UMRAZ- Keeper
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"Hold yourself in one place, Mister Dwalin!" Dagny scolded lightly. Dwalin leaned his arm, held aloft while she measured the width of his chest, the length of his torso, onto the fireplace mantle.
"I'll try," he relented, edgily. Balin stood across from him atop a stool with an apprentice of Dagny's on either side, fitting him with swaths of velvet.
"Do you think you should match with your brother's colors or coordinate?" inquired Dagny.
Dwalin shrugged, uninterested in the question or its answer. "I already had a fine new set of clothes for your wedding made. Can I not wear those, Thorin?"
"A wedding is not a coronation. A coronation calls for more than fine. Only the best," lectured Dagny. "Besides Mister Dwalin, you shall look of the handsomest quality. I'm certain your lady would be pleased to find you so."
"My lass prefers mail and a pair of breeches as much as I," Dwalin countered in a grumble. The seamstress's ladies fitted their careful cuts of dense rich fabrics against his arms, debating color and tailoring. The tunic was to be a heavy oxblood velvet, worn with vair and mail and a silver and gold studded belt that weighed as much as a small child. He had thought it prudent enough to don full armor for the occasion but the seamstresses and the council itself had shot down this idea, the former with a bit of horrified awe.
"I think a coronation not an occasion for armor. On the other hand, will you be requiring it in the presence of Freyda's kin?" Thorin intoned.
Dwalin's gaze flipped briefly toward Ori, head dipped toward his parchment, quill racing. His obliviousness was sometimes a gift, writing, and writing, self-conscious of his own politeness toward the seamstress trying in vain to take his measurements while his arm wound back and forth. Sometimes his whole body rocked into the task. Ori, quiet but undetermined when it came to discretion. Dwalin braced. Thorin was still staring at him half-demanding an answer. The answer, if there was one, might be (would certainly be) taken home to Dori, and to Nori and then that wench of his, Siv, and then, swiftly enough, to Freyda.
"What a broad figure you cut, Mister Dwalin. I'll need an extra yard just for these shoulders!" Dagny cajoled. She stretched her measuring ribbon crisply down one arm to the elbow. "I can already see you, how proud, how fine. You will look as befits your honor. For all that you do for this king of ours."
One order after the other for the textile market was sent with one of the errand runners attending on them. Ori begged a break, flexing his fingers in ache, and Thorin acquiesced quickly enough. He knew. Dwalin let the air out of his lungs and his chest strained against the measuring ribbon. The door closed after Ori and the steward and Balin stepped down from his stool.
"Those fellows give off an aire of the wrong sort," Balin interjected more bluntly.
He crossed his arms against Balin's insistent gestures, his brother's hands anchored firmly at his hips.
"Aye, was trapped in a closed nook with Hepti, the fourth of 'em ye didn't have the pleasure to meet, 'tis a true notion, the wrong airs," Dwalin said, sarcastically. He looked to Thorin but his stance was identical to Balin's.
"At ease, Mister Dwalin. Just need to get your waist," Dagny said. He thought her presence might stave off Balin's intrusiveness but no such luck.
"Is there something you hide from us, brother? The only true notion I know is, that you are in the presence of two you can trust with any matter, and not have fear for it," Balin counseled.
Dwalin jerked out of the lasso of Dagny's measuring ribbon defensively, crossing arms across his chest again. "Got no fear of four ruffians who'd be chasing their tails 'round 'til they dropped dead had they four legs."
"If they are so offensive to you, you are under no obligation to keep their company," said Thorin.
"Are ye cross with me Thorin, for taking off with the louts?"
"I am not. In fact, I would encourage it, if it sits well with you. Especially since they are Freyda's kin and you may find yourself family soon enough."
"Perchance," Dwalin's voice came out a nervous bark over the word.
"Have I touched a nerve, Dwalin?" Thorin's eyes caught his in the mirror, looking up from examining the blue velvet on his arm, the gold trim. The blue was the same darkening shade of his eyes when all trace of geniality had left them.
"No."
"I think he has, brother," interjected Balin. His staunch, quiet assuredness had a way of infuriating Dwalin, the fatherly eyes never showing the force of the relentlessness underneath.
"Perhaps it is not these four, but Freyda then. I have not seen you keep her company in several days. Are you avoiding her?" asked Balin.
"Do not doubt what I feel for the lass. Don't question it, brother. It is..."
"What is it?" demanded Balin suddenly.
"I can handle myself in this matter!" Dwalin shot back. "Best ye not meddle, brother."
"Meddle I will, if it will do you good. Tell me, do you care for her as truly as..." Balin nodded his head down toward Thorin, still seated across from him. The two of them, facing him, had Dwalin well-backed into the corner of the room.
"Aye I do care for her! I care for her. I love her. I'd be happy wi' a lass half as fine as her to spend all me days with. I would, with her," Dwalin blurted. "I love her, Balin. Thorin..."
He rubbed the back of his neck aggressively, with the knuckle dusters scraping it, wincing. "I do love her Thorin. But I'm afraid I've caused her more grief of late. Them lads, her father. What'm I doin'?" Dwalin slumped into Thorin's armchair with a dramatic heave of breath.
"Mayhap I shall depart for a spell," Dagny said, hitching her fabrics under her arms, motioning for her apprentices to follow at pace. "Share these colors with the queen's household and the lady princess's I will."
"Aye, that is well, thank you," Thorin acknowledged, relieved when the door shut behind her and left the three of them alone.
"I don't know what to say," Dwalin confessed quietly. "'Tis the truth what I've said to ye now. I don't know... what I ought to do to press on with it the way it ought be pressed on with."
"You cannot read of how to do this thing in a book, Dwalin. It will come, and you will find yourself at ease with it," Thorin placed a hand on his shoulder from behind. Balin's eyes urged him. He squeezed Dwalin's shoulder a little deeper.
"Khuzd tada bijebî âysîthi mud oshmâkhî dhi zurkur ughvashâhu," continued Thorin quietly.
"But I haven't..." Dwalin began to protest.
"When Bofur came to me on the road the night before he was married to ask my blessing, I told him those exact words. We set out to this mountain to reclaim its treasure. Do you think we would have learned the way we had, that there is no greater treasure than the ones we love?"
"There are days I wish I had not," Dwalin shook his head, as if of some painful memory or another.
Thorin took his hand, larger and deeper scarred than his own even under his diamonds of black ink, his runes. Thorin's own were smooth, positively regal in comparison. But he felt there sameness there, acutely.
"Nadad, you have guarded me of all of my life. Now you must guard Freyda, as your greatest treasure."
"Do ye say so as dwarf well-married, or my brother-in-arms?" Dwalin asked, hesitantly.
"Both. I only give you my blessing, Dwalin. To guard another. And guard her, Dwalin, more fiercely than you ever have your king."
"I don't know if I can do that," Dwalin sighed.
"You can," Thorin stood and held out his outer coat for him, he and Balin together setting him into it, smoothing the fur at the mantle. "Go now. If she is not at father's house, you'll find her in her forge."
"How'd ye know that?"
Commas formed on Thorin's lips, enigmatic. "Fireflies and the ears of foxes."
.
"Fair news, my queen," Dagny announced herself excitably into Dis's rooms. "Just come from dressin' the king and both sons of Fundin for their robes. He's made a confession to the king that his love for Freyda is… well, that. Love."
"And she has not yet heard this from his own lips?" Meisar set down her sleeve of embroidery, gifts for Bombur's daughters to don at the coronation. The gold thread was crooked and would have to be ripped out again, but the clumsy work of her fingers was a progress, as was Dis's general insistence on a regiment of the feminine arts.
"I'd think if that were the case, we'd well know already," Emli chuckled.
Dagny kept her report spilling as Siv and Eda entered Dis's sitting chamber and flung off their cloaks. "Says he would spend all his days with her, bless him. I pray Mahal will give him the countenance to say so soon."
"Aye, that's well-agreed here," Siv chipped in, sighing dramatically. "Her frettin' is driving me clear up a wall. Can't be so hard for 'im to say three wee words. Men lananabukhs menu," her voice dropped to dramatic gravelly drawl on the last three words. "Oh Freyda. Marry me. Give me bald head a furry hat at night."
'Siv!" garbled Eda. Dis realized and began to laugh furiously, to the bemusement of Dagny and Aroin.
"You've the foulest tongue I've ever heard of a dwarf-woman. Queen Lotte would have the good sense to ship you off the mines and have you commiserate with their likes. Be donnin' rock dust and not pomade in that ridiculous hair of yours."
Siv curved her hand delicately over the sagging left peak. "Ridiculous? That your way of saying well-kept? Well, for a lady who's never been kept anyway."
"I have other words but polite company is a notion I at least have not forgotten," said Aroin tautly.
"Well why ought Freyda suffer while he plays games with 'er? Call 'im Mister Dwaddlin' he keeps it up."
"If a word of what Dagny has said reaches her ears through you, you'll be lucky if send you the laundresses' way," Meisar warned.
"You wouldn't!" gasped Siv. Redcoat peeked out from behind Meisar's skirt and bared his teeth toward her.
"I boxed your ears once and now that I am queen I can do far worse. She must hear it from Dwalin's lips and his alone. Understood?"
"Siv?' Meisar repeated sharply.
"Loud and clear m'queen. Not say a word," Siv grinned off one side of her lips. "Nothin' at all."
"'bout what?"
Siv spun around to find Freyda, soaked in sweat, dressed in an old tunic and pants, coming through the doorway in a flurry.
"Nothing," she swallowed and nearly choked on her word. She trounced off the other side of the room to paw through the stack of fabric samples piled chaotically on Dis's daybed by Dagny and her apprentices.
Dagny brought the striking blue velvet to Meisar for her consideration. "For the coronation ceremony I think this would be of the utmost elegance. The king will be in blue. Traditionally you ought be as well. For the coronation feast, the color and cut of the dress entirely your choice, my queen."
"Do I really need two ensembles?"
Dagny chuckled. "We are a prosperous peoples again, my lady. Let it show. It is our power, and more, our pride, after all. A gown for the ceremony and for the coronation banquet is hardly excessive, I assure you."
"After all, that Bard will grim the most golden of chambers," Aroin half-smirked.
"He is a man with a sober countenance but a virtuous heart. He cares very much for his people, for his family," Meisar countered gently.
Dagny shrugged off the comment along with Aroin. "Grim, he is I say. Black wool and black leather and black hair. Does he keep his daughters there in black too? Or sackcloth?" smirked the seamstress.
"I have met them both. They are fair young girls. And certainly not sackcloth," Meisar answered.
"Well then, it'll be a treat to see him at our tables. Maychance a bit of dwarvish shine in his cups will lighten him up," Dis suggested lightheartedly. "Meisar tells me he is a decent sort, for a man anyway. Now I am curious to see for myself."
"He will be awed by your sight, uzbadnatha," crowed Elsa. "I do not doubt he has oft been curious for this dwarven princess, so close to his own gates. Even in the cities of men they respect your highness utmost."
"They pity me."
"What soul with an ounce of compassion in it could not a pity a mother who has lost her children? But when your hands crown your brother beneath this mountain before them, they shall know your true strength, and revere it first, before they lament for your suffering," Dagny added. She pulled away her measuring ribbon and smiled. "Well, you're still thinner than I'd prefer myself, but you've added an inch to the waist since last I measured you for a dress."
Dis shrugged, unenthusiastic. Dagny raised her head under her chin to look at her. "Progresses are measured one day at a time, my dear."
Dis looked away as Freyda stepped out of her bathing chamber, steam trailing behind her from the open door, and wrapped sullenly in one of Dis's robes.
"A bath always puts me in a far better mood. What is this business of your fretfulness, Freyda?" Dis asked gently. She sat Freyda beside her and helped her separate her wet snarls of hair for combing. Her courtship bead, with its intricate crossed axes, was held tightly in her fingers, deep enough to leave grooves.
"It's been days since Dwalin has even come to call on me. Can't find him anywhere!" said Freyda pitifully, hugging the robe around her middle as it slipped from her shoulders, revealing their muscularity.
"Why don't you show him your forge down below?" Siv suggested, sitting on the back of the sofa-seat behind them.
"Bâhu Nulukhkhazâd," Eda muttered under her breath. But Siv's eyes seemed to plead strangely earnest with Meisar not to run interference. The queen sat back and pursed her lips, gathering Redcoat to her lap and Raincloud at attention, never taking a stern pair of eyes from Siv.
Siv rubbed Freyda's shoulders, only to be shrugged, then flicked aggressively away. "Might it be that it gives you two a private spot to be speakin'? Or... not so much speaking," Siv went on.
"Ukhuglai!" scolded Emli and Aroin together, their unison breaking in realization, their glares turning to each other.
"I only mean it to say there's something to be said for a private spot. Out of the way of unwanted company. Some males you know, they don't... give off what they really mean in public. Even Nori's got some sense about what he'll say or do 'round me when there's a crowd."
"So you're telling me there is only decency, gentility and chastity between you when you are alone together?" Emli jabbed.
"Anyway, you're probably better over the anvil than he is. Show him how the hammer pounds the heat just right maybe? I bet he's never been properly shown," Siv's black eyes sparkled, intently.
Freyda glared at her over her shoulder. "A lot o' nerve ye have teasing me like that, Siv."
"I'm not teasing. I'm tired of you torturing yourself. Over him too. Mahal, seems like a fightin' brute to me who don't know the first about loving."
"Well you'd be wrong," Freyda retorted. "Very wrong. He is..." her mouth twisted in the absence of any words to come forthwith. "Oh, look, you've got me all in knots worse now."
"I thought Thorin once the coldest, saddest creature in all this world. And then it was not so. Love changes everything. It changes everything about a person," Meisar interjected gently.
Freyda squirmed irritably as Dagny began to measure her arms, her shoulders. "I must go," she insisted, throwing off the robe and all but jumping straight into her plain tunic, a pair of breeches, a leather belt and her old coat. "Be in my forge ye need me as urgent."
"But your dress measurements my lady," squawked Dagny, but Freyda was gone before she could say another word.
"Kept my promise, m'queen. Can't send me off for pointing the right direction for her," protested Siv, raising her arms in defense.
Meisar let an annoyed, relenting rumble slip from her. "You know, Siv, I hate it when you're right."
.
Dwalin put his ear to the door and listened. Onar's grunting boom of a laugh was ringing out, no others, not Lofar's stupid chuckle or Hepti's squeal. Only Gyda's harried scolding. But no Freyda. He drew back and turned to leave. But the door flung itself open first and Gyda bounced backward off his looming frame in her motion to exit.
"Dwalin, I was just-" Gyda's eyes wide with surprise stared up at him.
"I'll come back," Dwalin muttered.
"No ye won't! Get in here, lad!"
Onar was boisterous but it was a solid demand, nonetheless. He motioned Dwalin to come inside with a splinted arm. "A bit o' play down in the Pits is all. Don't concern yourself too much," Onar grunted. He slapped Dwalin on the back with his good arm, a little too hard for his liking. "Well come lad," he offered Dwalin a seat at the slab of granite that served as their table. A sweet aroma floated from the kitchen in heated wafts.
"How is my darlin' daughter lately? I feel I've seen her so seldom these days." He flexed his good arm, the muscles thick and undulating under the scarred skin. Shirtless, his chest was covered in a fine mat of golden hair, only absent where the white scars cut through, a few red and fresh.
"Nor have I, as oft as I'd... like," Dwalin responded.
"Oh aye, down in her forge most like. Been hiding down there a lot lately. Repairing work to do I s'pose. Takes a lot o' that to keep this place in one piece," Onar chuckled. There was a gash in the ceiling where a fixture had been ripped clean from the stone, even a dent in the wall, also solid rock. Gyda pushed back the curtain that separated the cooking hearth from the main room and set a heaping plate of biscuits in the middle of the table between them, along with a pitcher of ale. "And cookin'. Takes even a bit more o' that," Onar grunted with delight, his eyes flashing a greedy excitement up at the sight of the plate, puffs of steam rising from the plump rounds of biscuits.
"Cinnamon glazed, I am a lucky dwarf today." Onar grabbed two and devoured them in seconds. "Kasâb. Hot from the oven. Nothing like them. Isn't that right?"
Before Dwalin could agree (with genuine enthusiasm), Onar snatched the next biscuit and shoved it whole into his mouth, spewing crumbs down his beard and far enough to dust the table inches from Dwalin's cups.
He sipped the ale as his stomach rumbled and coiled against its own emptiness. The sweet scent coming from the still-warm plate was overwhelming. His hand extended an inch to reach but Onar's shot out again, taking several more.
"The one who courts my daughter dear would know what ails her, surely?"
"I... do not." The last word seemed garbled by the incessant, now audible, groaning of his stomach.
"Well lad, I think you must search your mind, or go find out. She seems to trust of you more than her own father these days." He popped the tips of his fingers into his mouth and licked them clean of the glaze, enthusiastically, as sloppily as the queen's curs could go at a plate.
Two were left on the plate. Two perfectly glazed cookies sprinkled in perfect harmony with hunks of sugar. Was it some sort of trick, this? Onar had taken him under his proverbial wing but who was to say there were not claws like Smaug's own hiding under those wings? Ready to tear his throat out. Freyda was tense and he knew it. A daughter was a father's greatest treasure. All to protect her he would do.
As would I...
"So, Mister Dwalin, have a good afternoon with my lads? They speak highly of ye." His eyes considered the properties of each cookie, debating, not rising to Dwalin with his inquiry.
Someone (Gyda? Freyda?) had spoke of his love of cookies, sweet biscuits, like his mother's own. A charming anecdote to the womenfolk, a knife that could as easily be used against him.
Dwalin stiffened against his own hunger. "A fine one," he said quickly. Onar took another cookie, leaving one left on the plate. It stared, faceless, back at him, warm, pleading, inviting. In the back of his mind, poking him with a viler glare, was Vigg's face and his mangled lip. For a moment he thought he could smell apples in the cinnamon wafture. A knife and several more scattered utensils of varying sharpness were beside Onar on the table, well in reach.
He remembered the cake. He would not let himself forget that cake and what Onar was capable of. He could almost smell the apples and the cinnamon and the warm spongy cake itself. It did nothing for his hunger, only stayed his hand.
He took the last cookie from the plate and shoveled it into his mouth, a mass struggling down his throat as he tilted his head up to lick his fingers again, belching a cloud of drool-soaked crumbs onto the table in front of him, which he swiped away, to Gyda's glaring eyes. She picked up the empty plate and shook it at Onar.
"Onar! I made those for Dwalin!" scolded Gyda.
Onar's mouth twitched, discharging a last line of crumbs and sugar bits, awkwardly. "Dinna take one," he shrugged in her direction. He turned back to Dwalin and snorted loudly. "Not hungry lad?"
"I... er..."
"Like a bull in battle, a staggering calf when he wants to ask for a cookie!" roared Onar again with laughter. A gurgling sound came again, not from Dwalin's stomach, but one that almost doubled Onar over, holding his torso in both arms.
"Durin's Beard," he groaned. "Now I've got a tummy-ache."
.
Evening was fading swiftly into night when Dwalin crossed the foyer of the city, paused to peer over a section of railing down into the layered heart of the city. Like an onion, or a tree trunk sliced lengthwise, its intricate levels all showed, walkways and dizzying stretches of stairs intersecting one on top of the next, with slivers of light emanating between them from each level and mezzanine, down to the Great Forges far below, their fires never idle. An operator was standing by at one of the lifts with his working-goats, shuttling merchants and their carts up and down. He chose the stairs instead, all many-dozen of them or more. On an empty stomach the trek was making him grouchy already. He saw Onar licking the cinnamon glaze from his fingers and clenched his own into fists.
He crossed the plain of the Great Forges, under shouting dwarves scuttling along on scaffolding and climbing ropes high above, still at work on repairing the largest of the furnaces. The rest were lit and belching the fiery breath of hard work and molten metal. The intense heat did not seem to bother a one of them, a hundred or more dwarves at this hour still keeping the pace.
Craggy turrets rose above the stone likenesses of great dwarven smiths of old, spewing dense streams of water from their mouths to turn the wheels below, keep the circulation from the mines running, carrying all manner of minerals and stone. The turrets, jagged at the peaks where they met the ceiling of the forges, were parceled inside into smaller smithing nooks, some only as wide as a traveling-cart, that any dwarf could rent to rend their wares. At the hour in the evening, the dim determined percolation of lanterns flickered out through the doors and curtains of a third or more of them still, a great uneven circle of light. Many were open to company and small flocks of dwarves gathered around, bantering and bringing food and drink. He smelled roasted chestnuts and chicken and grimaced.
A cacophony of clanking iron and hissing steam rang from one forging nook to the next, none taking notice of him until a group of blacksmiths in their guild aprons lingering outside one unit gave him a glance and silently pointed all together.
"Mister Dwalin," called one. "Knock before you go. She doesn't like surprises."
He followed their direction along the curved bend of forging units, finding Freyda's marked with a small plaque bearing a pair of crossed axes at the door, the metal sharp and polished and new and a perfect match to her courting bead. Dwarves on either side worked and peered out from their forges, tipping their heat-masks to him.
It was dark in her nook except for a single lantern suspended on the ceiling. A fire in the brazier glowed. He watched her scurry across the tiny space, set the lines of metal across the glowing coals, return diligently to her work over the anvil. The way her arms handled each tool, a hammer with a mallet as big as a fist and smaller instruments, the delicate way she set the iron over the hardy-hole in the anvil, adjusting it, every inch considered, before the hammer fell, and fiercely it did, one smack after the next, hard enough to release sparks.
"Freyda..." he cleared his throat finally against the ringing of the tools. "Freyda!"
The hammer fell as she jerked up and back and barely missed her foot.
"Dwalin!" Under the strong forearm that was swiping over her brow he could see the smile, surprised and even a little tense, but still a smile.
He rubbed his palms together, the metal of his dusters scraping a quiet squeal. "They said I would find ye down here."
"They did? Who?" She put off the apron and let her hair out of the heavy snood, braided tautly, the two axes gleaming against the light of the brazier at its ends. Sweaty strands stuck to her forehead still.
"Freyda," he took a step closer to her, seeming to cross the small forge entirely in one stride. White heat flashed in his eyes.
"A moment!" pleaded Freyda. She doubled her gloves swiftly to pluck the glowing white metal from the braziers, wincing in pain as she rushed them to anvil, and left them there to cool a bit.
"What are ye making?"
"Light fixtures. Lofar tore the big one from the ceilin' in my da's." Her hands moved swiftly in their stained gloves to slip the bending fork beneath the metal when it had deepened from white to yellow edging on orange.
"Kind of ye."
"Me da isn't the only one loathe to sit in the dark. Gyda and I would like to find our way about too," Freyda chuckled with a hint of sarcasm. Sweat beaded in the roots of her beard, wholly without its adornments. She blinked away more droplets of sweat that had already reddened the whites of her eyes.
He had never seen her more lovely.
"Aye, I suppose not," he relented. On long cables below the buckets of minerals and gems and metals jerked and lurched along, starting up again with a jolt. Dwalin ducked out of the way as she swung around and dunked one of her wares efficiently into the cooling tub. It released a heavy hiss and a cloud of steam that filled the air between them.
She waved it away. "I sent Gyda off with some cookies for ye. I thought it might please ye."
"Oh?" His stomach castigated him, unleashing a growl of dissatisfaction. The rumble was a deep one that seemed want to shame him, the way the bubble of emptiness beat back and forth against the walls of his belly, like the vigorous shaking of a head (just like Balin's shook when he scolded, always).
She laughed. "I'm not much over the cooking fire but here..."
The hammer slammed with a great clang on the metal still on the anvil, several more strokes coming, more concise, gentler, bending the metal to her will, to perfection. "Nê lutur rathukh khuzd," Freyda smiled out one side of her mouth back at him, wrenching her hair back and covering it in a thick snood. "Always makin' something down here. A set o' spoons after Hepti makes off with the lot of 'em." She pounded at the metal with peculiar angst. "Another cooking pan, a set o'nails today."
"Rest yer hand then, if you tire of it. Might I bring ye an ale or-"
"Don't want to rest. Times like these I prefer my hand stay busy."
"Times like these?"
She didn't answer over the clanging of the metal. He watched Freyda's arms flex and glisten with sweat, her face rosy with exertion and cheeks puffing against every slam of the hammer. He could see the movement of every muscle in her strong back and shoulders through the light tunic, the relentless energy of her arm. Her braid with its silver axes clasping its tip snaked out of the snood to escape and plaster itself damp with sweat to the back of her neck and down her shoulder blades.
She stopped as she felt Dwalin's frame behind her, a hand on hers over the thick glove. She set down the hammer.
"Have I done something to displease ye? M'I doin' something to cause ye grief? They say..."
"Don't ye listen to anything they say. I've missed ye is all." She peeled off her gloves and melted as easily as the metal against his frame. She pressed her forge-warmed hands into his sides, the heat sharp through his outer shirt, tunic and under-clothing all. "Dwalin," she murmured lower than he had ever heard her speak. "All that ye do is right by me."
"Are ye certain?"
There was no answer, again. He felt her head rest against his chest and sigh into it.
"Freyda..."
"Dwalin, I have no wish for ye to be off-put by the ones in my life. If they are unkind to you or incite ye in any way, I will make certain they never offer so much as a sideways glance ever again. I swear that." She held his hands in hers, rubbing the hard palms with her fingertips.
"I am supposed to keep you from harm, not the other way around," he smiled, self-deprecating.
"Then you have forgotten who it is that wears this courtship clasp in my hair."
He stroked the strong, thick line of muscle at her forearm, still quivering from exertion (or want). "No. No. I have not."
He flung the fire-smothering blanket over the anvil lest it remain hot still, hoisted her up to sit upon it and face him. "Freyda, I can't bear to think I've made ye unhappy for a moment. You or... your father, whatever those four are to ye. If they trust me not, I-"
"That doesn't matter. None of that matters. I trust in ye. That is more than either of us need. Do ye trust in me?" She held his face tight in her strong, warm, work-hardened hands.
"I do. I do, and I- oh aye!"
Legs asudden wrapped around broad, sturdy circumference of his hips like the limbs of a sea-beast springing from the water to envelop its prey, her sweat sticking on him.
"Kiss me, Dwalin."
Seizing the top lip of hers in his own he obeyed the command, a soldier's instinct. It ended when he met her lips again, lost in a world that was as black as night, stumbling through the dark. He surrendered and let her guide, his bottom lip suckled into the heat of her mouth, biting gently, returning to engulf him. Her tongue slipped and played on his, massaging, prodding, inciting to action. He plunged his own blindly but she returned with enough enthusiasm to put him a slighter ease. Hands that would have reached swiftly for an ax under circumstances of the unknown reached forward instead, grasping the strong curve of waist, holding her steady.
"Yer better at this than ye think," she offered between flicks of tongue.
"Am I?" He stroked her beard with his thumb, lingering on her mouth.
"Shall we see?" Freyda stretched and reclined back on the anvil, summoning Dwalin to press over her. Her legs dangling and twitching, his torso on hers, she welcomed his weight, however cautiously it was applied. He rubbed his face against the rough of her tunic, over the swells of her chest. Under her clothes they felt so strong and firm, like all the rest of her.
"Warding runes," she hummed. Her fingers made even lines over the top of his head, making a study of the ink there. "What are ye warding off? Your own happiness?"
"Worse things," he sighed, seeking the valley between her bosoms over the tunic, pressing his face to the dampness of her exertion there. She had a deep laugh, one that turned into a hitching squeak when her tunic ruched to her waist and the abrasive texture of his palm slid an inch beneath it to touch her stomach, find her hipbone with his fingertip.
"I'm sorry!"
"Don't be." Tilting her head up toward him, her smile was coy. "Tell me, is that why ye came? Have ye come to grasp and keep me?"
His hand drew away from her in an instant, a look like an animal caught in a predator's view. "No. Haven't come to... do that. Dinna have it in mind..."
"A virtuous lover, fair and true," she purred, her eyes sharp with need but her smile bearing that enigmatic quality. "None could not admire that."
He had always known what to do with his hands: seize an ax, a knife, make a fist. Motions he was used to, not tracing a lass's skin under his clothes. She was unbearably soft for her strength.
"If that is what ye wish of me, then I'll be."
"I wish you to be who ye are and none more, none less, even the broken bits I'll take as they are and cherish." She traced the line that cut through his brow and up his forehead. "So scarred. Like those mangy cats I used to see in villages when... a long time ago." She pulled him down by the wiry strands of beard to kiss the ragged line, solid brow under her kiss twitching with an instinctive uncertainty, but his sigh of quiet contentment seemed to indicate otherwise. "Which beast made this?" Her fingers raked through the long wiry hair trailing down the back just past his shoulders.
"Can't remember. An orc most like."
She peeled his fingers back from where they rested on her skin under her tunic, pushed it back along with the linen camisole that held her bosom firm, to reveal a pale belly. A spear wound crossed her navel. "An orc did this too." She tugged his head down so her lips could graze over the mangled spot on his ear, tease the cuff that covered with with her tongue, press her lips to its opening. "I strangled it in a choke-hold."
"Abnamul!" he growled, an impassioned issue from deep in his throat. He tore off his knuckle dusters and tossed them against the wall. Her eyes flamed, a burning ship in a stormy sea. Bare hands massaged her shoulder, kneading it nervously, like raw dough, finding a path down her side, scraping the rungs of ribs through her tunic with dense fingertips. He treated her with his hands as he had in the inn that night, his weight over her as intimately, but it was not her back he paid his tributes to now. The hem of her tunic scrunched in his hand. She felt his hand slide beneath and find the linen supports wrapping her bosom. The hand, so clumsy, so reckless its touch, the discipline of a soldier's hands seeming all but forgotten. As rapidly they drew away, drawing an exasperated breath from her.
"Freyda, I didn't, I'm sorry-"
"Don't..."
Her hands flew up and ripped open the top buttons of his bottom-most layer of clothes, sending them to flight, to clink against the walls. Before he could react she had seized the suspenders of his breeches and pulled him back, pushing her face into the bare peak of chest.
"My lass, Mahal, my lass..." Admiration and raw desire coupled in him from the naked head she was pressing her hands at to anchor him, to the feet that were on their toes to lean over her. His torso met hers through tunic and the rough bottom layer of his small-clothes. The denseness of his weight pressed the air from her lungs. Her legs burned at the inner parts of her thighs from stretching around the broad girth of his waist, a knee making a careful arc at the side of his ribs. His hands were curled around the horns of the anvil for leverage, moving from where they had pressed against the face of the instrument flat beside her own, his chest heaving over hers still. He kissed her furiously without guiding her head or steadying it in those big hands, hands that were still learning gentler arts, a mouth that had never practiced at all. His love, laid across the anvil like a doxy on a barroom table, sweating, heaving breaths and garbled words into his mouth, sending them rumbling into this throat and deeper down still. How a brute takes his woman, he thought, dispiritedly, to himself, but Freyda's heat was overwhelming, and his own made the sweltering forge seem like ice in comparison.
"Dwalin!" He kept kissing her lips, relentless.
"Dwalin!" she cried at last, ripping away from him. An apology was on his lips but a matter of more urgency seemed on hers. "Up! They're coming!"
Freyda made a quick survey of the disarray of his clothes, even her own. "No time," she concluded. "Get in the corner. Stay still." She piled the ragged fire-strangling blankets on top of him. In the dark of his hideaway, he heard the extant door to her stall fling open and the belching, hiccuping symphony of four familiar voices.
"What are you four doing here?" demanded Freyda, the hammer ringing again as if she had never put it down.
"Yer da said you might be here. Come to escort ye home. Likes o' these ruffians bein' what they are," Lofar offered, diplomatically.
"Well I'm not finished. Ye tell me da I'll be along soon enough," Freyda answered, annoyed.
"We'll stay. Seeing as Dwalin isn't in sight to do it," Vestri said.
"Dwalin has the sense to ask first," Freyda countered. "Not just showin' up out of the blue expecting I drop my tasks for him."
"He's a soldier, Freyda. What'd ye expect out of him? An attentive lovin'? Bollocks," hissed Vigg. "He's a fine lad. But no lover good enough for you. The king's the only one he'll ever have the mind to guard."
"What would you know of courting or love?" Freyda spat. The hammer smacked dramatically with the last word. "Or the king? Or anything that didn't involve brawling and acting a bleeding hooligan!"
"Nothing!" boomed Vestri, a teasing jubilation. "I like fighting and drinking and making knives far better than a dwarrowdam's nagging and clinging."
"I know no more than your love would, no less though. We know, you see, Freyda. We took him the lair, had a nice afternoon," said Lofar.
"The interrogation chamber," Hepti hastened to add, snickering. Wind broke explosively, Hepti gurgling a proud laugh, Lofar backing up a foot behind him. "Put him to the onion-soup test. He passed. Barely."
Vigg sneered. "Aye, fine soldier he is, that I can say. Dinna squeal to us what he's doin' with ye, what he wants to do. See that's what I've got in mind to know. You can't trust a man who doesn't know what he wants with a lass, or one who wants something shameful to say."
The hammer crashed; Dwalin braced himself against flinching under his cover.
"Out of here! Go! I'll right pound ye into the ground like a farmer's fence post again ye give him or me any more of your lip!" shouted Freyda. She waved a still-hot iron as a warning.
"Ah, Freyda. We came all this way to see you home right. You can't just threaten us with violence or-" Hepti whined.
"I can do this!" Freyda snapped. From inside of his sweltering hideaway Dwalin could hear the sound of water splashing, Hepti squealing. Through a worn spot in the blanket, he could see Hepti shaking off like a dog, sopping, Freyda holding the cooling tub, now empty, in her hands. Lofar's were raised in defeat, Vestri cowering behind him.
"Esni!" Freyda drubbed. "If Mahal is in a fair mood, you'll still be drippin' by the time ye get home if yer legs can carry ye that far wi'out faintin' like a maid."
"You're as mean as a mule, Freyda!" complained Vigg. "I'll make your sure father knows about this."
"Let's just go!" Lofar whined.
"Aye, go ahead. He'll split'cha somewhere else Vigg I tell him you give me such trouble!" warned Freyda, truculently. The grunts and laughs went on. Then the slap of metal screaming a warning against the anvil, Freyda's "Out! Out! Out!" thundering in several angry caterwauls.
"Have it your way," the brute finally relented, waving the other three out. They obeyed his direction without protest, their frightened wails and whimpers trailing away. Like kicked dogs scampering off.
"Come out now. Come. They're gone," Freyda flung off the smothering covers and took Dwalin's hands to tug him to his feet, and herself into his arms again. She crumpled the long tips of his mustache into her hands, the corners of his lips drawing up a little, an uncanny sort of smile for him, even when he was alone with her.
"Not afraid of 'em. Or what they think. Some things..." she stroked the jagged opening of his shirt, the sliver of chest. He braced against a raw shudder. "...should be between only us."
"That..." he nodded his head toward the empty doorway. "That alone would garner my admiration for ye, at first sight."
"Did the journey back to this place not do that sufficiently?"
"Aye, it did. From the first I saw ye I... I..." He swooped and pressed a kiss to her that engulfed her entire mouth in his, pulled her chest to his so she might feel how fiercely his heard was pounding. Fiercer than any battle.
"Calm yer heart Dwalin. It's beating so fierce. Are you well?"
He breathed in through his nose and let it out past his lips. "Men lananabukhs menu. Freyda… Amralime..." he whispered as the whistle of the steam turned into a sigh.
.
Khuzd tada bijebî âysîthi mud oshmâkhî dhi zurkur ughvashâhu- A dwarf that chooses to take a wife must guard her as his greatest treasure
Bâhu Nulukhkhazâd- Friend to the petty dwarves (someone who cannot keep a secret)
Ukhuglai- Too Vulgar
Kasâb- Cookies
Nê lutur rathukh khuzd- Never idle are the hands of a dwarf
Abmabul- A strong, shapely woman
Esni- Use a piece of soap!
Men lananabukhs menu/amralime- both translate more or less as I Love You. Going a bit movie-verse with the latter.