After Harandir left the camp, the company sat in silence for some time, each thinking their own thoughts. Kili's mind dwelt mostly upon food, his hunger and his worry that they would not find much worth hunting in the cold north. He wondered, also, if he might convince Fili to give them a day of rest before they moved on again. He was not eager to enter any land that was described as haunted, but to wait would tax their supplies and, Kili knew, his brother's patience.

Betta's face was sad and she looked older now that the brightness had gone from her eyes. What she thought, neither dwarf could guess. Neither brother knew that the story they had heard from Harandir was not the same as the words written on the back of the map they followed. That tale was dark and, Betta knew, it was only a matter of time before it, too, came to light.

Fili sat in silent thought as well, and he ran his finger over the blade of his axe. In his mind, he still heard with anger the words of Harandir, that a dwarf could not be trusted to protect a human woman. Hadn't Fili gone out into a blizzard to search for Betta when she was lost? And who was it that had bandaged her wounded arm each morning and night for three days? The Ranger had known her for a matter of hours, yet he thought that he would guard her better than Fili already had! She was his guide, and it was his right to protect her.

He scowled. It was not Harandir's words that troubled him the most, but the words that he had spoken to his brother before the Ranger told his tale. He had said that Betta was not one of them, and that she was no dwarf. These things were true, and yet, when Harandir had threatened to take her away, Fili had fought back as fiercely as he would had a man threatened his own kin. Only for Kili would Fili have risked killing the Ranger and breaking the law of hospitality. If the Ranger had not tied his sword, one at least of them would have spilled their blood upon the snow.

The moon fell toward the western horizon and the sky grew light as the sun made ready to rise in the east. The stars had grown dim and their campfire was burning down to embers again. Kili sighed and stretched his tired limbs.

"Well," he said, interrupting the sullen silence of his companions. "It seems the choice is before us again, to go on or to turn back."

"We go on," Fili said, without hesitation.

Betta looked up from her thoughts; she did not appear to be nearly so certain as Fili. She searched his face for a long time before she nodded. "We go on," she agreed. "Nothing has changed."

Kili looked at them both, and he knew better than to believe that nothing had changed, but he also agreed that they must go on. There was treasure waiting for them at the end, and if he did not see it through, he would always wonder and regret not knowing whether it were gold or jewels or an empty chest buried in the north country.

"Then the next question is, when do we set out?" he said. "I, for one, would like more sleep and a meal. It may be morning, but we have had very little rest this night."

"Some of us have had no rest at all," Fili reminded him.

Kili smiled. "That is all the more reason not to decamp until midday, at least. Get your sleep, brother. I will take my turn at watch, though I am many hours late for it. Perhaps if we sleep we will fool our bellies and they will not miss breakfast. It will go easier on our provisions."

Fili nodded. He was glad to have the decision made for him. As the morning sun broke over the crest of the hill, he felt strangely lightened, as if a weight that had sat upon his shoulders all night was now lifted. It no longer felt as if some evil thing were watching him from behind. He fell asleep as soon as he lay down, but Betta sat up and watched the sun rise.

She sat beside Kili, but they did not speak. He did not wish to interrupt her thoughts. But, as he listened, he heard her quietly singing under her breath, and he recognized part of the rhyme from the song of Lebennin that Harandir had sung for her.

It occurred to Kili for the first time that he knew many songs of Moria and Erebor, of Nogrod and Belegost and other dwarf cities, but there were no songs to sing for the halls of Ered Luin where his uncle now ruled. He had lived nearly all his life in those caves, but the songs that the dwarves of the Blue Mountains sang were all for other places, all of them lost and never to be reclaimed.

Except that Thorin meant to reclaim The Lonely Mountain and take back the land that belonged to his fathers. Kili smiled to think of the songs that would be sung in honor of his uncle when Thorin Oakenshield took back what was his own, when he was King Under the Mountain again, and his nephews stood beside him as princes of Erebor.

.

They did not set out until the early afternoon. The sun was shining overhead, but it looked down coldly upon them, and the air was pale. They broke their fast with a sparse midday meal, and few words were spoken between them. They packed up camp and rode north, seeking the road that Harandir had described. From there, Fili had not yet made up his mind whether he would follow it east or attempt a return to the half-directions of Betta's map.

Not even the Ranger had known exactly where their quest would end, but to follow a strange road to a black land in the east seemed worse than foolish. Much had changed in Fili since he had first conceived of the plan to leave Ered Luin and prove himself to Thorin. He knew now that there were some treasures not worth the danger, and that there were other treasures worth more than any weight of gold. He would rather return to his uncle empty-handed and in shame than lose himself and his brother to the dangers of the north.

Those things he knew, but what he had not yet decided was whether he would be able to stand by if Betta chose to give up her life to the quest. It was her life and her choice to make, and Fili had no claim upon her. But he had also promised to protect her, and he was beginning to suspect that she had some stronger claim upon him. That worried him more than ghosts and goblins together. Whenever he looked back over his shoulder, he saw her riding behind, her eyes down and her expression dark. She had not forgiven him.

Of the three of them, Kili seemed to be the only one still cheerful, and he spoke optimistically of trapping small game now that they were in hill country again where there were scattered bundles of brush and long grass raised above the drifts. In places where the steeper hills rose up, there were even bare patches of ground and around them he often saw the tracks of small animals in the snow.

Kili was careful to let Fili ride ahead on this day, although there was little chance of any of them falling into a hidden ravine. He rode next to Betta but, though he had become a deft hand at getting the woman to talk when she wished for silence, today she was stubborn. She had once hinted that she had practiced setting traps and snares during her travels through Enedwaith, but though Kili pestered her with questions regarding string, stick and netting, she never answered more than yes or no, if she answered him at all.

But he was also stubborn and did not give up. In the end, his only choice was to ask a question that he knew would demand her attention.

"The tale that you told of your uncles," he said, "was it true?"

For a moment, she did not answer, and then she seemed to wake from her thoughts. "Do you think me a liar still?" she asked, surprised that this question should come from this brother.

"I am only curious," he said quickly. "If a man had said of a dwarf's ancestors what the Ranger said of yours, he would not live long enough to say anything else. And you seemed willing to accept cowardice into your family, yet your uncles died bravely in battle. Were they your mother's brothers then, and not your father's kin?"

"They were both," she said. "Andor was my mother's younger brother, and Arborn was her elder. Beregil was my father's brother and came east with him when he took land in Lebennin. But he was very unlike my father, and they did not often get along."

Betta waited anxiously. Kili's curiosity was insatiable, and she knew that he would want to know more. It was a story that she was not yet ready to tell, not when Fili was so often looking back over his shoulder at them; she no longer trusted him not to carry her tales to other listening ears. She wanted to trust Kili but telling him a secret to be kept from his brother would test their loyalty, and she refused to come between them.

Kili sensed that he was walking a narrow line, and so he stuck to what he hoped was a harmless subject. "Your own brothers, then, they were all older than you?"

"All but one," she said. "My older brothers, they knew the story of the box that my father brought east with him; they knew many more things about our family that I never learned. My father did not think it worth his time to teach a daughter anything while he had so many sons to raise." She laughed bitterly. "He was glad enough that I had learned it after my brothers were spent."

"He taught you to shoot a bow," Kili reminded her.

"I made him teach me after my brothers left him to join the soldiers of Minas Tirith, and he only agreed to it so that I might hunt the woods at the feet of Ered Nimrais. We had moved our home to Lossarnach by then, and the hard ground there was not as generous to those who tried to farm it." She sighed. "He was a different man, after his sons left him."

Kili did not know what to say to that. He had wanted to get her talking, but now he found himself in uncomfortable territory. He had not known his own father well, and so he had little experience to draw on. Betta saw the expression on his face and she laughed.

"That is not what you wanted to hear when you tried so hard to trick me into talking with you," she said. "Well, I will tell you something more lighthearted. It was a joke to my father that he named me Anbeth, for I learned to speak when I was very young and often said things that an older child would have known not to say. I spoke more than was good for me, he used to say, but he did not know that I could also be very quiet when I sat by the door and listened to the stories he told my brothers."

"What of that name? Anbeth?" Kili said. "Why do you not use it? No one who knew you now would accuse you of speaking more than you should."

She smiled, but her smile was sad. "Because my mother named me Anwen. After four sons, she said that it was a gift for her to be given a daughter. But my father thought me no gift. He would rather have another son, and so he called me no name until I was old enough to speak, and then I became Anbeth. Then also did my brothers begin to call me Betta, for they did not agree with his naming of me but did not dare to anger him with the name my mother gave.

"My father had his wish granted soon enough, however, and a year after me, my youngest brother was born. My father called him Annandil, and he was truly a gift to all in our family; he was the last child that my mother would bear."

"I did not guess that you had a younger brother."

She nodded. "He did not live long enough to die in battle with the others."

"How did he die?"

Betta shook her head. She was sad, but then she looked at him with a smile and said, "You would have me tell you all the secrets of my family here and now? If you ask me, Kili, I will tell you, but are you so certain that there is not some secret that you have kept from me? It is right to demand answers when you yourself withhold them?"

Kili looked ahead at his brother and sighed. "It is not a secret that I would keep from you."

Betta followed his gaze and her smile fell away. "How can I blame him for that," she said quietly. "Who would trust a woman with three names, no future and cowards in her past?"

"My brother shall call me a fool for it, but I do trust you now," Kili said. "I would trust you with my life, if it came to it, and in the north I do not doubt that it will."

"I do not doubt that it will," Betta agreed, "but I hope that it does not."

To my reviewers and especially those who have Guest reviewed, since I can't PM my thanks to you personally, I want to say that your kind words have been the delight of a very difficult week. 'Epic' and 'Art' are certainly not words that I thought would ever be used to describe my poor piece of fanfiction. It means a lot to me to know how many of you are enjoying this story.

And if I might take advantage of your goodwill, my Dwalin fic, "That'll be the Door" is hungry for new readers. There will be blood, there will be romance, and, maybe... cookies?

-Paint