.
We Happy Few
Skyborn Huntress & Orion
Chapter 3 — Fire and Smoke
"...The invader did begin to spew forth
glowing fires and set ablaze the shining halls — the light of the
burning leapt forth to the woe of men. No creature there did
that fell winger of the air purpose to leave alive."
— Beowulf, 1947-1950, trans. J. R. R. Tolkien
They had no warning when the stars vanished.
A scream bubbled up in Sigrid's throat, but she made no sound. Keep running, a part of her urged. Hide, shrilled the rest. Her legs obeyed neither, and she froze in the middle of the rickety plank street. One hand clutched Tilda against her chest. On her other side, there was a dwarf, his features lost in the suddenly starless night.
A wave of intense heat rolled over them. The dragon's reek stung her nose: heavy, and sickening. Her eyes watered, her heart rebelled against her ribs, and each mighty beat of invisible wings threatened to wrench her off her feet.
And then Smaug roared.
A jet of orange smoke pierced the sky, and for a moment Sigrid beheld Girion's Bane. The dragon's eyes were yellow lanterns; his blood-red scales flashed with jewels; his jaws gaped, his voice was white-hot fury and murder and it rattled through her very core.
Sigrid shut her eyes.
Gyr be merciful. If this is it, let it be done now, and quickly.
But the dragon passed. With an earth-shattering crack of lashing tail, Smaug wheeled back across the lake. Sigrid's ears rang. Tilda screamed.
Dwarvish hands seized her suddenly and flung her aside. Sigrid's eyes snapped open in time to see the salt-stained planks rushing up at her: she threw out her hands. The impact jarred her teeth into her tongue, but glancing back she was grateful. The dragon had dislodged a cascade of shingles in his ire, and they had smashed through the road behind her.
A dwarf with a curiously silver pate held out his hand. Sigrid blinked, and he became Bofur in a guard's helmet. "Thank you," she said.
Rising, she checked around for the others. Oin had Tilda now. Bain had his bow in hand and peered skyward, but he couldn't hope to hurt the dragon in the dark. Fili and Kili had fallen in a heap, but Fili at present was helping his brother back onto his shoulders.
We've got to try, she thought, and turned away. Her palms stung from her fall, but clenching them stopped the pain.
Esgaroth's guardhouse loomed at the end of the block, its tall tower dark and silent. Bain rushed ahead and swung around the doorway first, bringing his bow to bear. It's open, Sigrid thought warily, although perhaps that was because across the town trumpets were shrilling, and every man fit to bear arms was scrambling to the defence.
Sigrid rounded the doorway to the stockade and smelled burning. Her heart fluttered up in her throat, but soon she saw that an iron lantern had merely fallen from the eaves. Flames licked up from the broken glass, seeking the posts of the nearest cell. In the center of the room, a round table was where guards would wait out the long night shift. One of the chairs was overturned. The wardens had left two mugs unattended.
There was no one here now.
"Da?" Bain called, venturing further between the cells.
Meanwhile Sigrid stamped out the small fire. As she kicked aside the lantern a grimy hand grasped at her skirt.
"Please, missus. I don't want to die here."
She shrilled and swung out, and the hand receded behind the bars. Bofur was there to draw her back. Faces emerged from the cells on either side, dirt-smeared faces with white eyes.
"Mercy, missus. Please."
She choked on a sob. "Don't touch me."
And then a familiar voice hissed from down the row: "Bain! Sigrid!"
"Da!" Sigrid could have cried then with relief, and she ran to join Bain at the bars of a rusted cell. Bofur and Oin crowded after them, and Tilda worming her way free flung herself against the bars and hugged Bard's outstretched wrist.
"Da! There you are!"
Da it was; and he looked terrible. Red skin swelled above his right eye, and though he smiled and patted Tilda's head, the look was more of a grimace than anything else.
"Where's the keys?" asked Bain.
"The guards would have taken them," Bard said, wincing.
Bain turned full circle, peering at the gloomy walls and cells as if the keys might still materialize there. Somewhere beyond, men were shouting, and Smaug's bellow made the walls quake. Dust shuddered through the slats of the upstairs armory, and something therein emitted a dull thud.
"We'll... We'll break you out, then," said Bain.
Bard reached through the bars and squeezed his wrist. "There is no time. Bain, have you the Black Arrow?"
Bain faltered. "I hid it, as you asked. It's in a boat down by the east docks. No one will find it."
"Then I need you to take it. Bring it to the windlance atop the Great House. Set the arrow to the bow, and finish what Girion started."
"You want me to kill the dragon!" Bain spluttered.
Bard's grip tightened. "It is our only hope."
Sigrid had always known Bard to be a grim man, but in his eyes now was sobriety and something else: sadness. She understood. Understood, and refused.
"Da, no. We'll get you out. There must be..." She grasped at the lock and rattled it. The metal was old, but held firm. She choked.
Gently, Bard laid his calloused hands over hers. "Go, Sigrid. Go, and take your sister with you. Find a boat and get yourselves to shore, and safety."
"I can't," she said fiercely. "I won't leave you."
Bofur and Oin inspected the bars and muttered to themselves, and Sigrid dared to hope. There must be a way. We must try. Then Bofur stepped forward, doffing his helm.
"Thank you, for all you have done for us," he said.
"Repay me by seeing my children through the night," said Bard shortly. He withdrew. Suddenly hands were on Sigrid's shoulders, pulling.
"Da, don't!" Sigrid screamed.
But Girion's Bane did not listen. There was a roar and a crash, the guardhouse trembled, and suddenly a corner of the upper floor caved. Sigrid felt a rush of heat on her face.
Other hands reached from the cages now; doomed, shadow-patched faces pleaded with them.
"Don't leave us here. Don't let us die, please! Missus!"
They grasped at skirt and tunic and hair as they passed, but the dwarves were stronger, and suddenly Sigrid was blinking in the night air, her ears ringing.
It did not look like night any longer. Orange light seared against her eyes; thatched townhouses and mud-caked huts were ablaze, and everywhere men were shouting, hands were thrusting vessels of water. There was a sudden gout of silence, a deadly whoosh, and a hundred black shafts rattled against the dragon's bejewelled hide as he flashed overhead.
"This way!" shouted Bofur, and lifting Tilda aloft — since the girl was now clutching firmly at both ears — started down the piers. Bain was gone. Sigrid turned about, lost.
We were supposed to stand together. We were supposed to fight.
"What's happened?" Fili called out, striding toward them. Behind him, Kili leaned up against the wall of the guardhouse, deathly pale but upright. "Isn't Bard with you?"
It seemed ash had settled in her throat. "We couldn't," Sigrid said.
For a long moment Fili looked at her; then he looked back at his brother, whose knuckles had gone white against the wood. "Take Kili. I'll follow in a moment."
But...
Kili guessed his intent, and as he passed the dark-haired dwarf snatched at his sleeve. "You're leaving. You said you wouldn't leave."
Fili caught his hand between both his own and squeezed. "Only for a moment."
"I'll come with you," Kili begged.
His eyes were white-rimmed and wild; his entire body trembled with the effort of staying upright. Fili smiled.
"Not this time." He let go.
"We couldn't break the lock," said Sigrid dumbly. At the doorway to the stockade the dwarf turned back to face her, the fire's fierce glare in his eyes.
"Maybe I can. We won't know unless I try."
"No," said Nia.
She clutched to Mathias's cloak, her knees locked together, her eyes overbright. Wind whipped up off the black lake and roiled the rowboat against the pier. It lashed her flaxen hair into her eyes and rippled through her nightgown. Sparks carried down from the burning town, settling in dark pinpricks against the white silk; she did not seem to feel them.
"Nia, please." Mathias turned her to face him, away from the dark lake, away from the mothers and children already huddled in the bottom of the boat. He could hear someone crying, and snatches of a lullaby to soothe a babe. Nia lowered her head. Gently, Mathias wiped the unbidden tears from her cheeks.
"It's just for a little while. I'll be along right after you."
The last he had seen of Arian Crow's-Eye, he had been leading a troop of bowmen atop the storehouses by the southern piers. The brandy had found him, and he had been laughing, fire in his eyes. He would be looking for a brother to guard his back.
Mathias tried lifting Nia. She was light, and swung easily into his arms, but at once Nia shut her eyes and clutched at his collar.
"No...boat."
Of course.
"The guards threw down the bridges," he said. "If I could carry you across, then I would. But I can't, Nia. I need you to get in the boat and be brave for me. It's not very far to shore."
Even as he spoke the reassurances, though, he knew they would not deceive Nia.
They had not been very far from the coast on the day of her accident, either. But she had been small even then, a laughing child with a head of golden curls, and it did not take much for her to slip as she raced across the Master's gilded boat. That the water had been no higher than a man then did not matter: she had struck her head as she fell in, and ever after would she be fearful, speaking in no more than halting syllables. (i)
Nia had pressed her face to his neck. Mathias kissed her brow and carried her onto the boat, and found a spot for her beside the singing mother.
Her hands curled against the neck of his cloak.
"Matt. Please."
"You'll have to be brave for me."
Nia did not answer. At the moment there was a clatter overhead, and Mathias looked up to see newcomers scrambling into the boat. It rocked anew with the motion, and Nia shivered.
A short young man collapsed next to Nia: his legs seemed no more suited to the swaying rowboat than hers. He huffed his dark hair out of his eyes and made a face. The old man stooping to tend to him was similarly short, and bearded most extravagantly. Mathias needed to look no further to guess they were dwarves. But he paid little heed to the thought: the third dwarf was entering the boat with a small girl, and her he recognized.
Ylmr (ii) was watching out for him after all.
He rose, and sidestepping Tilda and her guardian, reached where Sigrid stood on the pier. She crossed her arms over her chest, gazing back at the falling town, and squinted in the smoke.
"Sigrid — the rangers have need of me. Can you watch over my sister?"
"In a moment." Sigrid lifted her head. "I can't see him. Can you see him?"
"Who?"
But at that moment a woman with an oar laid across her lap shouted up to them. "We can't hold any more. Hurry, or let us be off!"
Mathias prodded her. "Sigrid —"
"The windlance." She lifted her hand and pointed. Mathias followed her gaze. Through the leaping flames and heavy vapor he could just see it, somehow untouched atop the Great House. Then the dragon's shadow rushed by, and he saw it no more.
"I saw it. Why?"
"Bain hasn't got there yet." And with that her shoulders hunched and she set off at a run toward town.
"Sigrid!"
Mathias sighed, and in an instant decided. He grabbed the arm of the dwarf with Tilda, the one with a lopsided guard's helm. "Watch Nia. My sister."
He did not wait to hear the dwarf's puzzled reply as he dashed after Sigrid.
He went this way. He came to find the Black Arrow for Bard.
Sigrid stopped short. Her breath escaped her in heaves: she bent double now, coughing. Smaug had been this way. Across the way a low awning had been ripped up, and smoke rippled from broken windows and doorways.
"Bain?" she called, once she had caught her breath.
She heard nothing but Mathias coming into view behind her, tugging at the neck of his cloak.
Sigrid bit her lip and tried again. "Bain!"
Embers were crackling in the ruins of the house ahead. Sigrid skirted the ash and splintered wood of the fallen awning and looked across the pool of bobbing boats. Where would he have hidden it?
"Sigrid." Mathias implored her, quietly.
At first she did not see what he had found among the ashes. And then she realized —
It was Bain.
A choked sound escaped her throat as she knelt next to him. Her brother's body was badly charred, curled forward beneath the rubble. Did the weight crush him? Or had Smaug found him first? Sigrid did not know.
Her fist curled and hit the rotted plank next to her brother's head. You fool. Her shoulders shook. We were supposed to stay together.
Mathias crouched next to her. "Sigrid, I'm sorry. But...we must go."
"Yes." Sigrid rubbed the ash and grit from her eyes, but still they stung. She forced herself to blink. Bain had hunched forward at the last, his hands clutched before his chest. There was something between his hands, so black that she had missed it among the scattered ash. But if she was not mistaken, it was not charred.
"We must." She reached for the Black Arrow.
Burning.
Sigrid's breath caught in her throat; her eyes filled with tears. Unable to scream, unable to make a sound she curled over, clutching her hand. Blood pulsed beneath her raw skin.
"Sigrid!" In alarm Mathias took her by the wrists and turned her palms over. He winced; she saw the hazy redness of blood.
"What can you hope to do for him now?" He squeezed her wrists, gently but firmly. "We must go."
Go where? she despaired. This is our doom.
Bard was lost to them, incarcerated, likely buried beneath the ruined prison; and the brave dwarf Fili was stifled with him. Bain had perished with the only hope of Girion's legacy in his hands. What could she hope to do for him now?
What could be done for any of them?
"No," said Sigrid suddenly, her voice seeming to come from very far away. "No, I must."
I am Sigrid Bard's daughter, of the line of Girion, and I will finish what he started.
It's our only hope.
She wrapped her hands in the hem of her skirt and then, biting her lip, she grasped the hot iron and pulled it from Bain's hands. Through the fabric heat pulsed and burned. She nearly cried out, but she found her feet, and rose with the arrow cradled before her. She was biting hard enough on her lip to split it, and blood trickled over her tongue.
"Ylmr's mercy, what are you doing?" Mathias was in front of her, hands outstretched in something of a placating gesture. He was in the way.
"We must go." Sigrid couldn't talk and keep breathing and hold the burning arrow all at once. She bit her lip again. "To the windlance. Please."
It seemed so very long a ways.
Her eyes had blurred over with tears. They fell freely now, and some spattered against her burning hands. When the Arrow jostled, she felt her skin peeling, rupturing in calluses, and each time she nearly screamed.
Mathias led her. Down the deserted roads, through a haze of choking smoke, and then they rose above it — they were climbing — and the narrow steps took them around the Great House, and into a strange world of darkness and pinprick fires. Once, looking out, she thought she glimpsed shadows adrift across the lake. But she could not look for long.
When they rounded the top of the stairs and found the windlance, intact, turned toward the cold moon on its platform, Sigrid nearly started crying again.
She staggered forward. Mathias took her arms and she knelt before the ancient contraption, pushing the Arrow into place. Her skirt caught and tore, but it did not matter. The Black Arrow was set to the bow. She pulled back.
Her fingers did not want to uncurl. For a terrified moment she tried, and failed, and then the stagnant air stung her blistered palms too much, and she clutched them limply in her lap.
"I can't..." she whispered, stricken. I can't avenge them.
Was none of it enough?
She swallowed back the bitterness of blood. Suddenly she saw Bard, grim and tempestuous, the Black Arrow in hand, swearing to keep their family safe. She saw Bain, buried beneath blackened and splintered wood. Her palms burned with angry blisters.
After all we have sacrificed, I was our last hope. And I have failed Girion's line.
She was the last of them; but at the last, she was not alone.
She looked up at the blond-haired ranger, his soot-battered cloak snapping in the dragon's wake. Her lips parted in a whisper. "Help me."
"What will you have me do?"
Sigrid's eyes burned. "Kill the dragon."
Mathias paled and took a step back. "Kill it? You mean with...with this?" He gesticulated at the iron windlance.
Sigrid rose. "You must."
Mathias broke into a feeble laugh.
"I can't."
"You must!" She stepped forward.
"This is madness, Sigrid. The archers, they've tried all night. Nothing can bring that beast down. And I don't..."
She hit him.
"Then our sacrifices will be for nothing! My father, my brother's life, m-my hands..." Her fist throbbed terribly after punching him, and tears sprang to her eyes, "...you would throw all of them away, and have us lay down and die before the dragon. You coward."
"Sigrid, I mean no..." But then Mathias stopped; he sighed. His shoulders straightened and he touched a hand, gingerly, to his temple. "I'll try. I can promise no more."
Wind whipped ash into her face, and she tasted it on her tongue. "Thank you."
Beneath the watchful moon they knelt. Mathias felt out the mechanisms that had long rusted to age and elements. Once, the windlance had been free to rotate on its platform, but now its joints were frozen. Instead he crouched behind it, watching, waiting.
Sigrid barely breathed. From high they watched Smaug circle over the black waters. He came close then, hot enough to make her eyes sting anew. For a moment, the dragon carelessly bared his gold-rippling flank. She saw Mathias's hands shake on the trigger.
But he did not fire.
Smaug wheeled away, now high above them, snorting gouts of fire against the dark clouds. Then his wings folded and he plummeted. He swooped low again, splaying his wings in a fiery gale. He came slicing past the Great House...and back into Mathias's line of sight.
At once the windlance jolted to life for Grimald Green-heart's newly heartened heir. The bow twanged; the Black Arrow whistled free of its roost; a deadly course was set for the dragon's flank.
Sigrid leaped to her feet. It struck! A golden scale tumbled free. Smaug jerked in the air, and roared, and all of a sudden swept up to the moon. Against its white glare he burned a line of fire, and mighty wings flared.
He was coming back.
"No," whispered Sigrid.
I have doomed us all.
"You are a fool," uttered Bard at once.
Fili said nothing, but dropping his axe he proffered his hand. Bard, grimacing, took it; he hauled the tall man from the rubble.
Bard stumbled on shaken legs and leaned heavily against him. Smoke coiled thickly about them, and tears burned in Fili's eyes. What had not collapsed of the armory belched black ash above them. The sizzling air was rife with choking.
"We might both have died here. You should have stayed with your folk."
"We still might. And besides, in a way, you are my folk." But Fili could say no more. His head was in a haze. He pulled Bard's limp arm around his shoulders and heaved, and together the beleaguered pair staggered toward a gaping hole in the stockade wall.
Fili hardly noticed when they broached the world outside. Wind blasted heat and sparks in his face. He couldn't breathe. He collapsed, Bard with him.
Bard rolled over and lay, chest heaving toward the starless sky. "Should we live to see the dawn...my life is in your debt, Dwarf."
"As ours were in yours. It was only due recompense." Fili coughed and rubbed at his mouth. He could taste ash in his moustache.
Bard smiled faintly at him. Then the look faded; his eyes hardened, and he attempted to sit up.
"The Black Arrow."
"The what?"
But Bard now was struggling to stand. "I must... The windlance... kill the dragon first..."
He took a stride forward; then another; then he stumbled. Fili hastened to catch his arm and held Bard upright as he shuddered in a fit of coughing.
"Where is it?" asked Fili.
"Atop the Great House." Bard's hand weighed heavily on his shoulder. "But your kin..."
"No one is safe, so long as the dragon draws breath," said Fili. He tugged Bard's arm around his shoulders once more. "Let me take you there."
The streets were long and ringed with fire. Always the smoke burned at their faces; often Bard halted, wheezing for breath, and Fili struggled to lead him on. The old piles of Lake-town creaked and popped precariously beneath them. Once Fili's boot hit upon them with a crack, and he suddenly found himself floundering, his left leg plunged through into icy water. But Bard had seized his elbows and yanked him free, and they pushed on.
The man's mutter of directions in his ear guided him. Fili's mind slipped into a haze. Once, as the dragon roared distantly overhead, as men cried out and leaped off the flaming rooftops around them, he thought suddenly of Kili.
Kili was huddled safe on the shoreline with Bofur and the others. Kili was alone in the night, and delirious, and terrified without him at his side.
I said I wouldn't leave.
I said I'd only be a moment.
I couldn't keep my word to Rada, either.
And then they came to the Great House, and the stairs.
Bard was a tall man, and he was nearly bent double against Fili; the dwarf was beginning to feel faint. Yet evidently he could not manage the climb alone. Fili grit his teeth and set his foot on the bottom step.
A whirlwind of fire surrounded them. Fili was drenched in sweat, nearly lost his grip on Bard once, nearly staggered off into thin air when the drake rippled past. But I promised Kili, so he put one foot above the other. And again.
Fili hefted Bard up the steps until suddenly there were no more steps, and Bard straightened and took a stride forward on his own. Then before Fili's burning eyes the shadows moved.
"Da!"
Fili blinked. Sigrid knelt on the platform before them, her hands in her lap. A blond-haired man was at her side. Behind them, the ironwork of the windlance shimmered in the rising flames.
Bard stopped. His face remained tense, almost pained; shadow and red light flickered across the lines of his brow. "Where is Bain? The Black Arrow?"
"Dead," said Sigrid. "We're all dead. We failed, Da. The Black Arrow failed."
Smaug circled back again, close enough to whip up cloaks and blind Fili with his own hair. Flames sprang up on the belltower over their heads.
But Bard remained unflinching.
"My bow."
Sigrid fumbled to remove it from her back. She seemed to have forgotten how to use her hands, and cried out in sudden pain. The other man leaned over her then and managed to pull the yew bow over her head. He handed it to Bard.
"The Black Arrow couldn't pierce its hide. What more can you hope to achieve?" he asked.
"I am not aiming for his hide," said Bard.
At that moment a chill wind ruffled off the lake; for the first time, Fili tasted a teasing of clean air. Clouds of smoke rolled away from the silver moon, and its silent stare paled the blond man's face.
"I don't... I don't understand."
"There is a hole. A loose scale beneath the left wing." Bard selected an arrow from Sigrid's quiver. The moonlight changed him: he stood taller now, unaided, a grim steadiness in his eyes.
"How do you know this?" asked the blond man.
Bard smiled thinly, nocking arrow to string. "A little thrush told me."
He pulled the bowstring back to his ear. "Now! Stand sharp: this way he comes again!"
Smaug blazed a trail of fire toward them, wings flared wide like storm clouds, flames flickering from his maw. This time, no arrows rained against his hide. Lake-town burned below. The heat of flames was at their backs.
Sigrid choked on a sob. Fili took a step back, an arm raised in front of his face, and saw that only Bard had remained undaunted; his silhouette blazed with orange light; his arm was raised and taut against his temple.
The bowstring snapped.
To be continued...
Authors' Notes:
So, at least someone seems to know his canon. ;)
Footnotes:
(i) Nia's condition: When Nia fell from the Master's boat and hit her head, the resultant trauma to Broca's Area led to the onset of her expressive aphasia (also known as Broca's aphasia, or non-fluent aphasia). Symptoms of her condition include difficulty in speech production and slow, effortful utterances. Due to the time period, aphasia is not well understood (see: the Master calling her a "half-wit", although that may also just be because he's a nasty piece of work...).
(ii) Ylmr: Dalish name for Ulmo. Borrowed from Quenya Ulmo 'He who pours', via Noldorin Ylmir. As Esgaroth is on the Long Lake, Ulmo's realm has a much larger influence on their daily lives than the other Valar, including Manwë; thus, for most intents and purposes, Ulmo has become their chief deity.