When the Witch-king ruled the northern lands, he set his throne high upon the mountains of Angmar in petty flattery to the greater thrones that had come before it, but his plain business, the daily cares of a warlord, were done within the halls of his fortress at Carn Dum. Through the hills and mountains, and over the plains between, fierce and foul creatures roamed and were pressed into service in his armies. Then that land was first called haunted. The Men who had once dwelt there fled in fear, and the Dwarves who might once have taken their trade routes from Belegost to Mithrin and Rhun chose another, safer road.
Many of those evil servants and slaves were destroyed during the terrible battles that took place over hundreds of years until Fornost was taken and their Master moved south to set his throne within the stolen stronghold. From there, his shadow would have spread throughout all of Eriador, but the fleet of Gondor came, and the allied strength of Elves and Men defeated him; the Witch-king was driven out, his creatures hunted from hill and vale by the Dunedain and Cirdan's elves.
But not all were found.
A few escaped and fled north into Forodwaith or hid in the hills above Carn Dum. The old fortress was abandoned but it was not empty though no good people came to reclaim it. The forgotten slaves of the defeated sorcerer still dwelt there in cold and biting hunger, each fighting for rule over the others for evil creatures are seldom masters of their own will; the evil that they do is off-hand and without thought, though this makes them all the more dangerous when they are met at unawares. Left behind, they linger on in the hills, marching in rank along untended paths until a strong master appears who might bend their will to his own. Fulfilling old duties and gnawing old bones, they wait for the day when evil will rise up again and make use of them.
One of those most ancient fugitives was the old sentinel of the western pass that led along a narrow, twisting chasm to the very gates of Carn Dum itself. The pass had long ago fallen into disrepair and could only be taken at great risk which only a fool would take, risking life and limb for a sight of the twisted towers and empty eye-socket windows of the fortress, but still the sentinel sat at his guard. Long ago, when he was very young, he had ignored his duty and refused to join the battle in the south. He was a creature of the northern lands, of ice and snow and bitter wind, and would have done little of worth in open fields under the sun. That reasoning would have earned him scant praise from his Master as the dark lord fled from Fornost and recoiled in fear at the strength of Glorfindel, Captain of Rivendell.
But those battles were long ago and far away from where the old sentinel now sat in his icy cave, hunting what animals wandered into his grasp, devouring even his own friends and neighbors – fugitives of Angmar like himself, or the children of fugitives – if they were fool enough to call upon him at dinner time. Great was his strength, but weak and decrepit were his thoughts; he spent most of his time looking up at the broken pass to the old fortress. In better days, the armies would come marching down from above, or running slaves would pass by with messages for other camps, and then the old sentinel might steal a soldier or two to make his meal. Now, the only thing that came down the pass was cold snow and the cry of the wind.
In the cold months, the herds came down from the north, and he might sweep them up by the handful upon the western plains, but his friends had once told him – from a distance and with an eye for escape – that there were many more herds in the north, and that if you were to walk far enough into the Forodwaith, you might find a land so cold and desolate that the Yellow Witch did not dare show her face for days or even whole weeks on end.
Those friends had gone north, the ones that had not made their home in the old sentinel's belly; but they had never sent back word whether or not their promised land existed; and so, the sentinel stayed home, guarding a pass that no longer needed guarding. Better the meat you know than the meat you wish for, he said to himself, gnawing old bones and breaking whole trees across his knee for the fire. The few neighbors he had left, he never saw; he had eaten too many of them to be sociable, and when he went wandering they refused to invite him in for tea… or, rather, they hid their tea cakes and themselves, and so he had neither, and he soon forgot what other creatures looked like or sounded like and he knew only the taste of wild beasts.
Behind the sentinel's icy cave was a cavern of stone with many halls and passages that he had once explored and pillaged for iron tools, of which there had once been many. He had broken most of them by now, but sometimes small gangs of skittish orcs would come up from below, renegades of the eastern mountains searching for a new place to set up on their own. They were good for a snack, but little more than a mouthful apiece.
Farther back, beneath the stone caves, and down a passage that was too narrow for him to explore, lay his last friend who was even older than the sentinel himself, and when he grew lonely, he would sit beside the passage and speak at the old worm. Mostly, he talked of food, or of hunting, or of the old days when food marched down the western pass and did not need to be hunted, but his old friend never answered. That was fine with the sentinel; he needed no answer. It had been years since he heard so much as a moan or a groan, a snuffle or a sigh from that quarter.
Perhaps the great beast was sleeping, or dead, or had he finally managed to work his fat body out of the hole he had trapped himself in and escape into the north?
The old sentinel sighed and sucked the marrow from the bones of the beasts he had devoured that day. There was still a good pile of meat at the back of his cave. He had hunted well last night, but he was restless and unsettled. The spirits outside his cave were uneasy; something had come into the hills, they whispered, something new and dimwitted was roaming about, heedless of danger, but carrying a long-forgotten power. They shivered and shook, murmured and muttered, flying back and forth between the hills.
The sentinel had no interest in power, new or old; his thoughts were of meat. If there was something new in the hills, perhaps it was good to eat. He could always do with a change of flavor.
He had smelled something strange on the hill yesterday, near to that damned stone, but he had ignored it then, being in a hurry to get back to his cave before the Yellow Witch looked down on him again. But tonight he had many dark hours before dawn, and he was hungry for sport.
So it was that in the early morning, before the moon had risen over the eastern hills, the old sentinel went forth when he might have stayed home and enjoyed a warm fire and a feast already caught. He lumbered out into the hills, his broad, flat feet dragging a wide, deep path behind him. He followed the excited airs of the spirits.
They had caught something, had they? He chuckled to himself. Well, he would steal away their fun and throw it into the pot. After all, what good was a meat to a ghost? The sentinel laughed, and if any of his neighbors had been around to hear it, they would have known to hide themselves far away and wait for the sun to rise.
But, perhaps, as is often the case, if this great monster had not left his comfortable cave, our heroes' worst luck would not have turned out to be their best, and they might still be wandering blindly through the snow, or have gone home with empty pockets.
.
As she retraced her steps along the dark, mountain road, Betta was glad for the moonlight, even if it was still only a thin sliver of the whole ship. After she left the broken cleft and narrow stair, she had been tempted to light a torch against the night, but some instinct held back her hand. On the eastward journey, she had met with no sight or sound of danger to worry her, but something had changed while she had been hidden between rock walls. The air seemed charged with nervous energy and watchful eyes; the land no longer slept and she was no longer alone.
She walked without light, and her eyes soon grew used to the shadows once more. In a cave below ground, she would have been blind and afraid, but so long as there were kindled stars overhead, her heart would not fail her. And, after all, this was not the first time that she had walked all through the night, and snow-covered hills made for an easier path than a thick wood with tripping roots and hard, broken ground. Winter was not her native season, but these hills had been the home of her ancestors, and whatever deeper senses her father's fathers had obeyed were still remembered in her blood.
The mist had thinned and, though there were spirits within it, they were restless and afraid. They made no attempt to hinder her, but she heard their excited whispers behind her back as she passed by. They did not assault her, but still, her heart pounded hard in her chest. She feared for the brothers and what ill might have befallen them in the few hours since she had left the stone.
She was little more than an hour from the standing stone when she tripped and stumbled into a deep depression. In the dim light, she had difficulty making out its dimensions, but soon decided that it must be a path pressed down by a wide sled or flat-bottomed cart. There were no hoof prints to mark the ox or horse that had drawn it; indeed, there were no prints at all that she could find, not of skid or wheel, hoof or boot.
Curiosity gnawed at her, and the desire to investigate this strange sign of other life, but she knew that she must find the dwarves first and be sure that they were safe. And, if her thoughts turned more often to the safety of one brother over the other, who could blame her?
Betta pressed on along the road, keeping her eyes open for any new sign, but she met with no obstacle save her own foreboding.
Not a quarter of an hour after, she met with another pressed trough in the snow, the same width and depth as the first, but fresher seeming. This time she stopped and stepped down into it with care, thinking to cross over it and go on, but with a better eye for detail, she noted that the path was like none she had ever seen made in dirt, grass or gravel. Between the ridges on either side, the snow was swept back and forth as dust would be by a broom; but, whether it was the fall of the moonlight or her own untrained eye that allowed her to notice what a skilled tracker may not, she thought that she saw the prints of wide, round boots on either side.
Curiosity got the better of her, then, and she walked a dozen or more yards along the channel. It led away from the road and into the mountains and, just as she had made up her mind to turn back, she saw something dark dropped to one side of the path.
Digging it out of the drift, she recognized the large, heavy glove and the steal stamped into the leather on the back of the wrist. "Kili?" She stared at it in surprise.
She was still more than a mile from their camp under the stone. Had the dwarves missed her sooner than she had anticipated? They should not have found her gone until morning. How did Kili's glove come to be here, far from camp and away from the road, unless they had already been searching for her and lost their way in the dark?
Betta was torn now in her heart and uncertain which direction she was meant to take. A lost glove could mean anything. It may have been stolen by a scavenging animal, and even now both brothers might be asleep under the standing stone, still unaware that she had gone. Or, they had come looking for her, had been attacked and carried off, and Kili had dropped his glove as a sign to her or because he was bound as a captive. What had left this trail? Harmless nomads who had captured the dwarves as enemies, or slave-traders out of the east who would sell them to the orcs of Hithaeglir?
She looked up at the stars for council. If the dwarves were safe, then they needed no help of hers. If they were captive, every moment of delay could be their last.
Betta thrust Kili's glove into the pocket of her coat and turned her face to the north. She hoped that she was wrong, and that morning light would find the brothers on the safer road south, but if they were captured, then she must follow their trail and attempt what rescue she could.
Not that she fooled herself into thinking that she would succeed in the task. More likely, she reasoned, she would be captured herself and killed alongside them, but that was better than returning east to the devilish black valley and green lights of Carn Dum, a sight which stained the sky and the heart.
The pressed path was easier to follow than the snow-covered road, and Betta passed quickly into the mountains while the moon sailed overhead. She wished for the sun to rise quickly and join him, for the dark night was no comfort; it would not hide her. She was walking into danger, wishing for Kili's indomitable daring and Fili's quiet strength. It had been a mistake to leave them, and when she found them again, she would readily tell them so.
She was a fool to have run away; she had been stubborn and afraid. Too stubborn to give up her quest when Fili asked, and too afraid of the confessions that he had made and to which she could not give the answer he deserved. Betta would gladly admit her foolishness to all of Middle-earth if it meant that she could see Fili once more and know that he was not dead.