Ch.2: The Gray Traveler.
And so it was that a naked dwarf girl wandered through the main gate of Dale. The city had indeed suffered in these years without her kin for protection and trade.
No one approached her; everyone merely stared quietly as though hoping she would vanish as abruptly as she appeared.
"Have none of you any decency?" hissed an elderly woman with stringy, thinning hair who sat hunched over behind a fruit stand,
"Forgive them girl, hard times harden not just the weaker hearts."
The woman gestured with withered hands and yellowed nails to her, but she approached unafraid. The woman grabbed her wrists a little too firmly and pulled her behind the stand.
"Follow me home girl. I'll get food in your belly and at least some rags on your back."
The woman lived alone in a small hovel of a home on a dingy street, cared for with the waning interest characteristic with the race of men. It had been constructed of thin thatching and sloppily applied mud with little stone or wood to hold it upright. Really it was but a single room with a hearth over which hung an aged and cracking cook pot. There was only a bench and table for furniture, a bed of straw and blankets in the corner.
The woman's speed picked up once she was in her own home compared to the cautious pace of the street. She tottered with purpose towards a wooden crate, from which she produced the rags she promised.
"Be a dove and put those on. Then help an old woman with her fire."
She was more than happy to consent despite the condition of the frock, stained and off colored as it was. Yet the cloth did little to keep her warm, so she rushed to assist in stacking wood for the hearth.
Once it burned steadily the woman began to assemble a stew from the few vegetables she had, most of which had begun to go soft. The result was watery, bitter, and generally unfulfilling. Not the best first meal, but she would not starve this day.
The old woman seemed not to be interested in conversation, and had no questions for her. Though the dwarf girl had never walked this earth before, she had witnessed much through the memory of her mother, the eye of the mountain perceived much. So the girl found it strange that the woman should be so uninterested in her, and an odd unidentifiable instinct began coiling in her belly like a serpent.
"You should rest girl. I'm an old woman and sleep seldom, go on." The old woman seemed content to sit on her bench and smoke her pipe in the firelight, and despite her suspicions the girl knew that this straw bed was a vast improvement to the exposure and danger of the street at night.
She awoke abruptly to a man pulling on her ankle. Her eyes darted about frantically as he began to drag her towards him. Her hands found no weapon or structure to hold fast to, but still she lashed out instinctively, kicking him squarely in the jaw with her free foot. Her dwarven strength was superior to his and he flew back with blood beading on his lips. He let out a yelp and she scrambled to her feet as she saw two other men begin to cross the room. Each of them was disheveled and had clearly suffered lives of hardship: scars, missing teeth, pock marked faces from disease.
The old woman stood near the door, counting the coins the men must have just handed to her. The man who was now bleeding on the floor spit out a piece of broken tooth and snarled at the old woman,
"Nanya! What sort of deal is this? Look what she's done to my face!"
"If you would chance to indenture a dwarf woman you best consider the risks, I'll not bring down my price. Twenty pieces is a bargain for one so young and fair, especially one who has no beard! I should charge extra for that alone!"
"And how would you know? You've never seen a dwarf woman before! No one has!"
"Then the price should be forty pieces!" she snarled.
The girl considered declaring the depravity of this situation, but clearly her words would be of little consequence. These men had paid for something she was not willing to exchange.
By now the bleeding man was on his feet, and his fellows approached cautiously behind him. With little recourse the dwarf girl began to scream as loudly as she could, "Mother Mountain! Mother! Help!"
But unmoving stone is little, and the men grabbed her, taking her down again into the straw. Her screams became less like words and she threw them from her yet again. Clearly these men had no conception of dwarven strength, equating her to a simple human who could be easily overpowered by numbers alone. They quickly recalculated, drawing crude buck knives from their belts.
Her back to the wall, unarmed, she prayed to her mother, to Mahal, to Durin.
Light shook the doorframe behind the old woman, who began to squeal and cower into the corner. The shoddy door flung from its hinges, careening into the back of one of the assailants. The other two spun on their heels, thinking themselves ready for anything.
They were wrong.
The man whose silhouette cast across the room seemed to her massive. He was gray and bearded with a great staff he used to dispatch the two men with relative ease. The old woman skirted behind him, wailing into the night curses about wizards and the value of her life to her. Once he was certain the men were rightly beaten he seemed to shrink to a more friendly size, approaching her slowly and gently.
"Who are you?" the girl breathed, the snake of suspicion uncoiling rapidly in her belly though she did not know why.
"I am called Gandalf. And what is your name?"
"I have none."