Fair warning: major character death in this chapter. (Please don't kill me!)


Chapter 124

Where He Belongs

When I at last arrived at Erebor songs were already sung about Jack's last stand. It was a feat undreamed of. He stood for all of an hour with two companions at his back and in doing so he restored a certain spirit of resistance to the Free Folk Alliance. Their recent defeats combined with the unexpected firepower of the Enemy had drained their courage and their morale. Many of them believed that the end was coming for them, that all their resistance was only putting off the inevitable. The time of heroes was gone. Those were the stories they may have grown up with, but those were the stories of the past. No such thing happened in the world today.

But it did.

Jack did not set out to become a legend. He never thought of himself as a hero. In his own eyes he was one who did his duty. Even when he was surrounded by enemies on all sides with no hopes of any escape he stood his ground and defended his friends. Dáin was not entirely out of the game, but he was not as much use as he would have been had he not been injured. Brand too stood and fought, but as Jack had feared he was not as young as he once was. Age had made him grow slow. It had dulled his reflexes. Jack saved his life more than once that day.

They were near enough to Erebor that they could be seen by those on the battlements. At first they didn't know what or who it was that they saw, but they were filled with admiration. Admiration in turn kindled hope which then led to resistance and defiance. Here were three heroes, like figures of legends come to life before their gates, shining brighter than anything they had seen in recent months. Here was the strength of their people in all its glory.

They were not blind to how precarious this position was, and it was here that the defiance and resistance put in an appearance. In one of the most unified actions performed spontaneously during the war, they picked up whatever weapon came to hand – swords, axes, bread knives, spears, pitch forks, you name it – they poured through the gates and onto the field of battle with the aim to relieve their heroes and bring them safely home.

Their mission was partly successful. The orcs had not seen something like this coming at all. They were temporarily overwhelmed, just long enough for the people to do what they had come here to do. Yet it was as much of a success as it was a failure, because for Jack their help came too late. For an hour he had stood and fought, ignoring his wounds and the growing exhaustion and the endless, endless opposition. It was his defence of Brand that did for him in the end. Refusing to step aside when the orcs came for the King of Dale he was at last struck down, even as the reinforcements were breaking through the last lines of orcs separating them from their newfound heroes, dying, but not yet dead. This did not in any way deter his rescuers, who were of the firm belief that any body left behind for the orcs' sport was one too many. One among them in particular felt very strongly about this…

Duria

What in Durin's name am I doing? Duria thought to herself even as she stormed out of the gate to join the fray armed with nothing but a dagger, a rolling pin and her wits. She had been in her kitchen when the news came in, trying to translate her inner restlessness into something productive and preferably edible.

The edible bit would have to wait.

It was Thulfa who came to her door, panting from the run, telling her that Elvaethor and Tauriel were coming and that they had Thoren, but the orcs were close behind and she might want to come down to the gates to come and see. So Duria had come to see, just in time to find that once again Jack had thrown caution and self-preservation to the wind. He had ridden out, the wordy elf had told her, to buy Elvaethor and Tauriel the time they so needed to get to Erebor before the orcs got to them. Her relief at hearing that Thoren still lived was short-lived when she saw what Jack was going up against.

The fool, she thought. The reckless, bloody fool!

Then Elvaethor and Tauriel came in. Both were dishevelled in ways that elves only very seldom were, but they had Thoren with them, who looked worse than the two of them combined. Maker be good.

'He lives,' Elvaethor told her the moment he saw her. 'He lives.'

But not for much longer unless someone went ahead and did something about this very, very soon. Duria was no healer, but even she could see this much. 'Save him,' she charged him. It was not a request.

He did not take it as one. 'I will do everything in my power,' he vowed, but that was not quite what she'd asked of him.

Fear sent a shiver down her spine. 'Save him,' she repeated.

This time he avoided her gaze. He is not sure he can. Despite her warm clothes she felt chilled to the bone. Elvaethor and Tauriel both dismounted. Elvaethor carried Thoren in his arms as one would carry a child, with infinite care. Thoren himself never moved. He made no sound. She could see that he breathed, but that was the only sign of life.

When Thulfa gently squeezed her hand in support, she did not brush it off. Instead she squeezed right back, because what else could she do? This was a fight she could not fight. She could lecture about history and most other topics one cared to name, but healing was not within her gift. She did not know how.

'Duria, look!' It was Thulfa again who drew her attention to where it was most needed. She pointed to the land beyond the gates, where Jack's little force had gone. Most of those had wisely determined that the stated aim of this sortie had been accomplished; Thoren was once again safe within the walls of Erebor. With this being the state of affairs, they went back in.

Jack was not with them and it was to him that Thulfa pointed. Duria did not have to search for him, for he stood a head taller than those around him. He was visible to friend and foe alike. The foe found this very useful indeed, so they converged on him. But he stood.

Her heart was somewhere nearer her throat than her chest. Maker, please, please, please. She did know what to specifically ask for. She did not have the words. Please. She begged without them instead.

On closer inspection she found that her brother did not stand alone after all. A man with grey hair stood beside him and, when she looked closer still, she found that it was Brand, who should not be there. He was no longer young. What had possessed him to come out and risk his life in such a way?

The answer came to her immediately. The same thing that possessed Thoren. The same thing that possessed Jack. The same thing that possessed all of the Free Folk who left behind all that they knew in order to stand and hold back the Enemy.

'Dáin is there,' Thulfa said, pointing again.

So he was. The bodies parted just long enough to allow her a glimpse of her kinsman, on his feet and fighting, before he was hidden from sight again. Mahal, please. They were only three in number, holding back the forces of Mordor on their own. They stood against an army that filled the horizon as far as the eye could see. What hope had they?

Yet even as she watched she felt as though her heart might burst. Fear was first and foremost. This could not end well and she knew it, but at the same time pride surged through her. This was her brother and he embodied all the best of their race: courage, defiance, strength. Jack might have doubted who and what he was. So might a great deal of others. It could no longer be called into question. He looked like a man still – nothing could change that – but he acted as a dwarf ought to.

Now all the world saw.

'They stand alone,' Thulfa said. Her tone of voice was carefully neutral, so that Duria could not tell what went through her head.

'So they do,' said an old man standing nearby that Duria did not know.

Thulfa did, though. 'It is a sorry state of affairs,' she said.

'Have we not fought before?' an unfamiliar elf asked. He certainly looked as though he had fought before; his left arm was in a sling and a nasty, red scar ran across his face from cheek to forehead. He had lost an eye to the same wound. 'Have we not come when called before?'

'We have,' said a woman Duria also did not know. She drew herself up straighter. 'Have we not committed ourselves to the defence of this last bastion of safety?'

'We have ridden out in its defence before,' said the old man.

'We have ridden out in defence of those who could no longer defend themselves.' To Duria's infinite surprise this was Lufur's wife Nara. She was a widow now – Duria hardly dared to think of Lufur's demise for fear that she might burst into tears and never stop – but it had not broken her. She stood straight and with an axe already in hand. 'I am of a mind to do so again.'

The mood steadily shifted. It shifted with every word that was spoken. These were people who may have never fought before or who had already fought until they could not do so anymore. She had not been here when Jack had taken these people on a mission that to a rational mind could lead to nothing but failure. He had ignored the expectations and led them to victory instead. On his return he had called upon them again to train and to prepare for the defence of Erebor when all else failed.

Perhaps that day had now come.

The troops that returned from battle were battered and exhausted. Many of them had dragged themselves the last few miles to the gates where they at last collapsed. They were injured, disheartened and exhausted. Now these people stepped in.

'What can we do?' Duria asked. Surely they could not suggest what she thought they were suggesting? This was suicide!

'We can do what we did before.' The old man grinned a smile that revealed a distinct lack of teeth. 'We can fight.'

'We can bring our heroes back safe,' Nara said.

'We can defy the Enemy as Thoren chose to do,' Thulfa added.

'We can do the right thing,' the elf agreed. 'And in this we can be different from our Enemy, who understand nothing of loyalty and valour.'

'Or indeed of doing the right thing,' Thulfa agreed.

The mood was catching. Something in the very air that she breathed urged her to take up arms and rush outside with reckless abandon to do the right thing, to defend and to protect. I have no weapons, her rational voice reminded her, until she recalled that actually, this was not entirely true. For some unfathomable reason she had rushed out of her home with the rolling pin still in her hand. It was good dwarvish craftsmanship. Dwarves made things to last. They also made them so sturdy that most implements could double as a weapon in a pinch.

If this did not qualify as such, she did not know what would.

Then there was the dagger at her belt. Since the attack on Harry she went nowhere without it. It was protection, a firm reminder that not even in the Mountain itself could she be sure that she was entirely safe. The world had grown that dangerous.

A rolling pin and a dagger. That was all she had. No warrior would ever think that this was sufficient for battle, but the wish to fight and do what needed doing for the moment overrode all else. So when the unknown elf asked who was with him, Duria joined her voice to the vast choir of others who did the same. She was among the first to rush out of the gates before common sense could reassert itself. Having no great running expertise she of course fell behind in moments, but it was the thought that counted.

She knew where she was headed. Jack. Jack was her goal. Others would see to Dáin and Brand, but Jack was her brother and so it fell to her to pull him out of this mess. She had done so since he had learned to walk. This was no childhood mischief gone wrong. They had grown beyond that, but her role had not changed. So if pulling him out of this mess took her running at the orcs at her full speed, shouting wordless battle cries to give herself the courage she needed, then that was what she would do.

The orcs had not seen it coming. The Free Folk barrelled into them at speed, with no intention of stopping until they had obtained what they had come here for. The first lines were overrun in mere seconds. Duria trampled a fair few of them under her own boots.

She made sure to use force.

This army had not got where it was by being useless at fighting, so after the initial surprise wore off, they began to resist and to resist fiercely. Soon enough she found herself in the thick of the fighting, rolling pin in one hand, dagger in the other. At this point common sense finally returned to her. What in Durin's name am I doing? This was the moment that she recalled that when it came to fighting, she really didn't know what to do. She ought to have remembered that from the fight against the traitors with Flói not so long ago.

As if thinking about her cousin summoned him to her side, he appeared out of nowhere, seriously unamused. 'What in Durin's name do you think you are doing?' he demanded.

'Pulling Jack out of this by his ears,' she responded whilst she brought down the rolling pin on an orc's head. It made a small noise indicating displeasure and then crumpled at her feet. 'You can help. Why are you not with him already?' Was that not Flói's job, to keep an eye on Jack when she was busy elsewhere?

He did not dignify this with a response. Instead he manoeuvred himself before her and began to cut a path through the orcs towards her brother. Duria was content to follow in his wake. She was nowhere near the swordsman that her cousin was and by now it began to dawn on her that this was not her smartest move to date. But she had come this far, so she would see this through to the very end.

Then Jack fell.

She saw it happen right before her very eyes. For so long he'd stood and fought – she was not even sure for how long it'd been at this time – and now she was so near. She was close enough to see the sweat on his face mingling with the blood dripping from a dozen wounds. She was close enough to see his every move, hear his every word.

She was close enough to see the orc that decided his fate.

It all went so wrong and it all happened so fast. Dáin, Brand and Jack were surrounded – not for much longer, but certainly now – and the orcs came at them from all sides. This one had set its sights on Brand, who was visibly struggling to keep going. Orcs liked their victims weak. It meant that they could kill them so much easier. Jack saw it happen. He moved.

He pushed Brand out of the way of a blow that would have killed him for sure and in doing so, he took his place. Duria was close enough to see it all play out in excruciating detail.

'No!' It felt as though the sound was torn out of her throat by force, the sound barely recognisable.

It did nothing to stop this tragedy.

The orc's blade bit into Jack's shoulder and slashed further down. He cried out in pain. Duria cried out in horror. It never stopped. The sound went on and on. Dáin stepped in and dispatched the orc with a well-aimed blow, but that was too little and too late. Jack dropped his sword – Mahal, please, no! – and went down. For the briefest moment she half expected him to get back up again. This was not the first time he got in a scrape and somehow he'd always walked back out on his own. He'd been in and out of the healing rooms since roughly age fifteen. That was how it went.

But no longer.

Mahal, please, please, please!

But no amount of her begging, pleading and praying made him get up this time.

Her despair lent her a strength she did not know she had. She fought her way through the last orcs separating her from her brother. She had no memory of doing so, but she must have managed it somehow, because she reached him before Flói did.

Up close the damage done to him was unmistakable. She didn't know how, but by chance he was still conscious, clawing at the wound with his right hand, feebly and in vain. He made sounds of pain that she was sure were forever burnt into her memory. In nights to come they would haunt her and torment her. They haunted and tormented her already.

There was so much blood.

Despite the exercise and the fighting she felt cold to deep inside her bones. By now she was no longer a stranger to war. She had seen wounds too gruesome to even describe. She had seen horrors beyond imagining and yet this surpassed them all. He will not live to see another sunset. He is dying.

She fought against the knowledge, but in her heart she was already sure. That he was even still alive and, despite his wounds, was still trying to get up, was remarkable. He gave up trying to stem the bleeding and instead reached for his sword. It was beyond his reach.

He will never fight again.

She fell to her knees beside him. 'Jack, be still!' she admonished. 'Please, hold still. We will get you help.'

'Must fight,' he croaked out.

Duria told him the truth: 'The fight is all but done. We're here. We've come to fetch you home.' All around her determined folk fought their way past holding off the orcs for long enough that they could retrieve their heroes and take them to where it was safe. She lifted Jack into her arms. It was her job. He was too big for her to comfortably carry, but he was her responsibility. He had been her responsibility for so long.

Now she failed at last.

The tears trickled down her face all the way back to Erebor.

Jack

The pain was excruciating. He could withstand much, but this was beyond anything Jack had ever experienced before. He suspected how bad it was when he no longer had the strength to stand on his own two feet and hold his sword. Warriors who could not stand and fight were not destined to live for much longer.

Then Duria had come and her eyes had confirmed what he already knew.

He was dying.

She kept garbling the most impossible nonsense and although he tried to speak, Jack no longer had the air to tell her to shut up. Soon enough the pain was so unbearable that he had no energy to even try. It was all he could do to stop himself from crying out.

Duria lifted him and the effort to keep silent was beyond him anyway. He knew that she carried him back home, as she promised, but his memory of that trip was fragmentary and disjointed. He suspected that he drifted in and out of consciousness for the duration of it. He recalled hearing voices calling to each other, but he could hardly tell one from the other, never mind that he knew what they were saying.

Yet all the while there was a voice, speaking clearly at the edge of his hearing. Not yet, not just yet.

The first time that he truly realised what was happening was when he was placed down on a bed. Gentle hands fiddled with the straps of his armour. Cool hands brushed his forehead with a damp cloth. Yet another pair of hands held a cup to his lips, from which he drank almost instinctively.

The pain subsided.

He tried to draw more air into his lungs, but found that he could not truly do this without groaning in pain.

'Gently now,' Cathy admonished. Hers were the gentle hands that he had felt, he was sure of it. 'You're safe now.'

Jack remembered the fight, remembered all those who were not safe. 'Brand?' he asked. 'Dáin?'

'Both alive.' Cathy was quick to reassure him. 'Both of them can still walk on their own. They have been hurt, but they will mend.' Unlike you. The words hung in the air, but she did not say them. 'They are with the healers now in the other room. They will come when they are able.'

He nodded. He did not have the air to speak long sentences. 'How long?' he asked.

'You stood for an hour.' Elvaethor materialised on the left-hand side of the bed. His were the cool hands. 'You bought us the time we needed.' He laid a hand on Jack's forehead. His eyes looked watery.

Maker be good, I'll be the next mortal friend who departs this life.

He reached out for the hand to hold it. Speaking words of comfort – or indeed any words that touched on emotion – had never been his strongest point. But time slipped away and his strength with it, so for this elf he would make the effort. 'No tears, brother.' He had seen the document that confirmed the fact with his own eyes.

'You are worth every tear I spill,' Elvaethor told him.

That had not been exactly what he'd meant. He meant to say that this was not a way in which he was ashamed to die. He had done his duty. He had saved whom he'd set out to save. He had done his part in this war. Now perhaps it was time to rest and to leave his burdens to people whose shoulders were still strong enough to bear them. He did not have the air.

He had enough air for another question. 'Thoren?'

'Will live,' Elvaethor told him promptly. 'He is badly hurt, but the Lady sees to him.'

Duria butted in at last. 'Why is she not seeing to Jack?' she demanded in tones that Jack had learned to dread. 'Why is she not here saving Jack's life? Does she not have that power?'

Cathy clamped a hand over her mouth before she could talk herself deeper into trouble. No one answered her at any rate.

I am dying. I am beyond their aid. All it takes is time.

When he was first cut down he had expected that he would die there and then, but his body was stronger than he'd believed. Perhaps it simply did not have the nerve to die while Duria still told him that he was not allowed to. Perhaps he still wished to see the faces of his nearest and dearest before he went.

Fear played no part in it.

Even as he lay here, bleeding from so many wounds that he had lost count, he was not afraid. A year ago he would have fretted about his fate, not in this life, but in the next. He feared then that he did not have enough dwarf in him to join his people after death, that he was doomed to spend an eternity among the men he so despised.

All this had changed. He no longer despised men, well, not all of them. But he knew who he was. Other folks' assumptions and opinions had lost their importance. He knew who he was. He was a dwarf who happened not to look much like one, much as the brother who shared none of his blood. Consequently, all his fears about his ultimate destiny had fallen away until they were no more than a distant memory.

His kin crowded around his bed. Flói to his surprise was unable to hold back the tears, as was Cathy. The tears flowed down Elvaethor's cheeks as well. He meant to tell them not to cry for his sake, but was deterred when Uncle Dori burst into the room and set to rearranging the world in accordance with his wishes. It took Uncle Nori and Uncle Ori both to rein him in.

'You're on your way out,' said Nori with a no-nonsense approach for which the dwarves were known. None other had yet dared to say it. Dori and Duria both raised their voices in protest, but Nori was having none of it: 'Hush it, you two. Jack knows and he's no longer a dwarfling. You fought well, my lad, and now you're going home. That's the way of it.'

'His home is right here!' Duria protested so furiously that the tears appeared in her eyes. Again. 'This isn't right. None of this is!'

Jack smiled at his uncle. 'Home,' he agreed. He could meet his ancestors now without shame and without apology. The time had come to rest.

His body felt heavy and colder by the moment. The pain was mercifully subdued by the potion he'd been made to drink. Vaguely he was aware that several healers worked on his wounds, doing what little they could. If he'd had the air, he'd have told them to stop wasting both their time and his. There was nothing left to salvage, not in this life.

Yet he could not go. He let his eyes drift around the people assembled here and found one face missing. 'Harry?'

'With Aerandir,' Duria said. 'Where you left him. He is safe, Jack.'

She had misinterpreted. 'The boy,' he insisted. 'I need to see him.' Seven short words and he was completely out of breath. It could not take long, but this he would do before he took his leave of this world.

The emotions warred on Duria's face, her instinct to shield the lad from the not so pretty sides of life fighting against the absolute breach of etiquette that was denying a dying dwarf's last wish.

It was perhaps for the better that Flói took the decision out of her hands. 'I'll bring him to you.' He forced his face into a smile. The attempt failed miserably; his eyes did not join in. It was this that hurt Jack perhaps the most; his cousin was almost never sad or disheartened. He'd always a jest or witty observation ready, eyes sparkling with barely contained mirth. This was so out of place on his face. 'Don't you dare go before we get back, you hear me?'

He rushed out of the room before Duria could take him to task for it. Uncle Ori squeezed his hand on the way out.

It was Cathy who stepped up and took charge. 'I'll better clean you up then,' she said briskly. 'Pass me the bowl, please, Duria.'

This little sister of his was perhaps born to lead. She had taken charge of the day to day running of Erebor in a way that did Thoren proud. He was content to leave that in her hands. Fíli would take care of the war until Thoren was back on his feet. He could let go in the knowledge that Erebor was in good hands.

He was ready to go.

Almost.

Cathy bathed his face. The cloth came away red, but she kept at it until the water at last ran clear. 'Better,' she said, pulling the covers up to his neck. For Harry's sake. The healers made faint noises of protest. 'Let it be,' she said. 'You and I both know you cannot save him. Let us at least make him presentable to Harry.'

Jack nodded his agreement to this and the healers did at last back away.

'You tell amad and adad hello for me,' Cathy said. Her voice did strange things and the tears never stopped. She was never usually lost for words, but they ceased after this. Instead she took one of his hands in hers and held it for a moment.

The end was coming and it was in these things that he realised it most. His family was never this harmonious. There was always bickering and good-natured – and oftentimes less good-natured – abuse. Duria and Dori would fuss, Nori would be up to no good, Elvaethor would be enigmatic and drive them all to frustration, Cathy would be airy and opiniated at the same time. Thoren would be there.

Maker keep you, brother. Live. This Mountain needs you still.

Thráin would be there. He wished he could have seen him one last time, but that was not to be. His time was up.

Flói did not take long, which was all for the better, because breathing became harder with every beat of his heart. His vision was blurry at the edges and he was so, so cold. It sank deep into his bones and did not leave. He would not be warm again in life.

Flói held Harry by the hand. The circle around his bed parted to allow them entrance. Harry stood as frozen for a moment, eyes wide, lips wobbling suspiciously. Flói will have given it to him straight. It was perhaps hardest on this little lad, who had lost so much, who clung to Jack and now stood to lose him as well.

If only for his sake, I would stay.

The choice was not his to make.

With entirely too much effort for such a small gesture, he held out a hand to the boy. 'Come,' he called, ignoring how very out of breath this single word made him.

Harry needed no more. He wriggled his hand out of Flói's grip and stormed at Jack, forgetting that he was injured. He lunged for him. Duria made to stop him, but Harry was a fast runner – they had not so very long ago determined that it was his strength – and he jumped onto the bed and wrapped his arms around Jack. Self-control had abandoned him somewhere along the way and now he cried in truth.

'Careful, Harry!' Duria scolded.

'Leave him,' Jack told her. The potion did its work most wonderfully. 'Doesn't hurt.' That was one mercy. The pain was all but gone. So too was all the warmth in his bones and nearly all the breath in his lungs, so he needed to do this quick. More importantly, he needed to do this well. He reached up and brushed the lad's curly hair. 'Look at me.' His voice had been reduced to a raspy sound that he did not much like, but if he put some effort into this, then he was still capable of speech.

Harry obeyed him without question. 'Are you going to die?'

Direct and to the point. The lad could have been born a dwarf. 'Aye.' It served no point denying this.

He was not ready to accept it. 'But fighting is your strength.' His voice broke on the last word.

'Sometimes strength is not enough.' He was short of breath, but he persevered. All the words he had needed to speak to his kith and kin had been spoken a long time ago. Even if he had neglected to speak his heart to them, they knew him well enough to know them regardless. Yet Harry was still so young and yet his eyes were old. Even now he did his very best to control his tears.

He failed, but he tried all the same.

Jack reached up and put his hands against Harry's cheek to brush the tears away. The effort was almost beyond him, but Harry, with his somehow infallible instincts, reached out and held it there. 'Will I see you again?' For one with eyes so old, he sounded impossibly young.

Jack was not given to lying and he was not about to start the practice on his deathbed. 'I cannot tell.'

Elvaethor had a better answer. 'When Arda is remade, young Harry,' he said. 'When all is made new, and so will we be.'

'How long?' Harry asked. 'How long?'

'None can tell,' Elvaethor spoke gently. 'It may be a long time, but there is hope to be had in the meantime. Do you think you can be patient?'

Harry nodded through his tears. 'I'll miss you,' he said to Jack.

The sentiment was entirely mutual. He'd better say it fast, because his vision was growing ever dimmer, but there were words that needed to be said before he could leave. He thought of this boy who had wriggled his way into his heart without ever trying. He thought of the adoption documents that Ori had been preparing that bore both of their names. It would never be. 'And I'll miss you,' he said. He forced the last words out with his last breath: 'I would have been proud to call you my son.'

His vision narrowed until only a pair of green eyes remained and then this too fell away. Voices sounded, raised in panic, but he heard them only as if from afar, as though he was underwater and they talked above the surface as he sunk ever lower down.

'He's not breathing!'

'Maker be good, please do something!'

He did not listen, because when he opened his eyes again, he could see. When he moved his hands again, he could move. When he drew breath, he felt alive. The voices dwindled away into nothingness.

He was no longer in the bed. His body was once again whole, completely under his own command. He stood in a corridor leading up to a door of dwarvish design some feet away. It was slightly ajar. Light fell through it into the corridor beyond. Voices drifted through it as well, happy and laughing.

I know where I am headed.

It made no sense to stay where he was and even less to look behind. His life on Middle Earth was done. So he stepped forward until he stood before the door. He placed his hands against the stone and pushed, very gently.

It swung open smoothly.

They were there, surrounded by a multitude of dwarves, most of whom Jack had never met. They stood in the middle of this group of people, facing him. They smiled.

His father moved first. He was not as Jack remembered him, old and grey and with lines on his face. If he hadn't known better he would have mistaken him for Thráin. He was not given the time to contemplate that, for his father embraced him. 'Welcome,' he said. 'You have done us proud.'

Jack felt his heart swell and the tears appeared in his eyes. 'Thank you, adad.' In life it was all he had ever wanted. In death he knew he had achieved it.

Then his mother was there, young and red-haired and smiling at him with such joy and pride that his heart nearly burst. She too greeted him with a heartfelt embrace and then a kiss on the cheek. 'Oh, my dear boy, I am so glad to see you again.'

He held her at arm's length and looked at her. So long he had resented her and all that she was. They had never truly made it right. He had never truly made it right. Now here she was, looking at him as though he had never once hurt her.

'Amad.'

'It is so good to see you again, darling. You did so very well.'

'I am so sorry.' It was important that he got this out of the way first. 'All the things I said to you…'

'Are forgiven and forgotten,' she said in a tone that brooked no argument. 'You are here now and you are home.'

Yes, he was. 'I am a dwarf,' he said and this time he knew it to be true. He looked around him. Only now that he had arrived did the last of his doubts fall away. 'I have made it here.' He could not disguise the wonder and delight even if he tried. He did not truly try.

Kate Andrews smiled at him. 'Yes, of course, Jack,' she said. 'Where else should you be?'


When I started writing The Book, Jack's storyline was always most clear to me. In a way, I think, this is for him the ultimate confirmation of who he is. Yes, it's very sad, but it's not as sad as it could have been, if that makes any sense.

Next time: the aftermath. And, on a lighter note, Beth figures out the answer to a mystery.

This coming week there will be no Thursday update. I've got a fairly busy week ahead, so I cannot guarantee that I have the time to have everything ready for Thursday. Obviously, the Sunday update is still set to go ahead.

Thank you for reading. Reviews would be most welcome. (Yes, feel free to rant)