The next morning, the dwarves hunted the hills around their campsite but found nothing more than snow and sticks to eat. Their breakfast was a bite of cold meat and all the warm water that they could drink. Kili joked that they might boil a scrap of shoe-leather to flavor it, but Fili did not laugh. It was three weeks since they had left Ered Luin, and he knew that if he had planned the journey better, they would not have gone hungry so soon. That failure weighed heavily on his mind as he watched his brother and Betta growing weaker and thinner before his eye, and he wondered if even now they had the strength to reach the southern lands again.

He kept his worries to himself, and they marched out to a dull and cheerless day with little new to see or say. Within a few hours, Kili had successfully slowed his pace until Betta gave in and walked second in line along the path that Fili forced for them. It was a small and short-lived victory, however; he often had to walk ahead of her again to help his brother dig through the deeper drifts.

There was still some luck left in them as it had not snowed in the mountains for some time, and what was there, although it would not melt again for many months – if it ever melted in these frozen hills – had been hard-packed by the wind and sun. In many places the company was able to walk atop the drifts if they were careful with their steps. They would have had a much harder time if they had not lost their ponies.

As it was, Fili did most of the work to save the strength of his injured companions, but Kili's bruises were quick to heal. He was yet a young dwarf and nothing short of shattered bones would hold him back however much he might wince at the pain in his ribs. The dwarves and her own injury would not allow Betta to help them dig, and she was clearly frustrated by her lack of strength, perceiving herself to be a burden to them. A wrenched shoulder was not something that could be easily shrugged aside and try as she might, she had only a little of the hardiness of dwarves.

The deepening snow slowed their march, and the road was becoming difficult. The hills to their left rose up and formed a broken ridge that promised soon to become a sheer cliff-face. On the right hand side the hills fell lower. More and more the company looked down into step valleys and ravines. Fili knew that it was a dangerous change. The snow was packed high on the hills above and if it once began to slide, they might easily be caught in an avalanche and be buried.

If they survived the road and continued east to its end, they did not know what they would find there. Fili guessed – and Betta agreed – that their path would narrow as it approached the Wall that Harandir had described. Beyond that, he had warned, was the haunted land of Angmar and, if they made it that far, they must go no farther.

Although the landscape was all white with snow, there was much to see on either side of the road. The steep northern hills that Fili looked on with trepidation held much of the beauty of the north. Where the ridge were steep enough, bare stone shone through and the snow atop it was warmed by the sun so that it dripped down and formed long pillars of ice as intricate and delicate as lace, or as thick and solid as the carved columns in the halls of dwarves. Sometimes these pillars were flung over the road itself like great archways of elven-cut glass, but the company hurried past as quickly as they might, looking up at the heavy icicles that had been carved to razor sharpness and seemed ready to fall in the slightest wind.

On the southern side of the road, the lower lands would sometimes open up and reveal wide, pleasant valleys of ice-hung trees and frozen rivers sparkling in the sunlight like crystal. Twice in the farthest distance of these valleys, Kili's sharp eyes picked out what he claimed were herds of some of deer, but with long white fur and blunt horns. The dwarves could not name them, and they were too far away for bowshot – and too far from the road to risk leaving it to hunt them – but the sight of living animals it gave the company hope that they might find some other game in their path to supplement their dwindling store of food.

Apart from this small hope, there was little else to cheer them as they walked struggled along. The oppression of the hills was not lessened by the beauty of the ice sculptures, and the one time that Kili tried a song to lift the spirits of his companions, his voice failed after the second verse, for it echoed strangely against the hills. He fell silent and sang no more.

With little else to occupy him, Kili made a game of hanging back to watch his brother and their guide whenever there was a drift to climb or a patch of ice over which Fili must give Betta his arm. There was much to see from that view, and he was surprised that he had not noticed it before, but he also saw that it was good that he had not let Betta continue to walk at the end of their line. Although she had kept up with them easily enough in the morning, by afternoon, her steps had begun to falter and she might have lagged far behind if Kili had not been there to keep a close eye on her.

She said not a word in complaint for all her struggles, and he found that he respected her the more for it. When Fili turned back or asked how they got along, Betta lied and Kili supported her lie. They were already being treated as invalids; it was better not to give him anymore proof.

The little food was telling on the human of their company more than the dwarves, partly for her lack of dwarvish fortitude, but also because she had gone hungry more often in her life than had the nephews of Thorin Oakenshield. The brothers had had plenty to eat while they lived in the mountains, and there were regular feasts of meat and good food there, but Betta had been forced to scavenge for her own meals for the past two years and not all of the warm southern lands provided equally. Her body was used to hunger, but it had fewer resources to draw on in lean times.

By the late afternoon, as the sun began to fall from the sky, a cold and bitter wind had picked up and blew down from the eastern heights throwing ice and snow into their faces. With a full hour of daylight left, Fili had nonetheless begun to look for a place to camp that would get his company out of the wind. His eyes were on the valleys between the hills to his left and right, but Kili was looking forward and gave a shout, pointing ahead.

"Look there, upon the hill!" he called.

Fili looked up, following his brother's hand.

Half a mile in the distance, they all could see the sharp, black shadow of a tall standing stone outlined against the white snow. It was nearly the same shape and size as the one that they had camped under not thirty leagues back along the road.

"We need no longer search for a campsite tonight."

"That is some good news, at least," Betta said, and Kili agreed. He was worn down and his body ached, but seeing the stone, he found new energy and hurried on ahead. The others followed him, but slower. Betta's feet were dragging, and she could not hide how tired she was. Fili stayed beside her, shaking his head at his brother's impatience.