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They reached the bridge in the early evening. Fili climbed down from his pony and brushed back the snow with his hands to look at the stonework, refreshing the memories of his youth. He said, and Kili grudgingly agreed, that it was similar workmanship to the stone of Ankor, and to the ruined hut that the dwarves had sheltered under the night before.
They crossed the bridge one at a time, leading their ponies; Fili insisted on crossing first. He wasn't certain that the stones that had gone untended for many hundreds of years would still bear their weight, but there was no sign of weakness in the bridge except for the cracks and loose bricks along the guard rails on either side. The middle-path was firm.
Once they reached the north side and stepped over the threshold of the bridge onto land, Betta shivered. She felt as if a veil had been drawn before her eyes and a gray mist lay over her sight. She blinked and shook her head, and it was gone. Neither dwarf seemed to notice any change, and so she said nothing. She was still tired and her arm still pained her; she thought it must have been only a spell of lightheadedness. They rode on, up a hill until they were many yards distant from the bridge.
There, Kili had a strange feeling of being watched, and he looked back toward the southern land that they had left. The sky was growing dark as the sun fell, and perhaps it was only a trick of the light that caused him to see movement, as if a crouched figure had run across the bridge behind them.
He checked his pony and turned to get a better look.
"What do you see?" Fili called back to him. Betta, too, stopped and turned.
Kili frowned and shielded his eyes from the evening light, but there was no sign of anything now upon the bridge. "I thought I saw…" He shook his head. "No, it was nothing."
"What did you see?" Fili rode back to sit beside his brother and peered down at the bridge.
"I thought I saw a creature, something small and dark, cross between the two posts upon the far side," Kili said.
"An orc?"
He shook his head. "No… I do not think so…" He frowned, but now his mind was not so clear. He had long since convinced himself that the ghosts from two nights ago had been nothing more than his worry and his hunger playing tricks with his sight. "It was probably only the shadow of a cloud passing over the sun."
Fili and Betta both looked up; there were no clouds in the sky that day. Fili was skeptical, but Betta looked thoughtful and Kili saw her pass a hand over her eyes.
"Even so, I will have a look," Fili decided. "It is better to waste five minutes chasing shadows than to be followed by orc or wolf into the night."
"I'm sure that it was nothing," Kili insisted, but Fili was already riding back toward the bridge.
"He is very good at going his own way," Betta said.
Kili was less than pleased. "One day he will go his own way into trouble, and who will get him out of it then?" he muttered.
"You?"
He shook his head. "I am the one who gets us into trouble. He is meant to get us out."
"Things change."
They watched as Fili returned to the bridge. He dismounted and crossed to the other side. For a moment, he was out of sight behind the stone, and then he reappeared and paced the ground, searching for tracks among their scattered trail of hoof and boot.
It was not long before he returned, and there was little news to report. "There are no tracks but our own," he said. "Some old crows have built a nest under one of the eaves. Probably you saw one fly between the posts. From this distance, it would be an easy mistake to make."
"I said that it was nothing," Kili said. He thought that his brother was again trying to prove who had the keener sight. It was bad enough that Kili had begun to doubt his own senses, to have his brother doubting him was worse.
They rode on, but now Kili rode behind Fili, frowning at his brother's back. Betta rode with him, and she too was frowning. "Do you think that it was only a shadow?" she asked him. "What do you say you saw there?"
"You heard what my brother said," he told her. "It was only a bird. Or do you doubt me as well? Then both of you will believe that I am too excitable to be trusted and, like my brother, you will second guess everything that I say or see. It is good that you get along so well with him."
"I do not second guess you," she said. "I only ask, for I do not think that it was a bird." She frowned at Fili's back and, though he was far ahead and would not have heard, she lowered her voice to say, "When I journeyed north through Enedwaith, I stayed two nights in the ruins of Tharbad upon the river Gwathlo," she said. "There are things in this world that men do not speak of..."
Kili looked at her. Her face was pale and her eyes dark under her brow, but he was not yet ready to admit to what he had seen. It was a comfort to him, however, to know that she understood his misgivings in a way that Fili could not.
"We will think no more dark thoughts," he told her. "We must remember what we are riding towards."
"And what is that?" she asked. She thought of Angmar ahead of them and shivered.
But Kili smiled. "We ride to treasure!" he said, laughing.
Yes, to treasure," Betta agreed. It was not what she had meant, but it was the first time that she had seen him smile that day and there were few who could stand in the way of Kili's good mood. "What will you do with your share?" she asked him.
Riding ahead, Fili looked back and was relieved to see his brother talking and smiling again. After they had crossed the bridge, the land had seemed to change. It was a darker place now, or perhaps it was only that they were riding farther from Ered Luin. The days grew shorter as you traveled north, he knew, and when he had travelled with Gloin, they had not crossed the bridge. They had journeyed east along the line of the dry river for a few leagues, then camped and eventually turned south toward the North Downs.
As he thought back on it, Fili realized that Gloin had been very careful to keep his distance from the bridge and, when Fili himself had approached to examine the stonework, Gloin had been anxious but had not stopped him.
It was an odd superstition, but one that Fili only now remembered as he looked back and thought that he, too, saw a shape that may or may not have been a very large, old bird, perched upon the far post of the bridge.
.
They left the riverbed behind and, turning north again, came to a steep hill about half a mile from the bridge. There they stopped, sheltered from the wind, for Kili refused to move again until he had dried out his clothes and warmed his hands with a fire. By then, it was too late to go farther for the sun had fallen swiftly below the horizon. Fili said that they would not move on that night, but would make camp and ride out in the early morning.
Kili continued to grumble even after the fire had been built. He was beginning to feel the hurt from his fall and, though Fili looked over the bruises, there was nothing to heal them but time.
The air had turned cold, but there was no sign of any storm to trouble them. The ground was hard and flat where they stood under the lee of the hill, but the land was rising steadily toward the east where it drew near to Carn Dum and the Mountains of Angmar. They were seven days long ride from that black land, but already the shadow was growing on their hearts.
They were all cold that night, for Fili refused to let them build the shelter that they carried. He thought it better that they should be able to watch the land around them while they had a moon to see by. And though they carried wood from the copse near Ankor, they burned only what they needed to cook their food and warm their hands before covering over the embers. There were few trees in the northern land, and their supply of wood would not last long. There would be many cold nights in the future if they found no more to cut.
Sitting around the embers, wrapped up in their blankets, Fili knew that the spirits of his company were low, but he did not know how to cheer them. He had no more stories to tell, and he was reluctant to sing, for there was something strange in this land, a watchful silence that he did not like; although, it did not feel evil… not yet.
Betta did not take out her map that night. She sat silently, staring at the covered embers and, now and again, Fili would see her reach her hand into her coat to touch the leather envelope that carried her pages, and then her face was dark and anxious.
"Some adventure this has become," Kili said. "I can see why Durin would go south when he woke. I am tired of this cold, and snow is only pretty on a warm morning when you need not go blundering through it."
"It will grow colder as we go farther north," Fili said. "You had better grow a thicker skin."
"I only hope that Thorin will not wish to take the northern road when we go east."
"What northern road?" Betta asked.
Fili gave his brother a sharp look, but Kili only shrugged. It had been said, and he could not take it back even if he wanted to.
"I thought your people did not travel in the north lands," she said. "That is what you told me when first we met."
"There is a northern road," Fili admitted, "but dwarves seldom use it these days. Certainly, neither my brother nor I have been farther north that the bridge that we have already crossed. Forodwaith is more dangerous than the crossings of Hithaeglir even now that the orcs are multiplying in those hills."
"Where is your road, then?" she asked.
Fili sighed, but there was no harm in telling her that. "Between Angmar and Hithaeglir it passes and then runs along the northern passes of Ered Mithrin which stretch into the east to the Withered Heath. There was once great commerce between the Blue Mountains and the Gray. Many dwarves dwelt there and they gathered riches to themselves, but the dragons came and raided their halls. There was a war, and those dwarves that survived it went south again. Most came to the Iron Hills where now rules Dain Ironfoot, our uncle's cousin."
"Who was at your battle of Aza… Aza-bizar…?"
"Azanulbizar, yes," Fili said. "Once, our people might have taken the northern road to visit our folk in the Gray Mountains or by the shores of the Sea of Rhun, but there are still dragons hunting the bitter cold of the Forodwaith that would freeze even the noses of hearty dwarves." Fili thumbed his nose at his brother, and Kili smiled but shook his head at him.
"We might still take that road, if there was a great need," Fili went on, "but it is far safer to take the east-west road and cross over the High Pass, or to go farther down to the Gap in the south where our kin in Dunland still dwell. You have walked the Greenway yourself, have you not? It is a pleasant journey in good weather."
"I walked that way, but not on the road. I took the crossing of Sarn Ford," she said. "I miss the green grass on the hillside." She sighed and saw her white breath on the air. To take her mind of warmer weather, she asked, "What other mountains lay in the east? My geography does not rise much higher than the southern eaves of great Greenwood."
Kili looked at his brother. There was one very important mountain that Fili had left out of his lesson. A week ago, Fili would have told her that there were no other mountains, but when he saw now the open curiosity in her eyes, he could not speak the lie. He found that he could not thing of anything to say.
"Durin, the Father of our Folk, came from Mount Gundabad," Kili said, saving his brother. "There." He pointed over Fili's shoulder toward the northernmost reaches of Hithaeglir that were sharply outlined against the rising moon. "Beyond Angmar lies the Holy Mountain where Durin woke, but orcs took it and though the dwarves took it back once, long ago, our folk have not yet returned to dwell there."
Kili told a little of the history of that mountain, and Fili listened, impressed to hear how much of the old lore his brother knew. But as the evening wore on, Betta found that she was growing tired. Kili might have talked all night, but Fili saw her nodding, and he, too, was ready for quiet.
He interrupted his brother and said, "I must take my watch, but there is no reason for the two of you to sit up shivering with me. Rest, for the dawn will be here soon enough."
Kili and Betta were willing to do as he suggested. They curled up in their blankets near the embers of the fire. For the first time, Betta did not lie apart, but laid her blanket near to Kili – it was too cold to stand on formality – and they piled the baggage close around their beds to shield what they could of the wind.
Fili sat up, sharpening his knives. His eyes often drifted down toward the bridge that he could still see dimly outlined by the moonlight. The night was quiet, but his mind was troubled. He felt as if he were being watched, not by bird or beast, but by the land itself that seldom saw visitors.
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- Paint