Author's Notes: Like our majestic king, I think I should avoid making promises I can't keep. I thought I would have more time in August to update this fic more often- didn't realize how much summer heat can aggravate MS. Here's hoping that will change with the season. I plan on continuing this story for a LONG time, fear not.
Emura your review brought such a smile to my face! I think I might have had a really rough day that particular one and came home to the review. Thank you so much! I do love inspiring "obsessions" and I certainly had yours in mind with this chapter. I hope you (and everyone else!) enjoy.
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Aroin was huddled in the antechamber not with any of Dis's attendants but Oin, whose healers' case was set upon the table, his head pressed in commiseration with his sister. Oin rose to meet the king and queen when they entered, his hands clasped before him anxiously.
"Is she taken ill, Oin?" asked Thorin, anxiously.
"Feverish, I'm afraid."
"Feverish?" Thorin repeated, an eyebrow knitted upward. Oin's affirmative, then slightly chiding glance, told him he understood his meaning well enough.
"Yes," Oin repeated as a firmer confirmation. "She has taken a temperature. Unusual condition for a dwarf as you know, but nothing serious. Bed-rest will do."
"Is it well to see her?" Thorin asked.
"She has a guest at the moment, my liege," Oin divulged quickly.
"A guest?"
Oin adjusted the ear trumpet, mumbling under his breath.
"Come in, come now," a familiar voice offered from the other side of Dis's half-ajar chamber door. Thorin saw the gray hat and let an irritated sigh flare his nostrils. Oin shrugged helplessly, packing his medicine kit swiftly to leave. When he entered his sister's bedchamber he found Gandalf a dwarfed presence in the room, and no less, in the close company of Dis, who was garbed in no more than her nightgown and a thick bed-robe, all of her hair down and unkempt, lank with feverish sweat. Thorin forced a suspicious smile. "Gandalf…"
"King under the mountain," Gandalf stooped to stand, offering his salutations in his characteristic way, hand to heart, and offered out. His more welcoming smile he offered only to Meisar though, repeating the gesture. "Queen under the mountain," he added, cheerily. He sat again very quickly under the lower ceiling on Elsa's pallet bed that lay at the side of Dis's own, to the nurse-maid's chagrin. Elsa filed out past Thorin and Meisar quietly, keeping the door but an inch ajar in leaving.
"I did not realize you sought my sister's company," Thorin grumbled, swallowing his as best he could.
"I took it upon myself to, whilst your duties kept you," Gandalf answered.
"Then you have my gratitude," Thorin adjured, gratingly.
"Reminiscing of father," said Dis. "Gandalf seems to have known him half as well as we did, in his time."
"Your father I considered a friend, and I have few of those, as you know."
"I cannot imagine why," Thorin intoned. Dis shot him a tired beam of a glare. Her rubies were all out. The contrast of her black hair and pallid skin made her seem half a ghost, alarmingly stark to behold. Meisar studied the heaviness of her eyes, the flush of her skin, her tired groans issuing out when she readjusted herself, arranging a stack of pillows so she could sit up. She drank from a chalice a potion that smelled hot and bitter; the muscles in her throat seemed to resist the elixir but she forced herself to swallow it.
Meisar closed her eyes and felt her whole body grow hot inside with shame. Feverish indeed she thought glumly. And I thought it Elvish in origin. She sat where Elsa had sat by Dis's bedside and took up the terry wrapped around a knob of ice that the nurse-maid had cooled her forehead with, pressed it there again as Dis shuddered once more. Her skin was peaked to the touch and to sight. When the ice had melted, she applied another cold towel to Dis's forehead, dewy again with colder sweat. I am sorry sister.
"I am sorry, Dis," she murmured, seemed not to realize it had emerged aloud. "I am..."
"Sister, what do you apologize for?" Dis asked pointedly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Gandalf's attention pricking, subtly. Ears like a rabbit's, they seemed to twitch at attention. And what did HE want, seeking the company of two dwarrowdams, whether for tea or convalescence?
"I... it grieves me that you are ill," Meisar said, more than half a lie. "That is all."
.
Dwalin found the door to their living quarter easily enough. On the knob was hung woolen winter scarf, alarmingly turquoise in color. He knocked twice with the force just enough to be commanding. It was Bofur's wife who answered and grinned and spun wordlessly on her heel then again to disappear through a separate door just on the other side of the entrance. He nodded a polite thanks to Brynja and her hale, plain face, warm eyes that seemed constantly wide with delight at something or another. She was in a plain mulberry gown that left plentiful give below the bosom, lest her belly get big soon. And perhaps it would but none would know. Neither she nor Bofur would say it aloud, too bashful, until it was obvious.
She was seated again then on Bofur's knee on a big overstuffed sofa that seemed like it was hewn from old quilts. Bombur was there with his perambulator stationed beside him, and Bira, and the children. And Bifur with that daft woman he dwelt with somewhere up and out of the mountain, a laughable scandal if ever there was one. Bofur had made them a fine place now, roomy, well-lit and save for that awful piece of furniture, decently furnished so far as Dwalin could observe, but they were and always would be miners' whelps from the stark slopes of the Blue Mountains. Liwizuthâk he thought, they he knew it impolite. Even under the Lonely Mountain, Ered Luin still carried its smell with it, a familiar aire to them that could never be rendered away. A scent like old leather and thin, dry pipe-weed and over-cooked meat. There was nothing exotic about it, not like Erebor in the days of old. It was straightforward, hardy and earthy, and warm. He stood on the other side of the open door lest Bofur and his kin try draw him into their mirth and drink, not even the sundown hours above the mountain and already there were pink in the face with the latter.
Liwizuthâk he thought again, but this time with an amused affection. Alas though weren't we all. Kings at anvils in mannish villages; the patient adviser to a now-headless king burning on a pyre far from home, cut down in battle… Poverty had colored them all the same: red and more red. He closed his eyes while he waited and tried to forget the sudden rush of that sight, the flames against the blackening sky. And he could see in its place a woman's red hair instead, lifted on the wind before a heap of burning orcs, on the other side of Thorin instead of the flames from a hundred pyres that were burning there beside Fundin's in front of them. And her. His king, his friend's bride that was as sovereign now to him as Thorin was. Not even a dwarf at all except for her stature and shape one would be tempted to think. How to describe her? Not a Firebeard or a Longbeam or a Liwizuthâk or Durin's Folk. What was there to call her? Queen perhaps. Aye. My liege, my brother loves her and thus I must. He loves her as I love-
Freyda slid out from the door with a coy smile, the turned in teeth clasped eagerly over her lips. "Couldn't very well slip outta me da's house so easy," she grinned. "Poor Gyda will have to deal with him and his company alone tonight."
"Come my lass, we're expected at the silversmith's soon," Dwalin urged gently. He could hear Brynja and Bofur inside hushing each other's excited speculations on the other side of the door and the chitter of their kin, the clanging of their dishes. The king's lieutenant donned his old furs with his mail and a long engraved leather sur-coat that reached his knees. It gave him an appearance less rugged than a soldier at his duty but just short of absolutely genteel. The sleeves of the plain olive-drab tunic underneath were rolled up over his forearms; when he took Freyda's arm in his own her palm in the bare skin in the crook of his elbow made him shiver in an unfamiliar manner.
Late in the afternoon the city hit its characteristic lull, before supper would bring them back out toward the great halls and kitchens and the carts that sold food in the old bottom-most cellar. Dwarrowdams walked together for afternoon strolls in packs, bedecked as peacocks, proud and adorned. And the jewelers' guilds; they always came up out of the workshops for the day before the metal-workers and the miners poured up at the suppertime shift break, as cliquish as the dwarrowdams in their color-coded aprons. Dwarves hunkering down making home on the rings of Dale too lingered, by fires keeping warm as winter descended heavy outside the walls of the city. They all parted and whispered in each other's ears behind hands jeweled in rings or grubby alike, the king's lieutenant passing arm in arm with her. Gossip was a queer sort of lifeblood in Erebor; it fed on itself. And he was known, constantly by the king's side, a renowned warrior. Little else.
"Oh what a handsome pair!" one young dwarrowdam gushed to the one beside her.
"A handsome dwarf, the king's lieutenant."
"Hush! Shan't be speaking of another's that way. She'll tear you in half if she hears you. That's Freyda the smith. One of the queen's ladies."
Dwarrowdams were still only a third of the peoples of Erebor, determined though to make themselves visible within the city limits. In such times that promised stability, many more were warm toward marrying, or well-fed enough on a diet of news on who was coupled with whom. A twinge of pride that was unfamiliar to him swelled in the chest area and in his throat, and seemed not to dare to spread any lower. Freyda's pale hair was all loose except for the braid that was haphazardly clasped in a leather twine. It reached the middle part of her back even when wavy from being plaited most days. She wore a straight skirt of sturdy velvet, sea-green going on turquoise that was much akin to her eyes, and still now even, a hauberk on top, worn under a vest of white fur.
"They're all a'whisperin' Mister Dwalin," Freyda beamed, sussurous to him.
"I am proud to walk with ye upon me arm. Let 'em gawk at something that's true for once. I am courting ye and if they are still dwaddling here when we leave the silver-smith's, they'll know it for sure." The dwarves from the diamond-cutter's guild parted from their cliquish cluster to let them pass through the narrow part of the stair, all eyes squinting through their monocles then squashing back together again to chitter at the sight.
"True? Is it, truly?" She had the eyes of a small dog seeking approval from its master for the umpteenth time, not a lass who had gutted orcs in a swipe and taken him on a sparring field as well as any warrior. Perhaps she was afraid.
And perhaps it was his weakness too. He felt it rise up and make him weak in the parts of him that were used to being so on edge, so alert, it was akin to losing a limb on the field of battle. Rendered helpless. But he was not afraid. Not now.
"It is. Truly, as it is, I should have made yer fair braid a long while ago. Before this, before, well…"
She smiled to herself, silently, thinking she saw him blush. "Stir up the chatterin' more than Thorin and his queen even," Freyda supposed in a low chuckle. A group of older dwarrowdams nodded at her with subtle approval. The crones were always the toughest lot, she swelled silently inside with pride.
"Think not," Dwalin countered quietly. Passing dwarves of another jewel-cutter's guild parted and were soon whispering again in a trail behind them. They had much to invest in with the currency of gossip in these times, jewel-cutters and dress-makers and lute-players, instruments to the art of love each in their own way.
"No? Look at their faces," Freyda half-giggled. "Pray me da don't have these whispers reach him before we return from the smith's."
Dwalin took in the hums and whispers and sighs of the dwarrowdams and the silent acknowledgements from the male dwarves. "There's no surprise in the two of us. We fit together right. A soldier and a smith."
"As do any who court or marry. That'll be a mystery for all times how one is drawn into another, aye, like moths are to fires knowin' well they'll burn. Folks are different when they get each other alone," Freyda shrugged.
"Am I so different now that I've got ye on me arm like this?" Dwalin asked. He didn't know quite what answer he wanted to hear.
"Everything is different. But I shan't like to see ye change too much. I liked ye to begin with for what ye are. A fine soldier, a finer friend, and the handsomest dwarf I have ever lain me eyes on."
Dwalin smiled self-deprecatingly. "Shan't be much changed, lass."
"Followed Thorin in all things, even in love."
"Nay," he gripped her hand tighter against the crook of his arm. "Followed me own in that."
.
Dis was awake and dressed when Thorin returned. Seated in her chair there was a stern posture about her. That weight had always seemed to burden her shoulders, as if it were literal. But her shoulders were upright and rigid and seemed to glare at him. She wore her rubies again, immaculately.
"Gandalf was kind to attend on you," Thorin began.
"Speak forwardly. We are alone," Dis nodded curtly at Aroin to leave them. Thorin sat in the opposite chair by the fire when Oin and Gloin's sister was gone.
"If you are worried for me, don't be. If you are cross with my absence, say so," Dis said crisply.
"I would never be cross for any absence of yours from official business," Thorin muttered. "I did not expect you to-"
"So it's the company I keep in your absence then?" Dis intoned.
"He's crept around this mountain turning over old stones, as they say. He slithers out of Balin's sight like a snake when he would have a simple word. But he comes to you when you are ill in sick-bed, seeking what?"
"Are you suspicious of me, Thorin?"
"Not of you, sweet sister. But there are cracks in your psyche and wine will do well enough to widen them," Thorin plucked the cask out from under the chair. Dis lowered her eyes away from his and refused to meet them again. "Don't let somebody take advantage of that, friend or foe."
"Or something in between," Dis sighed, cryptically.
"You must stop drinking Elvish wine. It does you no great good," Thorin chided.
Now Dis met his eyes. "You may be a king, nadad, but I am a mother who has lost my children. You do not command me."
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Stairs and sky-walks gave way at last to the final heavy arched bridge that marked the entrance to the great forges below on their cavernous plain under the mountain. Descending toward the floor of the forges a corridor, dark with low octagonal ceilings, forked off leading toward smaller workshops and guild halls above the enormous main forges. The silver-smith there was a dwarf called Frar who looked thrice his age. A beard as white as Balin's was plaited over the middle of his chest, divided in thirds clasped in thick silver rings. Many times the wrinkles creased his face but his green eyes were sharp as a hawk's, one more squinted in its constant expression than the other, being closed so oft focusing at the intricate carvings he made into his metal-work.
"Come you have at last," the silver-smith jibed. "Part of me feared you wouldn't have the gall to go through."
"More than enough gall," Dwalin assured quietly.
"Good then. Would have demanded the coin for such a fine piece regardless. Put a hard day's work into completing this one, on such short notice no less. Come and see." He held out a small hinged box, just large enough to accommodate a small piece of jewelry. "Tell me, how does your lady fair find it?"
"S'pose I shall ask her myself," Dwalin opened the box for Freyda's view. She took the elegant silver clasp from it and squinted at it. "Mine n' yers, crossed like, see? Showin' that we're together now," Dwalin fumbled an explanation, his fingertip tracing over the crossed axes etched into the silver.
"Aye, I see it. 'Tis lovely. Dwalin, it is a lovely piece."
"As lovely as you, my lady," the silversmith hastened to add. "Dwalin has told me you are a lass of great beauty. He does not overstate this."
"This mighty soldier? Swoonin' to ye like a bard of romance songs?" Freyda grinned. Dwalin's mouth twitched, abashed in the slightest.
Frar patted Dwalin's heavy forearm reassuringly. "I knew your father for a dwarf greatly devoted to his One. Your mother was the happiest wife in all the Seven Kingdoms. Now that Balin has come to his white-beard age unwed I am pleased to see such a legacy falls to you, Dwalin. I did not expect that. You always were too hard-boiled for your own good."
"These are different times now," Dwalin murmured a halfhearted defense.
"Aye, they are," chuckled Frar. He crossed his arms and knitted his brows amusedly at Dwalin. "Well, lad, make a proper plait of it. This one's frayin'," the silversmith mooned, jerking his head toward Freyda's hair. "Hope your fingers have the capacity for such a delicate task."
"Aye they do," Freyda insisted immediately.
Dwalin shrugged, shoulders that could barely maintain their nonchalant posture. He stood close to her while he worked on her braid again. "Could I leave ye without whilst Siv pranced about with a braid in 'er hair?"
"Is that all?" Freyda chuckled. "Savin' face for a hussy and a thief?"
"No!" Dwalin replied defensively. "I wanted this, I... I'm just sayin'." He ran his fingers through the thick pale goldenrod of her hair, finding a suitable section to braid. He plaited downward from the crown of her head. They stood outside the silversmith's guild-hall door, the corridor empty. Freyda's arms were drawn to her chest, clasped over her heart together. Dwalin reached the end of her hair and affixed the heavy clasp to the braid, just as thick. He slung it over Freyda's shoulder to show her.
"Two axes, oh, mine and yers." She reached and studied the ax necklace around Dwalin's throat with her fingers. "Mine and yers, and yer..." she laughed as she rummaged in the small velvet pouch she wore at her belt with her dirks. "Yer... snout." She brought up the wrinkled token and grinned. "P'chance I shoulda made this fine piece in the shape o' a boar's nose, yer lineage and all and..."
A gentle reassuring laugh issued from her. "Dwalin, it's perfect."
Silently, a palm slid up her neck from behind and turned her head back. The thumb on her cheek passed several times back and forth, rough at the tip, giving her skin a pink highlight at the border of her beard. Dwalln's head was bent slightly down toward her, the tip of his nose almost touching hers. And his eyes. He wanted so much to kiss her but.
Dwalin abruptly drew back, cleared his throat. "And now to yer father's stead?"
"Aye. If ye can summon the gall for that."
.
Freyda swept open the sheepskin curtain that separated the kitchen area from their common room, clustered in chairs hewn in animal hides and many furs, the curling horns of an aurochs serving as armrests for the one Onar occupied- barely. The Boar slumped and made a gurgling sound against the laughter of his comrades- Vestri, Vigg, Lofar and Hepti. Dwalin had learned the names and memorized the characteristic charms of their appearances each, lest he ever encounter them without the benefit of Freyda, or Thorin's company. Vigg had the flat-beaten nose and scarred lip, Vestri the missing thumb, Lofar the half-witted brutish grin, and Hepti the bulging belly like a sow's ready to birth.
"She's here, and with Mister Dwalin," alerted Gyda, trying to haul Onar upright and failing.
"Da, we come with some news," Freyda announced. Dwalin felt the tip of his nose twitch harshly, whether from nerves (the nerve) or the heavy, smoky scent of Onar's stead he dared not be certain. As could be expected, the interior was heavy with the scent of smoke and charred meat. Gyda was rushing about turning burnt hunks of some gamey-smelling creature on spits, scolding the squall of ruffians for spilling their drinks.
"The city under siege? The Pits closed?" Onar drawled.
"No da. It's perfectly fine news." She went forth and helped her father sit up again in his favorite seat. It must have been, he found the groves of the armrests so easily and settled into them, elbows flat. The furnishing groaned under his weight, heels digging into the carpet under him. He looked up at her with discombobulated eyes, and Freyda stood back with her hands clasped together before her.
"Da, I must tell ye... I am being courted. I have accepted me braid."
"Courted?" Two stern-browed eyes were disarmed and groggy with ale. Perhaps intoxicating drinks were the proper emollient to this after all, Dwalin mused with a secret, burning hope.
"Aye, da." She swept the braid over the top of her head to show Onar the hair clasp. His eyes passed over it and shot straight toward Dwalin. "I see Mister Dwalin has come. Come here, lad. Come here."
Dwalin took several steps across the room toward him, halting a foot before his chair.
"Ingit," he summoned again, impatiently. Dwalin took a seat in the chair beside Onar's, leaving Vigg to stand just behind him, the alcohol miasma of the dwarf's breath already sticking to his neck after several seconds in his presence. "We had a wee discussion not the other day, did we not, Dwalin?" Onar's arm swung around him heavily from the opposite chair and pulled him in with a furious tightness to his hand. "Did ye not swear to me you'd keep your eyes open for this sorta thing?"
"Aye I did, and I did not lie." Dwalin's eyes flitted up at Vigg. That the bigger one with the flattened nose backed off at his glare redeemed him inside but only momentarily. Dwalin's face would never betray an iota of fear, not even anyone's presence. That as much he vowed. "Ye have no reason to fear a whelpling lad's intent. It is I who courts yer daughter."
"You?"
Lofar and Vestri rose behind him tandem. Dwalin held his body stiffly, refusing to flinch. Lofar was stupid-drunk, and Hepti passed out in the privy. The two of them I can take if this goes sour.
"Yes. I. Me." He rose from the chair slowly enough, backing up to stand at Freyda's side and take her hand to display the truth of it plainly. The eyes of Onar's chums were all on his, huge, scarred and tattooed in runes, wrapping over Freyda's with the delicacy a woman might hold a newborn babe. Lofar laughed but Vigg shoved an elbow backwards into his sternum and shut him up swiftly enough. Onar gripped the bone armrests, hauled himself up and swaggered forward, whether the heaviness of his foot was from the spinning of the room or his own intent it could not be discerned. Instead of backing Dwalin strategically into the corner of the room that was a few steps behind him, which he was at a perfect angle to do, he plunked himself over the whetstone that occupied a fair radius of the room itself. He began to swipe an ax on the stone pie, his eyes, however bleary, never leaving Dwalin's. "Well, recallin' our conversation the other day and how ye said ye would always be truthful toward me," Onar continued, digging the ax into the whetstone again aggressively. "Do ye remember that talk we had, Dwalin, son of Fundin?"
"Aye, I do."
"I remember it too, word for word," Vestri hastened to add.
Onar lifted and tapped the ax handle pensively against the palm of his hand. He let a deep wavering sigh that emerged like the breath of a bull. "Good. Reckon somethin' foul gave you that rip on yer ear, least it dinna take yer hearing." He began to laugh in a booming uneven caterwaul, surging toward Dwalin and stopping to tug just a little too hard at the peak of Dwalin's ear that was visible over the cuff that covered the damage there. Onar examined the ax and put out his lip. "Well then, Dwalin. Shall we have a drink then?"
"Aye!" his comrades shouted, vacating their seats so Dwalin could sit again. He readjusted the ear clasp, smoothed a section of wiry dark hair back over it. Hepti echoed an agreement from the privy, and Gyda trotted back into the kitchen and returned with a tray of ales. The first she offered to Onar; he took two and handed one to Dwalin. He unclasped his hands from their stiff lock to accept the tankard from Freyda's father.
"So ye don't mean to kill me?" Dwalin treaded lightly, hoping for confirmation.
Onar sloshed a mouthful around and swallowed, chasing it with a deep pensive sigh. "I'm past a desire for killin'. Did a lot of killin'. Nowadays I prefer a good uppercut. Make 'em bite their tongue. Always a good laugh, in't it? 'Less it's you." He laughed and laughed and settled out into a flat exhalation. "Killin' makes me hungry and thirsty. Did most of my killin' in lean days. Think o' killin' and it makes me stomach rumble 'stead o' me blood flow. But you on the other hand, lad, you look like it gets yer blood flowin', a good kill."
"Had enough of killing," Dwalin rumbled. He let a small shrug of his fur-clad shoulders. "Unless it needs killin'."
"Fair enough. Need a strong dwarf with a life behind him, not a simpering lad, to be at my daughter's side. Truth be known, lad, I hoped ye might. But I hope sparingly. You seemed like too much a soldierly brute, the king's own, not a lass's," Onar commented, pointedly. "Then again the king seemed, well... not a lass's sweetling anyway. Now see what he's got. Should have sniffed that out when I found out who ye were, entertained some hope."
"Aye, well, it is what is now," Dwalin answered, shoulders slacked. "I care for her very much."
"Good, well, you'll answer to me, as I promised, the first day I hear ye stop caring for her an inklin' less."
"I think ye shan't worry for that. Onar... Freyda."
Freyda jumped and put her hand to her head suddenly. "Seems I've left me cloak at Brynja's and Bofur's. Would ye be kind and walk there with me, Dwalin?"
"Aye I will be."
They left the smoke and noise of Onar's home and took in the hint of sharp winter air coming through the arches of the terrace above. They walked in silence arm in arm for some town down the corridor that led up from the block of living quarters. Bofur and Brynja lived across the city; they would cross the Gallery of Kings to reach them, a decent walk by night, when it was all quiet.
"Ye shall find me hard at romance, but I swear I shall always treat ye with a true kindness. I feel only that fer ye, I swear it," Dwalin avouched. He felt Freyda's wrist tense and quake when he rubbed his thumb over hers, the tattooed fingers lacing tighter into her own in response.
"You act as if I've experienced anythin' more." Dwalin smiled sheepishly. "Well, I shall do none to inspire yer father's displeasure, lass. Freyda… s'pose I should get used to callin' ye properly. 'Tis a pretty name, it is, a strong name. Did yer father pick it?"
"Oh no, me mother did. Said it befit a lass who'd been so strong in her belly."
"A lass as formidable as you, yer mother was?"
"Me da was afraid of 'er. What do ye think?" Freyda chuckled.
"I'll take that as a yes."
Dwalin's hand rose quietly, the forefinger extending to sweep over Freyda's cheek ephemerally, Forefinger soon had her chin lightly held between it and his longer middle finger. So strong, those hands. But under their touch she felt suddenly as light as a feather. His nose touched hers at the tip and then his forehead to hers. His skin felt peaked.
"And of yer own?" she murmured against the passing fringe of his beard, as he drew away again.
Dwalin swallowed hard, his hand on hers becoming a little tighter. Freyda bit her lip briefly in regret. "Hertha. Her name was. She had blue eyes as if she were of Durin's Line herself. A respectable dame, and very wise, they said." He swallowed stoutly. "What happened to yer lady mother?"
"Died on the road. Far from home," Freyda said flatly.
"Aye, and did mine. Far from home…" They stopped and wove around the side of a great stone pillar, so many of them lining the broad path at the Gallery of Kings. A lantern hung on heavy chains above them, the many more reflecting the light back off the gold floor, and illuminating the pain that flitted briefly across Dwalin's face.
He lifted Freyda's chin again with his one forefinger, gentle, but commanding. His eyes shone queerly bittersweet. "Mayhap lass, we shan't speak of them things, not now. These are greater times. This is... this..."
A small tendril of hair still twisted over her forehead. Freyda played with the silver clasp in her fingers, tossed it back over her shoulder, letting it clank gently against the hauberk she seemed to have worn precisely for that purpose. "This is..." she echoed, encouraging him on, in her own way. He had always thought her eyes twinned his own when they were in the mood to be suspicious, flinty side-glances and all, parentheses forming at her forehead with it. The ends of the wispy beard all up her jawline, clinquant with her adornments, swept up neatly around her ear to join with her hair, the braid in the back tightening some of the strands that flanked her temple. Braided for courtship now it was, a sturdy four-strand plait with its heavy clasp, two axes, intertwined.
Like us. And now all shall see and know.
"Freyda…" he sighed, deeply. His hands surrendered themselves quietly and firmly on her waist. "This is... the first of many days we'll know together. You'll teach me how to love ye, as one should be?" What had been wrought in Mirkwood seemed a hazy dream half a world away, and he was suspended in a frenzied tangential plane, forgetting what to do with his hands, if, and where, to put them on her. She was solid under his hands, the shoulders whose strength he adored, the hint of a waist. His breath caught hard in the back of his throat.
"All that ye do is well to me," Freyda murmured. She cupped the back of his neck lightly against her hand, all sprouted in fine hairs. "But I'll make a good student of ye, if it pleases yer heart."
"Aye, it would please… it would be…" He spun her back around to the other side of the pillar and pressed her against the bare stone without warning. "What it is that makes me care for ye so much…" His hard fingers brushed through the loose ends of her beard at her jawline and settled back again on her shoulders. "Why do ye wear this mail, Freyda? We are safe here." He allowed himself to smile at her with a breadth of amusement. "I would always keep ye safe from harm, and let ye don silk if it was yer likin'." She felt fingertips then hard palms slide along the borders and then underneath the mail, reaching only her waist but...
She pushed one palm flat against Dwalin's shoulder, stopping him. "Forgive me, lass," Dwalin murmured.
"There is nothing to forgive." She rested her hand with a certain firmness of command on his left cheek and jawline. "Nothing at all." A whisper of a kiss touched him on the corner of his lip. And with it his restraint was dust. Arms that had wrapped sturdily at the center of her back surged her toward him and pressed her flush against him, and he swept over and tasted her mouth for a whisper and then fumbled right past it. She guided him back.
Dwalin had a plain smoky taste, smoky like the ale and something else, glad she could find his mouth at all under the his wiry undecorated facial hair. Freyda tugged him to her, the roots of his mustache trails tingling harsh on either side of him just above the corners of either lip as she did. He had a strong nose shapely in the dwarven manner that bumped at her and shaped into the folds of her own the deeper he pressed himself into the kiss, the contact indulgent, then utterly relentless. His hand found its way to cradle and splay fingers across the back of her head to steady her against his pursuit of her affection. To kiss was to be engulfed and made just another part toward completeness, of himself, of them, just to relish the bittersweet, foreign sensation of the Southron Swill on her tongue. His cheek drew itself steadily down from the corner of her mouth toward her neck when he could bear the torrid heat of her mouth no longer (lest he come so far undone...)
Pressed up against the stone, she leaned her head back against its cool, hard surface. Dwalin's mouth met the underside of her jaw, along its strong line, tentatively. His hot breath rushed at her from below. He kissed her thick sturdy neck slowly, kisses that nipped the skin, tentatively, never seeming to know quite how to move his lips over her skin. Freyda's chest was pounding against his own so hard the mail did not abate it. Their furs slid along each other's against the grain, a soft "kssshh" of movement, and Dwalin seemed to sink lower and lower. Her hands slid over the smooth skin of his head until they reached the straight, neat line where his wiry hair began at the rim of his cranium. He resumed his exploration of her with the harsh, scowling mouth that was used to such a blustery stoicism, on the front of her neck, puttering out mercurial air into the hollow just below the base of her throat. As powerfully built as he was, he seemed to sink into her embrace like a wounded child. She thought for a moment his knees might have given out from under his frame. He sighed into her once, and let himself quake for her touch.
"Ah, Freyda," he whispered, hoarse. Both hands now flanked her face, light, so lightly, forefingers on the lobe of either ear, a whisper of the hard palms. His thumb moved in a small circle at the corner of her lip. "Freyda..." again he felt breathless, but it was not an anxious sort of breathlessness. His eyes met hers and were at peace. "Freyda, good lass. I'm so glad I have found ye..."
Freyda gave the thumb a small teasing kiss on its pad. "Have I breached so fine a soldier's defenses?"
"Aye, and I am for once, glad of defeat."
.
In the evening when she was alone with Thorin again Meisar waited eagerly for the company in their chambers to depart. She turned toward Thorin, sitting quietly across from the fire. The two chambermaids set down the tightly-packed sheaves of parchment and scrolls collected from the day's duties. Thorin turned his attention from the dance of the flames back toward Meisar, sweeping her skirts under her to sit before the vanity mirror. The maidservants helped her with the cap and veil, pulling back the dark austere hood to let her autumnal hair show again. They began to unpin the braids and let them out. A rush of envy flowed hot in his head, the maidservant letting his wife's hair out, starting to comb one side while the other was still braided.
"Might your husband have the privilege?" he requested, a quiet hunger veiling itself. Thorin nodded a silent, stealthy request toward Griet that she and Bertha might take their leave.
"He may," Meisar smiled affectionately, handing Thorin her comb. He began to unravel one plait slowly.
"Gandalf came to see you."
"Yes, though he required no service of me, only brought a small gift of pipeweed. Somebody might have told him I favored it above any," Meisar said. She sparked an ember in her pipe and Thorin watched the orange kindle, the same color as the hair he was taking out of its braids, heavy silk between his fingers.
"Strange," Thorin remarked quietly, starting the comb on an end.
"Strange? What on earth would a wizard desire of me? I am only your wife, after all."
"You are more than that." He brushed her long orange hair until the braid waves were shiny. The slip of the jeweled comb through her locks was a relaxing sight.
"Any more than that, I might be ether-natural," she chuckled, lowly. "It is enough and more." He paused with a handful of hair in his hand.
Thorin's silence was always an opportunity to make a close study of his face. He had an enigmatic look about him, brooding as it could be. What was happening in his head, she wondered. Was there no end to a lingering malady? But it was not a familiar malady that seemed to cross his face. She reached and grasped the hairbrush over his hand and took it gently from him, craning her neck to observe him.
"What troubles you, my husband?"
All marriages are political, however they are formed a voice in Thorin's head reminded him. A young man with the ghosts of baby-chub at his cheeks and so wizened yet. Perhaps he was right, the whelpling master.
Of course it was not all but he was not in much of a mood to elaborate further. They were alone together, finally. "Many things. But I am here with you now. There shall be no troubles at the end of the day." Thorin bent down over his seated wife, clearing her loosened hair from her neck so that he could nuzzle his lips, his chin just behind her ear and offer a grasping pool of kisses there. His beard moved over her cheek with further affections, her eyes closed, lightheaded with sudden want.
"Shall we ready for night then?" she intoned, inviting.
He unfastened the brooch that held the fur cloak and placed it away over the seat. "Will Bard lead that delegation Sigrid has promised?" Thorin muttered low and half a growl. His hand braced itself against her back, his kisses trailing at her jawline, her fingertips finding his own, the rough of beard there a welcome sensation that her fingertip alone processed most lustily toward the greater part of her.
"If he does, I'll not have you at each other's throats. You are both kings. Put aside your bullheadedness for the better of the people. That is a command, I tell you."
"You command me now?" His hand slid up her neck and turned her back toward him, engulfing her in a heated kiss.
"If I must."
She rose to her feet and helped Thorin slip out of the surcoat and outer shirt, sturdy velvet with small panels of damask, all muted blues, dark and regal. The tunic underneath was a washed stony shade, elegantly embroidered. He unclasped her heavy jewel-crusted belt, leaving the gown loose, the undone front of it falling open, plain dark velvet shedding like a robe. He found himself untying the neckline of the lighter kirtle, with impatient fingers. Meisar paused his task and strained on the tips of her toes to raise the tunic over Thorin's head. Leaving it, instead he knelt patiently, raising his arms for her to slip it off, the tunic and the top layer of his small-clothes, bringing the bare, hard hairy chest to her corseted belly, the ache toward unclothed skin never so urgent. He started to unclasp the layers of underskirts one by one, heavy linen petticoats that padded that austere gown she wore again to the petitioners' queue.
"A better command would be for me to guard you, with all my heart. From all of this nasty business." The last of the under-skirts was shed and he reached around to untie the butterfly of the padded roll that was set at the small of her back, leaving but a well-defined shape of her bottom under naught but her shift now.
"If I need it," Meisar replied crisply. Thorin stood and plucked loose the draw-lace at the top of the bodice.
"Are you not my wife? Should I not guard you and treat you as my greatest treasure? Should I not see you as a work of art that I must hone my skill toward?" He slipped the bodice away, leaving her in the plain muslin shift she donned beneath it all. He admired the heavy, inelaborate shape of her breasts within the light chemise.
"A work of art? Me?" Their garments together on the floor made a pile half as tall as either of them were.
"A work of Mahal's hand, the most beautiful thing He has ever made," Thorin declared huskily. The chemise rolled down from her shoulder and bunched in Thorin's hands at the middle part of her back, his lips replacing the soft fabric. She curled her arm up around the proud bulge of his left shoulder blade, anchoring him to her, never wanting the warmth and comfort of his breath to leave her skin. On a pristine silken bed in Rivendell he had kissed her shoulder, beheld that first sliver of skin. It all seemed so long ago. But it had not even been two turns of the season past. And two turns of the season, maybe three, past that...
"What is a thing of beauty with no soul? A stone." She might have regretted her words under a different less intimate circumstance but at the moment they felt right. Thorin's breath puttered again on her shoulder. "The people were glad of your presence today," he murmured into her skin.
She touched her own beardless face, ponderously, in the mirror. "Dwarves prefer a bit of enigma in their women... our women. They say the beardless faces of other kinds are too easily read."
"And we prefer straightforwardness amongst of our own, my darling. You've been away too long." He shrugged himself quickly out of his leather breeches.
"Have I, Thorin?"
He removed the chemise entirely, sliding hands down the flanks of her waist, her hips, her thighs as he did. "Haven't we all."
She sighed as Thorin's arms slid around her from behind, his hands warm from kindling the fire. "How is it you could find me beautiful?" she queried low, her arms feeling a twitch that desired to cover herself from his sight. "When you are so… handsome." She touched his chest, his maleness over the cambric of a final layer of braies. She let her hand drift back to his, to hold it loosely while she roamed the tip of her nose across his chest, her forehead hot against the coarse hair on his skin there.
His arms, which had been slack at his side letting her roam and take in, came up and spun her firmly toward the mirror. She could feel the growing stiffness of him at the small of her back. "Look at you. How supple you are." Both his hands cupped her breasts as he closed his lips and teeth over her shoulder. "I love your belly and your hips and I could not imagine a fairer bosom to lay my head on at night." Thorin's body, hard, had shouldered hours and days of sweating labors and war, the weight of armor and dejected peoples trailing him from mannish village to plundered halls. Against him it made her feel soft, posh and delicate as a pampered dwarrow-maiden of old, cosseted underground.
But I am not, and I am stronger.
Still not strong enough to have resisted being swept off her feet into Thorin's labor-hardened arms. Her shoulders slacked and arms fell uselessly as he set her down on the bed and knelt on the furs over her. His legs were tucked to the side of her on the bed but his upper body draped itself powerfully over her, cradling her face that was turned sideways upon the velvet lined pillow, eyes screwed shut, focusing on the heat of his sparse lips, his rough face. She coiled one arm around his naked back and stroked downward until she could feel the heartbeat through the back of his ribcage, and settled her touch there.
She heard the bed groan as he readjusted himself, the dip of it with his weight climbing atop it. Once she had fumbled haphazardly to remove him from his smallclothes he struggled them off himself at least to his knees. Her parted lips waited for his kiss that came fleetingly, his hair over her, then the veil being abruptly withdrawn, and Thorin was posed over her, infernal-eyed.
"When I tell you I am taken from my very being by your beauty, you shall not deny it. Understood?" He bit into the soft skin just below her navel.
"Yes..."
"Good." Kisses splayed at her stomach, steadily drifting over the peaks and dips of her. She bent her arm backward to grasp at the underside of the pillow as his mouth trailed lower again, then buoyed up, leaving kisses from the border of her mound to her ribcage. Thorin's kisses and the texture of his hair fell across her stomach in waves, until he found the tip of her breast to kiss and suckled at it indulgently. He kissed it from peripheral to center and back again as she stroked his hair. He had left a trail of fire across her skin that had no want of being extinguished, and Thorin pressing into her belly with his want then was a gale of dry wind on a forest in flames.
"I beg you... come to me." She clung her arm around his shoulders, summoning him to a familiar position. And Thorin's opposite hand was at her waist then, grasping and kneading, and she felt his weight on top of her, already familiar. A hand fumbled up her inner thigh and her left knee bent upward to give his fingers a deeper breadth of access, her toes curling over the bedcovers. The border of her backside and her thigh pressed against the pulse of his wrist as he played her with his digits, moving one upward, crooking it lightly, her wetness on his fingers torpid. "Thorin..." the whisper was half a plea. She felt herself reach blindly and hold to one of his temple braids, tugging him down toward her. A queen, a dwarf does not beg but I...
Thorin's fingers slipped out of her and were replaced by the rush of hard flesh. She lifted her leg until the muscle pulled and pressed it around him with the stockings still on, rubbed the silk against the small of his back, forth and again, like playing a viol with a very peculiar string indeed. Her heel dug into the small firm dip that demarcated the crest of his thigh and the left globe of his arse, both so firm and rugged to the touch, even the thick neglected skin of her foot.
The first movement made her cry out it penetrated so deep it felt like it lanced all the way through her belly. Blunt nails raked into the small of his back and upward, drawing a groan from her husband that resonated through his stomach, his chest, quavered against her own tightly. Thorin's right knee dug at the bed as he leveraged his weight toward a second thrust. She rested her hand on his thigh as he did, feeling every give, every bulge of the muscled flesh there every inch she shifted, in and out, once more and then again, her knee bent around his hip. He made all the blood in her thrum and heat until it could boil in her veins and leave her, effervescent. And it all seemed to pool, as always, in the very center of her desire, swelling the lips of her below and the rose-diamond within. Once Thorin had slipped inside her waiting heat it was all she could bear to focus on, the relentless throb and gathering of clouds, ready to burst.
She raised her head up in want of that kiss so ardently she felt herself bare her teeth toward him. Thorin's eyes were closed; his tongue made eager motions behind his lips in want of finding her again. He finally brought his head down and indulged her, seeking mouth full of want and heat. The pulse of him inside her was enough to send her over her own precipice, but... when he burst forth she could not have imagined a more exquisite release. His hairy chest collapsed onto hers and she rested a hand lovingly on the back of his neck, letting him relax and recover, his head tucked just under her chin. He rolled aside when he caught a semblance of breath, the patter of his breath throwing off the steady rhythm of the fire across the chamber. His hair stuck to the sweat-soaked blades of his shoulders, lying on his back again, the beat of his heart visible in the inlet that led up from between his bottom ribs to his sternum.
Rolling over, she felt the heat of his presence against her once more and sighed happily. Every small variance in his texture was an intimate comfort, coarse beard wet from kisses, springy hair over hard muscle pressed lightly to her breast. In the afterglow of their togetherness, there was nothing else in the world except the two of them. He moved his nose in a tender circle over the tip of hers, forearm propped beneath her neck, cradling her steadily. "Promise me," he whispered, rumbling lengthily with breath. He seemed to have read her mind. She felt it but could not explain it.
"I promise... whatever it is."
"Promise me no ill shall ever come when I am with you here." He made a fist and clasped it over her heart.
In Dis's chambers she had felt the hot shame of her untruth. Here, it was a warm kindling. A precious fire. "I promise. I promise."
.
Liwizuthâk- An impolite term for dwarves of the Blue Mountains, seems to imply them to be unsophisticated and lower class.
Ingit- Come Closer!