"I know little of my father's family," Betta told them, "save that they came originally from the far north and, crossing over the western reach of Ered Nimrais, they settled near the green hills above Langstrand. Of my father, I know far too much, and more than my brothers ever lived to see.
"He was called Bereg and was born at Pinnath Gelin within sight of the sea. His elder brother was Beregil, whose death with my mother's brothers in the battle for Ithilien I have described for you.
"The pair came east to Lebennin when they were still young men and strong. They looked for work in a wider world, but Bereg met Elwen, who would one day become my mother. Her blood had no small claim to the lineage of Westerness and she was beautiful and wise with a fair face and soft grey eyes. Her father owned a large and prosperous farm, and when my father declared his love for the man's daughter, half of his heart at least was given over to the prospect of inheriting this land."
Betta hesitated. "I do not mean to say that he did not love my mother at all. From what I have heard, I think that they were both very happy with each other for many years early on. Certainly, my mother never complained of her treatment, and she often opened her heart to me. She stayed with my father when a less devoted wife might have returned to her own family.
"Bereg and Elwen raised four sons before they received their first daughter, and they had one son younger than me who died young. All his life, Bereg was ruled by the love of his northern ancestry, and he spoke of little else, but my mother loved Gondor and the land of her birth. She was loyal to the Stewards and to the King who shall one day return.
"As the years passed, my parents often fought more and more often, for the wars had come and my father took it into his head to be against Gondor. He would teach my brothers all the stories of his youth, but scorned the ancient tales of Minas Tirith and of Westerness. Then it was that my mother's anger grew fierce and she showed the strength that was in her blood. Beregil did what he could to make peace between them, but it was a battle that was never fully resolved…"
She sighed. "I still remember being very young and asking my uncle for the tales of his childhood, not the northern stories but of his own younger years by the coast. He told me very little, for he had promised my mother not to speak of such things to me. That line of my family is lost forever, now, locked away in time and no dwarf-smith, however clever, is able to open that box for me."
Kili glanced at his brother and saw the pained expression on his face. He thought of the many tales they had told on their journey north, their family stories and the histories that they had shared with Betta while she sat silently thinking on the lost line of her family tree. And not just a line! A whole half of her history was gone beyond reach leaving only a box and the tattoo on her skin.
"I was seven years old when the Haradrim pressed their assault on Ithilien," Betta went on, "and the Corsairs joined them, laying siege to the coasts. My mother's brothers were among the first to volunteer their service to the Steward, and Beregil soon made up his mind to go with them.
"It was sad the night when he told my mother what he had decided. My father was away, and I watched them through the doorway. I saw my mother put her arms around my uncle's neck as she cried, and I have often wondered…" She shook her head. "But that was long ago."
"When my father returned to our house and heard that all other men had given their oath to the Steward, he was angry. He said loudly to all that would hear him that he had no desire to die in the service of what he called a foreign army. The morning after Beregil announced his choice, they argued in the open yard and everyone could hear my uncle call my father a coward. He had never approved of Bereg's obsession with the fables of the north and often said that he took too much truth from old stories.
"They fought, and Beregil left our house still angry. My father left soon after, I thought to follow his brother, but less than an hour later one of the farmhands came running to the house to tell my mother that Bereg had been injured in the field as he struggled to chop down a dead tree. Why he had attempted the task, he never explained. That old tree had stood there as long as anyone could remember, but was as solid as a beam of iron. No axe could crack it, and my father's had slipped in his hand, cracking his leg instead.
"This was two days before the men of Lebennin were set to march to the river crossing and join with Lossarnach. My father's leg was maimed and he could not have joined them if he had wished to do it. Many of the men whispered that he had injured himself to escape the battle. I was young and not very wise, but even then I thought that he was not a brave enough man to take a blade to his own flesh even to save his life.
"Whatever the men might say, my father had not volunteered to fight; he had outright refused. Aid from Lebennin had been asked for but not demanded by the Steward, and so there was no danger of him or of any reluctant man being conscripted into battle."
Betta looked up from the fire and fixed her eyes on Kili. "And so, you see, it is not so unusual to find cowardice in my bloodline," she said. "My father carried that limp for the rest of his life and it saved him from ever having to prove his cowardice on the battlefield until we came finally to Rohan where a horse might carry a soldier who was too lame to march in line."
"One reluctant soldier does not make cowards of a whole family," Kili said.
"My father was more than reluctant."
"And you have shown neither cowardice nor reluctance," Fili told her. "You have killed an orc and with one shot vanished a pack of sorcerous wolves. I will not hear you name yourself a coward again. I say that you are not and that should be enough to convince you," he said, and Kili agreed.
"As you wish," was all that Betta would say, but Fili thought that in her eyes he saw that she was pleased.
"As I said, the accident did not kill my father, but it was the death of his pride. The battle that he avoided took the life of his only brother, and with him the last link to his family. He more and more took to sitting up at night reading the old stories with candles lit as if he read them in books, but there was no book. He murmured to himself the tales, and I learned much by slipping out of my bed to sit beside the door and listen to him when all the rest of the house was silent. He taught my brothers their history out of his own memory, and though my mother was ill pleased by it, she no longer had the strength to fight him. The death of her brothers was a blow to her, and she no longer had Beregil to take her side against her husband.
"A year later, my youngest brother drowned in the stream near our farm. Bereg grieved the loss and did not rise from his bed for three days. When he finally spoke, he declared that we would leave our farm in Lebennin for he could no longer look upon any part of that river. He claimed also that during his illness he had grown afraid of the field where his leg had been cut, but I think that was only a ploy to convince my mother who would have told him that it was a simple thing to avoid the river but our house was built upon the field within sight of the old tree.
"It was terrible to see my mother wrenched from her family's farm, but at least my father knew enough to sell the land at a cheaper price to a distant cousin rather than hand it over to a stranger who would not love it. That alone made the loss bearable, as we left the fields and rivers of my youth for the steep hills of Lossarnach. It was a land that Bereg would soon learn to hate as much as he hated my fair Lebennin.
"Our new home was so near to the fortress of Minas Tirith that the Wall of the Pelannor could be glimpsed by climbing a tall tree upon a tall hill near to the town where we lived. With no love of the land to keep them at home, my brothers could not resist the call to battle and to bravery that had claimed their uncles. One by one as they came of age, the each joined the armies of Gondor, her ships and her soldiers, and one by one they fell in her wars."
Betta's voice had begun to fill with tears, and she stopped to wipe them away. Kili would have asked to hear the tale of her brothers' deaths as well, but Fili saw the question on his lips and shook his head. Now was not the time.
"You need not tell it all tonight," Fili said, but she shook her head.
"If you do not hear my tale tonight," she said, "then you will never hear it, for I do not intend to tell it again until I am called to judgment beyond the circles of this world."
She frowned and touched her hand to her hair. "With each son lost, my mother and father fell further into grief. They had little strength left to care for our dwindling family and it fell to me to keep food on our table. We had little land to farm and less opportunity to trade, and so I took my father's bow from his hand and pressed him until he taught me how to shoot our food, but most of my skill I taught myself or learned from the men of nearby towns who pitied me. One or more of them might even have married me if I had been more beautiful or more willing, but my father was happily beyond arranging it.
"It was at this time that my father discovered that I had learned his northern legends, and that gave some little life to him for a while. He was angry at first but soon realized that I was the only heart he had left to write his history upon. He began to instruct me on what little I did not already know and to teach me to read the writing of the strange language that I had learned only in speech.
"After he put his last son into the ground, Bereg took it into his head that we should leave Gondor completely. Every blade of grass in that country was hateful to him, for he said that it was Gondor that had taken his sons from him and not his own hard heart that had driven them away. My mother was a ghost of herself. Grief had taken her spirit and her body was an empty shell only brought to life when I would sit before her near the fire and she would comb my hair, her arms moving as if they were raised on strings like a marionette. It was the only time that she found joy enough to smile." Betta pulled her fingers through her knotted locks.
"In Rohan, there was less work for a woman's hands to do. I could not hunt, and I knew nothing of horses. My father had nothing left to preserve his life, so he traded what few valuables we had left for a horse to ride. Rohan was in need of men at that time to guard against the Hillmen. My father's lame leg did not hinder him on horseback, and he had always been skilled with a bow. Now, he learned the spear as well and even could wield a sword if one were lent to him. As the strength returned to his body, his spirits were raised and I thought that we might finally be allowed to build a life again and live in peace, but it was not meant to be."
Betta's fingers had been at work in her hair, untangling knots, but now she felt the thin, raised lines of the mark on her skin. She remembered the pain that had come with the lines. No other man or dwarf that she had met in her travels had known so much about her as she now told to Fili and Kili.
"The savage Hillmen had often troubled the people of Rohan, but only a year after we settled there they had begun to make raids more bold and cruel and more deadly than any of the raids that the Easterlings or the Corsairs had made upon Gondor. King Fengel sent his army to put an end to the trouble. He was too old to ride with his men, and some said that there had been contention between the King and his Marshals, and so he put the battle into the care of a few that he deemed trouble-makers but who had the love of the people. Those, he sent off toward the Gap until cooler tempers could prevail.
"This time, my father was determined to ride out to battle. He was less brave than he was fey and reckless. He said that he wished to face down the death which had stolen his sons from him. Rohan and Gondor were and are still close allies – Thengel, the only son of the King, even now resides in Minas Tirith – and, as I said, the King wished for many men to send against his enemies. He took my father into his service and gave him a sword.
"The night before he left for the Gap, my father told me for the first time of the design that I now bear. He said that it was a seal or crest of his family and that it had been handed down but never drawn. He thought once or twice that he might teach it to me, each time that another of his sons had passed, but it was not until that night that he had some premonition or fear that it would be his last and he had made up his mind.
"There was no time to teach the design and, though he might draw it in the dirt for me to see, he refused to leave it there after he left or to commit it to paper. I do not know where he first learned of the art of skin drawing, but he knew the method of it and along the straits of Anfalas there were still small tribes that had descended from the Easterlings and Haradrim who sought protection under Gondor's banner during the great wars.
"It was his good luck and my bad that there was an Easterling woman journeying north with other traders – the Rohirrm were not eager for such visits, but it was sometimes necessary for trade and to keep good relations between them and those who would carry their messages north to the woodsmen and east over Anduin to those few of their peoples who yet dwelt near a place they called the Bight.
"This woman was as twisted and withered as an old oak tree, and her hands were thick with rheumatic knots, but she wielded her tools well and knew the needle and the knife. My father said that I would take the drawing upon my skin or let it die with him, but in his eyes, I saw that he would have rather held me down or struck me senseless that suffer the latter choice. He paid the woman in gold and volunteered his own razor to shave back my hair."
As she spoke, Betta's hand had slipped up to tug at the tangled locks again, and she pulled her hair down to hide her face. "I will say that the old woman was not cruel. She went as gently as she could about her art and spoke with a soothing voice in her own tongue, but in broken Westron she said how beautiful the color of the ink was, and how delicate the design would be on a beautiful girl." Betta laughed. "I am no beautiful girl, but my mother was away from home and I was glad for the kindness of anyone, even a nomadic, Easterling crone.
"I do not know whether you would then say now that I gave my consent to the mark I bear. I did not refuse it, but I was not free in my choice. I had never had much hope in marrying, but after that night I gave it up, and when my father's body was born back to us, I took his box and his bow and a few other of his possessions and was determined that I would go north. In the wilderness my hair might grow back and far from Gondor where I was known, and from Rohan where my mark was known, I might find a better life and the treasure that my father had promised was there.
"My mother and I waited in Rohan for the remainder of that year. It was in winter that my father died, shot by an arrow and trampled under his own horse. My mother did not live long after him, and when the ground thawed in spring, I laid them together beneath it. Bereg seemed to have found some small reserve of courage, for his valor in battle earned his family a few coins of gratitude. I had some friends among the Rohirrm at that time and was able to sell what little we had of property.
"I began my lonely walk beside the Mering stream, but the march through the Gap was hard and dangerous. The Hillmen and the Dunlendings were scattered but not defeated, and the mark I bore would have marked me out for any man to claim."
Betta sighed and raised up her head, looking from brother to brother. Her cheeks were wet with tears but her expression was hard. "So, now you know another of my secrets, and the most shameful of them, too. What do you say to it? Or, would you like me to continue my tale and tell you of the long miles between the Gap and the Greyflood, over Minhiriath, north to a strange little town called Bree, and then south again to Sarn Ford? I passed over unnamed hill and field, through the land of the Halflings and to the havens of the Elves before crossing west over the Lhun and following it north to you. I have been welcomed into homes and chased out of villages, I have starved and been very, very much alone, but I have never before told the tale of my father's fall. Ask your questions now, for I will never speak of it again."
The dwarves sat in silence, thinking on all that they had learned. Fili remembered his words to his brother at Ered Luin when he had said that the strange women was soft and untried, that she would be a burden on the road. He had been proven wrong more than once on this journey, but never had he been more unjust in his assessment of anyone.
"I have no questions," Fili said. "You have suffered much in a few short years, and I am no longer surprised that you have survived with us in these hills. It seems that our journey here has been less dangerous than the life you lived before we met. Kili told me once that there was little love lost between you and your father. Now, I suppose that I know why that is."
Betta raised an eyebrow and glanced at Kili. "He told you that, did he?" she said.
"Well, not exactly in so many words," Kili said.
She smiled and nodded. "But you were right, in a way," she said softly. "I loved my father because he was my father, but I did not love the man for himself. He was pitiless and hard and did not deserve many of the good things that he was given in this life, but I do not know what his life was before he came to Lebennin, and perhaps a more generous daughter would judge him less harshly than I."
She sighed, and then her smile brightened. "But if it were not for his poor treatment of me, I might never have determined to go north. His box would not have led me to dwarves and I would not have made friends with two proud princes of the west. That is a worthwhile ending to my tale with or without the gold."
Fili smiled sadly, and Kili laughed. "You weight our worth too highly," he said, but his laughter dispelled much of the gloom that had settled over them.
Fili found it easier to accept the strange mark upon Betta's skin knowing where it had come from. The dwarves of the Iron Hills marked their bodies in memory of great battles or to honor a painful loss. Betta's war had been waged without weapons, but that made her suffering it no less honorable in his eyes.
"There is no shame in the mark you bear," he said, "and no shame in your story. I thank you for entrusting it to us."