Date: TA 2941
Thorin: 195 years old
Lina: 192 years old
Lina hunched over the table with Kira's Second, a younger male dwarf called Gavin. Both warriors were pouring over Kira's meticulous notes regarding the terrain surrounding the fortress, her company journal detailing all exploits of the dwarves with her, and her personal notes. Something in the notes might give some clue as to where she had gone.
According to Gavin, Kira and her forces remained with the stronghold, waiting for Lina to arrive. When Lina' band arrived without her, Kira was frustrated but agreed to wait. The problems arrived hot on the heels of Lina's company, however. Within an hour, one of Kira's scouts reported an orc horde roaming the foothills to the west of the mountains, the same area Kes had led the group through shortly before.
The scout's report placed the horde's strength at only twenty strong. With the group being so small, Kira made the decision to take some of her warriors out with her and destroy them before they could discover the fortress. Kes and the rest of Lina's band volunteered to join her as they were already prepared for battle. Nearly fifty other warriors joined their general in preparing to attack the orcs.
Kira and her small army set out from the west gate. No one had seen any of them since the group vanished into the foothills. After a two days, Gavin grew worried. Kira had planned to return the same night. He ordered others out after them. Groups sent out after them initially came back with nothing to show for their searching. Then, on the sixth day after Kira's disappearance, the search parties began to disappear. After four vanished without a trace, Gavin recalled his remaining forces. No one had left the fortress in over a week.
Lina swore under her breath as she pushed Kira's notes away. Nothing in her friend's writing gave any indication where the dwarf intended to go. All the line breaker had to go on were Gavin's vague idea of direction and instinct.
"I can find them," Nes told her leader quietly.
"You can track them?" Gavin looked at the assassin with interest.
"Perhaps not the entire group, it's been too long with too many trails leaving the west gates, but definitely my brother. He would never deviate from a set plan without giving me a sign," she explained. Her jaw was set in determination. Whether Lina agreed or not, Nes was likely to go after the group.
"Can you spare anyone else, Gavin?" Lina wanted to know.
"I'll send just about anyone willing to go with you, my lady," he promised.
"Get me at least twenty warriors within the hour," she ordered, rising from her place at the table. "I have to know if there's even a possibility of them being alive."
Lina had her fighters faster than she'd thought possible. They were eager to know what had become of their beloved commander. Gavin had to prevent some from going so the fortress could be held in case of attack. So many dwarves had already vanished. If Lina and her band vanished as well, Gavin had orders to attempt the journey to the Iron Hills. Perhaps he would be able to rally Dain's men if Lina failed to bring Thorin the aid he needed.
The landscape to the west of the dwarven stronghold was just strange and wrong in feeling as the eastern side had been. It put the already tense dwarves further on edge. They moved in tight formation, Nes leading them as she followed her brother's faint and fast fading trail. Weapons bristled from the group, ready to be used on whatever had caused the earlier search parties to go missing.
For herself, Lina held little fear. She rarely did. As long as her death was an honorable one, it did not matter when or how she fell. What did matter was finding out what had happened to her old friend. Without Kira's aid, retaking the Lonely Mountain would be nearly impossible. To think of Thorin attempting to take the kingdom alone was terrifying. Since the groups had parted company and Thorin's band entered into Mirkwood, Lina's dreams had been startlingly empty. Knowing she should have had the ability to see and speak to him but, for some reason, couldn't, frightened her.
That fear for her husband and nephews only strengthened her resolve to find the missing dwarves of Kira's army. They must be alive. Nes still insisted at least Kes was alive. If he was indeed living, the others must also be or he would have likely returned to the fortress.
The first sign was not encouraging. The band found the remains of one of the scouting parties. The corpses lay bloated and rotting, no sign of any animal having attempted to scavenge food from the bodies. The armor and weapons lay scattered about, but the day rations the warriors would have carried were missing.
"Anyone know them?" Lina asked, jerking her head at the dead.
"That's Elo's group," one of the dwarves said finally, gesturing to a male corpse. "That's his insignia on his armor. They were the last group that went out."
Lina watched as Nes prowled around the edges of the dead band. The assassin was practically crawling along the ground, searching for any sign of her brother. Her head's sudden snap to the side raised the alarm.
"Everyone get into cover!" Lina ordered sharply. The dwarves scrambled for the rock crevices along the edges of the path, concealing themselves as best they could.
The line breaker crouched under a low rock over hang hidden from the path by bushes. Nes joined her in an instant. Her long knives were gripped tightly, ready to be used. Lina followed suit, drawing her two longest knives from their sheaths on her back.
Silence gripped the area, not even the wind made a sound. It was unnatural. Lina's body trembled with tension. Every muscle quivered violently as the dwarves waited for some sound to break the unbearable silence. Even Nes looked perturbed. Her eyes darted wildly about, scanning the area for some enemy.
Time slowed to a crawl. Eternity seemed to have come and gone before the silence broke. A stone skittering down the path drew the dwarves' eyes. The ground developed a slight tremble, causing small, loose rocks to jump about ever so slightly. A band of orcs lumbered into view, their ill-fitting armor clanking as they walked.
Lina could see one of the dwarves across the path watching her, waiting for the sign to attack. Her eyes darted back to the approaching orcs. As they crested the hill, it seemed, at first, like they were few enough to be defeated by the dwarves, just large in size. But they simply kept coming. More of the foul creatures appeared until they numbered at least ten times Lina's band.
A quick shake of her head sent the dwarf back from the path. Word seemed to reach even those who could not see the approaching horde: hide. If the orcs discovered the dwarves taking shelter around them, there would be no hope of finding Kira.
The orcs seemed to have a mission. Their leader was a mangled creature, marching resolutely toward some goal. Where they were going was anyone's guess. Lina felt certain they were not going to Kira's Fortress. The orcs were not equipped for a siege. Instead they bore gear meant for battle, supplies for a prolonged march: weapons, whetstones, forge tools, and the like. Far fewer items than dwarves would take, but there was no mistaking it: these orcs were on the warpath.
The dwarves barely dared to breathe until long after the ground ceased its trembling and the smell of the horde dissipated. Nes slithered from beneath the rock and branches, ensuring there were no orc stragglers, no one and nothing to keep the dwarves in hiding. At her signal, the rest of the band joined her on the path.
"What if they come back?" One dwarf asked Lina.
"They won't," Lina assured him. She did not elaborate. The knowledge that those creatures were going to war was terrifying and sent chills down her spine. It was not in her nature to frighten the recruits any more than necessary for survival.
The group continued with even more caution. After their brush with the orcs, every eye and ear was tuned to the barest movement or slightest sound. They had come too close to a fight they had no hope of winning. They barely murmured when they came upon the degraded corpses of the other three search parties. Now the only objective was to see if anyone might have survived from Kira's group, and, if not, at least confirm their demise.
Darkness began to fall before they found more than the slightest trace of the group. Nes had led them on a twisting path, deeper into the foothills and lairs inhabited by trolls. Her continued pursuit was proof enough for Lina that she was not lost, that Kes was somehow still alive. When asked for something to tell the others, Nes pointed to small innocuous mark on a rock. She explained to Lina that the mark was much like the symbol Thorin and Lina used to communicate. It told her when her brother had been in a place and an approximation of where he might have gone. According to the signs, Kes was still alive, or had been alive within the last two days.
The further in the group travelled, the fresher the signs. However, Lina did not feel comfortable leading the tense dwarves any deeper into the hill under darkness. To do so would mean the possibility of fighting an enemy they could not see, one used to battling in blackness. To risk such an encounter after they had come so far was courting disaster.
Nes growled in frustration, but found a suitably safe place for the small band to take shelter for the night. It was not a cave, for who knew what might be lurking in those caves. Nor was it precisely a clearing, for trolls tended to feast in those. Rather they found a small canyon in the rocks, covered from above by squat, scrubby bushes, and the entrance hidden by the way in which the rocks twisted and curved. The entrance appeared to be a solid wall.
Lina ordered a cold camp, no fires. It was too dangerous. The dwarves did not grumble. Instead they fell quickly into their bedrolls, watches arranged and set up at the entrance of the canyon as well as near the rear. Lina knew goblins had crafty ways of manipulating rock, she did not want to find that they were camped on the path into a goblin lair by surprise.
Once the others were bedded down, Lina conferred with her assassin. The younger dwarf was anxious to locate her brother, knowing she was so close to his last location. Of all the dwarves, she was the only one able to track in the dark due to the extensive training she'd received as a child. Her eyesight was no better in the dark than any other dwarf, but her perception of movement and ability to detect the slightest shift in shadows gave her an edge. Her hearing was tuned to tell the movement of a living being from that of a rustling plant or rock moved by the wind. She insisted her training would keep her alive. Her brother's marks, she insisted, had been made at night. They had the same training. If he could survive, then so could she.
With some trepidation, Lina let her go. The assassin would have gone whether she willed it or no, she was not beholden to Lina in anyway. Her current association with the female linebreaker was one of the respect.
Lina slept fitfully that night. She dreamed, but not of Thorin as she wished. Instead she felt darkness, cold and clammy. It was nothing like the warm, comforting darkness she was used to feeling when she tried to reach Thorin. Nor was it like the darkness of night, this was sinister and frightening.
Nes's return was welcome. In the dim, predawn light filtering into the canyon, Lina could just make out the shape of Kes. Relief suffused her body at the sight of the other assassin.
"Kira?" she asked quickly.
"Alive, Lady Firehammer," he said softly. "Along with most of our band. They're surviving in a collapsed cave not far from here."
He settled down with his sister and began to explain. The orcs and wargs who'd attacked Thorin's band on the western side of the Misty Mountains appeared to have caught the scent of another dwarven band: Lina's. Kes managed to keep the group one step ahead of the foul creatures, but could not seem to shake them. He'd lost them just long enough for the group to arrive at Kira's Fortress.
Kira, however, was not interested in letting the orcs survive within her territory. In the interest of keeping the female warrior alive until Lina could arrive, Kes and the others had agreed to accompany her on what was to be a short journey outside the walls to destroy the orcs. Instead of merely contending with the twenty or so creatures, Kira led her group right into the middle of a massing orc army.
The dwarves fought valiantly, but the odds were against them. By chance, the dwarves found a cave just big enough to get all the survivors inside. The earth mage ensured there were no goblin tunnels leading into the cavern, then collapsed the entrance and part of the mountain. The dwarves were trapped inside, but they were temporarily safe from the orcs.
At night, Kes would slip out of the cave and search for anything the dwarves could eat. The two days of rations Kira ordered them to bring, and the meager rations Lina's band still had in their packs would not last forever. They didn't even have messenger birds to eat. They'd attempted to send a message back to the fortress, but every one of the birds had been shot down by orc archers.
Due to orc patrols, Kes never could make it all the way back to the Fortress in one night. He was forced to return with whatever food and supplies he could find, including those scavenged from the dwarven corpses he found. He'd nearly been captured once, and since then he'd not been willing to venture very far from safety. Without his skills, the band hidden in the collapsed cave would starve to death.
Kes agreed to show Nes where the cave was. Together the twins would take Lina's plans to Kira along with some food and medical supplies. Kira would respond by the following dusk, and Nes would return with the message and enemy numbers.
Lina settled back against the canyon wall as the siblings left with supplies for Kira's forces. With any luck, she would be reunited with her friend by the next morning.