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They slept little during the few hours that remained of the night. Huddled together with their baggage piled up for a wall between them and the open hillside, the dwarves sat themselves on either side of their guide with weapons in their hands. They continued to sit up even after Betta had pointed out that Kili was at least as injured as she, that he had fought more in the battle and so needed more rest. Fili agreed with her reasoning, but he could not very well force his brother to sleep.
Nothing more disturbed the night, not wolves, but also not their lost ponies returning and, when the sun rose the next morning, Betta and Kili stayed at camp while Fili went out in search of the animals. He would not to have gone if he had not held out some small hope that he would find at least one to carry their food and baggage.
There was little difficulty in finding the ponies' tracks in deep snow, but following them was another story. The tracks were confused and muddled by wolf prints. It seemed that several of the wolves had indeed chased the ponies after they fled the camp, but they were chased for less than a quarter of a mile before the wolf track broke off suddenly and seemed to disappear into the drifts.
Fili had begun to have his suspicions as to the nature of the magic spell that had set the pack upon them and the vanishing tracks confirmed it. Whether the phantom wolves could not exist very far from their host, or whether they had vanished when Betta killed the leader, Fili could not say. He did not like magic, prophesy or omens, good or bad, and did not spend much time speculating on cursed wolves. He went on, still following the tracks of the ponies.
Two sets of tracks galloped north over the hills, but half a mile from the camp they reared up and turned suddenly south again. Something had spooked them and, from a tall hilltop, Fili could see their trail leading away into the distance beyond sight and hope of catching. Those two, he gave up for lost, but the third pony had joined them later and it continued to run north. He followed that trail for some time but after an hour was forced to turn back. He did not like the idea of leaving his wounded brother and Betta alone for long, and the tracks that he followed were hours old. There was no fresh sign of any pony, or any animal at all and he unhappily gave up the search.
.
Two hours after leaving them, Fili returned to the camp. It was midmorning, and he was glad to find his company had been left unmolested, but he was also surprised and dismayed to see Betta kneeling beside the fallen wolf, her hands painted up to the wrist in blood. She had already skinned the fattest portions of the animal and two wide but thin slabs of flesh were laid out in the snow near to her. It was cold enough that there was little worry that the meat would spoil, if it were not spoilt already.
Fili frowned, but he remembered his oath and bit his tongue, going to speak with his brother before he demanded answers from her.
"What is this?" he asked.
Kili was also frowning and clearly not in a cheerful mood. "She insisted," he said. "And when I would not agree to clean the animal myself, then she took out her own blasted knife to do it. I told her that you would be angry when you returned, she said that you would be hungry, and I could get nothing more out of her after that." Kili scoffed. "For my part, I will not swallow one bite of that sorcerous creature, however carefully it has been cleaned."
"We have had little enough luck catching meat," Fili admitted reluctantly. He shared his brother's aversion to eating this particular animal, but after his long hunt through the hills, his stomach was growling.
He shook his head, but walked over to where Betta knelt at her work. She had done a mostly hack-job with the butchering, cutting mainly with her left hand what was a two-handed job. As he watched her work, he saw that she winced whenever her right shoulder was moved.
"You should not use that arm," he said.
"I needed two, and there was no other that would aid me," she answered, not looking up.
"How do you know that animal is not poisoned?"
"I do not," she said. Her cutting knife struck bone and jarred her arm. She hissed at the pain but did not stop her work. "I do know that without ponies, we must walk through snow and cold weather, and if we walk with as little food as we have left, then we must starve."
He said nothing, and Betta continued to saw into the carcass. She threw another slab of meat onto the snow, this one more torn up than the others, and Fili knew that he was making her anxious. She was more used to cleaning small game with finer cuts, but the wolf's meat was tough. He continued to stand and stare down at her until, after a few moments, she sat back on her heels and sighed.
"You need not eat any part of it," she said, "but I am hungry. We have seen no large animals this far north, and I will not pass up any meal that is offered. If after a night or two I do not turn feral, then perhaps you will believe me. In either case, it will save our other food for you and your brother. Whatever spells this wolf suffered from I believe that they have gone from it. The meat is red and healthy, if a bit lean, and there is no sickness in it that I can find."
Fili looked at the wolf and at the arrow shaft still stuck through its eye. He was not sure that he agreed with Betta about the spells, but he trusted her word on the meat itself. She seemed to have experience with hunting in the wild while most of the meat that arrived on Fili and Kili's table had been caught and cut by other hands. He was determined to hold to the promise he had made the night before not to scorn her any longer. If Gloin or old Fror had told him that the meat was safe, he would have accepted it as truth.
"Alright," he agreed. "Kili and I will divide up our baggage to carry. Take what meat you can from the animal and char it in the ashes of the fire. You are right that we will need more food than we have, but we will not test this flesh on you. I am the strongest and have taken the least hurt on this journey. Before we set out this morning, I shall stomach a strip of it and if I am poisoned it will be small loss to you."
"Not a small loss," she said. She looked up at him. "Would it be any use to argue with you?"
"No use at all," he said. "My mind is made up. Do you doubt your own assessment of the animal? You think now that it is not safe?"
"No," she said with a scowl. "No. I am right in this." She returned her eyes and her knife to the work at hand.
Fili shook his head at her but he admired her stubbornness. Not for the first time, he thought that she reminded him of a dwarf; but, for the first time, he did not reject the notion. He would not have been surprised to hear a young dwarf-lad, or lass even, answer him back in the same way. And he readily admitted that he enjoyed the sight of her wielding her knife unflinchingly and wearing blood without fear.
Although it was not widely spoken of – and generally hushed up afterwards – there were a few dwarf-women who had wielded weapon in battle. His cousin Dwalin's wife, Frei of the Blacklocks, was one. Fili had seen her once and thought her both strong and beautiful. But the Blacklocks were a different sort of folk from the Longbeards of Durin's line, and Betta might have been a soldier like her brothers, if her race and situation had not interfered.
.
That there were no ponies was news not gladly received by his brother, nor was Fili's announcement that he would taste the wolf's meat first, but Kili had not the strength to complain. He was too tired, and sitting up all night had not been kind to his sore ribs.
They had more baggage than they could comfortably carry, although there was no need to bring the sacks of corn if there were no ponies to eat it. But Kili was injured and, though he insisted that he was strong enough, Fili refused to let him carry a full share. Betta's arm, too, made it difficult for her to shoulder a heavy pack for the long march that was ahead of them. She did not argue as long and as heatedly as did Kili, but still she insisted on carrying more than Fili thought was good for her.
Even so, it was a hard choice for the dwarves to make, deciding what to bring and what to leave behind. No one suggested that they abandon the quest, not after coming so far, and all three were determined to go on. They would not be deterred by wild wolves and magic.
In the late morning Fili reluctantly swallowed a thin strip of charred wolf's flesh – the rest had been wrapped in cloth and stowed away – and then they set out, each weighed down by a full pack and several bundles.
They took all the food that they had and all the warm clothes and spare blankets. Fili carried the winter shelter, the oilskin and the rods, for the land above the hills would be deadly cold and they would not be able to camp out in the open air. What was left of their wood, they took also, though that was uncomfortably little. The supplies that they could not carry with them, Fili covered with a spare oilskin and buried under snow though he had little hope that they would ever return to retrieve them.
He led them out from between the hills with Kili following him and Betta behind them. Kili had protested this as well, insisting that the woman of their company should not be the last in line, but all agreed that Fili had the best direction sense and as the only one uninjured, he should be foremost in line in the event that they met with more danger. Betta agreed with Fili that Kili was newly injured while she had suffered with her own hurt for many days already, and for that reason he should not be last in line for fear that he might fall behind and be lost. It was only her shoulder that was hurt, not her chest or legs that would interfere with their walking.
Kili grumbled but knew better than to argue in the face of their united front. He was beginning to regret bringing them together.
The cold sun was dim in a clear sky above them as they marched on, mile after mile, stopping often to rest but always only briefly. Fili pressed them on, keeping them moving through the force of his will, and there was no sign that the wolf meat had done him any harm. He felt no difference in his body since eating it and agreed that if there was still no change through the night, they would all hold a feast the following morning. There were no songs that day, but there were also no sharp words or angry frowns between Fili and Betta, and only Kili complained of anything.
All day they marched, but it was the third day since they had left Harandir and by the end of it, when the sun was just touching the western rim of the world, they saw in the distance a towering black stone raised up upon a hillside. Arriving under it with the last failing rays of daylight, they found a wide, flat span of snow-covered road cut between the hills and passing east and west as far as their eyes could see.