A/N:
We ARE so close but being the tease I am, I've got another chapter's worth of things I'd like to resolve in Lake Town.
I much appreciate the feedback on Bard and I hope I'm not making him out to be the turd in the punchbowl here. As much as I'm a deathly loyal Oakenshieldmaiden I REALLY do admire and respect Bard and his side of things, and hope that he is understood as a protagonist, albeit one that's got some disagreements, perhaps legitimate ones, with our king (and maybe, just maybe, doesn't express them in the nicest way at the moment). Bard is a man who has literally seen Hell, and will do all and anything see that what happened last time the mountain was stirred doesn't happen again. His and Thorin's relationship WILL be a process, a positive one rest assured, but an evolution nonetheless. Ultimately, I think they will end up proving each other wrong.
We will see more of Bard as time goes on but for the immediate future, he won't be in the picture. Once we get to Erebor, we're in Erebor and not coming up for air for awhile. It's going to be an intensely dwarf-centric, if not dwarf-only, environment for awhile as they adjust to life there and prepare for the wedding. There is so much to attend to under the mountain in the weeks before Durin's Day, not the least of them Dis, and of course, a royal marriage.
Thorin sat at his betrothed's feet on a soft rug by the bed and nursed a long pipe of her Frogmorton weed. "It is the last of it. Let it calm that rattling fist of yours."
He rested heavily on legs folded sideways beneath him, with a hushed groan circling her torso in his arms and pressing his head into the little shelter where she dipped inward just below the heavy cliffs of her bosom, the soft couch of her rendering a tempest of ugly sentiments suddenly insignificant. Her smell was a gentle soap, starched linen, and smoke. "Dear Thorin. It grieves me to see you unsettled in such a time." She stroked his hair in determination that he might be soothed, for his own sake if not many others'.
"You fought bravely," he grinned up at her, mildly. "Defied a king. My lady was once so reverent, so stiff." She could feel him smile with a jubilant, almost childish, arrogance into her. "I feel a fire in you."
"Fought? I did and I'll not be doing anything of the sort, Thorin. Enough fighting."
His exhalation into her midsection, through layers of clothes, still felt tense, but the heat of it inflamed her wildly, in spite of his mood. "I praise your forbearance in that case," he half-grunted half-smirked.
"People change," she said flatly. "The courses of life change us, the passage of time."
Thorin exhaled again, head rested sideways on her knee. She could feel a deeper, more forbidding intensity in the inertia of that breath, the tightening clutch of his large hand to her knee. "I am unready to see her."
A once ineffable shadow, it evinced, and jarringly. "This night has seen too many burdens." Before she could reply any further they heard the door of the room next over creak open and swing shut again. Boots were flung across the room, one hitting the wall with a fury.
"Mahal, have we started a war again? Who else saw that useless kerfuffle?" Thorin scrambled up off his knees from where he had been resting in his betrothed's soft shelter. He felt a coldness and a panic the minute he removed himself from her side. "Where is Dwalin? That better not be him tussling with the bowman now."
"Bofur!" A hushed voice half a squeal in the adjoining room carried hushed but unambiguous. Another boot hit the wall behind Meisar.
"Bofur, ye get this dress off me this minute!"
"Well, there's that possibility, I should have considered," Thorin accorded self-deprecatingly.
A howling wind ripped at the windowpanes and rattled the whole of the room. Thorin crossed the room to survey the storm and was met with the glower of whipping snow just outside the window.
"It is far too cold by the window, Thorin. Come sit here with me, and let us commune peacefully." Sitting on the bed she met his eyes from a distance and tenderly but they were drawn away every few seconds by the amplifying amours on the other side of the wall.
"Baimnigi!" Bofur's voice issued a throaty command on the other side of the wall.
An inflamed inclination toward his betrothed seemed a panacea for every sorrow, every doubt, at least for the moment. He knelt again on the cushion by the side of the bed, a worshipper at prayer in his fervency, and grasped his hands about each of her calves. Then her soft, thick, yielding thighs he took and venerated with kneading strokes, over stockings and braies and the stiff, heavy skirts that seemed to form a fine evergreen lake about her body, rumpled about or not. His fingers seemed to dig into her skin through her clothes in some manner of angst. "Beyond sorrow and grief you are, men gamut dayum."
The opposing bed was rattling up against the wall and moaning along with Brynja. They could hear the faint but ever distinct sound callused palms made when they wrapped sturdily about the handle of something, an ax or the wooden rungs of a bed's head-frame. One body undulating, a distinct moan. An impromptu initiation to that specific sound, which had escaped her own lips in a darkened forest grove for the first time, was unmistakable. A private knowledge that existed to be shared between two alone, one that she and Thorin gazed and each acknowledged in a silent, voracious communion.
"Mahal grant me patience!" The tone of Brynja's keen let Meisar know the exact spot Bofur's tongue was gliding over at the moment. Her skin burst forth in an all-encompassing gooseflesh, Thorin still on his knees with her calves still grasped in his hands. Eyes flickered at the wall. "In the Blue Mountains they would say that coal miners had the most robust energies of any dwarven stock."
"Oh?"
Hands found their way up the calves and to her knees, urging them to part. "To bear more heat and cold and hardship for the scarcities of life's provisions in those parts, and to toil with more stamina at their labors." His voice had descended with every word. The heavy stiff skirt of her traveling dress and petticoats had bunched and fell and molded about her, a tunneling hand assessing. "It is also said widely that the coal miners of Ered Luin marry the most oft of any dwarven kinship group or guild, and they marry younger, and sire larger families. I found this to be true of many."
"And why is that?" Curiosity and the efflorescence of desire both swelled rapidly. She tried to remember the distinct culture of the coal miners, whom she had sheltered amongst in the southern Blue Mountains, but her brain was encapsulated, channeled into none but the fervid present.
Stiff linen petticoat pushed aside, only a layer of calico separated skin from skin. He slid along her thigh and squeezed it. "Some consider coal mining a lesser craft, sturdy and essential for survival but not much beyond. It is not a beautiful thing like stone you see. Or skin."
He leaned and kissed her inner thigh over the undergarment. "But all dwarves must perfect something you see. Some say they simply excelled at another kind of delving."
"How do ye like that, lass?"
"Their stone was scarce. Perhaps their flesh was not. So they made something of it to last."
"Mahal! Crafter of me flesh make mine patient! Bofur!"
"And kings? What is the chosen craft of kings?" She threw her head back and stared and the ceiling and saw stars in the plain wooden beams, and in Brynja's sordid prayer did share silently.
"Aye! Aye! Aye… oh..."
"I was called as skilled smith even in my pauper days. But do you think I have not delved and dirtied my hands even as a prince?"
"Bofur! I'll right burst ye torment me another moment!"
"I wouldn't know. But I know where you've delved and dirtied your tongue as a king."
"Aye, and I'll torment ye until I can wring yer nectar from me beard."
Tugs and more tugs at her clothing; she knew the braies to be well-anchored, practically sewn into the lower part of the tight longline bodice Emli had laced her into. They were not going to come off, but she felt a tempestuous yearning not to tell him that.
"My king does not remember his perfected delving?"
"I remember!" He came up off his knees and lay between her bent and parted legs, her softness and her heavy clothes each their own distinct cushion to his weight. His hands slid beneath her back and pulled her chest upward to cradle his head against. Knees rested between her legs, he was kneeling prostrate and bottom raised upon her, face buried into the heaving chest. "I remember..."
He could feel the stiff lining of a bodice and a sturdy one at that, under the velvet and the linen smock beneath it. That dastardly Emli had rigged her into it no doubt, that wretched female contraption. Kissing a returning path southward over her clothing he slipped back to his knees and found the taut ribbons of her stockings where they met the braies at her knees. The right stocking he tore off with his teeth and slid down her leg in a slow travail, the abrasive texture of beard on her skin determined to render a distinct burn.
"You are my refuge my queen. My temple. A temple of fire." He bit her ankle as a hand flung itself blindly up her skirt again in search of-
"A temple of fire where I would put my tongue to the flame."
Her temple of fire was flooding with hot blood.
"Bofur! By my beard I can bear no more! I am-"
The door opened without a warning and Dwalin staggered in, against a savage cry of bliss on the other side of the wall that could have stirred the whole of the town to wakefulness.
"Dwalin!" Thorin's voice grunted at him half a scold that he immediately regretted the tone of. Luckily Dwalin didn't seem to note it- either his king, or the dwarrowdam supine and scarlet-cheeked on the bed, Thorin kneeling on a cushion with her skirt hems flung back, her right stocking over his shoulder and her leg sliding off the opposite.
Dwalin's eyes swam in their sockets. "Thorin?! What are ye doing in my room?"
"It's my room, Dwalin."
He blinked twice at Thorin as the king maneuvered swiftly to sit up on the bed stiffly, putting a foot of space between himself and Meisar. Dwalin looked between them and squinted at Thorin. "You look like you've spent a day's journey staring at the arse end of an elf."
"Something like that," Thorin replied tersely. He thought better than to clue Dwalin in on Bard's pugnaciousness when ale seemed likely make the better part of his decisions. He was staring at the king and his betrothed for a spell before he appeared to come to some recognition of a recently severed embrace. Meisar scrambled off the bed in a forbearing fluster. She drew a cask of wine from her bedside table. "Dwalin, would you like-?"
"Bath!" hooted Dwalin, interjecting giddily, too giddily for his usual countenance. Catching a glimpse through the bathroom door at the full tub, he promptly threw off his knuckle dusters and then his short fur mantle. "Balin stole mine earlier, the old bastard."
"It's well gone cold but you can have it," Thorin offered. "It's its own room, there. The door… shuts," he stumbled over his words as the chest harness was thrown off and landed on the floor with a dense clink. Meisar averted her eyes lest the larger dwarf undress fully in his state of drunkenness. It might have piqued her curiosity, the savage strength of limb and war-chewed physique of him, had Dwalin not still frightened her a little bit. And Thorin anyhow, Thorin. Beneath his clothes he would be hers alone.
"Aye," Dwalin concurred, one boot plucked off and then the other.
"Dwalin, perhaps you should wait until morning, when the ale wears off." He was half relieved when Dwalin, after shedding his boots, found the door and swung it shut but for a sliver ajar. More clothes and a few weapons were clumsily shucked off, before they heard the water being stirred.
"It's gone cold now. It'll sober him up perhaps. Come now, my blessing, let us not be disturbed," he soothed. She was edgy for more affections, with Dwalin just behind a cracked door. She was had once blushed at the thought of being caught with her eyes anywhere near Thorin. Now, were her good clothes not such a dreadful obstacle, she felt little care whether Dwalin finished his bath and emerged to an eyeful of them, mid-consummation.
Hurmul. Oh I have let it flow away from me like water from a broken cup. Her cheeks flushed with shame, then exhilaration, at the thought. Thorin propped himself up to sit with a pillow wedged at the small of his back against the head-board. He beckoned her toward him and she acquiesced, pressing her palms into the sheets on either side of his hips and her chest and belly flush to his, the trembling half of her encapsulated by strong parted thighs. She leaned into him and gently kissed again, his slight but ardent mouth, following his beard with a fingertip until she felt the rough weave of his braid where it was rooted just before his ears. He traced the curve of her rump, patted it gently and let his hand settle there. Strong thighs squeezed lightly about her, a part of her pressed up to the junction of him that was kindling a wicked heat. Imminently smothered in bearded kiss again, her balled fists crumpled the exposed collar of his tunic. Betrothed to him. It was a sublime feeling.
On the other side of the wall a fourth and final boot flung at the wall knocked Thorin forth with such force his body lurched and knocked her backward. The jolt was moderated by his determined hands seizing the moment and her hips, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and pulling her to sit atop thick muscled thighs, both their strength and their quavering unmasked by the layers of clothes he had not yet shed for sleep. They bounced her with harsh, smoldering want of something he was not entirely keen to take at the moment.
Arduous quaking of the opposing bed commenced again. "A lovely chestnut pony to ride ye are, my Bryn."
"Good gracious," Meisar leaned forward onto Thorin's shoulder. "I foresee many children if they keep up like this. His kin are fruitful. And she, she is so young…"
He pulled her away to face him, a ghost of his stubborn but lately absent austerity of gaze embodying itself angrily and swiftly. "I will not stand idly by again should that bowyer speak of you like a shriveled plant. My queen owes no man any accounting of herself, nor do I." Anchored tight to his shoulders her hips wrenched and bucked but were held steady by large hands that grasped her hips and handfuls of her dress, her good dress which didn't take kindly to crumpling. In the moment he cared not for it or anything except her and the fluctuation of passions that were ascending to a volcanic peak on the other side of the wall.
"It will not be broken," Thorin murmured, a musing gentleness settling over his face. "Never broken." His finger trailed up her leg over her braies, skirt brazenly crimped up over her knees and beyond.
Bofur wailing out in steepling pleasure flicked the headboard once against the wall and there was in the aftermath his gentle satisfied chuckle rumbling through, Brynja's stilted breaths.
"There will be life under the mountain again." He cupped at her midsection while she clasped her hands around the back of his neck to anchor. He kneaded her there, eyes filled with pain and simultaneously a wretched, beautiful hope. "There will be life here, my queen."
"Ah, Bofur, that ax of yours shall slay me right." On the other side of the wall, a desultory groan of wooden bed slats indicated a modicum of replenished energies.
"Again?" Meisar buried a hard laugh into Thorin's shoulder, the thrum of her amusement resounding over his flesh, his layers of clothes no consequence. The skin seemed to to tighten over the whole of his body, like a suit of armor that was too small worn over naked skin. That feeling had paralyzed him once, but for worse sentiments. Her, that taciturn, weary little scrap of a dwarrowdam; he never imagined she would feel so good in his arms, or that the very presence of her could do so much to bridle a growing unease within him for what lay ahead.
A sublime feeling indeed. There would be an end to this, a stirring pinnacle. A time when she would know every inch of his skin and solder with him, and the bowman-bargeman-slayer-lord would regret his impunity toward her body's suitability to queenship, for what it was worth in the ultimate matter. She kindled an imprudent desire to plant the first seed and let it be forged in her thusly, right there in his own territory. Her legs twisted and curled sideways behind him.
"Aye, oh, ye did it, ye hit that wee spot! Do it again!"
He grasped the thick plait messily slung over her shoulder firmly as if to pull her head back, but only set it behind her with a winsome gentleness. His hand moved from her face to her neck, callused thick fingertips becoming a fleeting scrape of beard on her jawline. He wanted to touch her but he didn't know how; Dwalin was stirring and making strange sounds behind the cracked door.
"Well I'll be a scrappy bowman to a feisty dragon." A frenzied roll of hips sent two bodies now undulating madly to rattle the walls. Thorin twisted his head away from his languid task of laying his cheek to hers, irritably.
"Poor as a coal miner and fosterling to one you say." His tone suggested a concentrated effort to ignore the particulars of Brynja and Bofur's fervid role-play. "It is of no matter to anyone, myself the least of all. You will be a good queen unto to our people, perhaps all the better for it."
"I cannot be a good queen unless you are a good king."
"Without you I would be quite lost on that."
"Let none provoke that dwarvish fire in you without good cause," she squeezed her legs a little tighter around his torso, a tender travail of his bearded jawline a pretense to a more serious proposition. "Bard will be your ally whether you choose it or not. You'll not go insulting each other like children. Either of you." She settled on his shoulder again, clearing hair from the half-exposed peak of his ear to kiss and whisper indelicately. "That is your queen's command."
Dwalin made a dramatic movement behind the door, the nature of which Thorin could not discern, only a tide of water slapping the floor giving any indication.
"Will he linger there?"
"He is a dwarf who makes brisk business of all of his personal tasks, but he is quite inebriated. I think he will linger."
"Does he hate me, for sharing you loyalty?"
Thorin dropped the fistful of her clothing he had re-grasped. "He thinks well of you. He just doesn't trust you. He probably won't for a few more years," he grinned, a forced humor about his smile, the way the bottom lip seemed to recede. "He would not play his viol publically, were he indisposed to you."
"He plays very well. It is a gentle instrument. I am surprised."
"I have seen him play it thrice in anyone's presence other than my own or Balin's. At the burial of Hertha his mother, the funeral pyre of Fundin, and somewhere in a dream… seems so close. Familiar. But it's all dark."
She knew but she would never say. He would tell her, when he was ready.
"Seems he only plays for occasions of great sorrow then," she murmured.
Thorin pondered for a moment. "I can think of no joyous occasion in all our days, for which he has ever had the opportunity."
He could think of two but there was no joy in either memory now.
He held her tighter but she could feel something darken. It felt illicit to her suddenly, to have desired him so wantonly, for all the travails that still lay ahead, and for all that lay behind but not really dead, not in the way death finalized things. But perhaps he needed her warmth, just not her heat, then, in that way. She felt herself grow cold inside and dizzy, to her disappointment.
"Well then!" The sound of bracers snapping startled them both. Dwalin hooked them and put them up about his shoulders over heavy trousers, top half clad in only the snug drab-green bottom layer of his smallclothes. He rubbed his bald head with a towel and squeezed the long wiry hair that still held in the back, and tossed the wet bath linens into the corner, oblivious to the queen in waiting's rumpled clothes and flushed cheeks, the escalating wails on the other side of the wall resurging. "Gone off to bed I am. Se ye come morn- OI!"
All three of them leaped a league at a shattering crack, harsh as a whip's lash. Grasper was snatched and pointed at the wall. The silence that followed quickly reddened Dwalin's face.
"Was that…?"
"Yes," Meisar concluded adroitly.
Outside Emli's heavy but ever-prim pitter patter went rambling along the hallway, the hushed laughter of the inn's maids and the heavy breathing of two exhausted dwarves on the other side of the wall, in delicate shudders and snaps lifting themselves off of a broken bed.
Dwalin finally staggered out and down the hall.
.
"Who's there! Dare to peep in at me!?" Freyda threw open the door to the bath ax in hand and was greeted by the sight of a large half-conscious lump in her bed.
"Gyda! That you? Ye drink too much lovie?"
The lump groaned, a rugged baritone she recognized immediately.
"Dwalin!" she flapped the front of her robe shut in haste. The ax hit the floor blade-first and was lodged there.
"Freyda?" he shot up half in a daze, eyes like saucers, all shot red from too much mannish drink.
"Ye crawled off to wrong room ye did, Mister Dwalin. This is mine," chuckled Freyda, forgivingly. Dwalin sat up off her bed in half a daze. His face had rested comfortably on a pillow that smelled of a woman's hair, a hint of iron that had sparked a particular comfort. "Aye?" he warbled.
"But a door down ye are."
Dwalin didn't move. He was inebriated at a depth that precluded much movement. "Well, you can stay if you'd like," she said finally.
"Strong ale," replied Dwalin flat of affect toward the invitation. He turned over and let his arms splay wide over the width of the bed. Freyda, her breath in her throat, came and sat cautiously on the edge. "Ye play the viol nicely. A mighty fine song ye played for the king… and queen."
"A song about drinking and splittin' skulls o' orcs. Got a merry beat to it though. Best I could do," Dwalin shrugged.
"Afraid of losing him?"
He replied in a noncommittal grunt, unready for a better answer.
"Ye can try to put on them tough airs, but fear's got a smell about it."
"Just had a bath, lass." Dwalin scratched his itchy skin over his clothes. "Fear don't smell much like this mannish soap I din think."
"Never thought you'd see him alive again much less betrothed, did ye? The Creator has spared him for the sake of all of this. You'll not lose him again."
Dwalin scowled over his shoulder at her. "What do you know of fear, lass?"
"I know enough and then some."
Dwalin's swimming eyes stared upward at the ceiling, lips in a scowl more dramatic than she was used to beholding, even on him. "What do you know of being so afraid of losing someone it killed everything but the air in yer lungs?" his voice lowered and ominously, turning away from her.
She shoved Dwalin's full half-dead weight aside on the bed, flexing and moving his mass with such ease he jolted upward and seized a pillow to bifurcate himself from a glaring Freyda. "Saw me only brother skewered through the belly like a pig. Da said we shouldn't a' been escorting the merchants in those parts but the coin was too much to turn down. Attack killed him, left me da a bleeding mess. Carried him on my shoulders for days; every time I put him down I was afraid he would breathe his last but fer me turning him the wrong way. I wasn't more than a girl in them in-between years, not even grown, Mister Dwalin, and I carried my own father so many days my back still hurts from it, shooting pains. Don't ye dare tell me I know nothing of fear. Or love. Or loss. I had a brother I loved as much too. Creator didn't let him back to me though."
"Forgive me." He looked strangely impassioned, compassionate even, fingers flexing like he wanted to reach out, to touch her, but he didn't. She might have been tempted to take his hand, guide it to the places that urgently cried for touch, like in the forest, but had grown wary in the moment, and he was still drunk.
She sat stiffly there still. Clad in a long-battered robe and a sturdy layer or two of attire for sleep, she was rosy-faced and bare-footed, tepid hair uncombed making rivulets down her back. She heard cartilage crackle and snap as Dwalin sat up behind her. "Where does it hurt?" Dwalin asked cautiously. She thought she could feel the hot tingle from his breath on her neck.
"Pardon?"
"Yer back. Top or bottom part?"
She blinked back at him over her shoulder. "Top."
Dwalin took some of the pillows off the head of the head and tossed them over in front of Freyda. "Lay on yer belly. Put them pillows under your head and hug 'em."
Through a dam of angry tears about to unleash, she grinned, and they receded. "Well that sounds like a recipe for scandal don't it?"
"Ye asked me put my trust in ye once. Now return me the favor, lass. Please. There's no scandal to be had, I promise ye."
Hesitant, she threw the pillow over the width of the man-sized bed and adjusted one under head and another under her chest. She felt Dwalin's presence shift and a hard palm press into and begin to knead her just below her shoulder blade. Freyda let a surprised moan slip past her lips, twisting her head back toward Dwalin.
"What's that yer doing?"
"Do the same for Balin. His shoulders get awfully sore."
Freyda rested her head back on the scratchy pillow. He had laid there and it was scented with his ale and pipe-smoke and overall maleness.
"He's so much older than ye," Freyda observed quietly. There had to be a way into him. What was his childhood like? His mother? Why did he like sweet-biscuits so much? There had to be a story behind that.
"Aye, he is. Thorin was a brother's age to me, bit older but... Thorin and I… we… we just were, lass."
"Ye still are."
She thought she detected a hint of a smile at the assurance but couldn't be sure. He seemed to have some ease, and even unmasked affection, for the way he spoke of Thorin, for all that she had heard, dwarves whispering behind hands, of what had transpired between them under the mountain not so long ago. His loyalty hadn't been broken. That both endeared and frightened her.
"Brawl like brothers we did in fair play," Dwalin went on. "Nearly cracked his skull once horsing about. Thrain wasn't too happy with me, Balin even less so. But ye see, I swore to protect him, like my father swore to protect his. He knew. He always did..."
Some aspect of him seemed to soften, relax even, but she couldn't be sure which it was. His eyes would always have a hint of guarded menace in them, and the scars on his head and on his forearms were not likely to heal. Perhaps, she thought, losing herself in imagining what could make him weak (nay, just not so... harsh), it was all in his hands. They were used to clenching things- axes, throats, themselves; she had seen the indents of blunt nails in his palms, little crescents, many of them, scarred over, some fresh. Now his hands were unnervingly gentle, laboring on against her back, the fingers careful.
"Was yer father a soldier too?"
"Nay. A diplomatic kind more like. Brave in battle when it called him though."
"A fine spitting image of Balin he sounds like."
"Aye, he was."
"And yer a war-dog that's been chewed to the bone."
"What of it?" He lingered at her shoulders with an intensity coming about his hands, but not the kind that she had expected. He lifted and flex his hands and touched her shoulders with just fingertips then.
"Even think there's another way to living? Not all this tearing up and fighting?"
"I lack the composition, lass, to be a stopping and thinking kind. I let my axes do the thinking. Might be dead otherwise. Probably would be."
"I trust ye on that. Still, I pray there be times of peace beneath the mountain. Would ye even think o' thinking with another part of yourself if we were free from warring?" Freyda lamented quietly.
Dwalin stroked a pale golden lock of her hair that was loose across the span of her back. "Dunno," he answered flatly again. The finger tangled itself and tugged at the lock of hair and Freyda tried to roll in apt recognition, but his hands on both her shoulders pressed back at her. "Ishrigif, lass. Not finished."
Yielding, she felt the weight of him straddle itself across the small of her back and gasped. A most sublime pressure. "Aye, yer heavy Mister Dwalin."
"M'I hurting ye like this?"
Freyda chuckled low and languidly. "Nay. Ye aren't." She wriggled her hips against the strong legs that were spread and near buckling on either side of her. "Lass you'll drive me mad." He responded to a heat she herself felt surge by adjusting himself lower, straddled the upper reaches of her thighs, and returned to work diligently.
"'Aish,"she shuddered beneath him. Her shoulders had always felt achy, but where he seemed to grasp it down into the muscle itself, it wrung with pain.
"Hurt?"
"Aye, a little, right there."
He grunted vaguely. "As expected, carrying something too heavy on yer shoulders and all the wrong way. Not that I blame ye, lass, for its cause."
"Da took me to a healer in Dunland who specialized in un-twisting back knots and bad shoulders. Never worked like—oh, that is right!" Both hands molded a section of her shoulder as if it were a lump of dough. She resisted what seemed such an instinctual yearning to grind her hips upward again and drive him mad. He seemed determined but blithely ignorant of how wretchedly he was doing the same to her. But ignorant? She shook her head against the pillow. The forest in all its wantonness had taught him the significance of all her parts. Did he even remember?
"A healer? Man or dwarf?"
"Tall-woman."
Dwalin made a dismissive hacking sound. "None but a dwarf know how a dwarf's muscles work. What kind of load they can bear, how they bunch and twist. Stronger backs we have." Hands migrated to the center of her back to demonstrate, and kneaded in rhythm with every syllable he ranted out. "Don't reset a dwarf's back like a man's. Muscles are stubborn. Take longer to come undone." The heel of the palm pushed enthusiastically with an undertone of displeasure. "Only a dwarf ought be putting hands on a dwarf. Regardless the reason."
"All is true. S'pose when a dwarf's putting hands on another dwarf it's never for a wrong reason." She could feel him shift lightly and withdraw, sighed achingly at the sudden absence of his weight at her tailbone. Loyal and humble, in his way, scarred by too much to let it show. She could feel something doubtlessly of a kinder intent toward her in that body, with an unmistakable heat that her heart knew better than to think was meant to be contained. His hips moved shiftily, as if trying to avoid a particular mode of contact.
"He'll always be loyal to ye. Thorin," she consoled, and meant it.
His shift to sulkiness was well-expressed in the shift of his hips away from the small of her back hands to an uneven, stridulous rhythm on her shoulders. She offered a soft laconic laugh to ease a path out of the subject. When he didn't want to talk, he shut down; that much she knew, and she liked the sound of his deep, rough voice too much for that. The way words rolled off his tongue made her tremble inside.
"Why ye doing this for me?"
"Because yer back hurts, and ye know, because."
Pulling words out of him would never be easy but she felt confident given what she had pulled out already. That he was drunk on a belly of ale made no difference, not in her mind. "Well you've got a gentle touch for a hard kind," she whispered, dejection and determination warring furiously in her, surging between her legs, making her want to grind her hips into the pillows beneath him like a wanton. Imagining it might rile him too quickly, too messily, she ceased. "Anybody ever tell ye that?"
His heavy form readjusted itself cautiously back where it had rested. "No. Just you, so far."
"It's a good touch. Mmm, it is."
"Is it?"
Hands moved from shoulder to the dips of her flank and inward, a tickling sensation on the muscles there from his hard hands causing her to wiggle.
"Yes!" His hands drew back from where they were dug in edgily, a slow, careful migration now moving southward.
Without a knock the door opened. Freyda's languidly rolling hips jolted suddenly upward into Dwalin and he jerked away at a sensation less than convenient, for the particular dwarf he beheld standing gape-lipped in the doorway.
"Brother!"
"Brother," repeated Balin, eyebrows both raised high. Freyda took the pillow and hucked it only half-jesting across the room at Balin. "Whatcha doin' in my room Mister Balin?"
"Thought it was Thorin's room!" protested Balin, hands raised up in defense. She could almost feel how red and hot his face was growing under that white beard and it made her laugh inside. Dwalin gestured drunkenly in the direction of Thorin's room.
"Too much ale," concluded Balin, his fluster finally surfacing. "Too much ale and far too many doors." Balin didn't move from the doorway though. Still-raised brows demanded an explanation.
"Rubbing 'er sore back the way I do yers," scowled Dwalin defensively.
"Propriety now, brother, come. You can have my bed. I'll bunk with Gimli."
"He's welcome to stay here. Enjoy a bed of your own, Balin." The hips moved. The shoulders flexed. Dwalin flinched.
Balin smiled gratefully over a growing discomfort that seemed to amuse the iron-smith more by the minute. "A kind offer lass, but you would not wish rumors of alsâz be reaching ears. Too fine a lass you are for such a thing. Come now, brother!"
Freyda shot up, irritably. "Too fine a lass? Aye, too fine a lass for ye to be putting me on a bleedin' pedestal like I can't be steward of me own good name," she glared at Balin.
Balin looked cornered, well-schooled if she was any judge of facial expressions, which seemed to make Dwalin smile behind her in tandem.
"Good gracious!" Emli's disapproving trill rung through and Freyda sulked again. She pushed past Balin in the doorway, blockaded Gimli from coming through. "To my room, Gimli. You'll stay with us. Us, meaning, us," Emli wagged a finger at Freyda that wasn't taking no for an answer.
"But 'amad, they're cousins and right upstanding cousins for the company! Can't I stay with them tonight instead of the 'dams?" whined Gimli.
"'Dams?" repeated Emli. "Is that what you call your mother now? A 'dam? What sort of vulgar shorthand is that? Where did you learn it?" Gimli turned and fled with Emli pecking after him. Dwalin headed for the door.
"Wait, will you not stay? I would welcome your company."
Dwalin sighed, reluctantly. "I best not be a part in slandering yer name lass. Freyda. It is a good name, truly."
"Alsâz," Freyda repeated sadly. "Only a word tall-folk use to scare their women. We're dwarves, Dwalin. We only ever have one. Or none. It don't apply to us."
A door opened and slammed shut in those narrow, austere eyes. "The king's found his solace if there is any to be had in this world. In her. Why can't ye find yours?"
A pang there, an indelicate glint less than savage flinted once. He glanced quickly back at Balin, banged the door shut behind him with the heel of his palm and crossed the room in five steps. Strong arms inelegantly raised her up and holding her by both elbows, he swooped his head as if to kiss her but only brushed her beard with the wiry fringes of his own, before drawing back suddenly.
Her blue-green eyes yearned and then stormed the longer he held her and stared like he was paralyzed, eyes looking like a scared dog's all black and shifting. The strong tattooed hands withdrew and so did he, without a word.
.
"Oh what a day!" Emli greeted the morning by throwing open the curtains and making saturnine eyes at the sight that greeted her. In Meisar's room Gimli was resting on a cot, swatting away morning light, while the dwarrowdams bunked together on the larger bed. In her midnight roundup Emli had lassoed Meisar too, corralled her back to her room lest her san be besmirched, and in a mannish realm no less.
"Seems rather a dingy day for travel," grumbled Emli with little concern nonetheless. The storm outside had fluctuated from snow to rain and back again, and now to a miserable sleet. Meisar flinched with a jolt of utter discomfort upon waking as the cold air hissing through the chinks of the building with the ferocious wind poofed under the blanket. She was chilled to the bone; when the blanket covered her again a heat came back, mercurial and dizzying. Emli brushed against her and drew back in alarm.
"Mahal! You burn with fever!" Emli's voice did little more than pound at her, words and hysterics blurring together. Her footsteps eventually faded from earshot and the door wasn't even closed behind her, as she raced down the hall to fetch Eda or Oin.
When Oin had been roused and came down the hallway to assess the situation, Emli rushed down the stairs to ask the bargemen to hold at dock for but a small delay.
"Afraid there won't be any boats going out," a gray-bearded bargeman announced solemnly. "The storm won't break for hours, if days."
A dejected Emli's jaw dropped silently. The bargeman shrugged, only slightly sympathetic. "Well, for what it's worth there's a fair smorgasbord to be had, thanks to a betrothal or something."
The common room was packed with people and hot, mouth-watering aromas. Urdlaug had gone to the kitchen with the hired girls earlier in the morning set on showing them the proper way to make a biscuit, finding their daybreak offerings less than to standard. Proper biscuit making had become proper breakfast-cake making, proper wurst-frying, proper breakfast-mash making, proper seed-cake baking, proper egg-and-smoked-cheddar in a bread cup making, and proper raspberry-jam tart techniques. A cluster of men with snow on their caps and puddles from their boots were crowded at a long table filled with her delectable work, Anbur, Virta and Lulia pressing through with hot fare. Percy and Dylis wolfed sliced spicy wurst and potatoes and cinnamon-crusted breakfast cakes giddily. "Can't complain for a dwarven betrothal," the innkeeper laughed. "Sure does make a fine meal to greet a miserable day. More of you dwarves ought to pledge yourselves."
"Supposing food was the only thing of concern in our betrothing habits," smiled Thorin tiredly. Barely awake, he had spent the wee hours of the night kept awake by a rabble of hushed disagreements between Dwalin and Balin in the bed over from his, which did not seem to involve the usual accusations of space-hogging, pillow theft or a foot in the back. He had been too dazed, too determined to alleviate himself with Meisar absent (even her breath, her heartbeat, the scent of her hair would have done), and slipped into a dark dream filled with ghosts that eliminated the need for that particular alleviation it had so darkened his mood.
He followed Percy into the kitchen, where Urdlaug hopped down from her perch before the stove. The floor screeched so wildly with her weight that Percy's legs buckled anticipating the floorboards to snap and them all to fall clean through.
"Half the town's come to the common room to feast in spite of this deluge, mistress dwarf. Are you quite sure a wedding feast is still in your energies?"
"Never seen a dwarf at work, have you sir?" replied Urdlaug hastily, proudly.
"Well… no. Haven't been many of you since…" he stopped himself and snatched up the last raspberry tart, eyeing Thorin self-consciously.
"Sadzkasab. It's going fast," Virta hollered in.
"Oh I've another loaf in me I suppose," conceded Urdlaug. "My king is betrothed. I am well-motivated this day, I do think."
"What does that mean?" the woman at the soup-pot asked her. She grinned at the wee dwarf girls all running about her, climbing up on stools to fetch laden plates off the tables to bring out.
"A secret! Not for the ears of men. Our dwarvish language is a sacred legacy, not to spread about like it were frosting on a cake," huffed Urdlaug.
"Seed cake is what it is," Lulia answered, strolling in with empty plates.
"You!" Urdlaug waved her rolling pin at her sister. "Shut your cake hole or you'll never be putting another piece of cake in it!"
"Are you dwarf women always so cagey?" the cook smirked.
"Yes," replied Urdlaug stoutly.
"Oh hush sister," scowled Lulia. "You are only so bitter because Hroth the Blacksmith rejected your hand."
"Bring the tarts out. Before I make sure you haven't hands for your own One to reject someday."
An unthreatened Lulia went on, sidling up the soup-stirrer. "You see, miss, my sister was once convinced a blacksmith named Hroth was her One. But he told her it was not to be."
"He said he would be crushed to death if he married her!" giggled Yrsa nearby.
"And he has no more of my ham pies or blueberry scones. I care nothing for him!" Urdlaug retorted, pinching her lips.
"Oh but mistress Urdlaug, there are good men… dwarves… aplenty I am certain," the cook consoled. "Let not one despoil you from loving."
"That's… not… how… it… works," Urdlaug banged the rolling pin on the dough with every word, seething. The other kitchen wenches backed off slowly.
"Good gracious no wonder so few of you ever marry. So stubborn!"
"You ought not be so unkind, Lulia. She is your sister," chided Thorin, entering quietly. The hired girls all gawked at him. "Dwarf courtships are not like mannish ones. There is one, or there are none. There is in between, no lines of suitors to sample from." He might have eyed the flirtatious girls in the back accusingly, but the same ones had been rushing in and out of a particular upstairs room the night before, fetching new bed linens along with a carpenter.
"On the other hand, sampling from this line," trilled the soup-cook, pilfering the offerings. "Oh, delicious. Well mistress Urdlaug, his loss I say. May he have married a terrible cook."
"May he have married no one and died a lonely soul as I surely will!" snapped Urdlaug back at her. The door to the kitchen flapped open and Brynja rushed in, her gait half a limp. The hired girls in the back put their heads down toward each other and giggled.
"Good morning. Sleep well?" Thorin relayed sarcastically, biting his lower lip against a smile.
She pulled a queer face at him. "There ye are! I've been searching for ye, majesty. You must come quick. Your lady is taken ill."
Athune- My queen
Men lananabukhs menu- I love you
Baimnigi- Spread Open!
San- Purity
Ishrigif- Lay Down/Lay Back
'Aish- Ouch!
Alsaz- Promiscuity