Chapter 9: The Thundering Sky

A week later they were blessed with some rare warm weather, and everyone's spirits lifted somewhat. Sam somehow convinced Gandalf and Aragorn to let him light a small fire so they could have some hot food for once, and the smell of cooking meat filled their camp.

Toven, along with most of the others, was taking the opportunity to rest his legs. They'd spent most of the morning climbing a steep, rocky slope before stopping at the top, and they were all grateful for a short rest. But Merry and Pippin had pestered Boromir into giving them sword fighting lessons, and this seemed this was as good a time as any.

Boromir swung his sword towards Pippin, giving him enough time to parry as he counted each strike. "Two, one, five. Good! Very good."

"Move your feet,"Aragorn reminded him.

Merry stood ready as Boromir turned towards him, giving him the opportunity to counter the same series of blows.

"Why do you count like that?" Toven asked.

Boromir paused and lowered his sword. "These are drills taught to every member of the Gondorian guard."

"Drills." He sat back. "I see."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Aragorn shoot him a look, as if to say, Don't start, but it was too late.

Boromir turned to fully face him. "Do you have a problem with my method of fighting?"

He shrugged, feigning disinterest. He hadn't forgotten the way Boromir had spoken to Aragorn during the council. He didn't exactly dislike the man, but he'd been toying with the idea of knocking him into the dirt. "It just seems a rather…rigid way of learning."

Merry and Pippin exchanged a questioning glance.

Boromir raised an eyebrow. "And you know of a better way?"

"I suppose we'll have to find out." Toven grabbed his sword and moved down to the flat space where the three of them had been practicing. Merry and Pippin stepped out of the way. "I was taught to improvise, to learn through trial and error. I believe it's made me a fairly effective fighter."

"Let's see it, then," Boromir said as they both raised their swords.

"Fuck him up, T!" Quinn shouted from the other side of their camp.

Boromir came at him, and Toven went low, ducking beneath his horizontal swing. He brought his own sword up, but Boromir pivoted out of the way. He waited again for the other man to attack, and dodged each blow.

"Are you going to strike me?" Boromir asked, backing up a couple steps.

Toven grinned. "I'm still waiting for you to strike me."

He'd fought men of Boromir's stature before, and knew to rely more on his speed than strength. The idea was to expend his opponent's energy first, then go in for the kill (so to speak)—though perhaps it wasn't the best idea to get him winded with half a day's travel still ahead of them.

They circled each other for another moment, the Boromir came at him again. Toven sidestepped, but Boromir reversed his swing halfway and jabbed his elbow to the side. It caught Toven on the shoulder and made him stumble, and the flat of Boromir's boot sent him the rest of the way to the ground.

"You should know," Boromir said, lowering his sword with a small smirk, "drills were not the only thing I learned as a swordsman."

"For the Shire!" Merry jumped from a nearby rock and onto Boromir's back, making him stumble. Pippin barreled into his legs, and the three of them collapsed to the ground, laughing. Aragorn went to break the three of them up.

Toven blushed and pushed himself to his feet. It seemed he'd underestimated Boromir's skill with the sword, and overestimated his own. He picked up his sword and moved up the rocks to where the others were sitting.

"Don't worry, man." Quinn patted him on the shoulder. "You'll get him next time."

"Hopefully I won't have to, seeing as we're on the same side."

They looked downhill in time to see Merry and Pippin flip Aragorn onto his back.

"Or maybe you should worry about those two," Quinn said. "By the way, did you end up bringing that Morgul blade out here?"

"I…" Toven sighed. "No. I must have forgotten it in Rivendell." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry."

"Aw, man." She shrugged. "Well, it's too late to go back and get it. If we run into the wraiths again, I'll try to bum another one off of them."

"Right." Toven crossed his arms. He had left the blade in Rivendell—that much was true. And thankfully Quinn didn't seem to have picked up that he'd left anything out.

"What is that?" Sam stood up, peering at something to the south.

"Nothing," Gimli said. "It's just a wisp of cloud."

Toven followed their gazes and frowned. A dark shape was hovering in the sky, gradually growing closer.

"It's moving fast," Boromir said, having pulled himself and the hobbits to their feet. "And against the wind."

"Yeah, maybe if clouds were made of birds." Quinn shielded her eyes against the sun. "Oh, they are birds."

"Crebain from Dunland!" Legolas said.

"Hide!" Aragorn commanded, and everyone sprang into action.

Boromir sheathed his sword and ushered Merry and Pippin back into camp. Sam doused the small fire they'd lit, while Frodo grabbed their packs and shoved them under a bush. Toven spared one last look at the approaching flock of birds, then shimmied under a small gap in the rock nearby.

"Oh, shit."

He turned to see Quinn lying beneath a bush a few feet away. "What is it?" he whispered.

"I just realized my armor is shiny. What if they see it?"

With a sigh, he balled up his cloak and tossed it to her. She gave him a thumbs up and spread it over the top of the bush. Toven put his hand over his face and prayed she wasn't about to get them all caught.

The shrieking and cawing of the Crebain grew louder, and the sky darkened momentarily as a flurry of fluttering wings passed overhead. They waited until the sound had faded, then disappeared entirely.

Once the others began to move, Toven crawled out from under his hiding spot and retrieved his cloak.

"Thanks, man." Quinn stood and rolled her shoulders. "I was panicking there, for a second."

"Well, that's what you get for wearing plate on a secret mission." Toven brushed a few brambles from his cloak.

Gandalf was staring to the north, where the Crebain had disappeared. "Spies of Saruman. The passage south is being watched."

"That's a lot of spies." Quinn put her hands on her hips. "I wonder if he has to feed them all."

"We must take the Pass of Caradhras."

The others had packed up their belongings, and began descending the hill where they'd stopped to rest.

"I don't understand why we can't just march our way down to Isengard," Quinn said. "We beat up Saruman and he won't bother us anymore. I mean, you're also a wizard, so you could definitely take him, right?"

Gandalf muttered something under his breath and followed the others down the slope.

"Right, Gandalf?"

"I guess he has something else in mind." Toven nudged her arm. "Let's go."

Quinn spread her hands, then gave up and followed him. "You know, every once in a while I have a good idea…"

"Man, that looks gnarly as hell."

Quinn gazed up at the peak of Caradhras in the near distance. In the setting sun, the snow-covered peak looked red, like someone had spilled blood all over it. Or Kool-Aid.

"We should not forget about the wizard. Saruman remains a threat, even if your companions choose to ignore him."

Quinn turned to look at Belekur. The two of them were alone—the others were setting up camp while she walked around to get a look at the area. "Believe me, I'd like nothing better than to punt that guy from the top of his creepy tower. But I swore I would protect Frodo." She glanced down the hillside. "I can't just leave him."

"You may not have a choice." Belekur stepped closer. "Your companions will not be safe as long as the wizard is in power."

She shifted her weight. It always made her uncomfortable when Belekur made a good point. "Yeah, well…there's other things that can threaten them besides Saruman. And Gandalf says we should wait. He almost never explains things to me, but I know he must have a good reason."

"You do realize we are working towards the same end." They moved forward, blocking Quinn's path before she could walk away. "Ignoring my advice out of spite is not going to achieve a result you want."

"Okay, first of all, we don't want the same thing, because I know you don't give a shit about collateral damage." Quinn met their gaze. It was weird, like looking into a mirror and seeing an angrier, colder version of herself. "And I'm not ignoring you out of spite, I'm ignoring you out of principle. Because I know you would lead me to do something that's going to get my friends killed."

A flutter of wings sounded close by, making them both turn. A large black bird had settled on a rock a few feet away. At first Quinn thought it was one of the ravens that always hung around Erebor, but this one looked gaunt, its feathers ragged and oily-looking.

Quinn put a hand on her sword. She hadn't gotten a good look earlier, but it looked like one of the Crebain that had passed them. After their initial pass, they'd flown back south a few days ago. Maybe one of them had stayed behind and found them.

The bird only stared at her with one beady eye as she drew closer. Quinn glanced behind her. The sun was still out, just barely peeking over the horizon. She lifted her sword from its sheath, just enough for part of the blade to catch the light, and it started to glow. She let it fall back into the sheath. If the bird tried to fly away, she'd have one good shot to try and kill it.

The bird clicked its beak, then let out a squawk. It repeated the noise in a strange pattern, almost like…

Quinn narrowed her eyes and took another step forward. "Is this thing talking to me?"

She caught something that sounded like "bring," or maybe "break." The bird hopped closer, still chattering away.

An arrow went right through its chest, sending the bird backwards off the rock. Quinn jumped and turned around. "Dude!"

Legolas lowered his bow and walked towards her. "That must have been another one of Saruman's spies."

"Yeah, no shit." They walked around the rock to check on the bird. It was lying with its wings spread, already stiff.

Legolas bent to retrieve his arrow. "Did you see any more of them?"

"No, that was the only one." Quinn frowned at the bird. It had been talking to her, trying to tell her something. Maybe Saruman had been trying to contact her for whatever reason, but…

"Is something wrong?" Legolas asked.

"Uh, no." She looked away. She didn't feel like telling the others about her former partnership with the wizard, since she wasn't sure how they would take it. "We should probably get back to camp. Maybe we can eat this thing." She nudged the bird with her foot.

Legolas raised an eyebrow. "If you want to cook a spy of the enemy for dinner, you can take that up with the others."

Quinn gingerly picked up the bird by one of its legs. "Ugh. Yeah, I'm leaving this up to Sam."

As they walked back to camp, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing something, but she didn't quite know what. Maybe she'd try and figure it out later.

Toven winced as another frigid breeze passed over the rock. They were nearing the Pass of Caradhras, the mountain peak looming above them, and it seemed the temperature had dropped as they'd gotten closer.

Aragorn had been concerned that they would be exposed in the first stretch of the pass, which was barren and exposed to prying eyes. He'd taken Legolas and Toven with him to scout out the first mile or two, before the rest of the party proceeded.

They were walking across an open stretch of bare rock, which provided little shelter from the biting wind. Toven blew into his hands and cast another glance around the barren landscape.

"If anyone is lying in wait up here, they might already be half-frozen," he said.

Aragorn knelt down to inspect something on the ground, then stood up, apparently finding nothing of interest. "That may be true once we reach the higher slopes. But there still could be spies or scouts hiding ahead."

They'd had a close enough call with the Crebain earlier, so Toven understood why he was being cautious. They couldn't afford to be caught, especially not in a place like this.

He lifted his head to look at the mountain. "I've heard tales that Caradhras is cursed. That it brings down brutal storms upon passing travelers."

"Do you believe them?" Legolas asked, stepping up beside him. He was holding his bow at the ready, but didn't have an arrow nocked.

"I wouldn't rule it out. I think there's very little that would surprise me after some of the stuff Quinn has told me." Toven looked up at the mountain again. "But then again, it is winter. This could just be a spot for bad weather."

He glanced at Legolas. He'd been slightly intimidated by him at first—of all the races in Middle-earth, he knew the least about elves. Legolas seemed all right, though he mostly kept to himself. Toven didn't buy into most of what his dwarf friends had to say about elves, anyway.

"What do you think?" he asked Legolas.

"I'm not sure, either. Some say the forest where I grew up is cursed, or poisoned by darkness. Perhaps something similar has affected this mountain."

"Do you mean Mirkwood?" Toven asked. When Legolas nodded, he continued, "I passed through that forest, once. But I was too young to remember much of it."

Legolas nodded, his eyes on the landscape around them. Toven wondered if he was avoiding eye contact, or if he wasn't that invested in the conversation. "It is no place for children."

"Well, for what it's worth…I'm sorry that your home has been affected that way."

Legolas finally looked at him, but only with a mild raise of his brows. If one thing was true, it seemed elves were less emotive than dwarves. "There's a snowstorm brewing," he said eventually, turning back to the mountain. "Whatever is causing it, making it through the pass will be difficult."

Toven nodded, accepting the change in subject. He hoped he hadn't crossed some sort of boundary—he hardly knew the elf, anyway. "We might get snowed in." He turned to Aragorn, who had taken the lead again. "Is this our only way through the mountains?"

"It's a lesser risk than taking the Gap of Rohan," Aragorn replied. "Saruman may have some reach this far north, but passing by his stronghold would likely mean death."

They reached a tall cliff face, and began taking a narrow path along the side of it. Toven frowned—they would have some trouble getting the pony this way.

"Gimli keeps talking about Moria," he said. "Is that not a viable path?"

"Not unless there was no other way," Aragorn said, his expression darkening briefly. "If we were to go south, we would know Saruman was lying in wait. But no one knows what would meet us in Moria."

A sinking feeling appeared in his stomach, even as they reached a wider section of the path. Quinn and Gimli had friends that had gone to reclaim Moria. But there was a worrying amount of uncertainty around their fates.

They weren't on this mission to find out what had happened to those lost dwarves. Their purpose was far bigger than that. But Toven still felt guilty at the thought of leaving them behind.

I realized while writing it that they cut a lot of corners in the movie for timing sake, like the Crebain passing over them and then immediately turning around. But that makes it more fun for me because I can flesh out these sequences a little. You'll see what I mean a little later on.

I want to make it clear that I am pro-Boromir, I think he gets way too much hate tbh…so don't worry, I have big plans for this fella

This was mostly just filler/fluff/a little foreshadowing. Next chapter we'll get into some interesting stuff, which I'm excited about.