Meisar sat up on the low camp bed. Her head throbbed and her nostrils were filled with the scent of witch hazel. Soaking a bandage in some healing elixir, Eda lifted her arm and wrapped her wound. Meisar looked up at her with urgency. "The king?" she asked. "What of the king?"
A male voice murmured low and deep at a near-distance. "The king is here," the medicine-woman answered finally, seeming surprised. "He wishes to see you, Meisar."
Meisar did not have the time to rise from the makeshift cot before Eda had stepped away and let Thorin come and sit by her side. "Milord," she murmured softly. As she raised her head, she felt her chin resting in his hand. His fingers were rough at the tips, but their touch was surprisingly gentle. Harsh blue eyes studied her face with concern. "You've a cut on your neck," he observed.
"Yes. Only a small one though."
He turned her head to the side. A ring of bruises dipped down around the nape of her neck and showed more crawling in a blue-gray spatter into her scalp. "You took a nasty hit to your head."
Meisar rubbed the back of her neck self-consciously. "I suppose. I do not remember." Thorin pulled back from her, allowing him to peer more clearly into her eyes. She thought for a moment she saw something hesitant in them.
"You fought bravely in the night," he told her.
"It is my duty and my honor." Thorin's blue eyes were relentless as always, though lacking in harshness the way he looked at her now.
"I came to thank you."
"You are most welcome, my king. I-"
"Thank you," he repeated. He put his hand up to her cheek and held her face haltingly in the cup of his palm. His lips moved but no sound came out.
"My liege…?"
But he left then, without a word. Meisar put her hand to her cheek and sighed.
Siv was lingering about Eda; the healer nagged her to bring bandages, grind the pestle, help Balin to remove his boots so that she could tend a sprained toe or two. Oin and she joined their forces to treat sprains, cuts and rattled nerves. Potions made of herbs were ground into paste and wrapped around a cut on Ori's arm, an orcish blade, though Mahal was praised (not the least by Dori) that it had not been the poison-tinged lot. Siv slipped away while Eda tended to him, contenting herself to loiter near Meisar since Thorin had come looking for her. Siv, young and capricious, proud of her broad shoulders and hefting bosom, should have alerted Meisar to… something. She had near-black eyes that sparkled with a certain mischief that could be called lasciviousness. She scooted over to Meisar's side smoothly. "That was… tense."
"Siv! You've been knocked about the head too hard, with all these unbecoming thoughts I'd say," said Eda, exasperated.
"He's the one been knocked about the head too hard, maybe in that battle, having a fancy fer a beardless lady."
"Don't speak like that. Don't you know that's how rumors get started?" chided Eda. She returned to her side and pulled the bandage tight over Meisar's arm, making her wince. "And besides, he is right. Our shepherdess was brave in his defense. He's got every reason to be gracious."
"Gracious? Looked like he wanted to kiss ye," Siv pressed on, jauntily.
"Oh hush cousin. It's not Thorin Oakenshield to take a liking to a lass, bearded or no." Her voice was sad. "I mean no insult to you my lady."
"None taken." Meisar made herself stand. She took a look around, head throbbing a bit. "Eda, where are we?"
"A few leagues ahead of where we made camp last night, unfortunate as it turned out. Crossed a stream during the night to throw them off." "Where did… the king?" Her head swam and felt hot.
"Had business to take care of. Think he went to the village."
"I suppose I should catch up." She stood, the ache in her head dulling. "My lady you should rest!" Eda called after her. But she was already gone. She turned crossly at Siv, thrust a mortar and pestle at her. "You walk a narrow line with that mouth of yours, Siv." "Not my fault I'm good at reading men," Siv half-purred half-sneered.
Eda drew back, grumpily. "There are some days Siv, when I wish you illiterate."
II
There was a path, no more than a beaten strip of dirt, leading off the Great East Road, toward a village. Smoke hung dark and low in the air beyond a line of trees. The smell- the smoke and the burned flesh and decay- should have warned her away but she was inevitably pulled toward it.
She passed through the line of trees on her pony, to see what had been wrought. A village had stood in the place that was reduced to smoldering piles of ruin. Nothing stood, nothing but a few blackened posts where fences, or homes, had stood. The earth was scorched black around the piles of burnt and still-burning wood. The dead livestock- cows and sheep and an errant pig- lay dead. The few surviving animals sniffed at them with palpable fear.
Carrion crows had done their unpalatable work on the dead that had not been burned to black, shrunken hollows of their living selves in the fray. She followed a trail of black blood to the village center where she found them, at work.
She cleared her throat cautiously, caught a breath of ash and stifled herself from choking. It was raining down on her like a soft, foul snow. "My liege!"
Thorin turned around. On a half-broken cart, salvaged from the ruins of the village no doubt, were the mangled bodies of four orcs. Two harnessed ponies were stamping about at the bridle, skittishly. Dwalin heaved a dead orc over his head and flung it down a well. As there was an ominous black smoke rising from it, the well must have been dry. Thorin poured oil down to follow, then finally a lit torch. More black smoke belched and growled its way up as orc flesh and offal ignited down below.
"Give us a hand?" Dwalin asked unthreateningly, but it was not a question, and she knew. She picked up the next of the orcs by the feet and Dwalin the head, the body awkward and diagonal with the difference of their heights. It mattered not as Dwalin pitched it headfirst down the well and spat after it. The fire made a sound unlike the familiar crackle of flame. It was a bellow, a sinister growl.
"All of the bodies must be burned. Their comrades won't trace them now," Thorin hastened to explain, unhappily. "Tell me, Meisar, what has happened here?"
"Orc attack, or do you not remember with that hit in the head." Dwalin made a curt nod at her bruised neck and ear. "We were led straight into their path."
The woman's cold dignity held solid in her face, but inside, it had melted, boiled. She exhaled angrily from her nostrils. "And had we gone ahead as you wished Mister Dwalin, and not made camp at Amon Sul, we would have been waylaid by a pack four times that size!"
"And how would you know that?" He half-slammed the last of the orcs down the well, splitting its body near in half on the stone edge.
She began to circle around with her hounds, stepping lightly on the torn-up and smoldering earth about them. "A pack of twenty-five at least besieged this village." The little brindle hound let out a high distinct chortle. "On Wargs."
"And you know because that cur has told ye? I am comforted, my lady."
"I trust a creature whose send of smell far exceeds my own," Meisar retorted, quietly. "Never once has been wrong."
"Suppose you'd know. Been out in these wilds long enough, too long for a dwarf anyway" Dwalin relented, however sarcastically.
"Why did you come back? To Ered Luin" Thorin asked her suddenly and sharply.
"You're standing on it."
Thorin wrinkled his nose against the acrid smoke still sputtering from the smoldering remains of the village dwellings. A sheen of water pooled in his eyes from it.
"There was a village not far the east of here, a market-town more like, not a wee outpost like this. And what I saw there, morning after they waylaid it… well, I started off for Ered Luin before the sun set again that night." A crow cawed in their direction, accusingly. Thorin untethered the ponies from the cart. Soaked in orc blood, he set it aflame. "It won't be the first or the last. Meisar, will you ride and clear us for a league? See that there are no tracks. I think we left none alive but we must be sure."
"Yes, milord." "Dwalin, ride with her. I will return and tell them to be prepared to move."
She watched him go off on the short trek back to the caravan, his proud shoulders, the ash caught in his mane of black hair. "Come then lass," ordered Dwalin. She acquiesced silently again, squeezing Jenny the pony's ribs lightly with her feet. "Ground to cover and not much time 'fore sunset. Let's get this business over with."
A pair of carrion crows flapped their wings and took off southeast along the flat, dry earth that stretched a league around the village in all directions. Meisar and Dwalin followed them as they went to the next meal. Two wargs lay dead ahead in their path. A crow picked at the eye of one, and started on the other, when the blood-sodden creature lurched in a vicious death-throe. Dwalin drove a spear into its throat, ending its misery. "Craven beast." The dwarf spat three times on it. "There are your wargs, lass. How many more got away?"
"Mister Dwalin…" What she had desired to say stuck in her throat. She had been right about Amon Sul. That was as much as she knew or cared to think, and she and Dwalin's dwarven stubbornness would not bore dividends on either side. That would have to be lived with. Yet, he had already seemed to adjudge her guilty of something else she herself could not comprehend. It was about Thorin. Of course it was about Thorin. The dwarves all looked after him, some more clandestinely than others. They feared for him and were utterly loyal to him, and she feared for him the same having never known him alas, and yet something entirely apart from fear had risen in her. Bloody warg prints trailed haphazardly over the dirt in front of them, blood coagulating with the dry earth. She sent the hounds ahead with a quiet command of "Warg," her throat feeling tight with fear. They sniffed and growled and led them to another mound of cold ember and bone. A dozen blackened warg skulls and rib cages twisted together on the pyre. "Villagers must have killed them."
"Aye, missed half the orcs though." He urged his pony around the pile so he could side-eye her. The hounds pattered back to her side silently; they had found no tracks.
"None can be blamed for what happened last night, not I, or you. These are dangerous times I am sure you know well enough already," she said.
"I know only what I see, lass, and I will not suffer my king to be killed all over again, not now."
"Nor will I."
"Good," he answered, flatly.
"I did as you asked of me, Mister Dwalin. I defended him, with the life in my body, the same I know you would do, and have before."
"I know lass. I know." His voice lessened in its harshness. True, he was hardened, anyone could see. But he was not cruel.
"Do you care for him?"
She looked at Dwalin strangely. "He is my king. Of course I care for him."
"As a king?"
"As a king."