We Happy Few

Skyborn Huntress & Orion

Chapter 4 — Lords of Lake and River

"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more."

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters

Kili awakened to fire, but he was still cold.

At the least it was a more pleasant fire than the one in his dream. He rolled over, bringing his face to the crackling flames, and blinked.

One would scarce call it dawn. A line of fire pierced the eastern sky, but dark clouds huddled across the North, and a long cloak of fog swept off the lakefront. Everything seemed greyer, shrouded beneath the mist. And too quiet.

The flames snapped.

A blond man with a good-natured face prodded at the bonfire with a stick. Kili did not know him, yet evidently Fili must, for the two sat quietly conversing with their backs to the dawn. Fili had commandeered a pipe: sweet smoke hazed in lazy rings above his head.

The ground was cold. For more than half a year Kili had not minded, and it would not have bothered him now but for the dull ache creeping up his right leg. He tried to shift his weight off his side, yet the movement only sent a sharp stab of pain through the fallow muscles. Instead, he tried to sit up.

That didn't quite work either.

Kili swayed, propped up on one elbow, and groaned through the growing haze, "Fili."

His brother left the fireside to lean over him. His shoulders blotted out the light; for an instant all Kili smelled was ash and tobacco and Fili. Then hands fitted beneath his arms, Fili hoisted, and the world swung back into focus.

Leaning up against Fili, Kili blinked blearily across the shadowed world and discovered theirs was not the only cold campsite. Pinpricks of orange light scattered up and down the coastline. Yet no light shone out over the water, where the dragon's gilded flank lay. He looked on that for a long while, certain he was still dreaming.

Then Tilda sneezed.

They were not alone here, either. Bard's girls huddled on the opposite side of the fire, wrapped snugly in quilts. He had not seen them there before. Although, one of them was now blond.

Sigrid was across the campsite, tugging at a rumpled heap of pelts. She moved with the slow stiffness of a wearied old woman. The top pelt slid to the ground.

"Let me," said the blond man, hopping up. He shook out the battered pelt (Kili saw it was rather moth-eaten) and laid it about her shoulders as though the woebegone thing were a royal sable. Sigrid clutched at it, numbly. From wrist to fingertip her hands were swathed in cloth, and she certainly could not hope to move her curled fingers.

"The songs never mention this part," she muttered.

"They will sing of you," said the blond man.

"They will sing of Sigrid Burned-hands." She sighed, clutched them against her chest, and went back to sit with Tilda.

"Fili," Kili mumbled, "where is everyone?"

Fili's hands tightened against his shoulders. "Oin's with the healers, seeing to the wounded. And Bofur's gone with Bard to see about felling trees for shelters."

That left one of Bard's children, the boy, Kili thought hazily, but at the moment he could not recall his name. He wanted to ask about another, too, and her name was on his tongue, but he was half-afraid that had been a dream as well.

His belly growled.

"Fili, 'm starved."

"I know. We all are."

Then let's go hunt. What happened to my bow?

Then Kili remembered he couldn't sit up unaided. He grasped at Fili's hands. "Fi..."

"Some of my brothers are out tracking, to the North," said the blond man, returning to the fire. "And there are a decent amount of herbs to be found here, if you know where to look. Nia knows these banks better than I do."

Kili stared at him. "Who're you?"

"This is Mathias, one of the Dunedain," Fili put in. "He helped bring down the dragon."

"Well, I would not go so far," said Mathias the ranger, smiling. He went around the fire and touched the arm of the blond-haired girl. "Nia, Bard asked me to keep watch, so I cannot leave camp. But perhaps you could show the dwarves along the lake?"

Timidly, the girl nodded. Her blanket was clutched to her throat like a cloak. Beneath, Kili saw, the lace white sleeves of a nightgown hung down.

"If you don't mind, that is," said Mathias then, looking up.

"Not at all," said Fili. He looked at the girl Nia and self-consciously tugged at his moustache. "Though I hardly know what to look for."

Kili huffed, sitting upright. "We only spent the last year in the wilderness. Surely you remember some things." He was cold and hungry and his leg hurt. He decided. "I'll come with you."

Fili's hand rested on his shoulder. "Kili, your leg..."

"If I have to lie on my leg here any longer I'll scream," he said fiercely. "I have hands, don't I? And eyes. So... So help me up, Brother."

Fili obeyed. Hands reached around his arms and hauled him up, and Kili leaned back into him until he felt strong enough to carry his own weight. By then the world had stopped swaying, Mathias had found a smaller pelt to bundle around his sister's shoulders, and the sun had broken above the clouds on the horizon. The light burned directly in his eyes.

He pushed Fili away and took a wavering step on his own.

"We'll be back," said Fili. He stood near enough to catch Kili if he showed the slightest sign of falling. "With herbs."

"The healers will be grateful too, I'm sure," said Mathias. "Many are suffering. And the nights are only growing colder."

.

The sticky sweetness of seaberries filled Kili's nose. Tangles of hardy bushes reclaimed the northernmost shores of the Long Lake, where little else dared grow and even less could presume to thrive. Moreover, undaunted by wind or autumn frost, their branches bowed beneath resplendent clusters of bright orange berries. Yet Kili had tasted a handful and nearly spit them out again: the berries were fermenting. Even the birds would take their feast elsewhere, leaving the vibrant seaberries untouched.

But the people of Lake-town were starving.

Kili grimaced and shifted, stretching his right leg out in front of him. Walking was arduous. Sitting was worse. Inevitably he would forget and lean the wrong way, putting weight on the wound as he reached for a laden upper bough. And the ground was still too bloody cold.

Fili's shadow paused over him. "All right?"

"I'm fine."

Kili ducked his head and held his tongue. I am lucky, he told himself, though it felt like anything but. He was alive. He was cured. Kili did not remember last night, but he saw the long shadows in Fili's face. He recognized what his brother could not quite hide behind heavy eyes. Fear.

It was Kili, not Fili, who had taken an orc-arrow in the thigh, but Fili had weathered the night at his side, enduring his fever fits and deathly silences and...and he dared not imagine what else. Kili was loath to put Fili through any more suffering on his behalf.

So he endured, too.

The branches above his head rustled, and a smattering of orange berries tumbled into his hair. Kili shook his head impatiently.

"Watch it, Brother."

"Sorry," said Fili. He didn't look sorry. Indeed he didn't look much at Kili at all: his gaze wandered often to the girl Nia. She had left them the task of berry-picking and retreated up the shoreline, where clumps of wild camomile pushed between the rocks. She knelt in the damp, collecting flowers in the lap of her white frock.

Kili huffed.

She's not even that pretty. Nia was hardly more than a girl, with pasty-white skin and the overlarge bluish-gray eyes of a fawn, as if she was terrified of everything and everyone. She had a young deer's lean bony limbs, too, and moved as if she hadn't quite figured out how they worked yet.

Kili glanced upward, but Fili was obviously distracted again, plucking absent-mindedly at the bush. He bit the inside of his cheek, glancing away. Get on with it already, then.

As much as he had hated the mothering, it certainly wouldn't kill Fili to show a little more sympathy. (And to think a little bit less with his prick.) He had his admirers aplenty in the Ered Luin: girls drunk on campfire light and good dwarvish ale and a certain blond's singing voice. And when Erebor was theirs Rada would surely find him some pretty dwarrowdam to ogle, and they'd have themselves a brood of fat dwarfling princes.

Kili rolled his eyes and tossed a handful of berries at the strewn pelt that was their makeshift carrier.

His leg hurt. Fili was being an idiot. Kili's mind left the sun-blighted shore and crossed the curtain of hours until dusk.

Then all became starlight; then he saw her. She was as deadly as the amber-eyed mountain lion on the heights, as the wolf stalking unseen in the brush, and she was beautiful: more beautiful than any of Fili's drunken conquests, more precious than anything dwarvish hands had ever wrought. And for a moment, for a dream, he had belonged to her.

Then Fili cursed aloud.

Kili rolled his head upward. His brother stepped back from the bushes, hissing, the skin between right thumb and forefinger stuck firmly in his mouth.

"Thorns," he managed after a moment, and Kili looking at his scraped palm saw pinpricks of blood welling against skin. And bite marks.

Serves you right, he thought, but all he said was, "Better be more careful, there, Brother."

Nia came over, too, although Kili barely noticed until she extended her hand and said, "Please."

It was the first word Kili had heard from her. Fili stopped sucking on his hand and meekly held it out. Nia looked for a moment; then blood started to well again, and she vanished.

Scared of everything, Kili concluded, and went back to picking berries, although he was doubly conscious of the thorns now. But his nimbler hands were suited to fletching arrows and making minute adjustments to a feathered shaft against a bowstring, and he had yet to scratch himself on the brambles.

By the time Nia dared reappear, Fili had gone back to the bush, too. This time she said nothing, but stood waiting for Fili to notice her. Then she apparently overcame her own shyness and tugged at his hand.

Kili looked up.

Nia carefully unfolded her right hand to reveal two broad fleawort leaves. With her left fingers she pressed and crumpled them together; then reaching again for Fili's limply proffered hand she pushed the poultice against his scratch. Fili watched over her bowed head until she had finished and stepped back, shyly.

"Thank you," he said. "I...uh, it didn't hurt that much." (Kili snorted.)

"Yes," said Nia. She stood looking up at him, and Fili back down at her, and for a long moment neither seemed to know what to say. Then Nia smiled suddenly at her feet and fled.

Kili turned his head to stifle a cough. Fili waited until Nia was out of hearing range before calmly reaching down and punching him.

.

"You've got it backwards," said Sigrid. "The tails need to be on the same side. It's not secure otherwise."

Tilda made a face up at her. "I know how to make a weaver's knot."

"Do you now? What about when all our fish escape?"

That was enough conviction: Tilda, grimacing, plucked apart her haphazard knot and bent her head anew over the twisted rope.

Sigrid sat back with a sigh. Along the shore women of Esgaroth clustered over half-finished fishing nets while their ruined town smoked on the horizon. Tilda was joined at her craft by two old fishwives, their knuckles red with cold.

Sigrid, meanwhile, perched on a nearby rock with her bandaged hands in her lap. She could do no more than keep a sharp eye on Tilda's progress and correct her on occasion. Now and again she tried flexing her fingers, but Oin had tied the wrappings tight: even if it had not been for the pain, she could hardly hope to manage the quick precise tugs with which the fishwives secured their nets.

I was useless against Girion's Bane, too.

Sigrid shifted restlessly. Still she found no respite from her thoughts; sighing she rose, and clutching her blanket about her shoulders she moved among the women at work. Snatches of murmured conversations swept over her; some looked up as she passed, and she smiled, though she received no recognition in return.

And why should they? They have lost everything.

We have lost everything.

Some, at least, could find solace in their plight. Sigrid could hear them murmuring amongst themselves, contriving of cold gates reopened, a hoard unguarded, and gold enough to alleviate all their misfortunes.

"What aid would the Lords of the Lake deny us, when they saw but a fraction of that mountain's wealth come down the river?" decried one woman as she passed. The weaver's face bore the caresses of age, her back bowed beneath the strain of labour. Yet her fervent words stirred the others; they looked at one another and dared wonder.

"That mountain belongs to the dwarves," reminded Sigrid.

The weaver looked up at her, brow creasing. "They are long dead by now, child."

"Some yet live."

Sigrid turned away. Cold air lifted off the lake and ruffled through her skirts. Pushing her dislodged hair from her eyes, then, she saw a familiar figure hastening up the shore toward them. From afar the flaps of his hat bobbed up and down like the particularly floppy ears of a friendly dog.

Sigrid crossed her arms over her chest as he came upon the net weavers at work. "Bofur. How progress the shelters?"

"Well." Bofur puffed and seized her elbow, turning her aside. "Do you bear arms?"

"What?"

"Your women-folk." He dropped his voice further. "Do you bear arms?"

Her heart skipped over a beat. Brushing her thigh - where she had always kept hidden a knife, at Bard's lecture - she answered tersely, "Some of us. Why? What's happened?"

I may not be able to wield it, but at the least I might try.

Bofur hesitated. "Look out over the water."

She obeyed. Turning back, she scanned the Long Lake; and then she halted, and looked again more closely. From out the mist presently three tall figures broke. They were yet shadows on the horizon, slim and sleek, cream sails rippling.

"The Lords of the Lake," she breathed.

"The who now?" queried Bofur, puzzled, but already Sigrid was moving. She hitched her skirts about numb fists and ran down to the water. As she clambered atop the rocks the mists diverged, and a burst of sunlight haloed the golden ships.

"The Lake-Lords are coming!" she shouted.

The women stirred. Whispers intensified; old fishwives leaned conspiringly toward young girls, and one, hardly more than a child, broke down and wept.

Sigrid turned back, eyes agleam. "Tilda," she called, "find Father, quick!"

Gyr spins us new luck at last.

.

Kefus Strongboar's heavy boots splashed toward shore. He was a large, barrel-chested man with a red face and a tangled red beard to match. On one arm he bore a buckled shield, emblazoned with a black boar's head on yellow.

A dozen strong men leaped from the longboat behind him, or furled her ruffled sails, or rolled barrels of goods toward the shallows.

But Strongboar was the first to the shore, and his hairy face broke suddenly into a grin as he lifted a hand in greeting. "Hail, Harald! We feared you dead."

Master Harald stepped from the disordered ring of folk who had come to gawk at the boats. The front line, at least, was assembled of his guard, save Mathias, who wore his bow over his shoulder, and Alfrid, who wore his usual sneer. Behind them pressed gaunt men, and women, and children on hand. Some were curious and hopeful; others were merely desperate, and hungrily watched the barrels tumbling from the boat. Sigrid had secured a rock for herself and her sister, and they peered above the heads of the rest.

Master Harald did not look himself. His regal furs were bedraggled and stank faintly of seaweed; his face was pale and splotchy, his hands shaking and red. According to rumour, what hours of the night he had not been clamouring for food and shelter he had instead spent bemoaning his ever-worsening gout.

But now he opened his arms and said, "Here you find I am not." He paused a moment and added, loudly, "And neither are my people!"

We have arms, Sigrid thought, looking out over the motley array of guards as Tilda strained on tiptoe next to her. Yet we have not the men to use them. Strongboar had brought sharpened warriors with him, as had the other Lords, whose vessels had swept in neatly alongside his.

We cannot fight them.

Sigrid was not fooled by smiles and open palms. Their elegant longboats - with their prows carved in the curved necks and gaping maws of lindworms; their spears and bucklers; their strapping men: these were raiders' tools.

They expected to find us dead.

Gout-ridden, shivering Master Harald was all that stood between them and a bloody conquest. But the arrival of the final Lords of the Lake momentarily stilled that curdling thought.

Strongboar turned and beamed up the coastline. "Now see who comes! Anja, my sweet spear-wife; and Eugen the Tardy, unhurried as ever!"

"I am no man's wife," tartly answered Anja Red-Spear. The aforementioned spear rested in a sling over her shoulder. The Lord of the western shore had a coarse, weather-beaten face and a mane of fire. She stood with feet apart, hands on haunches. The housecarl at her side carried the blood-splashed wolf on his shield.

Eugen the Tardy, meanwhile, was dark-haired, sallow where Strongboar was ruddy, and portly where the warrior-lord was broad. Yet they said he knew sails and scales in the south, where they named him Master. His shield bore the proud-breasted bullfrog.

"We have journeyed far, and hardly dispatched our men and our efforts solely to hear your poor japes," said Eugen.

"Then let us tarry no longer." Kefus Strongboar turned to face the gathered folk of Esgaroth. "We are come to see the Dragon-Slayer!" he boomed.

"We have seen the great corpse as it lies, bloated and bedecked upon the ruins. Whose hand stilled the dread-wyrm's breath? By what blade or bolt fell he? Who among all men might claim the glory of this day?"

For a moment no one amidst the sullen crowd spoke; then a grim-faced man strode forth from the disassembled motley.

"I am he," said Bard.

Sigrid straightened. Even from afar her father seemed rigid and dour. Robed in his patched old coat, he yet stood as tall as Strongboar in his glimmering hauberk.

"I am Bard son of Baldr, of the line of Girion, who was descended from Brannon of old. I am the slayer of the dragon."

Kefus Strongboar looked upon him, as did Anja and Eugen, and Sigrid knew then that the Master alone did not stand between them. They fear him, she thought suddenly.

She dared hope.

"Long have the Lords of the Lake feuded and forgotten what it was to sit in joined council," said Eugen the Tardy at last. "There is much you must tell us ere nightfall, Bard of Girion's line."

"And more still to be decided!" agreed Strongboar. "Come! Let us lift these weary eyes. Girion's Bane is vanquished. With me, sweet Anja, Eugen, Harald."

.

There was no great hall to prepare for the Lords' assembly.

For a table, they laid hewn oaken planks upon a pair of sturdy rocks. Their seats were sun-gilded stones, their audience the wind and the lake and the wild-eyed flock of Esgaroth.

Sigrid found herself seated in a place of honour beside Mathias, with Tilda and Bard on her right side. She had watched a town thing (i) before, but never had she dreamed to be sitting among the likes of jarls and warlords. She pushed her ruined hands into the folds of her skirt to hide them and clutched them there, limply.

Still she held them when Kefus Strongboar joined the moot circle, and paused for a moment peering down at her.

"Is this your daughter, Harald? She has grown well."

Master Harald had looked particularly sour since Strongboar had mentioned more to be decided. He ground his teeth, but it was not his voice that answered.

"Sigrid is my daughter," said Bard, laying a protective hand on her shoulder.

"My apologies, m'lady." Strongboar smiled.

Sigrid did not know what to say; no one had ever called her m'lady before. So she nodded.

Once Strongboar had resumed his seat the council opened session. First men came before them to tell of the coming of the dragon in the night; they spoke of the destruction of the town and the evacuation to the shore. Then Mathias rose, and to Sigrid's great surprise first told of her valour in retrieving the Black Arrow. And as the council stirred among themselves all she saw was Matt looking toward her and, sheepishly, smiling.

Sigrid Burned-hands I will be. She found she didn't mind the name so much now.

But their efforts in vain could not bring down the beast. So Mathias related how Bard at the last strung his bow, and aiming for a loosened scale beneath the drake's wing killed the fiend in flight. By the time his tale had finished, and he sat down next to Sigrid, all was quiet among the Lake-Lords.

Yet Sigrid could hear the questions buzzing behind their eyes, and many looked to Bard, and then to Master Harald, and then to Bard again. At length it was Eugen the Tardy who rose.

"We are all kin of the Dale-men of yore," he said. Turning to Bard first he bowed his head. "By your happy shot, that kingdom is now freed. But Dale wants still for a king. Her people are lost, starving. Who among us would we name?"

He turned to face out over the round-eyed folk. At first none had an answer; they ruminated, and shuffled, and glanced bitterly at the well-fed lords.

And then an old fisherman timorously clambered to his feet. "King Bard," quavered Percy.

Bard slowly lifted his head.

"King Bard!" agreed a shipwright, lifting his fist.

"King Bard!" clamoured the fishmongers and sailcrafters. And then all were shouting, rising, pushing forward, and Sigrid could hardly believe her ears.

"King Bard! King Bard!"

"We will have Dale! Let the river run golden and the fountains flow with silver!"

"Up the Bowman, and down with Moneybags!"

Master Harald's face went puce. He lifted a hand for silence; and when none heeded he rose with difficulty on his gout-ridden feet, but still no one would pay him any mind. He had left the brave to burn on rooftops, defending Lake-town to the last, and bitterness and hunger made a long grudge.

"Why, O People? Why do I receive all your blame? For what fault am I to be deposed? Who aroused the dragon from his slumber, might I ask? Who obtained of us rich gifts and ample help, and led us to believe that old songs could come true? Who played on our soft hearts and our pleasant fancies? And what sort of gold have they sent down the river to reward us?"

His shouted words availed the crowd, turning heads and thoughts to the smoke-shrouded mountain on the horizon. Angry mutters intensified, but now they had a new target.

As the crowd moved then Sigrid caught a flash of a pale face. Fili was sitting on a rock next to his brother, a little apart from the crush of the Lake-town folk, a tight grip on Kili's arm. Bofur stepped in front of them as if he alone might shield them from the people's ire. Some of us are armed, Sigrid had told him. She wanted to scream.

The Master raised an incriminating, shaking hand.

"From whom should we claim the recompense of our damage, and aid for our widows and orphans?"

The crowd agreed.

It was Bard's firm voice that cut through the escalating chaos. "Fools! Why waste words and wrath on those unhappy creatures?"

He stood. The crowd had not forgotten his fervor; and the grave warning in his speech gave them new pause. "This is no time for angry words, or for considering weighty plans of change. There is work to do. I serve you still, Master - though after a while I may think again of your words and strike North with any that will follow me."

So Bard spoke: so the people of Esgaroth listened, and resorted to muttering unhappily to one another. Then Bard turned aside and bowed, and the purple-faced Master dismissed the moot.

They wanted to name Father a king, Sigrid thought dazedly as the Lake-Lords departed.

Do they not know that he is merely a bargeman?

"Sigrid," Bard called sharply. The others were gone now. She leaped up to follow, scattering her thoughts.

Yet hours later, after the campfire had died and the only sign of Mathias on watch was a shadow's movement beneath the stars, Sigrid remembered. She wondered.

In the old tales lords and leaders were named for prowess in battle, or wisdom, or lineage. But her father was neither a warrior nor a dragon-slayer by trade: he was a simple bargeman, as had been his father before him. And certainly Bard was not unloved by the fishermen and the tradesfolk, but he had been foiled at every attempt to better their lot by Master Harald and his ilk.

Nonetheless he was of Girion's line, in direct descent from crownless princes to humbler lords. Sigrid had heard those stories sung on Ma's knee; and then, when she was older, and Ma was gone, she had recited them to poor Bain, and Tilda, and Nia Harald's daughter. She knew the lays by rote, but she had never truly believed her family were the heirs to Girion's dale.

Father slew Girion's Bane. He freed Girion's folk.

Beneath her head the cold ground echoed with distant singing. She closed her eyes and listened to the nameless minstrel wandering the shore:

The lord of lake and river,

The king by mountain lone;

The heir of Brannon's harbour

Shall come unto his throne!

.

His crown's reclaimed in shaft-fall:

Ne'er failed his hunter's eye!

His watch is burgh and mead-hall

As Ǫr's (ii) hawk surveys sky.

.

Wake spring, and burgeon waters!

Let wind proclaim our chord

And echo sons and daughters:

The Crownless is restored!

.

Hence Man shall fear no evil,

not flame, nor shadow-spread.

Protector of our people

Hail Bowman, dragon's dread!

.

To be continued...

Authors' Notes:

Well, Kili, you could've been a little more grateful and all.

Footnotes:

(i) Thing: In Germanic societies, a governing assembly that was made up of all free men. And, yes, it is called a thing (or ting, in modern Scandinavian languages). The equivalent in Anglo-Saxon England was the folkmoot or folkmote.

(ii) Ǫr: Dalish name for Oromë. Borrowed from Sindarin Araw, "Horn-blowing; sound of horns". In the Dalish pantheon, Manwë's role is much reduced in favour of Aulë and Oromë; thus the hawk, a predatory bird, is more commonly associated with Oromë's domain than Manwë. Compare the shift in Germanic mythology: Týr, head of the reconstructed Indo-European pantheon, came to be replaced in his role of father of the gods by Odin.