Chapter Twenty-Seven: Nori
T.A. 2933 Bree.
Nori is very careful never to draw attention to himself in Bree. He passes through too often, the Mannish town being the best place to pick up supplies on his way to and from the Blue Mountains, and he has noticed more than once that the Men pay closer attention to those who pass through than they do in other places. It probably has to do with the funny little creatures who live in the lush green place nearby, the few hobbits he's encountered are soft little things that are suspicious of everything bigger than them and naïve as new born babes. Nori is more than capable of disguising himself, of course, he'd have been caught and strung up decades ago if he wasn't very good at running, hiding, and making himself look like someone else. Darkening his skin and hair, changing the style he wears his normally auburn locks in, wearing different clothes and altering his posture. It's a lot of effort to go to every time he passes through.
He passes through a lot and when he does, he's usually running as fast as he can from the guard (specifically Dwalin who seems to take his continued avoidance of the consequences of his thievery as a personal insult), or on his way back to Dori and Ori with his ill-gotten gains. He doesn't draw attention to himself because he doesn't need to lose that which he is regularly risking his fingers (and hands and neck) to get hold of so that they can afford Ori's apprenticeship (whether Dori wants to admit that they need what Nori brings in or not).
Which makes it all the more frustrating that he has been grabbed now when he hasn't actually done anything. Nothing that they would be interested in here anyway. He had actually been intending to use some of his recently acquired money to buy one of the delightful smelling pies he had been eying. He's hungry, the pies have been tempting him for years, and his last job yielded far better than he had expected. Typical that the one time he decides to work inside the law is the one time he gets arrested by the very Men he's so successfully avoided when he needed to.
"He hasn't actually done anything, Bartlebus," a half familiar voice says, "you can't scream for his arrest just because he 'looks shifty'."
The funny little creature who sells the pies glares at the speaker. From behind Nori can tell it's a dwarf with grey streaked blond hair and a pair of swords strapped across his back. Something about them niggles in the back of Nori's mind and he sags in the hands of the guards who have taken hold of him so that he can get a moment to think, before has to start thinking about trying to escape with everything he owns.
"I know a thief when I see one," the hobbit argues. "I've had enough of my pies stolen and I won't have it anymore. Pre-emptive arrest is better than losing any more of my stock. I've got faunts to feed, same as everyone else."
"Apologies," the guard holding him says and releases his grip on Nori with an irritated grumble. "I should take you in for wasting my time, Bartlebus," he adds to the hobbit who begins to protest at volume.
Nori's elbow is snagged by the dwarf who spoke for him and Nori is led quickly away before anyone can get the idea to look into him a little bit more closely. Usually, grabbing him anywhere would be a guaranteed way to find one of Nori's knives in the offending appendage, but he doesn't want to draw more attention, just get out of town and go home, so he goes along with it.
"I've heard of you," his unidentified companion says once they are a suitable distance away from the disturbance. The blond turns and Nori finds himself taking in the face of someone he has only seen a handful of times and who he knows there is a sizable reward out for information on.
"As I have you," Nori smirks, "Prince Frerin."
Frerin doesn't respond, barring a barely noticeable thinning of his lips and Nori is impressed despite himself. Most others he would have encountered in this kind of situation would panic and it would show on their face. Frerin is enviably calm which means he probably thinks he has the upper hand. Nori can work with this. It will make the prince over confident.
"Why did you step in for me?" He asks, leaning against the wall.
"I don't need Dwalin or any of his guard tromping into Bree," Frerin replies. "My circumstances are delicate and Dwalin's lot have this habit of upsetting such things."
"There's a substantial reward for information on your whereabouts," Nori tells him.
He knows the type, Frerin and Thorin are the very image of it. Too noble and honourable, too trusting of the loyalty and integrity of their people. Too bad he's neglected to account for the twenty-eight years Frerin has been away from Ered Luin.
"I doubt Dwalin's opinion of you has improved that much since I left," Frerin chuckles. "He's more likely to hang you than listen to you. There's a reward for you as well, or there was when I left." He shrugs. "You and I both know that Thorin will never pay you for the information. He won't have to. With all the charges they have against you it'll be easier to execute you."
The fact that Frerin is aware of that annoys Nori more than anything. Nori can get out of any cell, could probably trade the information for a pardon if it leads to Thorin's agents finding Frerin. It won't get him the money, but he knew that even before the prince had smirked at him and pointed it out, and a pardon won't get him any paid work. Besides, Nori has passed through Bree a dozen times in the last five years alone and has never encountered Frerin here. There aren't many dwarves in the Mannish town and those there are, tend to stick in one area. He's likely living nearby but easy enough to miss.
"It raises the question about which of us knows Thorin better I suppose," Frerin continues. "So, how about you go your way and I go mine, and neither of us mentions seeing the other."
"If I don't?" Nori asks.
"If you don't and any harm comes to those I care about I will make life for you and yours extremely uncomfortable," Frerin snarls. He has a family, Nori realises, a family he has given up a comfortable life for. A family for whom he has abandoned his brother, sister and her children.
"Touch my family and I'll gut you," Nori hisses. The only reason he hasn't already is that he owes Frerin for getting him out of an awkward situation and he doesn't need the blood of a prince on his hands or the price on his head.
"We understand one another." Is the response. Nori nods, if begrudgingly.
"I keep quiet, you keep quiet," he agrees.
Frerin stares at him in silence for a long moment, arms folded over his chest and face as impassive as Dwalin's when he stands at King Thorin's side. Finally, he inclines his head once, barely a nod, and Nori takes that as his cue to leave quickly.
He doesn't linger in Bree.
T.A. 2941 Mirkwood
Nori's head feels like it has been stuffed with cotton, his lungs feel like the smoke from his pipe has become trapped there and his eyes itch. This forest is cursed, and he knows it is affecting his judgement. He also knows that it's worse for the hobbits. In the time that they have been following the path, guided by Fili who seems to be able to feel even that small amount of stone, the two hobbits have become pale and listless, when they aren't twitching like rabbits. Fili and Frerin have to coax them to eat their rations when the group stop to rest at night and start in the morning, especially Belladonna who begins to become unable to keep food in her belly the longer they spend under the trees. Bluebell stumbles often, gripping Fili's hand as tightly as she can and leaning heavily on the two princes and Ori. Belladonna has to be carried, however, her lack of food has left her weak and the sickness in the trees is affecting her far more than it does her daughter.
Guttural phrases of Black Speech spill from Belladonna's lips every now and then, and more than once Bluebell will come back to herself with a gasp and order that her mother be placed on the ground with a panicked kind of urgency that Frerin obeys instantly. The girl refuses to explain her reasons, but every time she gives the order she will place her mother into a deep sleep using her strange magic. Frerin, when pressed, will only say that it has to do with how Belladonna survived the death of her first husband. Nori doesn't like it, none of them do, and by the time Belladonna had become this way they had no way of knowing if they were near the other side of the forest or not. They are over halfway through their rations, however, so pushing on is all that they can do.
Maybe he should have just let them hang him, he thinks miserably, it would have been quicker than starving.
Eventually, of course, they lose the path. Fili's Stone Sense is remarkable, but it isn't infallible. The forest and the lack of food get to the prince as much as they do anyone else. Nori's surprised the young prince holds up as well as he does with the short rations, he's never imagined any of the elder line of Durin going without even during some of their harder winters, but both of the young ones bear it with grim determination. Nori wishes that the spiders they encounter, not long after they realise they have lost their way, were an hallucination brought on by hunger. He really does. He's loathed spiders since that time in Harrad and a job went wrong and he got caught in a tunnel full of the large, hairy, kind. These are worse. These are so much worse.
Should have let them hang him, he thinks again as he dangles in a cocoon. He wriggles, the silk wrapped around him muffling the sound of fighting nearby. Then it's torn open and he sees Bluebell, her face pale and her eyes shining as she mutters. She looks sickly and her gait is unsteady enough that he fears she will fall from the tree. He guides her to a corner, glancing down to see Fili and Gloin hacking away at spiders while Bombur groans and Dori clambers from the cocoon he's just opened to another. Nori opens up two more cocoons, containing Kili and Bifur, before dropping down to the ground to help Fili, Gloin and Dwalin. He attacks the spiders with extreme prejudice, but there are too many and the Company are hungry and sick from spider bites.
He's tired enough to be glad to see the elves when they turn up and finish what the Company have started. He never thought the would see the day he was actually happy to see a pointy-eared tree-shagger but this goes to prove that anything is possible. He retracts the warm feeling moments later when they are all surrounded and disarmed (and he needs to talk to Fili about some of those daggers, he has some beautiful pieces for a stone smith). Even Bluebell, who had stopped using her weird hobbit magic not long after Nori had cut Kili free, is dragged to her feet and searched. Fili, predictably, is incensed at it and it's only the fact that Bluebell slumps in a near faint that stops him from attacking the elves with only teeth and nails.
Dwarves are a possessive lot, especially when in love (he pointedly does not look at Dwalin when he thinks that).
Nori can only think of one positive to being taken captive by the elves. They are led out of the dark and sickening forest into a healthier area. The only reason he knows that it is healthier is that the hobbits perk up rapidly. The way they become stronger and brighter before his eyes makes it seem as though the earth itself has given them some measure of sustenance. He wouldn't be at all surprised if it had.
Nori watches as much as he can, you don't break out of cells as often as he has without taking note of as much as possible on the way there. He sees the suspicious gazes of their guards and hears their unguarded words in their own tongue (and he smirks internally at the assumption none of the Company can understand it, Ori isn't the only smart one and it has been useful to him in the past). He maps the corridors they're led down mentally, trying to remember the way out for if they manage to escape and is taken by surprise when Bluebell shouts.
The Company grind to a halt as Bluebell and Frerin fall to their knees next to Belladonna's prone form. The older hobbit is unconscious, and Bluebell's hands reach towards her before a red-haired elf pulls her back.
"Your tricks will not work here," the blond leader says and Frerin glares up at him, every inch the protective husband (and how so many missed the significance of those glares is beyond Nori).
"It's no trick," he hisses, "we've been wandering and starving for days, poisoned by the filth you've allowed to infest this place and the darkness that covers it. Allow our daughter to see to her." It comes out as more of a demand than a request, but Bluebell is released, and they all watch as she closes her eyes and touches her mother with the gentlest of hands.
A knot that Nori hadn't realised had twisted inside him unravels when she smiles.
"Nothing that rest and food won't fix," she says, "Not to mention getting away from the poison in those trees." Her mother stirs and opens her eyes, and the girl's grin gets wider. "Apparently, you two should have been more concerned about yourselves and less concerned about Fili and I. Congratulations, Mama, Adad, although at sixty-two I think I might be a little bit old to suddenly become a sister, don't you?"
A.N: yes, I went there. Also, I love Nori, because I do.