A/N:
Dylis is the name I'm assigning to brassy Lake-Town lady. In this AU I'm envisioning Bain as a young, steadfast ruler wise beyond his years who is keeping things up in Lake Town (with Dylis as a secretary, mentor and occasional mother figure), while Bard takes up lordship in Dale.
On Bard, I promise he won't be such a sourpuss forever. Canonically he is described as "grim" (and TBH not much else). I really want to keep with that to an extent because I think he has plenty of reason to be "grim," but I do appreciate that PJ gave him a bit more depth as a character and that I feel I can work with.
In the future, both Meisar and the Bardlings will play a crucial role in the evolution of Bard and Thorin's relationship. For now, let's just say there won't be any friendship bracelets being exchanged.
Betrothal beads on the other hand...
By boat it was a fair longer journey than had been upon Bard's barrel-barge. The side of the boat scraped against something hard and the bargeman steered it assiduously away. Dwalin peered over the side and was greeted with the sight of a pale spine, the largest bones of any creature he had ever seen, protruding from the lake all white and gleaming, long cleaned by fishes. The boat veered sharply a second time, around another bridge of bone protruding out of the water. The bargeman glanced downward with skittish eyes. "The bones of Smaug," he explained flatly to the curious troop of dwarves all climbing up on the rungs of the boat with their heavy boots slipping about, to have a look. "This here is where the old town stood," the bargeman hastened to add, as the boat passed between two wide-set posts with braziers atop them lit. Parchments scribbled in mannish names and soft trinkets were tacked to those posts. Some of them looked like children's toys. The bargeman steered furiously on. "We've got a bit further north to go."
Oin kept holding onto the side of the boat, one arm holding himself steady to the side of it, in the other was held a lorgnette to his good eye, straining through the fog and dark to study something in the water.
"What do you look at there, Master Oin?" asked Eda.
"Sûd," responded Oin.
"In these frigid waters? I thought you better skilled in reading portents from the air."
"New life growing on that which is dead," Oin gestured to a sopping nest of otters in the rungs of the dragon's bones, newborn by the looks of them, little pink bodies and a mother snuggled between two discs of the dead dragon's spine, all of the newborn pups upon her belly. "Like a flower blooming upon a grave." Oin smiled with certain ataraxia as the boat passed by.
"A dwarven portent?" Eda queried again. "Never heard of a dwarven portent a'pondering creatures or things that grow. Save the ravens and the thrushes."
"T'means we shall soon see life renewed. Life renewed from something dead. Life rising from a grave. Like our king perhaps. But more than that."
"Well what does that mean? Sound like dread spooks are to spring to life the way you speak of it, Master Oin."
"I don't have an idea precisely and as a seasoned reader of portents, I sense nothing ominous, dear Eda. In truth, I have a sense it is a fine portent, and we shall find out soon enough exactly what it is."
.
When she caught a glimpse of herself in the bargeman's mirror she could see that her braids were like Thorin's now, one rooted at either temple. A oneness that drew nearer to its completion, ever more tangible. I am him and he is me. Lonely, exiled, deprived of our kin. Unbroken.
He dipped his head down to graze the tip of his nose about the uncovered nape of her neck. "Do you like what you see there?" His eyes jerked upward toward the mirror, the reflection of the two of them foggy but readable.
"I do." She turned to Thorin to face him and smoothed the unclasped braid that was beginning to fray at its tip just a little. "Do I make one for you too now?"
"You will make one for me on our wedding day, as part of the vows."
"The vows," she repeated half in a state of dreaming. She had been to only one dwarven wedding, the marriage of Bombur's eldest son Nifur to a dwarrowdam whose name she had long lost. Pies and wheels of cheeses set on a long trestle, hams and a frosted cake as big as Bombur himself, and Bombur bursting at the seams in his formal set of clothes. And Urdlaug, sour-faced chasing a goat away from the train of the bride's gown. Yes, what a day in the Blue Mountains. She had been a young girl, no older than Anbur or Yrsa were now, and she had drunk too much of Bombur's cold sweet nog and fallen asleep across the lap of his wife, Bira, while she counseled the bride in no uncertain words of her duties come the night. Somewhere as if in a dream, she remembered being part of something, a feeling she had distinctly lost, until that very moment, Thorin's face, his cold skin and his warmth breath leaning onto her forehead with is own, his plait in her hand.
"For now, I should not like to see this one frayed," she beamed beatifically, taking up her own discarded hair clasp and fixing it about the tip of his braid.
He placed his cold un-gloved hands on either side of her neck, cradling the whole of her jawline and the flanks of her throat in those big hands. "Men gamut dayum," a thumb stroked her tear-strewn cheek gently. "I ache for the day I may call you my wife in true."
They had stared so long into each other's eyes without words, just midsections drawn and pressed together, the gentle but steadfast hold of her hands to his arms just behind his elbow, as if steadying herself. They both buckled on their feet when the boat rankled and veered. He kissed her quickly and they ascended toward the stern for a clearer view. The gates she had seen the boats before them pass through were but a parallel set of lit beacons, to guide lake-farers lest they be caught over Smaug's bones, which had a tendency, the bargeman explained witheringly, to come up from under the water after a dry summer. The bargeman held the oar under one arm to steer it and plucked a talisman from his neck to hold in front of him, until they had passed the tail end of the Smaug's remains.
The bargeman eyed them from his perch a bit unsoundly. "His jeweled hoard there lays upon the lake floor. Some even say the gems of Lasgalen lay with him."
"A fair treasure should you wish to retrieve them."
The bargeman glared at the dwarf. "None shall venture there! Rattle one dragon's bones, wake another, they say."
"Perhaps you are the wiser then, good sir," relented Thorin. He held Meisar's cold hands in his again and bowed his head toward her, whilst she laid her head to the fur of his sur-coat, emotionally, even bodily, too unraveled to do anything except cleave to him. She rolled the clasped end of his braid between her fingers over and over again as if she would never let go, and he put his face into her hair determinedly and quietly. "No drake, no fire shall break us. Never again." He raised his arm up again to cradle the side of her face that was not pressed firmly into his furs, while she wrapped both hands about his vambrace to steady herself in his hold. His warmth was her safety, and his body could have been her own the manner in which she seemed to sink in and twine with his clothing, his very skin, his cold earthy scent, the thick texture of the long hair that tickled then plastered to her face with every loving genuflection of his head.
I love your hair. I would have it blanket my skin as my own does, in place of my own. And your beard. May it grow long now and cover me also.
Warm breath and determined lips kissed her hair over and over again. "Mahal do not take this from me," a susurrus plea into misty hair too low even for her to hear, full of both fear and hope.
II
By the time they arrived at Laketown's watery gate, a cold, hard rain was falling. A vaguely familiar figure clad in black approached. At a distance, two sentries were seated at a table with a fire kindling in a small portable hearth beside them, playing table games and gabbing uselessly. The man who approached shivered enthusiastically. Thorin glared at him from under his cloak, that sniveling, toothy little manservant, Alfrid. At least he was not in a barrel this time about, he reasoned. From a comfortable distance Alfrid still reeked of brandy and old piss. And the Master… the Master would have groveled at Thorin's feet if it meant more gold for his chests. He could have it. He could have it all. He could fill all the chests in his house and watch it collapse under the weight. Then he would know what it felt like.
He squeezed Meisar's hand just a little tighter.
"Eleven barrels, two dwarves, three curs," the bargeman announced, tossing a bag of coin with an attached invoice to Alfrid on the shore. The purse was immediately snatched by one of the sentries, who promptly returned to his checkers and waved Alfrid back to the gate.
Thorin peered back down at Alfrid. His cluttered smile made him flinch. "The Shepherdess has brought us another company of… beautiful… lady-dwarfs, to grace us this beautiful evening. I have so greeted several barges just this night brimming with them." His smile was disingenuous.
"This shall be the last for the evening," she assured him with a flat politeness. The bargeman jammed the oar back into the water as the gate was raised, Alfrid heaving with puffed cheeks to pull the rope and raise the portcullis. The bargeman's oar flipped a generous comber of frigid water upward at him as the boat passed through.
"Ah, Alfrid," Meisar quipped softly. "The man with more gold in his teeth than will ever be in those greasy little pockets. The King of Dale gave him a choice- exile or the lowest and filthiest of servitude for the duration of his life, to recoup what he had skimmed from the good folk over the years as the Master's little puppet. I guess some people are that terrified of being alone."
"Exile oft means death. I think we dwarves understand all too well," remarked Thorin dryly.
"Aye, but some of us can survive that. If there is something beyond all to look forward to. To live for." Thorin wrapped his arms about her again.
Meisar continued with a certain giddiness. "Poor Alfrid. I might actually find pity in my heart for that man, but I think I know better than to. He labors with the fishmongers and rubbish-collectors in summer and with the gatekeepers in winter. And still scrubs the Master's pots dinner and chamber. Though I hear that one man is feeble now and alive but for a certain lord's mercy."
"He lives then?" A part of Thorin had not remembered the Master so unkindly.
"Bard has had his share of death enough not to mount both their heads on pikes in the middle of the lake."
"Bard?"
"Aye. The dragon-slayer. The king of Dale. They're taken the ruins from ruin to… a work in progress, much like Erebor. But a mighty progress nonetheless."
In the market pool that lay just beyond the docking station, the gaudy statue that had been the Master's likeness stood hollow and burnt entirely except for a few blackened orbs where his face might have been. It was almost as if they had brought it from the old ruins and let it stand there in its state, broken, twisted beyond all recognition, some totem to an ancient dystopia.
"Let us find shelter, love. Then we may make haste on the final leg of this journey. And come home." There was a distant, nagging unease about the way Thorin's eyes turned northward and strained through the dark, but he could not see the Lonely Mountain.
She readjusted several heavy bags of coins that were tucked into her jerkin, withdrawing one to hand to the bargeman.
"And you do all this for money or the glory of home my darling?"
"You think I have made this arduous journey twice over, out of charity? I am fair in my charge, but I certainly do not prostate myself before people who have no use for me, for free. I know the value of money. I know what I need to survive."
"What you needed. You will never need for anything again. You will toil no more to take caravans for pithy price and risk your skin. You will be my queen under the mountain, and I will protect you always there from all sorrows."
"You need not worry for my sorrows, Thorin. Your own will be enough for you to bear." She swallowed uneasily, held tighter to his hand, again, as the boat steered into a narrow quay and came to a halt. They disembarked, Meisar with the hood of her cloak enshrouding her. She gave the bargeman a polite nod of thanks and they stood then upon the wet pine of the landing. Meisar reached out for his hand again and they walked along the quay beneath lantern lights, the smell of oil omnipresent there. Oil and snow on the horizon. "It was my charge that I take them so far as Lake Town. They know their way back from here. It gave me the opportunity turn around quite fast and get back to Ered Luin for another caravan. I never beheld the Lonely Mountain from within."
"I could tell you for ages of its beauty, in its golden age, even in its ruin. Even in my own malady it never escaped me, how beautiful it was."
"Where do we go now?"
"Zilalîn," Thorin grinned. "Only place you'll find a dwarf in a town of men."
They traversed the narrow criss-crossing walkways that surrounded the market-pool. Remnants of what a clamor of enterprise it was during the day left its mark. The more stubborn of merchants were only now scrambling to shut down, fishermen in boats battening down the hatches all along the waterways that underlined their homes, newly built, but still styled in the distinct Lake-Town manner, all tallish houses upon narrow lots with steepled roofs, packed so tightly together there were no alleys, no passages, between the dwellings thereupon the water. They had once been fairly wretched in their construction, with the cold and hungry and miserable people clattering about, untangling fishnets, patching battered boats with tar, mongering their catch, and trading bread, gossip and pithy provisions. The people were rude in their dress and ruder in their mannerisms. Thorin for a moment could have believed it was but a shadow of its former misfortune, but it wasn't, not quite. There were some scars that could never quite be erased, not even by fire.
Alas, it was, as he, renewed, if remaining a peculiar work in progress. From ashes anything could rise. Even a dead king.
"How will we tell them, Thorin? What should we say?"
"Precisely what it is. We are betrothed. We will marry and you will be my queen, until I am stone again. We have made a new life. We will make new life. Together."
"Aye. But I think I will have a hot bath and don my good dress before we go making such an announcement." His worrisome distant glance softened and returned to the peace and safety of her vicinity, the kindness of her face. The solemnity, the sternness of the dwarrowdam west of Bree had seemed but a veil too long drawn. "After all, my king, is it not the most important moment of my life?"
His fingertips brushed urgently over the her left hand and summoned her fingers to weave into his own. "Do you know my heart to be good, Meisar?"
He seemed strange and distant and she squeezed his hand a little snugger in response. "I know your heart to be flawed. But gentle. Stubborn. Loyal and kind. Do I think I would fall so easily in love were your heart befouled?"
He didn't answer. "You fear what lays in that mountain? You fear what you have reaped? Do you think I do not know? And would hold you up with my own arms should you sink in grief upon..."
"Give me strength that I shall not."
"You said it yourself my darling. Time does not heal wounds, nor are some meant to heal. We live with the scars. We will live with them together."
"Have I paid my dues?" he mused darkly.
"Thorin! This is what you have reaped. My heart! Life. Your people. Home."
"You are my home," he murmured, a quiet acquiescent that the moment would have to sustain.
They followed the light, and the faint resounding echo of clanging glasses and rough laughter, to the inn in the center of the town just off the market pool where the other dwarves would undoubtedly be waiting. Once an ostentatious hall had stood where the inn did, relative to the market pool in the old town. The inn itself was sturdy and practical a structure, though not without some warmth to it. Latticed windows jutted from its plainer façade, symmetrically, to sides and above the main entrance.
They entered and were enshrouded by a warm wave wafting over from a tall roaring two-sided hearth of silvery and umber shades of stone, the smell of meat and potatoes and stout meads, ales and pale lagers. "Zilalîn," Thorin smiled with a tranquil sigh. "Of mannish quality but not such a bad one."
A keep peered down at them over the high counter. "Dwarves. If you seek your fellow folk, they are there in the next room."
"A great hall once stood across from these marketplaces," Thorin remarked to the keep. The barkeep pulled a sour face.
"Master's House and "Great" Hall my arse. Burned in the fire like the rest of the town."
"And the Master?"
"A right vegetable rotting in a scarce apartment down the way of Bain's home."
"I thought he died in the dragon-storm."
"Jumped out the boat seconds before a dead dragon flattened it. A pity. Of all those who perished that day, and that one was spared. Him and stoopy Alfrid Lickspittle." The barkeep spat twice on the ground and crossed himself in some mannish gesture. Meisar let a small sigh of relief escape her. The barkeep said nothing of what had brought the fire.
The dwarves in the next room gathered at tables and warmed their wet stocking feet. The floors were covered in soft if battered rugs of autumnal shades- gray and red, orange and brown, and there were well-stuffed sofas and fur-covered chairs all about that dwarves were occupying heavily, happily. Dwalin sprung up when Thorin entered, Meisar's cloak still drawn tight beside him.
Intrigued by the scarcity of dwarf women, the men at Laketown accepted their coin and provided them decent mead and food. The women sat at a long trestle table across from the barkeep's counter. Percy the barkeep in that part was called, was a man with wrists as thick as tree branches. He eyed them but without a great deal of malice or suspicion. The inn was the only inn in Lake-Town and with the tavern on its ground floor, business was always brisk. His fair-headed daughter was running back and forth from the kitchens and the barrels again and again. Tonight though, save for the company of dwarves, it was a quiet affair. Men came and went however scarcely in the deepening tempest, acknowledging the dwarven presence with small salutations and looks of curiosity. Dwarves were coming and going oft in these days, yet so few of them were women.
"Warm yerself, shepherdess," Dwalin chuckled. He jiggled her cloaked shoulders as if trying to shake the cold rain from her. She clutched the cloak at its drawstring at the neck.
"Thank you Mister Dwalin. I think I must lie down for a spell and have myself a hot soak."
Thorin tilted his head modestly to meet her forehead and the tip of her nose with his own, brief and ephemeral the touch of their skin, still cold, a fingertip tapping her chin and crossing her jawline once. "Take your time, my blessing."
She slipped away and offered the innkeeper the last of her coin for a single room with a bath, tired and eager for a hot one. It was a modest room with a large wood-framed bed against the wall, but a pretty leaded bay window with a seat covered in worn, overstuffed cushions. She had just put open the door to the bath when the hired girls knocked and entered, bearing linens and lugging the first buckets of the hot water. One opened a small hatch by the window in the corner of the room and drew buckets of water straight from the lake up on a pulley, lining them up by the fire to warm. The mannish folk of the Lake washed in small private chambers, not like dwarves who tended to prefer the camaraderie of common baths. For the time, she was grateful. She sat on the bed in half a daze fondling her betrothal bead while the hired girls heated the water until a bath was aptly prepared. In the small bathroom she shed of all her clothes, unbraided her hair save for the two plaits which she swore in her heart would never be again unwound, and climbed in, intent on a long, hot and thorough wash before her world was turned upside-down forever.
.
When Thorin had surveyed the cadre of dwarves, he found Ori furiously at work by the light of two candles at a corner table, Ori hovering about him. Likenesses of Siv and Nori he sketched hastily on blank pages torn from his great book. When one rendering was done, Eda circled 'round and snatched it up and thrust it forth in desperation to any who passed through the inn's doors. "Have you seen them? Have you seen these two dwarves?" she pleaded again and again, to be met with vague nods of no or shrugs that cared little for either answer. Dori wasn't having much better fortune in that regard, until finally one ornery-looking fellow snatched the parchment from his hand and gnashed his teeth. The fussy dwarf drew back and put out his lip with savage indignation. "Well have you seen them? Pray tell!"
"Seen them I have. The next I see them I'll skin 'em both!" The man crumpled the parchment and tossed it back at Dori, scowling. "Thieves!" the man spat. "These two come about in the days before you came, stole wineskins and casks all full of Dorwonian right under my nose!"
"You've seen them!?" Eda repeated, coming into the fray, oblivious to the man's hateful sneering countenance.
"Seen them?" he glared down at the old healer. "I chased 'em down to the water! The runts jumped a boat. The cosmos willing it, they'll right drown!"
"That's my brother you speak of!" Dori puffled angrily.
"A thief for a brother! I ought to wring you one for his sake, short-man!"
"Short-Man! How dare you! I am no man!"
Thorin quietly nodded his head toward a rearing Dwalin, knuckle dusters slipped on, stealthily moving toward the fray Dori and Ori were mustering. Dwalin grumbled resignedly as his king's eyes directed him upstairs.
"We should speak, Dwalin," he said when the door to the room had closed and Dwalin had lit the torch on the wall. "I meant not to deny you a fight, my friend."
"Of what must we speak?" Dwalin seemed on edge and he couldn't interpret it. "Well?"
Thorin didn't answer. His eyes were trained at the Lonely Mountain, its faint shadow in the light looming over across the lake; the sky was red before a storm, the mountain black.
"Mahal my king!" Dwalin shouted at last, exasperated.
"I have asked Meisar to be my wife. She has accepted."
His eyes widened and his throat seemed to tighten. "I have chosen," Thorin went on cautiously. "To have a queen at my side I am made most happy. Renewed."
"Ashhân," Dwalin swallowed hard.
"I owe you the first knowledge of it, for all that you are to me. Nadad."
"Nadad," Dwalin's repeated, voice a high squeak as if strangling tears, his big hands a sudden weight upon Thorin's shoulders. "When?"
"Before we docked."
"A proposal at a moment's notice?"
"Not really." Thorin shrugged. "A proper time to ask has seemed to escape me these recent days. It was my intent, and has been for some time."
Dwalin stared at him blankly.
"Hard to digest," he muttered. "Like wolfing too much and meat getting stuck, right here." He curved his arms downward in a V over the upper part of his chest.
"Are you unhappy with me?"
"No!" Dwalin shot back. "I am... I am... I wish to see ye in all means restored. I find her well. Might take me years to trust 'er with yer heart, but..."
He pressed his lips shut with a vague recognition of Thorin's rising swell of distress. "Thorin?"
"I have no heir. My nephews are dead." His voice strained against a rising grief. "Mahal should strike me down... Dwalin. For my kingdom I will do anything. Bleed for my people. Sweat for them. Die for them. I have, thrice over. But for myself, I do this. I love her."
"Calm yourself, Thorin. I uttered no word against it." He looked up at his king. "Ye love her I know. I know. And truth is, ye do it for all of us. Durin's Folk shall be better for it. You'll forgive me if I've never been a sucker for the romances of the kind ye speak of now."
"You are forgiven, and equally, you are challenged." He raised his brow at Dwalin.
"A wife," Dwalin shook his head, almost amused, his scrunch-faced expression a timorous side-step of the challenge issued, by a king or not. He allowed a taut smile to bloom. "Never thought I'd see ye take one of those."
He put his hand on Dwalin's shoulder gently. "Come then now. Let us rejoice in this respite, if only for a night."
.
First she heard Red-Coat and Fred yip and whine and one of them leap from the bed on the other side of the door, uncut claws on the wood floor scrambling.
Emli threw open the door to the bathroom.
"Emli, for shame!" cried Meisar. Eyes scrambled around for the towel to cover herself but it was draped on the far side of the tub.
"Is it true?" Emli demanded, her voice shrill and ringing loud.
"Is what true?" Her heart leaped in her chest, saucer-broad eyes desperate to play dumb. She knew. Of course she knew, Emli wife of Gloin.
"Has he asked you? Has he asked you to marry him? Have you accepted? Well!?" She was jumping up and down like Red-Coat did when she held goat jerky aloft for him, Emli, the folds of her blue dress all shimmying and swaying about her.
In seconds Gyda and Freyda followed, all huddling in the heat and steam of the small bathroom. At last Emli threw a towel about Meisar's shoulders and pulled her reluctantly out of the tub. She bristled at the sudden cold of the room outside, where she wrapped herself furtively under her armpits with the over-sized towel, so that it hung on her like a gown with no straps.
"Passing by the door seeking extra linens from the hired girls, heard the king himself tell Dwalin he's to make a wife of you!" Emli began blustering madly about the room.
"Eavesdropping is very impolite Emli."
"I wasn't eavesdropping! Just happened to pass by I did," maintained Emli, defensively.
"Saw yer ear pressed up to the door!" scoffed Freyda.
"Might I be lady in waiting when you are queen?" Gyda asked brightly. She was giddily smoothing Meisar's green traveling dress which was laid out immaculately on the bed awaiting the conclusion of her bath- concluded now, for sure.
"Let us get to Erebor first, dear girl," Meisar grinned.
"What a tale it will be for generations to come!" swooned Gyda again. "A lady of rude beginnings, a king driven out by dragon-fire enthroned again, together falling in love! Oh what a story for the ages!"
Meisar patted her hand, silently. She was too young to understand the gravity of this betrothal, for better or worse that it would bring. Secretly Meisar wanted that particular narrative to stick.
"Let us sup then in the tavern, and make it known there to all," insisted Emli.
"That's what we intended to do, Thorin and I. I only wanted a bath."
She dressed quickly again, in her good tartan cloak and the traveling dress, unworn since Rivendell. Emli fussed and combed out her hair, leaving her betrothal braids utterly untouched and with a distinctly dwarvish sort of reverence. The rest of her hair she tugged at mercilessly, knots coming undone from braids that had not been unwound in many days. She sat her on a stool near the bed, but undone Meisar's hair fanned several inches across the floor. So Emli bade her stand then the whole of the time while she fixed her hair in four-strand plaits that were wound all about her head to form a high, tight crown, leaving only the betrothal and courtship braids to hang loose in front. Finally she framed her face in a translucent ivory shawl which was draped across her shoulders elegantly. Emli plucked the mirror from where it hung on the wall and held it before her proudly. "The best crown I can manage until you've a proper one," beamed the elder dwarrowdam. The front of Emli's dress was clung with many orange hairs.
"It is beautiful, Emli."
"Good, good then." Emli climbed down and took her hands again. "Are you ready now?"
Earlier it had begun to sleet. Now cold rain was was pouring, relentlessly drumming at the roof and pouring in great torrents down the eaves.
"It is rumored that Erebor will soon have a queen as well as a king, a woman amongst these," the barkeep Percy whispered. The men gazed carefully, if discreetly, upon each dwarrowdam and all were ill to guess which. For dwarf women, they were all pretty enough.
"Who?" Bard looked up from one last ale, only his second of the night but he was feeling heavy and lethargic already. King of Dale now, he was dressed in an undecorated coat of black wool and matching leather boots. The old kings of Dale had been gaudy figures, clad in silks and jewels. Emblems of a Golden Age. Now was the Age of Iron, the Age of Stone, the Age of Sober Rebuilding, and Bard was dressed for the occasion as always.
"Alive and betrothed, the king under the mountain. What a strange journey," mused the barkeep.
Bard was unmoved. "He is a broken man. There is nothing left in his heart for love; he only covets."
"You cannot presume to know another man's heart, father," chided his son quietly.
"Aye but I can figure a dwarf's with a certain ease. Nonetheless…" Bard sighed heavily. "I wonder who it is she may be." He had sat in the evening there with his son commiserating over the politics of their respective municipalities; the conversation, for obvious reasons, had shifted, and Bain's eyes downward with it. His father had become bitterer since the destruction of Lake Town, even in the better fortunes that followed for him. He and his children were warm in the winter, and never hungry now, but the bowman king was constantly grimmer. Once Bard had expressed relief to think Thorin Oakenshield dead. Now he pitied him.
Bard and his son looked up several more dwarrowdams came to the common room of the inn.
"Ah, our shepherdess comes," beamed Balin as Meisar entered with Emli and Freyda and Gyda flanking her, desperately trying to contain their enthusiasm. "You look quite lovely, Meisar. And what an occasion it is."
Her entire face and upper body flushed hot and abashed. "The end of our travels. The parting of our companies at the end of this journey. I have cherished each and every one of the friendships wrought throughout," prattled on Balin. "Now come, let us have an ale."
"Wait," Meisar balked. "Let us wait but for a moment on the ale, Balin." She looked around nervously for Thorin but he was not there. "Thorin is not yet here. We shouldn't start without him."
"A bit late for that, milady," Balin grinned, noting Bofur, Brynja, Bifur, Hegi and even Bombur's children going in for second and third tankards already. Balin's brows knitted but he relented. "As you wish, however. I shall not imbibe until Thorin- ah, there he is!" Balin turned about as Thorin and Dwalin came down the stairway together and into the common room.
"Milady," Dwalin bowed his head to her quietly. She noted quietly the eye contact between himself and Freyda, who was standing next to her, the passing of that knowledge still unknown to the rest of the dwarves, transmitted wordlessly between them. She sensed something else transmitting but couldn't, and hadn't the concentering power at the moment to try and interpret it. Her head was hot, her heart beating thickly, though not unpleasantly.
"Come dwarves. Gather here. I should like to say some words to each of you," Meisar announced un-presumptuously. Her limbs ashake she stood before them, with shawl drawn and petticoats worn under the skirt of her good dress, so that the dwarves might not behold the instability of her legs beneath. She raised a small glass of ale quietly. "I would say to each of you that it has been an honor. For every peril we faced, I would do so again without question, but to have your company in it. Merry we shall meet beneath the mountain again, our kingdom restored. May our friendships last a lifetime."
"What will you do, my lady? Have you a skill to trade in?" Eda inquired. "I am certain the king's lady will find no trouble alas, but you are welcome to lodge me with myself in the meantime. If Siv doesn't show up."
"It will not be necessary Eda," Thorin assured quietly behind her.
"No?" queried the old healer.
"My friends and kin," he nudged a swooning Meisar to sit just off to his side. "We stand on the doorstop of Erebor again, a people renewed, and I a king of many sorrows." The dwarves each focused their attention so reverently, so silently to him, it made him want to draw in, even up-heave. "Many sorrows..." He fiddled with the cup in his hand, momentarily gazing into the amber liquid of the ale. "But one less sorrow."
"Thorin?" He could see Dwalin rise up to his feet out of the corner of his eye, primed, as if to catch him should he fall.
"One less sorrow," the king repeated. He reached and gently uncovered Meisar's hair from the gauzy shawl. "Mabajbûna," he said gently. She who has been chosen. The dwarves let the gesture settle for a nanosecond before Thorin raised his head again, raised Meisar to her feet with his left hand held aloft in her right. "Let it be known that I have asked this dwarrowdam's hand in marriage. Khazad, behold your queen."
Ori dropped his ale and Dori was then brought to frantically patting the front of his sweater with a napkin. Dwalin gripped Dori about the shoulders and turned him to face Thorin. "Forget yer wretched sweater. Dontcha hear what yer king has just told ye? Pay heed!"
"And I have well accepted," Meisar concluded breathlessly. She smiled, for all her nerves a splendid smile that alighted a face so accustomed to solemnity, braids displayed proudly. She leaned on Thorin's arm with the blood in her veins and the very muscles of her legs rendering themselves all so chimerical.
"Well," purled Bofur at last after several long moments of dwarves staring agape. "I think this calls for ale."
Laughter and cheering and rejoicing was burst forth from the rest of the huddle of dwarves, to the confusion of the hired girls, kitchen wenches and the barkeep whose brows were raised up. "Ales! Ales!" cried one dwarven voice after another. The king and his betrothed were sat on the two best chairs closest to the fire and feted with whoops and embraces. The hired girls all scrambled.
As the revelry mustered, Dwalin sat to the side half in the shadows.
"Bazirzadkhlefam," he said at last, jutting a hand toward Ori, and his travel pack, which was plunked upon the floor beside him. "Bring it here, lad."
Ori took the viol out, peeled back the moth-eaten gray velvet from it, and placed it in Dwalin's hands. He removed his knuckle dusters, and plunked them quietly in Freyda's hands, Freyda who had sat silently beside him. With a gracious quick nod toward both of them, he began to play, alone. Euphonious was the song that came from that instrument, stark as it was in its solitude, a room where the only other beats were the occasional snaps of the fire logs.
"Aye, it's an instrument for a funeral without some accompaniment," sighed Dwalin, stopping his ministrations along the strings. "Bofur! Bifur! Yer flutes! You too Ori!"
Ori joined with his flute as Bofur scrambled to unpack his. "A betrothal this is and ye dilly-dally about," said Dwalin impatiently.
At the start of the music Bifur leapt up from where he was jamming his maw with apple tarts at the cook's counter, and took his clarinet to his lips. He blew into it and crumbs flew out the end, spraying Brynja and the youngest 'Urs. The flute itself thus made a sound like the passing of a fierce wind that might have bested Donbur's strains after a binge on cheese and onion soup. He sat back down at Hegi's side, the mad miner grunting with laughter. She brought Bifur more apple tarts and the music went on.
Dwalin stepped down when the music had been sufficiently played, the players thirsty. He wrapped his arms tight around Thorin's shoulders and drew him tighter into a crushing embrace. "With the better part of me heart I love ye my king, nadad. May there be days of gladness now."
.
"So which is to be queen?" Bard queried, half-interested at most still. He studied the remaining dwarrowdams, just Urdlaug and her sisters now finishing off what potatoes and sweets remained from supper. He found himself uncannily amused the younger one, with the spoon protruding from the stump of a wrist, eating from a bowl of stewed cranberries off of it, her jocundity, her bright eyes like Tilda's when she was that small.
"Could it be her? I've heard she's possessed of hair like a dragon's-breath, the king's bride in wait."
Bard craned his head to survey Urdlaug, to which Percy nearly snorted aloud. "I hear they prefer their women on the ampler side, but that one's pushing it, wouldn't you say?" the barkeep chuckled. Bard sighed in response; he had lacked the constitution for petty snarks since childhood, and Owenna, in her time, many children birthed, had cut a voluptuous figure.
"No hair bead either. Not that one," remarked the black-headed woman, Dylis, who was wizened enough to dwarven customs to recognize them where she saw them. Her eyes circled the room and fell on another stout, though beardless redhead with a silver-capped plait, who sat alone with the king on the far side of the room. The fire glinted off the blue within the silver. "Sapphire for Durin's line," whispered Dylis to Bain and his father and the barkeep.
"It is she?"
"Aye, I would say," nodded Dylis affirmatively. "You see, Bain, when a dwarf-woman is betrothed, her husband-to-be gives her a braid in her hair with a fine bead to clasp it, the way we give a ring upon the finger," she explained to the boy. He listened intently as always.
"It is the Shepherdess," the barkeep answered again toward Dylis, surprised.
"I see no sheep."
"A dwarf woman, guide-for-hire. Seen her once before about these parts, months ago." The barkeep Percy slid another full tankard toward Bard; he accepted it politely. The reconstruction of Dale was keeping him well-occupied, and Percy was always glad to see him home. "A surprising choice for a queen if I do say so myself."
Bard sighed. "I think we will have to accustom ourselves to surprises."
.
The fire crackled a long while and then, without a phase of glowing ember that lingered, was but smoldering ash. Meisar and Thorin sat late into the night by the fire, in the common room of the inn. A fair barmaid brought them hot mulled wine long after Percy and the other girls had retired.
Thorin took her braid and kissed the sapphire-clasped tip. "I have decided," he said at last.
"Decided what, adyum?"
"We will be married on Durin's Day."
"Durin's Day!?" she exclaimed with disbelief and gladness together on her lips. When she smiled her small, even teeth glinted in the rekindled firelight and exuded a timid joy.
"Yes, and it is a perfect day. All of Durin's folk will be feasting and drinking. They'll be in too fair a mood to grumble."
"It is in a fortnight's time, my treasure!"
"There is a coronation to consider. That will take months to plan. We should be married before then."
He kissed the hand that he had clasped to his chest. "When I am crowned, my consort will be crowned by my side. All who come will behold you as my wife and queen and no less."
"Do you think they will behold me as something less?"
"No, but if they do, I care not for it." She smiled, a hint of irony in her blushing cheeks. "A fortnight's time, my king. And we will be married?"
When she gazed up into Thorin's blue eyes again, her own were steely and determined. Meisar always carried herself with a sort of assurance but at that moment she looked… happy.
"Then it is meant to be," she concluded at last. "A good omen, our love is."
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of female eyes staring at them quietly. "Come of the shadows. It is alright," Thorin assured gently. Two women came before them, one a hearty maid of twenty or so, the other a girl in the in-between years.
"Is it true you are the queen of Erebor?" the younger asked.
"She will be soon," Thorin offered a welcoming tone.
"I did not know that dwarves had queens!" the younger one exclaimed.
"Aye, and princesses too. And ordinary women alike."
"Silly Tilda," the elder chuckled affectionately. "She has always been quite fascinated by dwarves your majesty. Ever since you and your friends were guests in our home."
Thorin sat up and squinted harder toward them. "Ah, yes. You are daughters of-"
"So it is true," a harsher voice came suddenly. The girls parted and Bard was looking down upon them. "The dwarf-king's bride. More precious than gold?" he addressed Thorin with tired contempt. The girls stood back from the dwarf king and his bride. "Hurry to the boat, daughters. The last departs soon for the city. Tell him I will be along in the morn. I've business here."
"I've never seen a lady-dwarf without a beard. She's not very pretty," the elder sniffed as the girls deferred to their father and made a quiet exit.
"Hush. All queens are beautiful."
"Your daughters?" Meisar inquired peaceably, Thorin's tension palatable in the pulse his palm was pushing to her own, hand gripped tight in his.
"Aye. Sigyn the elder, Tilda the younger."
"You are Bard then, King of Dale, the Dragon-Slayer," Meisar acknowledged deferentially but without enthusiastic reverence.
"I am. Myself and your intended have met before."
Thorin glared at him.
"And you are to be queen under the mountain my lady?"
"Yes."
"What business of my kingdom, of my private life, is yours?" Thorin interjected moodily.
"Your kingdom? Indeed it is. Rightful or not, you seem to forget it is I who slayed the beast, and you that awakened it."
"Do you think he would have slept forever, my lord? You forget the nature of wyvern kind perhaps," argued Meisar.
Bard seemed surprised by her but his face was hard; he never let anything show. She could read as much from the man. "I forget very little, mistress dwarf. Grow up in a sleeping dragon's shadow and you would know. Your kind were driven far from this place but we, good lady, remained, and long I feared the day would come that rained fire upon us, for your king's madness."
"You insult me and dare speak in such tones toward my queen," Thorin growled. "I would tear your tongue from your miserable palate to remind you to whom you speak."
"Then before I am speechless let me offer my congratulations, majesty. I would have wagered all my coin Thorin Oakenshield that your fancy would fall to a maid whose hair was spun gold." He smiled grimly, his malice muted, and tired. "But… I think fire is appropriate after all."
Meisar fell silent and glared. She held Thorin's hand in an iron grip, and he to her in a savage vise. If she let him go, it would all fall apart.
"You would be wise not to say these things," Meisar warned calmly, but with iron in her voice. Bard ignored her entirely. His eyes were on Thorin, bitter and black.
"From Thror to Thrain and you now. Blessed with a new life but for how long before it is soured again. My king, you know well what you shall beget."
Meisar looked between them, and rose quietly, ax in hand. Bard's eyes were pitiful, if not particularly malicious, toward her. "I see you are no spring-maid my lady. Forgive me if I offer offense by saying so."
"What of it?" snarled Thorin.
"I hope beyond hope that you may enjoy a happy marriage, my lady, my king, but by the name of the Creator whatever name you assign him, beget not another one of Durin's sons. Let this line, proud in its time, rest. Or fall generation after generation after generation to maladies that will bring death upon us all."
This mannish king who had been called just and fair and kind by his people, suddenly infuriated her.
"My lord, dwarves may bear offspring near until the age of white-beardedness. I pray, that Mahal shall bless me with my husband's child and heir. Many heirs, Mahal willing. Yes, as many dwarflings as my body shall nurture I will bear and make my king a hearty brood, spring maid or not."
Thorin swelled inside with pride for her, desire for her. For a hearty brood is made but one way. My queen, how fierce you grow.
Bard's eyes shifted from helpless pleading to an outright unmistakable despair and contempt. "It is a terrible sight, my lady, to see someone you love succumb to a malady you could have prevented. I say so only out of compassion, to a stranger, and a stranger you are, mistress dwarf, though not an unkind one I see. Just misguided."
"Speak no more, Lord of Dale."
"Let us not go forth in enmity," Bard replied to Thorin stoutly. "Honesty, on the other hand, I find crucial."
"And do you find insult as crucial? Are you so astute a politician you believe that you may order a dwarf to do any deed? Do you forget how you strode to my gates with the Elvenking gloating beside you, tossing the legacy of my people up like a ball for playing on a field?"
"No, I did not forget. I was trying to protect my people, and not to mention you, from yourself. But you were too blind to see."
"Well I have regained my sight fair enough, clearing the blood of my kin, my heirs, from my eyes. You shall not order me, king of my realm, in matters concerning my marriage, my queen."
"You look at me with murder in your eyes, Thorin. I will a fair brawl engage if you think to strike me."
"You'll do no such thing," Meisar mouthed intensely to Thorin out of the corner of her lips. She was not afraid to give her betrothed a warning swing if he so much as twitched. Twitch he did and set one foot forward toward the Lord of Dale. Meisar stepped between them and drew her ax quietly again. Bard rolled his sleeve to the elbow. "My lord," she addressed Bard fixedly. "I may be a small creature, but I am well-positioned. If you think to strike my betrothed, I shall be forced to strike as well."
Bard made a dour face of realization, of where the ax would fall if she struck.
Thorin swelled further inside, a bliss that was half an indomitable, unapologetic haughtiness and half a burning prurience for his Meisar, his solemn shepherdess grown feisty in the face of a king twice even thrice her height. "You are a king now yourself, and ought know better than to insult a king, unless it is his queen you would answer to," seethed Thorin through his elation.
"You are a brave woman," Bard said tersely. "And a foolish one alas."
"The night of our betrothal shall not be soured by your words, my lord," asserted Meisar. She stepped back into the warmth and strength and intensity of Thorin's embrace, arms set about her waist, purposefully, for the Lord of Dale's eyes, undulating up and down, kneading and kneading, over her midsection. "I love this dwarf, this king with all my being. I have promised him my hand, and he has avowed me his own."
"A man who makes one empty promises makes many more. You are a fool, and despair will be the price you pay for your stubbornness."
"We have long paid the price for our stubbornness, we dwarves. Let us have something worth being stubborn about."
"You know not of which you speak, mistress dwarf. Or you underestimate it sorely, what you will reap."
"Meisar," growled Thorin. "Her name is Meisar."
"Meisar," he repeated. "My queen." He bowed his head in brief, curt reverence, and Bard then turned on his heel and strode out. Watching after him, Thorin's hand had curled around an empty tankard so hard there were splinters in the palm. "I will bury my ax in his skull while he sleeps."
"You will do no such thing," Meisar responded firmly. "Temper your rage."
She took his hand and led him upstairs.
.
When the door was finally closed she embraced him at once, kissing him fully and passionately, tangling her small, coarse hands into his hair.
He felt his blood vaporize and become steam in his veins, harsh as a smoke burn, in his throat. Yet all he could feel at that moment was her heat. He hugged the dwarrowdam in his arms tighter, so tight he felt the creak of her bones from his crushing embrace. Her head lay in the shelter of his neck, her hot breath singeing him from the tip of his ear to his shoulder. His skin never flushed when he was angry; it pooled in his eyes and when Meisar caught a glimpse of them, they were black and sick.
He would bruise and chap that supple, wanting mouth of hers, leave the low burn of his beard on her cheeks. The rage inside him yielded to the tenderness he owed her, and yet he felt a pang of fear inside him that he would hurt her, she was so tiny. Another ministration would have sent her crashing over that edge, washing her out into that unknown sea. And she would have, with gladness, yielded to him in that prickly, overstuffed Lake-Town bed, and exited come morn, a new woman, leaving nothing but burlap and white feathers tinged in blood. Honor or no honor, I am his.
A much deeper consideration tempered the white-hot longing. His blood was boiling for her. She rested a hand against his sternum and felt the storm of a heartbeat. "If you let it conquer you, we are lost. We are so close, Thorin… so close." "We are so close," the anguished whisper came again, and he felt warm breath penetrate his clothing, the faint thump of a heartbeat meeting his.
Sûd- Portents
Men gamut dayum- My Beautiful Blessing
Zilalîn- "Place of Ales, Lagers and Drunkenness."
Ashhân- Marriage
Bazirzadkhlefam- Viol