Chapter 128

Love and Loss

Having no orcs around made the progress of the Fellowship significantly easier than it would have been had the whole land still been crawling with the pests. It meant that this segment of the book was once again absolutely useless to Thráin. I knew that much, but I think I would have fretted a lot more if I'd known what the Ring was doing at that time. I didn't know how much stronger it was than it was described. I was probably very lucky not to know what it did to the members of the Fellowship.

It's never got any less frustrating to me just how slowly information travels in this world. You know what goes on in your little corner of the world, but I didn't know how Thráin was getting on. I didn't know how the war in the North was progressing either. It was the same for everyone else of course, but they were used to it. They know that they cannot know what is taking place elsewhere, so instead they trust in their friends and allies. They trust that someone else hundreds of miles away will still play their parts even when they cannot see it.

I'd call that faith.

Thráin had no clue what was happening in the world beyond, but he did know that he still had a mission to carry out. All the other parts were beyond his control, so he trusted that his kin would see to the war in the North and that Boromir and I sorted out whatever was going on in Gondor. Little did he know that not much was happening in Gondor at all, because that is the way these things go when a world must make do without such wonders as telephones and Internet.

Thoren had no idea what was going on in any other part of the world either, but he knew what Thráin was about and he trusted in that. Truth be told, it was getting a little hard for him to keep the faith. Lately it seemed that all was set against him. The Mountain was under siege, he himself was still a little out of the game and his brother Jack had died. Out of all these three things it was the last that hit hardest…

Thoren

It took two disgruntled healers to carry him to the room where Jack lay. Both of them grumbled about it, but Thoren pointed out that he was still their King and that he expected his orders to be obeyed. It was not his way to pull rank, but in this he would not be overruled.

Jack died so that he may live.

Tauriel had not said so. He knew she did not mean to imply it, but they both knew the truth of the matter. Jack had ridden out to buy Elvaethor and Tauriel the time they needed to bring Thoren back to Erebor. He would not have risked this had there been no reason. Only a fool would try to stand against the forces of Mordor with so few people at his back. Yet Jack had done so.

He paid the price for that bravery in his own blood.

The knowledge was as a sword to the chest.

So he would go and see. He owed it to Jack to get up and carry on the work. He owed it to him also to pay his respects, to honour him in what small way he could for the sacrifice he had made. This was all he could do for the time being.

The healers grumbled and muttered all the way to the room at the end of the hallway where Jack was. Thoren bit his tongue and said nothing. The movements jolted his injured limbs, to say nothing of the ever increasing pain in his throat. It was clearly understood that they would turn back in spite of his orders if he gave the slightest indication of discomfort.

He said nothing.

Jack had not been left unattended. Elvaethor stood at the foot of the bed on which he lay, so still he might as well have been hewn out of stone. He stood a vigil there throughout the night and the morning, Tauriel told him. The hour was well past noon by now.

He startled when Thoren and his carriers entered the room. For a moment Thoren saw the deep grief in his eyes, before he shielded that away from view.

'Don't hide,' he asked. 'There is no need.'

The mask fell again.

The healers put him in a chair next to the bed and covered him up with a blanket tucked over his shoulders as though he was a doddery old man who was likely to drool down his own chin at any minute now. Ordinarily he would have had some choice words for them, but now he held his peace. He did not have the strength to argue with them. He barely had the strength for this venture either, truth be told, but he would see this done all the same.

He waited until they had departed and then reached out a hand to his chosen brother. 'Can we not mourn together?' he asked.

Elvaethor bowed his head. 'The fabled wisdom of the dwarves again,' he observed. He took the hand.

'Not wisdom.' He was not so blessed as that. 'But sense, aye, perhaps I can still offer that.' He prayed that it was so at any rate. Of late he questioned many things, his own decisions chief among them. Had he truly done what was right? Had he risked the lives of his people needlessly? Would it have been better to wait out a siege and not provoke the Enemy any further than he already had? Was there truly wisdom in defiance?

He could no longer tell, not when he considered the evidence before him.

Someone had cleaned Jack up. The figure on the bed looked as though he was merely asleep. If he looked for too long he might almost be tricked into thinking that he could open his eyes at any moment. Yet there was no more breath in the body, no more movement where once there had been nothing but action.

He is truly gone.

And the fault is partly mine.

'This was not your doing,' Elvaethor spoke, as though he had read Thoren's mind. 'Neither was it my own for bringing you home.'

'Yet it was my defiance that led to this.' From the deep dark recesses of his mind came the thought that if he had at least succeeded in taking his own life before the orcs could stop him, none of this would have come to pass. Truth though it was, he banished it. No, he'd not be ungrateful for his life. He had much left to live for. Was that not why he had entreated Tauriel to wed him? He still wished for life.

But not at this price.

'Do you doubt your actions?'

'How can I not?' His own life would have been an acceptable price for defiance. He knew he'd lived on borrowed time from the moment he gave Sauron's messenger his marching orders. He'd taken that risk for himself, yet he had taken it for all the Free Folk as well. He'd always known this.

Yet Jack was supposed to be safe.

He hadn't been.

So here they were.

'The choice to go and fight was never one you inflicted on your people,' Elvaethor pointed out. 'You defied Sauron with their support and you fought the Enemy with their support at your back. They were never unwilling to come.' For all his words about the dwarvish wisdom and common sense, he was eloquent on both matters himself.

'I know.' Yet in all of this, it was Jack who had never been supposed to die. It was almost instinct, ingrained so deeply within him for so many years. He was the one they all tried to keep safe. His moods often ran dark, so they made sure that there were folk around him who would draw him out of himself. He was often reckless in skirmishes and battles, so they made sure that experienced fighters were nearby to save him from himself.

We have been found wanting at last. Thoren was in no state to save Jack. Flói, bless him, had done his best, but he had come too late. Could he then blame Dáin for not taking more care? Should he look to Brand and hold him to account? None those options seemed fair. Jack's choices were his own. They always had been.

So here they were, looking at a life cut brutally short.

He could not say how long they were there, united in grief and silence. Elvaethor stood, but his grip on Thoren's hand never slackened. Thoren in turn held on with all the strength he had, which was not much of late.

He looked at his brother's body again, and once more could have fooled himself into thinking that he was merely asleep. Tauriel had counselled him not to look for the wounds that had slain him. Thoren had retorted that he was a dwarf and as such not given to squeamishness in general. She in turn asked him if this was the last memory he wished to have of his brother. Would he forever remember him as one so horribly wounded or would he rather retain the memory of Jack as he had been in life?

She had left him with the matter unresolved. Now that he was here, he knew her words for the wisdom that they were. He did not look. Besides, he would not have the strength to rise to his feet and do so.

Thoren did not measure the passage of time. In this room it had but little meaning. It seemed detached from the world, yet at last the world encroached upon it again and broke the spell. It was only a small noise, the slightest creak of the door opening behind them, but in the silence it was as loud as a stone avalanche.

Elvaethor turned to look. Thoren followed suit in a distinctly slower fashion. He had expected the healers, demanding to take him back to his bed now that he'd had his way. Perhaps he had expected his siblings or another one of their kin. It wasn't.

A small correction was needed, though, because while it may not be who Thoren thought to see there, he was kin. Young Harry stood in the doorway, wriggling on his feet, not meeting either one of their gazes, chewing on his bottom lip. The door handle was still in his hands. He looked as though he wanted to run, but something kept him in place.

'Young Harry,' he greeted when Elvaethor did not. 'You are most welcome here.'

He knew that the young lad had taken a shine to Jack before he left again for war, but he did not know what had happened since. Yet he is here. Did that not in itself speak louder than a thousand words?

'They said I could say goodbye,' Harry said in a small voice. He was near tears. 'And then they forgot.' His voice broke.

The tears suggested a closer relationship than the lad had enjoyed with Jack when Thoren last left. There is much I no longer know.

None of that mattered. He let go of Elvaethor's hand and held it out to Harry instead. 'That was remiss of them,' he said. 'Come, you may do so now if you wish.'

Harry shuffled closer, step by step. 'Are you hurt very bad?' he asked, peering at the many bandages that covered Thoren. His eyes widened slightly when he saw just how many of them there were.

'I will mend,' he reassured the lad. Maker knew what the lad had seen of the war, but it was almost certainly too much for one his age. Too much of war, too much of death. Here was the proof before them. 'It will take time, but I will mend.'

Harry's face grew solemn. 'Do you promise? You won't die?'

'I won't die.' Not of this, despite the orcs' and his own best efforts. 'Come.'

Harry put his hand in Thoren's at last and let himself be pulled a little closer by until he was between Thoren and Elvaethor, the latter of whom put a hand on his shoulder. Harry stood very quietly for a good long while, just looking. Maker only knew what went on in that little head. He didn't say and for all the emotion that his face showed, it gave very little away about his thoughts.

'He was going to be my dad,' Harry said out of the blue.

This threw Thoren for a loop for a moment. He needed only a little time to realise that dad was his word for father, and in truth this only confounded him more. 'Do you not have a father?' he asked. In the short time Thoren had known the child he had never mentioned one and no one had asked.

The boy muttered something unintelligible.

'Sorry?'

'He ran away before I was born,' Harry said, only a little louder this time. He kept his eyes pointedly on the ground.

Thoren needed a little time to process that as well. Here in Erebor fathers did not do such a thing. It was unheard of. Yet he recalled from his mother's writings that her father had abandoned his family. He had done it when she was old enough to know what happened. From what he heard Harry might have never known the man who fathered him.

'Then he was a faithless villain,' Elvaethor judged. 'And the fault lies not with you.'

Harry only stared at Jack. 'He was going to be my dad,' he repeated. 'I wanted him to be my dad.' He started crying anew.

Thoren didn't know what to do. More than before he felt that there were certain facts that he had not been apprised of whilst he was away. In this he did not know Jack's mind. He could not reassure Harry and tell him that the feeling had been mutual. He did not know if Jack's interest in the boy was only indulgent, such as he was to Dari and Nari, or something more paternal.

Elvaethor was wiser in these things. He was also distinctly less injured, which allowed him to crouch down to Harry's level and open his arms. Harry did not need more. He all but threw himself in Elvaethor's arms and sobbed as though the world was ending. Perhaps for him it was. He'd lost so much. This might be the thing that broke him in the end.

Elvaethor let him cry until the tears ran dry.

'Sorry,' Harry muttered.

Elvaethor gently took him by the shoulders. 'Look at me, Young Harry,' he said. When Harry complied, he continued: 'I'll share some wisdom first relayed to me by Mrs Thora. Promise me you'll remember it?' Harry nodded. 'You've shown great wisdom in your tears, Harry. Tears are a body's natural reaction when our emotions become too much for us. And when the crying is done, we will stand stronger for it. Crying helps.'

'Does it?' Harry still sounded very hesitant.

'Aye, so it does.'

'You don't cry,' the boy observed.

He was right at that. Though the news of Jack's death had hit him like a sledgehammer, he had not shed tears for his brother's passing. He felt numb with the loss, as though he stared into a void everywhere that Jack had been. If he could, he would have roared and howled, but his strength failed him.

'Because we are older and have grown into fools,' Elvaethor said. 'This is great wisdom that children have and adults often forget. So you, I think, will be wise and recall it even when you have grown old and grey to remind us older fools.'

Harry considered this for a moment. He looked from Elvaethor to Thoren and back until at last his gaze lingered on Thoren. 'Do you miss him?'

'Yes.' This was not a question he needed to ponder at all. 'Deeply.' Would that he could not feel it.

'Is my mum going to die too?' It was a very different question, but it seemed that to Harry at least they were closely related. And for one who had seen so much death that was perhaps understandable. There was no more building on solid ground. All had turned to shifting sands. Anyone could be snatched away at any moment and none could tell who it was to be.

Certainties had become a distant memory.

So Thoren answered him honestly: 'I do not know, Harry. I shan't lie to you. The journey your mother must now undertake is a dangerous one.' This was a lesson that he, young as he was, had to learn. He had to bear that burden. Lying might seem kinder, but would be crueller in the long run. 'I cannot promise you that she will return.'

The boy looked lonely, forlorn. He was cut adrift in a world that was still foreign to him, separated from those he had known all his life. Now the one he had cleaved to so unexpectedly had died and no one knew where his mother was and if she would return at all. He was too young to formulate those feelings with any accuracy, but they were there on his face for all to read.

I have been lucky. Bereft though he felt, many of his loved ones still remained to him. 'You will have a place here, Harry,' he promised, holding his hand to reassure him in that way as well. 'We will not forsake you. This I swear.'

Harry didn't say anything, but he clung to that hand as if his very life depended on it.

Duria

It was to the battlements her feet led her. Folk tried to stop her and talk to her, but she avoided their gazes and increased her pace. Most of them knew how to take a hint and let her be. Those who didn't know when to stop she had to physically dodge. On one occasion she even had to run and take a few back alleys to shake them off.

She was in no mood to speak.

She did not trust her own voice.

I am not going mad. This Duria did know. She knew what that felt like and when she had been immersed in her own grief, she had been unable to recognise what had happened to her. There had only been the numbness and the darkness. She hadn't felt the demands of her own body.

She felt them keenly now.

Her stomach reminded her that it had been some considerable time that she had put some food in it. Her throat was dry, her eyes heavy. She hadn't slept last night. She had tried, for a bit, but she found that sleep eluded her grasp. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the images of the past day flash before her eyes, jolting her into painful wakefulness. So she had asked her neighbour to look after Dari and Nari for a while. That was the last time she talked to anybody. Ragna's pitying sympathy had turned her off people for a while.

It was as if her mind sometimes forgot for a few moments that she had one brother less than she had at this time yesterday, so when she did remember, it hit her like a brick to the head. On more than one occasion had she staggered when it hit her all over again. This wasn't meant to happen, was the thought that she kept repeating. It was Thoren in danger. He was the one who rode out to battle, fully believing that he was never coming home again. It was Thráin who had gone off on a more dangerous mission than she truly wanted to contemplate. He was the one she might never see again.

It was never meant to be Jack.

Yet it was.

For the first time in her life she experienced the restlessness that Thoren was often plagued with. She walked all over, but found that she could neither sit quietly nor settle herself to one occupation. The restlessness drove her on, but in her fuddled state it took her a while to realise why she could not come to rest.

That realisation sent her staggering into the nearest wall.

Narvi.

The army was home. No one still alive had been left behind, she had been told. Yet Narvi had not come home. And after all that time she spent in the healing rooms, she fancied that she ought to have seen him if he were there. She cast her mind back, but it was being singularly unhelpful today. It kept replaying the images of Jack's dying moments over and over again, sometimes substituting her brother's dead face for her husband's.

If she had been restless before, she was more so then.

So her search began. She went all over the Mountain, looking for him. She went to the healing rooms – just in case she missed anything – to the barracks, the workshops, the markets, everywhere he might have possibly gone. Redheads there were aplenty, but not a single one of them was Narvi's.

The downside of going out and about was that she had to confront people and every single one of them wanted to talk to her. They wore the same faces Ragna wore, so Duria gave them a wide berth and eventually they left her alone. Cathy, whom she came upon near the council chambers, was not as easy to shake off and perhaps she ought to have stopped. They'd both suffered the loss of a brother. For a moment she slowed her step and resolved to do the right thing. Then Halin materialised at Cathy's shoulder and she decided against it. Cathy at least still had her husband.

It was more than Duria could face.

So she ran.

With the Mountain under siege she eventually ran out of places to go, so it was to the battlements she went, feeling numb and empty and full and exhausted all at once. She drew the hood of her cloak up so that folk would not see her face. She was not alone here either – nowhere was deserted – but in the shadow of the clouds and her hood both, she could at least be anonymous. Besides, everyone was too preoccupied with the scene before the gates to pay much attention to those who had come here to see for themselves what had become of the lands beyond.

It was not a cheerful sight.

The orcs had laid waste to these lands when they were here before. Dale was no more and much of the landscape itself had been changed beyond recognition. After their departure the snows had been kind enough to conceal much of the damage done, but armies marching over the land had turned the white snow to grey and brown sludge.

Now it was on fire.

Duria did not know how it was possible. Even after melting, it ought to be too wet to be on fire. Besides, there was nothing left that could possibly still burn. It had all been burnt before. Yet everywhere she looked were flames and orcs dancing as if they were celebrating a great victory. The Nazgûl flew on their winged mounts above this travesty of dance, screeching to their heart's content.

For some time she thought that she must have wandered into a nightmare from which there was no escape. Perhaps this is what the world's ending looks like, Duria thought. There was only fire and evil. As far as the eye could see nothing else remained. It felt as such too. The world beyond the gates had been stripped bare and set aflame and here within her brother lay dead and her husband was nowhere to be found.

How can we win?

She experienced a despair that went beyond her own grief for the first time. Had Thoren ever felt it, this sense of futility, even as he rode to war? How could it be that anything they did could make the smallest difference? Were they not fighting a losing battle? They had no idea if Thráin was even alive yet. For all they knew, he might have fallen long ago and his quest may have failed. Sauron could have the Ring. Then what were they still fighting for?

All around her the faces reflected that same despair. Their world went up in flames before their eyes. It was hard to have any faith about the fate of their people and the world they lived in. So many had died, so many others were too weak to fight any further.

'Not a pretty sight.'

The voice beside her startled her. 'Dwalin.' She retrieved her composure from wherever it had hidden. She was in no mood for company, but she had a healthy dose of respect for Dwalin, so she would not tell him to push off. And only orcs ran away from Dwalin.

He didn't speak again for the longest time, a quality that Duria valued enormously at the moment. Dwalin could chatter with the best of them, but he knew when to hold his peace too. Perhaps that was why her father had appreciated his company so much. Duria's kith and kin were a noisy bunch, she herself often included. Only Ori and Dwalin truly understood that silence could achieve as much, if not more.

She drew some support from him because of it. He made no attempts to talk to her or bestow his pity on her. She needed no condolences or offers of help. Why would she need help? She was still alive and standing on her own two feet when so many others were not. What need had she of aid that could so easily be better bestowed elsewhere? She had no right to it.

So they stood and they watched the world burn. The scene looked as desolate and hopeless as Duria felt.

In the end she was the one who broke the silence. 'Do you believe that we can survive? Can we win?'

It was an honest question and he did her the courtesy of taking his time to think about it and give her an honest answer. 'Aye,' he said at last. 'But not today.'

Not today, no. Today the orcs celebrated and the Free Folk mourned. Today she did not feel as if all could ever be well again. Today she only saw all that was lost and all that was wrong. Perhaps it was something that the Nazgûl did. Despair and futility permeated everything. It was in the very air she breathed.

'But we may?'

'If it must be done, it must be done soon.' Dwalin was a realist, another thing she valued. 'We saw them off once before. Once they assemble themselves a camp, we may know more about how it could be done.'

Already he was thinking strategy. He'd better, because most of the leaders of the Free Folk Alliance were not functioning too well. Thoren was likely too weak to partake in this for many a week. Brand and Dáin had both sustained injuries that ensured them a lengthy stay in the healing rooms. Fíli, whilst up, still could not walk without a stick. That left Thorin Stonehelm, a firm believer in charging in headlong without any complicated plans, and Thranduil, whom no dwarf would ever willingly follow into battle. Their ally he may be, but dwarves had long memories.

But everyone listened to Dwalin.

They had listened to Jack as well.

The grief was never far away these days.

She forced herself to focus. 'How long can we last out a siege?'

Dwalin looked at her in a way she did not much care for. 'You ought to ask Cathy,' he said, which was not the answer she wanted to hear. 'She's in charge of these matters.' He frowned when Duria did not follow this up with an assurance that she would go and do so in the near future. 'Have you spoken with her since Jack…?'

There was a word she didn't want to hear, so she cut over him with all due haste: 'She's been busy. As have I.'

'Aye, traipsing all over Erebor like Thoren on one of his days,' Dwalin agreed, who knew a lot more about her movements than she was comfortable with.

It sounded like an attack, so she treated it as one. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at him. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

Dwalin had weathered tempers more fiery than hers, so this hostile approach did not put him off in the slightest. 'You have both lost a brother,' he pointed out needlessly; she did know perfectly well what had happened. Would that she could forget it for an hour or so. 'It is natural to seek comfort with your sister and offer her some in return.'

This wrong-footed her. If he was going to lay into her, it would be because he believed that she was close to the point of going beyond reason, because she was the one to need help. It had not occurred to her that someone could want her to comfort them. Besides, his reasoning was faulty at any rate, so she set him straight: 'Cathy has Halin.'

Only with maximum effort did she manage to prevent sounding jealous and petulant. In truth she did not begrudge Cathy her husband, but seeing that she still had one while Narvi's fate was once again so uncertain was more than she could bear. It seemed so horribly unfair that Halin, the dwarf she still didn't really like, managed to get out of each and every scrape with all his limbs still in their proper places and nary a scratch on him. And now Narvi was missing. Again.

She felt as though she had lived through a moment like this before.

Dwalin crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a good long look she didn't appreciate much. 'I sometimes wonder if it's from your father or your mother that you've inherited that streak of bloody-mindedness,' he said in a tone that suggested he was quite put out by it. 'So here's some counsel for you. Go and find your sister. Find a quiet place and mourn together before the war starts up again in earnest. Then pull yourself together and do what needs doing. It's not like you to mope or wallow. So don't.'

Duria could only blink back at him for a moment or two. Her words resurfaced a little later. 'I've never known you to give counsel unasked.' She certainly had not asked. She certainly did not want it.

'Maker save me,' Dwalin muttered in exasperation. He uncrossed his arms, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. Though she struggled, she couldn't break free. Dwalin was one of the strongest dwarves she knew and Duria, despite the recent training, was unskilled in the art of wrestling. 'Go and do as you must. The war will keep.' He gave her a final shove back over the threshold.

Of course she could have cursed up a storm. She could even have turned around and marched back out, because no law forbade her from doing so. Yet she hesitated. Part of her was rational enough to recognise that he gave good counsel. She should go and do as he said, only she didn't have the words. In all her years she had only seldom been without them, but now they let her down at last.

One step at a time, she told herself, and so she set off.

But only as far as the foot of the staircase.

It was here that surprise froze her into place. It couldn't be. He could not be there. She had spent the entire day searching for him. He'd been nowhere to be found, just like the first time, when she had gone all over the Mountain to look for him and he was not there. But he was here, talking to one of the warriors that Duria couldn't put a name to. There were a lot of hand gestures involved.

One of said hand gestures pointed straight at Duria and a moment later, Narvi turned around and looked her right in the eyes. The world slowed down until time no longer existed. He was here. Duria cast her eyes over him and found that he still had two legs and two arms and he was perhaps wearing a few more bandages than she was used to, but no bits had fallen off that she could see, so it stood to reason that it would remain that way.

He's not dead.

He's alive.

The world unfroze and so did her body. She forgot that she did not believe in public displays of affection. She forgot that she'd never once wished anyone to see what ought to be private. Truth be told, she forgot that there were people there at all. All there was left to do was run until she had his arms around her and all the distance between them had been bridged.


Next time: Fíli appoints a new, somewhat reluctant new commander of the allied troops.

Apologies for the lateness. This site was having issues. Again.

Thank you so much for reading. Reviews would be very welcome.

Until next week!