Middle-earth, and all who dwell within it, belongs to Tolkien. I am grateful to him for growing this beautiful garden in which our imaginations can play. Please review!
That night the weather turned cold; or at least, it was colder than it had been the night before. The three of them huddled together under their blankets beneath the black stone and with no wood to spare, they were forced to borrow heat from each other. Betta was the most uncomfortable. Although she had grown used to lying side by side with one dwarf while the other was at watch, between two of them she felt hemmed in.
The stone marker was made of common rock, according to the dwarves, but with snow on the ground, they could not say whether it was native to the hills or had been quarried and carried in from some other place. It was very tall, nearly thirty feet from base to tapering tip, and had been polished smooth by the passing years.
At the base where it was widest, a shallow hollow had been cut on the southern side and, sitting inside it, one could look down upon the road and see far east and west upon it. Inside the hollow, upon the stone had been carved many runes and strange designs, some elegantly drawn and as fine as elf-script, others crude and chipped by primitive tools. After much conversation, Fili and Kili agreed that the crude marks seemed to be similar to the sort that the dwarves used at the junction of passages in their mountain, meant to give direction or name rooms along the many miles of tunnel underground. By the time they had made their camp, there was too little daylight left to attempt a reading of them, but they were not written in any of the common languages of the world.
With the stone at their backs, no enemy could surprise them. The moon had passed its half the night before and was on the wane, but the sky was clear and the stars shone bright as lanterns, lighting the hills around them. The hollow was not deep, but it protected them from the cold wind. Though they shivered under their blankets, all agreed that there was no need to struggle with the shelter just yet.
Fili lit a small fire for a short time only, long enough to melt what snow they needed to fill their water skins and to warm the worst of the cold out of their noses and fingers. Then, he put it out to save their wood and they sat gnawing on hard bread and tough, dried meat that tasted more like shoe leather than animal flesh. Kili still would not touch the wolf's meat, and Fili would not let Betta eat it either, not yet, though it had not done Fili any visible harm. Not yet.
As they swallowed their meager meal, Fili said that they would return to the old watch schedule, with each of them taking one third of the night, but he – and he knew his brother, too – silently swore that he would not sleep a wink that night. Betta was less worried that there would be another attack. She cared only that she paid her fair share of the hours at watch; she knew better than to lose a whole night's sleep to phantom fears.
It was less decided than accepted that they would take their time in setting out the following day. The stone was a better campsite than they could hope to find in these hills, and they did not yet agree on how to proceed from where they stood. Fili wondered if they should not return to following the landmarks on their map while Kili said that it was quite clear to him that the road would make for easier walking and that it should be their pathway east.
To march upon the open road before all eyes who cared to look was not a plan that Fili liked, less so now that they were so far north. Harandir had said clearly that the road would lead them to Angmar, and after the magic of the wolves, he was not eager to see those mountains. He would rather find another path, if other path there was.
Betta listened to them argue, but said nothing on either side. She would only agree that they must decide their course the next morning before they set out. What she thought that course should be, Fili did not ask, but he guessed that she would side with Kili. She would walk the eastward road with or without them. Betta's path had been laid long ago; and, though she might regret it, she would not turn aside.
Long after the others had closed their eyes – though Kili was still determined not to fall fast asleep – Fili sat up on watch, smoking his pipe and thinking on the past and of the future, on roads and paths and the maps that he had studied in his youth. He tried to measure the long leagues between Lebennin and Ered Luin, and from Ered Luin to Erebor in the east. The world was wide, and he had seen very little of it. He was young and had his life ahead of him, but already on this journey, he had learned new things about himself, some things that troubled him.
Though he was glad for the adventure, Fili had never loved long travel and preferred the comforts of home and family. When Thorin or Kili joked that Fili should find a wife and child, they were not only making fun. He had always been the quieter, the more firm and unwavering of Dis' sons. It was natural and expected that he would be the one to settle down and produce an heir to secure the family line, but Fili had never been as certain of his fate as others were. He had fifteen years of freedom before anyone would expect him to take a wife, but sitting upon the snow-covered hill near the haunted mountains of Angmar, and looking eastwards toward a dragon… he was even less sure to what end his path would lead him.
Fili looked at his brother. Kili held his own pipe in his hand, but he had not lit it and had refused the leaf that Fili offered. He sat with his back straight and shoulders set, but his eyes were closed, and Fili could see that his head was beginning to nod. In the last few days, Fili had seen his little brother grow older and more serious. His laughter came less often and his smiles were not so careless. If they did not return to Ered Luin with treasure, Thorin need only look into his young nephew's eyes to see that they had earned their experience in the north.
Midnight was fast approaching and Kili's chin dropped to his chest, but he had not given up the fight. His head would droop and his eyes close, but after a few seconds or at most a few minutes, he would sit up again with a start, wide awake for a few minutes more before it all began again. Fili laughed at his brother and the start and stop of his snores between waking. He remembered the old nights back at Ered Luin when he had listened to his brother's snoring and felt safe and warm at home.
Finally, he looked down at Betta as she lay between them, curled up on her left side with her back to him. She had scoffed when they insisted that she needed their protection for a second night, and he knew she did not like to sleep between them, but she had finally agreed to it. In the first nights of their journey, she would not have agreed, but she, too, had changed along the way, and her injured arm had taught her that she could not do all things alone.
Fili frowned and wondered, if Thorin had agreed to take his nephews to Erebor when they asked, if they had not needed this quest to convince him of their worth, would Betta be here now, but alone? Would the wolves have found her? That battle would not have lasted long without the dwarves to defend her. Or would the orcs have captured her in the hills of Evendim? They would have killed her or carried her back to their tunnels to die as a slave.
If Thorin had agreed, Fili knew that promise or no promise, he would have abandoned Betta's quest as easily as he abandoned a broken hammer, and he would have forgotten her by now.
There was a tightness in his chest, but Fili told himself that it was the hunger and the cold and nothing more. It was a dark night, and he was worrying himself with dark thoughts for no reason. Tomorrow they would march on along the road, find a treasure and return to Ered Luin before the month was out. Betta would leave them and go back to wherever she had come from, and Fili and Kili and Thorin would go east and defeat a dragon and set their throne once more under Erebor. That was the path he walked, Fili reminded himself, and no other.
Why, then, did he continue to look down at the woman of their company and feel certain that there was something more than he had missed, some stop along the road that he had failed to see?
Kili jumped himself awake yet again, and this time Betta sat up with a sigh. "How am I to get any rest pressed between the two of you who hold yourselves as tense and tight as rabbits!" she muttered.
Kili grinned at her sleepily. "You might pretend that we are rabbits," he suggested. "For one who has spent so much time in the wilderness, you seem very particular about the bed you lie in."
"It is not the bed, but the crowded company that I object to," she said. "You lay like a lump of rock. Is that another characteristic of dwarves?"
"Not one that I have ever heard of," he said. "Curl up against my brother next time, perhaps he is made of softer stone."
Betta glanced at the other brother, and Fili felt his cheeks flush red with more than cold. He was glad that it was too dark for her, or his brother, to see the change in color, but the moonlight was still bright and shone upon his face. He did not know what his expression was, but Betta frowned when she saw it and was troubled. She looked away.
"I think that you have hurt my brother's feelings," Fili said, to save her from having to answer Kili's poor joke. "But the two of you should sleep. We will have another long walk tomorrow."
Betta looked as if she had something to say, but she bit her tongue and pulled up her hood, saying nothing instead. He worried that the night had brought back some of the old anger in her. The northland seemed to have a habit of stirring up bad feelings, but he had not felt the watchful eyes on the back of his neck, nor any of the fears that had plagued him before they killed the cursed wolf.
Fili smoked his pipe and closed his eyes to rest them and to forget Betta's troubled eyes that had looked at him with worry. Kili was dozing off again, but Betta did not lie down. She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and her cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders. Her arm was still held carefully, but Fili knew that it was secure in the sling that he had fitted for her. She was as motionless as a figure carved of stone, and he remembered the night not long ago when the sound of her singing had lulled him to sleep. She was not singing tonight. Now it was the woman of their company who tense and tight, and Fili could sense the tension of her body without needing to touch her.
He opened his eyes and saw that se was wide awake and looking down at the road, her brow knit with frustration. He wondered what worried her, but did not ask. Instead, he said, "If you are unable to rest, we might pass the time in some other way… I have a tale to tell you, if you wish to hear it."
Kili opened one eye and looked at his brother with interest.
"I thought that you had run out of tales," Betta said.
"If you spent a lifetime wandering the stony roads of Middle-earth with me, it would not be long enough for me to tell you all the tales I know. Dwarves have long memories, especially for story and song, and for the history of their kin; but this tale, I think, you would like to hear most of all."
She looked at him, and he guessed that she worried that he was only teasing her as his brother always teased her. She thought that he meant to tell her yet another legend of other dwarves and other battles that would not answer the questions she had. Fili kept his face stern and gave her no sigh of his thoughts.
She looked at Kili instead, but he only smiled and made himself comfortable for a story. He was glad that his brother had finally made up his mind to confide in their guide, but Fili was not as certain as Kili believed him to be. Although he wished to tell Betta the truth and to answer all of her questions, he did not know where to begin. Every dwarf in the Blue Mountains old enough to lift a hammer knew the tale of the dragon and the sacking of Erebor, but though the songs were often sung, the long tale of grief and loss was rarely told in full. The pain was still too near to their hearts, the loss of life and treasure keenly felt by those who had survived it.
Fili had learned most of what he knew from Dis, for Thorin only ever spoke of regaining the mountain, his words hinting at the manner of its loss when he cursed the dragon.
"You asked us once, what other mountains there are in the eastern lands near the Great Greenwood," Fili began. "What my brother would have told you then and what I willingly tell you now is that west of the Iron Hills and south of the Gray Mountains, there lies a single solitary peak called Erebor, the Lonely Mountain…"