"I do not believe it," Kili said. "I do not believe that she is dead. Betta would not come all this way, come so close after searching so long, only to let some stunted orc murder her in her sleep."

"If she had been awake and keeping watch, do you not think that she would have made some sound to warn us?" Fili told him, trying to be gentle. "It has been a long journey and we were all tired. She was not used to the first watch. Is it any wonder that she would fall asleep? The orcs crept up and… and they took her body away."

Kili scowled and turned his back. He went to the blankets that Betta had left behind to look for sign of her, but Fili followed him. "Indeed, I do not blame her," he went on. "If there is any fault to be found, it is with me. Fror warned me that there were orcs in these lands, yet I was careless. I should not have…"

"She is not dead," Kili insisted. He crouched and touched the cold ground. There was no sign of a struggle, but rock and stone do not leave easy tracks to read, and Kili was no tracker.

"She was the farthest from the cover of the woods," he reasoned. "If orcs had killed her, then why did they not kill us as well? There is no reason for them to kill her quietly, carry her body away and only then return to attack us after we were awake and had blade in hand. They would have killed us all three at once; or, taking her away, they would not have returned."

"Then where is she?" Fili demanded. "Kili, you must accept that she is dead."

"I will not," he said, standing. "You may mourn her death if you wish – although I do not think that you will grieve overlong. I will not despair until I find a body cold and rent with knives." Kili turned toward the trees, intending to go in search of her, but Fili caught his arm and would not be shaken free.

"You will cause your own death if you run heedlessly into danger," he said.

"I do not go heedless. I know what the danger is," Kili said, looking his brother in the eye. "But I will not rest until I am sure that she is out of it. If that means that she is dead, then so be it, but can you sleep tonight not knowing?"

Fili sighed. He shook his head. "No. I would not rest," he admitted. He was convinced that the woman was dead, but Kili was right that neither one of them would sleep so long as her body lay free for the animals to despoil. There was no use in waiting for daylight to search.

In part of his mind, Fili also knew that Betta carried their map on her person at all times. He knew it, but he refused to think on it. She would say that he only looked for her to find the treasure map. "Even if you think that I am heartless, I am not," he muttered under his breath.

"What did you say?" Kili asked, looking up.

"Nothing. Make a torch," Fili said, gathering branches and the long, green grass together. "And keep your sword in hand. Betta's ghost will not thank us for joining her in death. There may be more battles for us to fight before the red sun rises."

They gathered the ponies and tied them under the shelter of the cliff. After they had lit their torches in the embers, they covered over the fire and entered the woody valley.

When they had first come to the narrow ravine, it had seemed a peaceful place, but now the dim moonlight shone yellow through the clouds, and their torches reflected red against the white trunks of the peeling birch so that they seemed to be stained with blood. The ground was thick with fallen leaves, muffling the sound of the dwarves' heavy boots, but to their right they heard the trickling of water over stone. The peace of the ravine was deceptive now that they knew what had been hiding under branch and bough as they laughed carelessly and sang by the fire.

.

Kili moved quickly through the trees, waving his torch back and forth over the undergrowth. He had been up the ravine once before to hunt and now as he went, he cursed himself for not noticing any sign of orc. Not that he heard or saw sign of them now, but it must have been there, and he must have missed it. He hurried forward and bit his tongue to keep from calling out Betta's name. At least he knew better than to do that.

Fili followed behind him more cautiously, his sword raised and ready. He was there to protect his brother and did not carry any real hope that they would find Betta's body with only torchlight to aid them. While Kili searched, Fili strained to listen for any sound beyond the racket that his brother was making.

It was lucky that he did, for he heard a sound in the trees that Kili missed, and was ready when a third orc dropped down from the branches. This orc was fleeing, however, and did not attack. It hissed at Kili's back and turned to run, but found itself facing Fili's ready sword. By the time Kili turned around, the orc was lying at his feet, its body rent. It twitched and squealed as it died.

"If you cannot be more quiet," Fili whispered, "we would do better to stand here and let the orcs come to us."

"I am not making all the noise," Kili said. "And I am not looking for orcs. I am looking for our lost companion. If she is captive and not killed, then she may not live long enough for us to take care in the search."

"If you do not take care, then you will not live long enough to rescue her," Fili reminded him, but his brother had already moved on. "Of all the Dwarves in Middle-earth, how did I earn you for my close kin," he muttered, as he hurried after his brother.

After their second attack, however, Kili did seem to take more care as he walked; but, further up the ravine, it was still Fili who first heard movement in the bushes to their left along the steep rise of the northern wall.

"Kili," he whispered.

His brother looked back and Fili pointed toward the sound he had heard. Kili had learned from his last close call, and he nodded. They propped their torches in the trees and, shrouded in darkness, both moved towards the wall on either side of the brush, keeping the step of their heavy boots as quiet as they could. But they could not move silently, and whatever Fili had heard, it heard them as well. It fell silent, warned and waiting.

Kili would have burst in on it alone, but Fili gestured and drew his second sword, holding one in each hand. He was determined that neither orc nor animal would escape him tonight. Kili reached out to pull back the branches.

There was a crash of leaves as a body rose from the bushes, and Fili swung his swords.

"Wait! Stop!" Kili cried, putting out his arm.

From behind them, the torchlight was just enough to show Betta, who stood with bow in hand. She had an arrow fitted to the string and drawn back, aimed at Kili's heart, but she turned her arm aside in time and the dart sailed harmlessly between the two dwarves and away into the trees. Fili was warned by his brother's shout and turned his blade as well. It cut the air to the right of Betta, slicing through branches with a whistling rush.

Kili tossed his sword into the air and gave a cry of relief as he saw alive the woman that he had believed cruelly murdered. He wrapped his arms about her, but she cried out and pushed him away. He saw blood on her right arm from a deep cut. The red torchlight made it difficult to discern wound from unbroken skin. Her face was scraped and smeared with dirt; her coat was torn and her hair disheveled. Behind the bushes in which she had lain hid was a shallow hollow in the stone that she had been small enough to crouch inside. Kili helped her to step out of the brush, and she limped on her right knee.

"You are hurt?" he asked.

"Hardly," Betta muttered, but she winced and let Kili take the bow from her hand.

"Where did you go?" Fili demanded. He had been overcome by surprise, and as glad to see her living as Kili had been, but now he was angry. She was injured, but still carried her weapons; she said nothing to suggest that she had been taken into the trees by force. He now realized that she had not been. "Why did you wander from the camp? There are orcs beneath the trees!"

"I have seen them," Betta answered with more than anger in her voice. It had hurt her arm to bend her bow, but Kili's hand had hurt her more when he pressed her injured side. "If there were any more about, they would have been drawn to your noise by now."

"We killed two by our camp," Kili explained. "And one farther down the ravine." She looked at him, and at his brother, with concern, but he shook his head. "We were not hurt, only you."

"I suppose that is some manner of luck," she said, touching the blood on her arm.

"Well, Fili was scratched," Kili added with a grin.

"Where is the one that cut you?" Fili asked. He was not smiling. "If it was not one of the three we killed, how do you know that it is not still nearby?"

"It is," she said. She pointed her left hand toward a thicket behind the dwarves.

Kili went to look and nearly slipped down a low gully. A dull, broken short-sword lay in the bushes nearby and, looking down, he could see the body of an orc that was smaller than the ones that they had already killed. Kili held up his torch and saw that the orc's head lolled to one side, revealing one of Betta's crudely carved arrows broken off just above its breastbone. There were shallow knife wounds also up and down the orc's neck and chest. It wore no armor, only a thin leather jerkin and rags that were no protection against even Betta's small knife.

If Kili had climbed down into the gully to look close, he suspected that he would find the orc had suffered more from its fall into the trench than from any wound that Betta had inflicted. He did not look close but called back to his brother, "It is dead. She killed it."

He sounded impressed, but Fili was not. "How did you come to be here?" he demanded again. "Does it mean nothing to you that we set a watch? I cannot believe that you are such a fool that you would leave us to be murdered in our sleep! What excuse do you have?"

Betta shook her head and said nothing. She had none that would satisfy him.

"Fili, she could not have known."

"She knew as well as you or I that the wild lands are dangerous," Fili told him. "And I am tired of hearing you defend her faults. It would have been better for the orc to have put its brittle blade in her belly, for I will not trust my life to her again, nor will I risk yours, Kili. Tomorrow, our company will part ways. The woman may go to the dungeons of Angband if she so desires, or back to Gondor where she belongs, but you and I are going home."

Fili turned and stormed off through the trees, not bothering to pass quietly. He cut aside the branches with his sword and cursed in the dwarf-tongue that Betta did not understand, but Kili did and he winced. Fili's torch wound away until it turned a bend in the rock and vanished.

Betta stood still, holding her arm and staring after the departing flame. Kili still stood beside her. "He is angry," he told her. "He will see differently by daylight."

"No, he will not," she said. "He will not, because he is right."

She hung her head and began the slow trek back to the camp. Kili stayed close to her, his ears open for any sound, but he did not believe that there were any more orcs under the trees. If they had not been attracted to Fili's shouting, then they had been frightened off by the prospect of facing an angry dwarf.

It had been a long night, and they had come through it alive, but whether morning would find their company still journeying north together remained yet to be seen.

All my readers are so wonderful! Thank you all for your kind comments, and special thanks to Rovalo for her free advertising.

-Paint