It was half past the midnight hour when Betta and Kili emerged from the trees at the mouth of the ravine. Fili had arrived ahead of them at the camp. He had already dragged the body of the headless orc away and rolled it down the hill to join its companion in the shadows, and then he built up the fire. He saw no point in trying to hide themselves any longer as danger seemed to stalk ahead of them rather than behind.
The ponies were still tied up near the cliff, sleeping peacefully; their tails swished lazily back and forth as if nothing had troubled them in the night. And, indeed, nothing had.
Fili sat before the crackling fire with his back against the wall and his sword in his lap. He stared across the camp toward the bodies of the two orcs, and his face was grim and angry. The bodies were many yards away, but the silhouette of their tumbled limbs could just be seen dark against the ground when the clouds thinned and the moonlight grew stronger. He had not been able to find the missing orc head.
Fili said nothing when his brother sat down beside him, and Kili tried in vain to catch his eye. Betta did not try to catch his notice as she limped past them. She said nothing, and Fili frowned but gave no other sign that he saw her.
The night was cold, and Betta wanted only to curl up under her blanket and let the numb rush of fear tremble its way out of her limbs. But she could not. Fili had decided the direction of the next leg of their next journey, and she would not stay another hour where she was not wanted. She took up her old pack that had been with her since happier days in Rohan; and, with her remaining good arm, she began to sort through food and supplies, taking only what she would need for a few days march and weighing how much she would have the strength to carry upon her own back.
In the company of dwarves, she had been taught to take advantage of the strength of their ponies, and her personal things were separated into several bags. But, the animals belonged to the dwarves, and she must leave them behind and carry her own burdens now. Much of the extra food and warm clothing had been purchased and packed by the dwarves, as well, and she was careful to only choose from her own things.
The loss of the pony was some small bit of luck, she supposed, for she would not have been able to brush and saddle him one-handed – even with two good arms, she had struggled with the harness and straps; more often than not, out of exasperation, one of the dwarves had done it for her. Tonight, it was a struggle for her to fold her blankets, and to trade her things from one pack to another with her fingers shaking.
Her body ached, and her wounds burned, especially the deeper cut on her right arm. That wound was hot to the touch and needed tending, but she refused to ask the dwarves for help. Fili had made it clear that he would offer none, and she was ashamed to ask Kili and admit her weakness. In her ears, she could still hear his laughter as he spoke lightly of the orcs that he had killed. When Betta thought of her own clumsy battle, she could not laugh; she was ashamed of the fear that still pounded in her chest even though the orc was dead.
"Where do you mean to go?" Kili asked her.
She did not know. "The ferry over the Lhun is less than a week's walk from here," she said. "I will make for the river and follow it down."
"With wolves and orcs at your heels, I do not think that you will make it there alone."
"I must go somewhere," she said. "And I am used to going my way alone, but I do not fear the wolves." She looked at Fili, but he still stared at the dead orcs. He was not thinking of the night before when they had spoken of dogs and cats rather than fought like them.
Betta shook her head sadly. She gave up folding her blanket, rolled it into a ball and forced it into the overfilled pack. She closed the flap, but could not fasten the buckles. Her fear was wearing off, and as it did, the pain in her arm grew sharp. Her right hand refused to perform the fine manipulations that she ordered it to do.
Kili was right. She had never traveled with an injury before, and it was a rough path down the steep hill to the flatlands. From there, it would take more than luck to see her over the unsheltered plain to the nearest town. The cut was short but deep, and it still bled, although slowly now and only when she moved and broke open the skin again. If her arm was not bound and allowed to heal, she would not have the strength to bend her bow for many days.
Kili had been watching Fili closely. He would not gainsay his older brother's word, not if Fili was determined to take them home. And he was reluctant to ask Betta to stay with them, even for the night, if she did not want to do it; he could hardly blame her for that. But he was not willing to watch her disappear into the darkness. She may not be a dwarf, but they had taken her on as a member of their company and a companion on this journey. In his heart, he saw it as a blow to the honor of Durin's Folk for them to abandon her in the wilderness in addition to abandoning their quest.
"And the pearl?" Kili said suddenly.
Fili heard him and shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he remembered the sea-jewel that he still carried in his pocket. The pearl had been an uncomfortable tension during their ride, although no one had mentioned it aloud since the inn. Kili knew that Fili had guarded it jealously after that, but his brother was also very aware that he had little right to withhold it from Betta.
"What of the pearl?" Kili asked her. "If you leave now, you will be leaving it behind."
Betta hesitated. It was a wrench to give up something that was hers, and that had belonged to her family. She could trace her strongest grievance against Fili back to the moment in the forge of the Ered Luin when he had knowingly taken what was hers and put it into his own pocket, but…
"The pearl is yours," she said. "I give it to you as payment for my failure."
She gave up trying to fasten the buckles on her pack. She had settled her debt with the dwarves, and it was time to leave. An unfastened pack was soon to be the least of her worries. She clenched her jaw and braced herself for the pain of swinging it over her injured arm.
"Why did you leave the camp?" Fili asked her. Both she and Kili looked up to hear him speak. She glanced at Kili, but he only shrugged. He was glad that his brother was speaking again.
"I heard a sound in the trees," Betta answered.
Fili clenched his fist. "This is not the first time that you have heard strange sounds and said nothing of it to your companions."
"It was not the sound of danger," she insisted. "The woods seemed fair to me, and I thought, there may be deer in the thickets. We were all so glad of the squirrels that Kili caught, and I knew that we would want fresh meat when we enter the cold lands."
"You were leaving the camp unguarded. Why did you not wake one of us at least to keep watch while you were gone?"
"How good would it have been to wake hungry in the morning and find meat frying in the pan?" she said. "And if there was no meat, if I found nothing to bring back, then there would be no one but myself to be disappointed." She did not say what else she had thought: that if she had told the dwarves that she heard deer in the ravine, Fili would have sent Kili to hunt for it and not Betta. She held out her hands. "I wanted to be useful."
"Useful! You risked our lives for a bite of venison!" he cried.
"You think that I do not realize my mistake?" she said. "After I was attacked in the woods, I heard orc cries coming from the camp that I had left and…" She looked at Kili and saw his grim face. That hurt her more than Fili's anger. "Yes, I knew the mistake that I had made. It was only luck, indeed, that it was an orc body and not mine that you found dead in the bush tonight. Try to bend your bow and aim an arrow blind and with an orc knife in your arm."
"You would not have had to try it, if you had not left the camp."
"You are right," she agreed.
She reached for her bag, but Kili spoke again to delay her. "Why did you not return to fight beside us, once you knew that there were orcs?" he asked.
She turned her face away. If it was the elder brother who asked that question of her, she would have walked away without giving him answer, but Kili had been kind to her during the handful of days that they travelled together. She did not regret any trouble she might have caused Fili – he deserved every bit of it – but she was unhappy that her pride had put Kili in danger as well.
"I was afraid," she admitted. "I had never seen an orc before tonight and had only heard the tales of their cruelty. I thought they were a story, an exaggeration of the wild men who dwell in the forests and mountains. To be suddenly attacked by one, and nearly killed… When I heard their shouts, I thought that if I made a sound it would bring others to look for me." She shook her head. "I am no warrior. If two dwarves could not stop them, what help would I bring? And… and I was afraid."
"You would not have been afraid, if you had not left the camp," Fili reminded her.
"And I have suffered for that mistake!" she cried, angrily.
"Perhaps not enough!"
"Well, for my part," Kili said, quick to interrupt them, "I am glad of the orcs." They both stared at him in amazement, and he laughed at them.
"You think that it is easy to ride between the two of you all day long while you bicker like children?" he asked, still laughing. "Fili, if you would not apologize for bringing murderous thieves upon us at the inn, then you cannot hold Betta to blame for thinking that a fair, wooded valley sheltered deer rather than orcs under its branches. At the least, you should place some of the blame upon me as well, for I hunted those woods in daylight and found no trace of orc."
Fili opened his mouth to protest, but realized that he had nothing to say. Kili grinned; he was proud that for once he had his brother speechless.
"You should have looked more closely," Fili muttered finally, sullenly.
"Well," Kili went on, "as the one who has been on the receiving end of both of your mistakes, I blame neither of you. This adventure would have been very dull without them. The two of you can fight it out over who will watch the remaining hours of the night, but I have had my excitement and now I wish to sleep. Wake me before we are attacked again, if it is not too much trouble."
With that, Kili stretched himself out upon the ground and closed his eyes; although, this time he did not wrap up in his blankets, and he kept his sword and bow at hand.
Fili frowned across the fire at Betta. She had long since given up trying to pack her bag and now sat silently beside it, lost in dark thoughts and nursing the pain in her arm. She was too proud to wake Kili to ask him to bind it, and Fili knew that she would never ask him. He signed and took up some cloth and a water skin. He rose and walked to her side. It took a moment before she noticed his heavy boots beside her. When she looked up, her expression was confused but clearly she expecting him to continue the fight.
"Sit still," he ordered. He knelt and took hold of her arm.
He was not gentle as he removed her coat and sleeve to clean the wound Dwarf-fashion, the only way he knew how, but the bandages that he wrapped where done well and not too tight. The pain was fresh, but it did not burn the way it had before. There was some hope that the wound might heal without infection, although the scar would be ugly. Fili returned to his place across the fire and sat down. From her history and bearing, he had expected to find scars on her, not many and not severe, but scars. There had been none. Her skin was rough from hard labor, but unbroken as if it were that of a young Dwarf lad who had never seen battle.
"My brother is right," he said. "You cannot go wandering; not until the morning, at least. Stay. Wait and see what daylight brings. Go to sleep, and I will take the watch. There is no more rest in me this night."
Betta did not argue. She lay down, turning on her uninjured side and keeping her eyes on the woods beyond their fire. She knew that she would not sleep, but she was glad not to be walking down the mountainside alone in the dark.
Across the fire, Kili lay awake and listening. He smiled in the dark, proud of his own cleverness.