The northern lands are harsh and bitter, frozen under the lingering bite of a Dark Lord whose name has been forgotten by all but the eldest of the peoples of Middle-earth. In the far reaches of the north, there stray the evil creatures born of an ancient age when Luthien sang beneath the trees and Earendil sailed upon the waters of the sea and both yet dwelt within the circles of the world.

Little is known of the Forodwaith, for the Elves never went there and the Dwarves pass it by with a dark look and a curse for the dragons that lurk within. A few brave tribes of Men made their camps along the western coast and upon Cape that overhangs the Icebay of Forochel, but if those enduring nomads ever wandered farther north and east than the stony slopes of the Mountains of Angmar, what they saw there they kept to themselves and no tale of it came ever south to the sun-warmed lands.

The Lossoth lived upon Forochel and were a people of legend to the Men of Gondor. Those hardy hunters, though they did not go into the Forodwaith, sometimes went east to the dark hills where they tracked the migrating beasts along the borders of the wasteland, and they had many grim tales to tell of the northern lands, passed down from father to son. Their stories of the south were more merry. Grass was a strange invention to them, and they laughed on cold nights when the old men rolled up their thick leggings and danced with bare knees and bare feet in the warmth of the snow-huts while old women sang songs describing the men of the south who lived half-naked and poked their fingers into the ground to draw up strange fruits that came not from the sea but from unfrozen soil.

And yet, the Lossoth were not wholly ignorant of the history of the world. There were many things that had been passed down from mouth to mouth among the snow-people that might have been news even to the Eldar, and many secrets of the winter-lands they knew. Merchants and traders came north to Forochel selling steel fishhooks and buying seal skins, but they were few and most often came from the farms near the River Lune or from the dwarf halls of the Blue Mountains. Those men, the Lossoth thought strange, with their pale skin and wide eyes; they spoke little when they met them and never of themselves.

Ix was not old, nor was he young enough to sit in warmth and listen to the old tales. He had children to feed and a wife with more skill in cutting fish than he had in catching them. He was the nephew of the childless Chief of a small village that in winter camped along the southern coast of Forochel. The other men thought that Ix was too proud, even if he was the son of the Chief's brother, and it was well known that he spent too much time with the merchants and wanders from the south. He had learned the common speech of those lands to negotiate with traders, but also he allowed strangers to sleep under the roof of his own hut – a thing that not even the Chief would do with his most honored guests.

There was one man, tall and dark, who came regularly to the house of Ix, a strange man in a grey cloak who walked alone through the snow and brought with him nothing to trade. Ix learned many things from this man on these visits and after the stranger would leave, he would sit in long thought beside the fire.

There were many stories in Ix's head, old and new, strange and common-place. He listened much and spoke little, but of one skill he could boast and no man would argue: he could throw the heavy spear with such strength and aim that he always returned from the black hills with the most meat of all the hunting party. And he was always generous in sharing.

For this reason, the men forgave him his pride and every young boy was eager to follow him on the seasonal hunts that he led when the weather grew cold and the large, horned animals came south to shelter from the winds within a wide, flat plain a few miles from the old, abandoned fortress.

The oldest tale that Ix held in his head was of an ancient family that had come out of the north many generations ago, before even the great southern King had come and gone to die in the ice-churning sea. That family had been Lossoth, but they were outcast and called thieves by their people who dwelt upon the Cape. They made their home apart, under the stones of the black hills, but when evil built its city there, they had moved south, leaving much behind but taking with them a great treasure, a stone of strange power and even stranger history. It was the stone that they had been accused of stealing, but its power was much feared and no one dared to take it back from them.

When the fire burned low and he could not sleep for the loudness of the wailing wind, the thoughts of Ix dwelt upon this story most of all. When he was young and his father still alive, he had had a dream of omen that one day he would be offered this mighty stone but that he must not steal it back by force but pay for it in goods and in that way only would it bless his village.

It was a strange dream, and one that no Shaman could interpret for him. It returned to him each year on the night before he was to set out toward the black hills to hunt. It had returned to him last night, and he had lain awake until the first light of dawn broke over the eastern horizon.

The day was cold and the sky bright as ice when Ix stepped onto his sled that was pulled by a long harness of shaggy-haired dogs. He stood at the head of a large band of hunting men and their families stood behind them to bid them farewell. Winter had begun to bite and the migrating herds would be waiting for them upon the plain. In three days time, the party would pass through the high hills and into the valley that they knew well. There were dangers upon that trail and within the valley, but Ix had led the hunt before and he was not afraid.

If luck was with them, within a fortnight they would be riding home again, their sleds burdened with the heavy meat that would see them through the cold months when fish were hard to reach under the frozen waves. The hunters sent up a great call of voices and their dogs joined them, howling in their eagerness to run. Ix shook the reigns and his sled sprang forward. The others followed, and the party sped away, disappearing into the white fog of morning.
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It was some trick of the light upon the white snow that made the trees ahead of him seem so much farther away than they were. Fili felt as if he had been walking for hours; he knew by the sun that it had been less than one. The wood appeared to have come no nearer, but the hill behind him shrank farther and farther away each time he looked back and so he stopped looking back.

He had been spoiled by the clear path of the road that they had followed. Here, where the land was wide and open, the snow was soft and deep. His legs ached from forcing his way through it and, with no hills to block the wind, it blew down into the valley with a relentless force that froze his face if he looked into it. His hunger gnawed at his belly with sharp teeth; he had not realized how starved he was and the last of his energy had almost been spent in lifting his feet again and again and again. He was cold, colder than he had ever been in his life and his hood was full of snow, but he pressed on, thinking always of the two that he had left behind who were waiting for his return.

The north side of the road had been a wall of steep hills, and they had all three imagined that the hills would continue on behind them, but they had been wrong. It had been a front. Beyond the first row of hills was a wide, flat plain nestled at the bottom of a rocky bowl. Indeed, their own hill with the black standing stone upon it was centered along the southern rim of the bowl and to the east and west and ahead of him beyond the trees, Fili could see the hazy gray wall of hills that made up the westernmost reaches of the Mountains of Angmar.

The peaks were tall and sharp, impossible to pass for anyone who did not know the hidden paths between the stony crags, but the flat land that Fili walked upon held few barriers to his travel. Only the tall drifts of snow blown up like dunes in the desert, some so tall that when he reached them they rose like low hills themselves and he pressed his way around instead of over them. His agitated imagination made him fear that if he attempted the climb he would sink through to the heart of the snow-hill and be frozen there forever.

In all his life, he had seen no land to compare with this frozen prairie where the grass was ice and the rolling hills were built of snow. He could only draw upon the stories of his youth, descriptions of the wide, open spaces of Minhiriath where the Greenway met the long North-South Road, or he remembered how Betta had described the flat fields of Rohan where horses roamed and ran in wild herds.

There were also, he recalled, in the farthest reaches of the south, the dead lands where no man dwelt and great winds blew the sand in storms that were as sharp as a blizzard was cold. East of Rhun there were empty lands and perhaps one day Fili would see them… if he lived long enough to reach Erebor on his uncle's quest.

He had seen snow before, of course, but it was usually upon the tops of tall mountains or lying like a soft blanket over the mountain's feet. The Halls of Thorin Oakenshield were north enough to suffer from cold weather, and though Fili and Kili had laughed at Betta's unfamiliarity with the white stuff of winter, the brutal bite of the land they were in was beyond what even the brothers were used to.

The cold air caught in Fili's throat and froze the breath in his lungs. When he exhaled, the ice gathered in his beard and upon the braids on either side of his mouth. His cheeks were numb and his fingers pricked by a thousand cold needles. He chaffed them in his gloves and was glad that he had not burdened himself with Kili's bow. He would not have been able to hold the arrow, let alone draw back the string.

It seemed strange that the cold would grow so steadily worse with every step north that he took, but he was soon to learn that the legends were true and the Forodwaith was cursed from a darker age.

Fili was not yet two miles onto the plain when he fell and for the first time did not immediately stand again. His arms and legs felt weighted down and he lay upon his back in the snow, feeling the cold creep in upon him. Darkness covered his sight. There was something devilish about the hills that seemed to take the heart from him and as he looked up he thought he saw the mountains grow taller on either side. They leaned in over and above him as if they were his tomb.

Far overhead before the two points of the mountains touched, he saw the dim, pale curve of the fading moon. It was nearly gone but lingered in the sky though the sun was sailing close to him. Fili struggled to remember his brother and the warm welcome that would be waiting back at the camp when he returned with meat, but the only future he could see before him was a cold, blue body buried under snow.

There could be no food here in the cold. What did he have to hope for?

Kili had promised to take Betta south to the Rangers, and at the first light of tomorrow's morning, they would be gone. Harandir would no doubt be glad to take Betta from him, Fili thought bitterly, and the man would have hard words to say to the surviving brother of the pair of dwarves who had nearly killed her in the north. Kili had not promised, but if he were wise, he would return then to Thorin and remain there.

Would Thorin search for him? Fili wondered. He took out one of his short knives and held it before his eyes, peering through the growing dark at the stamp upon the hilt, the seal of the Kings of Durin's line. It was the only sign that Fili carried to mark him as a prince, and he seldom looked at it.

Would Thorin search for his lost heir?

No. He would not.

The cold sank deeper into his bones. He understood now what a weight it was to be a King. Thorin could not take on the search for his foolish nephew. He had a mountain of dwarves to look after and a quest to lead. If Thorin was to undertake the search for Fili's body, then he must forget Erebor. Fili was not certain that he himself who had walked upon it could rediscover the strange and winding road that had led them north; Thorin had neither map nor guide to direct him.

The darkness had nearly overtaken his heart, but something in Fili's body stirred suddenly against it. What of their guide? He thought, and for a moment the sky seemed to grow light again and the looming mountains to recede. He thought of Betta's face and the anger in her eyes when she had looked as him as he bade her farewell upon the ridge. He heard her voice calling him a fool. Who was she to be angry with him? She knew as well as Kili did that he was the only one of them left with strength to hunt – not that he had made a good show of his strength so far.

Fili scowled, but even as he did, he knew in his heart that Betta's anger was not with him and not because he had ignored her advice to wait and gather better supplies before riding into the north. Like a true dwarf-woman, Betta was angry and jealous because she knew that she could not have him for her own. He heard her words again, that if he were only a man of her own race and station she might have fought for the right to him. She had laughed then, but the smile had not reached her eyes. He would not be surprised if in dwarf fashion she refused to take on any man if she could not have this one. She would not give up the search for him; she would not let Kili take her south.

The last of the darkness slipped away from Fili's eyes and he saw the moon and sun together in the sky. To them only he admitted aloud the truth that he had hidden from his brother.

Whatever fancy words a Man might use to express his love had no place upon a dwarvish tongue. Fili felt the flame of anger in his breast that answered hers; if she were a true dwarf-woman and not only so much like one, then he could have acknowledged her right to him and claimed his right to her as was the proper way of things. They might have been happy. But he was no Man, and she was no Dwarf; and yet, he could not abandon her any more than he could abandon Kili to live in a world without his older brother.

His strength and stubbornness returned, and Fili dragged himself to his feet, shaking off the last lingering cold. He felt life return to his limbs again and heard a low moan upon the wind. He imagined that some ghastly spirit that had been holding him down and whispering doubt into his ears was now shaken free and fled.

He put his knife into his belt and once more turned his feet toward the trees, ignoring the cold and his hunger. He felt his mind was clear and he must wait. Find food and shelter, find warmth, and then think on the future. He would have a choice to make, but it was not to be made here.

Halfway between hill and wood – what Fili guessed was half-way in the strange measurements of the white-washed land – he tumbled down another slope, but this time it was no hill-basin that he had fallen into. He found himself in what seemed to be a long, low furrow only a few feet deep and perhaps five feet across. It was a path pressed down hard and firm into the snow. He might have thought that it was a trail for animals, but there were no tracks that he could recognize, only the endless waves of wind-blown snow.

Whatever had made it, it ran toward the woods and to walk upon it would make Fili's march much easier. If he were not so tired, he might have let his fear convince him to take a different path, but as it was, he had no choice. With a wary eye and ears listening for any sound, he started down the unexpected road. It seemed to go all the way to the tree line, and that would cut his time in half, so long as it did not lead him into danger.

In any case, even if it led him straight to a troll or an army of goblins, it was better than being left alone with himself, his thoughts prey to any passing spirit. There were ghosts in this land, and Fili had no desire to battle any more with them.

Please, please, please review! Feedback is essential to my muse's self-esteem.

And thank you to Borys68 for inspiring me to review my Jack London, and to the Gutenberg Project for providing free ebooks that I can read at work ;-)

-Paint