When morning came, they were able to have a better look at the road and the stone under which they had slept. The dwarves had no more ability to read what was written upon it in daylight than they had had the night before, but Kili, who had risen before the others and gone to explore the hill around them, discovered a sparsely wooded valley from which they could cut much needed wood.

The news was gladly received by the others. Fili had shown no sign of illness since swallowing the wolf's meat the morning before and had announced that, so long as they could cook it thoroughly, it would be safe for all to eat.

With wood to burn and their stomachs grumbling, Kili's resolve was beginning to fail, and he looked with hunger at the slabs of charred flesh that his brother unwrapped and laid out in the snow. Fili smiled to himself as he kindled the fire and prepared the meat. He could see Kili's longing looks and knew his brother well. Sure enough, the first strips of meat had hardly been toasted before the scent of cooking tickled Kili's nose and brought him to the fire. He sat and broke his fast with the others.

They toasted the cut strips in the fire and ate the meat between torn pieces of stale bread. They drank their fill of warm water brewed with a handful of wilted carrot roots that had been part of the bribe of foodstuff that came from the innkeeper so long ago. It was a cheerful meal, but quiet.

After they put their bowls away, the dwarves left to cut extra wood to carry away with them when they broke camp. Betta sat beneath the stone within the hollow and stared down at her pages spread across her knee. There had never been a clear path to follow, and she had guided them mostly through luck and guess-work, but it was not hard to see that their path would lead forever north and east until it passed off the edge of the page. As she stared at the map in the dim morning light, she suddenly noticed a pattern in the drawing that she recognized and did not like.

"How did I not see that before," she muttered to herself.

"See what?" Kili asked, coming around the stone and dropping down beside her. He held his axe in his hand and was still sweating from the work of cutting wood. He was smiling, but she saw that he held his body carefully. He had strained his bruised ribs in a way that would make the day's march all the more painful. His injury put him in a sour mood and he had answered his brother back a little too sharply while they were cutting at the trees… which was why he now sat here with Betta while Fili was away tying their firewood into bundles.

"It is nothing," she said, folding her pages and putting them away.

Kili knew that he had not been careful enough. He had meant to hide his pain from his companions, but now all that he could hope was that he could hide it from Fili or his brother would undoubtedly delay their setting out. Kili was glad that, though Betta had noticed, she had not said anything; he did not like to be fussed over.

"Which way do we go today, guide?" he asked her with forced cheer. He had argued with Fili last night over this very question, and now he wished to know which side she would take.

"It is your brother who leads us," she said, "and unless you have change his mind, he intends to follow our map's guidance and not mine."

"I know what my brother says, but I wish to know which direction you would choose." He scowled and looked away from her. His usually unwavering good-mood had been knocked out of him by the wolf, but he knew that it was continued more by the oppression of the high hills than by any other trouble that they had faced.

Betta sighed and looked east toward the dark, distant hills; she knew what he felt. "I would choose to follow the road, for I think that it will take us where we wish to go," she said. "Where I must go," she added, "for I do not know whether I wish to see those mountains any nearer."

"Fili will follow your choice even if it goes against his own," Kili told her. "And so the question becomes, will you speak up and tell him that you have chosen against his advice? Will you take the lead this morning?"

She frowned, and did not answer. He searched her face, but she gave him nothing to read there.

"You are making some joke that I do not understand," she said finally, and then she smiled at him and shook her head, "but you will not fool me. If you cannot change your brother's mind, then I certainly will not be able to do it. Fili will always go his own way, and I will not let you trick me into arguing with him over it while you sit and laugh at us."

"I do not want you to argue. I only wish to know your thoughts on the journey, without always hearing you echo back what my brother has said." Her frown returned, and he knew that he had spoken too angrily. "I do not mean to be sharp with you. I am sorry."

"Do not be sorry. You are right, but I am too tired to pick this fight with your brother, if he would even argue with me now that he has declared us friends." She frowned and looked down at her empty hands. She no longer needed to hold the pages to remember what was there.

"Fili wishes to follow the map," she said, "but his path would take us many miles north on our search for the next landmark. If we manage to find it there, then we must journey miles south again to the one after it. In these hills and with this snow, that will not be an easy journey to make. Following the map would mean going leagues out of our way, and yet our direction would still be the same. This road will take us east along an easier path – and both ways will take us eventually towards…"

She did not say the name, but he knew it. He followed her gaze toward the eastern hills that seemed to grow taller and lean down over them. "I know it," he said, "and Fili knows it, but we both hoped that there was some other way that you could find."

"There is one other way we might go," Betta said, and Kili looked up hopefully. "West, and back the way we came," she said, and his face fell.

"That road we will not take," Fili said. He stood near the mouth of the hollow, leaning back against the stone, and Kili wondered how long he had been listening to their talk. Fili lifted his hand to touch the crude carvings. "Have you yet looked at these marks in daylight?" he asked Betta.

"I cannot read them, if that is what you ask. If it is the language of my father's family, I do not know the characters, and they do not seem to have been made by the same hands that wrote upon the cornerstone of Ankor."

"I agree." Fili nodded, and put his hand in his pocket. "We must move on, but I would be more comfortable knowing what is written here. It would give us better advice for our future journey. We must now choose our next direction."

"The only direction we have is east," Betta said.

"Indeed."

There came a long silence, and Kili looked back and forth between them. They stared at each other steadily, and he knew that there was something being said that he could not hear, something beneath the words that were spoken. It was not often that anyone openly opposed his brother, and Kili wondered if he had in fact convinced Betta to side against Fili. She said they must go east, but it was clear that she meant east along the road and not along Fili's winding path.

Kili sighed. It was tiresome that he must always parse his brother's words when Fili was being stubborn, but with both of his companions working together to confound him, Kili was exhausted before the day's walk had even begun. Fili's determined stubbornness did not seem to tire Betta. She continued to look up at him without blinking.

"Then east we shall go," Fili said finally. "Gather your bags and I will help you on with them. I suppose I must help both of you now," he added with smile and a wink at Kili. "We shall set out upon this strange road of yours, Betta, and hope that our luck holds."

.

In the mid-morning, they hefted their packs and set out, carrying less food but more wood, and Fili did indeed need to help both of his companions to put on their baggage. Kili bit his tongue and hid the pain in his back, but once they were on the road, his bruises continued to ache; he was only glad that it was not the sharp pain that had stung him the day before.

As they marched along the road, they spied many small groups of bush and tree scattered between the hills where the melt water would flow on the rare days that the sun was bright enough to warm the snow. They would not lack for wood in this land, not for some time, and in the cold north that was an unlooked for comfort.

The temperature was falling, and the snow was deep, though it seemed somehow to keep mostly off of the road they were on. Still, their march was slow and wearying; they managed less than three leagues before midday when they stopped to fill their grumbling bellies. Pushing a path through the snow was harder work than riding a pony, even on a straight-cut road, and both dwarves had a chance to be glad that Betta had taken the wolf's meat when it was offered. The only animals they saw that day were birds circling high above and far out of the reach of bowshot.

After their rest at midday, Fili once again helped Betta and his brother on with their packs. This time, the weight rested heavily on Kili's shoulders, but he pretended not to notice and they set out again.

They walked through the afternoon, seldom speaking. Their heads were bowed and their back bent under their burden. Fili came first, the only one of the three whose head was still lifted for his eyes were always searching the hills ahead. After him, came Kili, wincing at the pain in his back and shoulders, but only when he thought that his brother would not see it. Last of all came Betta, her smaller feet finding the tracks that the dwarves left in the deeper drifts. She did nothing to hide the pain that her wounded arm caused her because she knew that no amount of pain would prevent Fili from marching them on until dark.

When Fili looked back, it was only to be sure that his companions still followed. He was not as blind as his brother thought him, and knew that Kili's bruises would need better tending after they made camp. Kili did not look back – his back ached too much to strain it that way – but he kept his ears open for Betta's light footsteps and knew that she was never far behind him.

For all the trouble they had had finding food for the ponies, they had never missed them as much as they did on that long day's march through unknown hills.