Middle-earth, and all who dwell within it, belongs to Tolkien. I am grateful to him for growing this beautiful garden in which our imaginations can play. Please review!

The long walk through the night and snow and bitter cold nearly did her in, and if it had not been for the meat that Fili had brought them, she would have fallen dead in a snow-bank long before she came to the end of her path. But Betta did not fall, although she was exhausted and feeling the pain in her legs from the long climb upwards into the mountains. After struggling through the narrow paths of the high passes for nearly an hour, she knew that daylight was coming, but not soon enough!

Following the pressed path around a stone outcrop, she looked up and marveled to see the bright yellow light of fire reflecting upon mirrored ice. The path that she had followed wound up a steep road, past the fallen remains of a huge stone hut that had been little more than three walls and a stone ceiling overhead even when it yet stood. In the mixed light of fire and moon, Betta saw a large, yawning cave that opened upon a sheer ledge above her. It was too dark to guess how high it was… or how large the fire; but, if the fire were for whatever had made the wide tracks that she followed, then it was large indeed.

A more experienced wanderer or warrior would have already guessed what she had found. Harandir could have spent a whole day naming all the beasts and cruel creatures that they might find in the northern mountains; he would certainly have warned her away and told her that the dwarves were dead and she was a fool to risk her life over a pair of corpses.

Of course, Harandir was not there, and would not have risked his life to save even live dwarves. Betta had only her own heart to advise her. If she went forward now, there was no going back. Her footsteps in the snow would betray her; the path up to the cliff was too narrow and exposed, and she would not be able to hide herself.

She hesitated for only a moment, and it was the memory of Fili's grim smile that decided her. She hid her pack in the fallen hut. From the snow, she guessed that nothing had disturbed that dwelling for many years, but she was careful to cover her tracks to and from the hiding place.

And then, with a deep breath and a glance at the trembling stars above, she started up the narrow road. Here, the mark of huge and heavy boots was more clear to see. The snow was pressed down hard and in places worn as smooth as ice. Betta slid down more often than she climbed up, but slowly she made her way toward the cave. She could hear deep, muttered words, but the echoes of the cave made it impossible to tell if it was one voice or many. Already, the lore that she had learned from her mother and upon her long journey was returning to her. She had her guesses as to what she would find, and they were enough to chill the blood of a less stubborn woman.

"I am mistaken and it is some other beast," she said. She had reached the ledge and pressed her body close against the wall near the cave.

Betta listened carefully, hoping to hear some word or movement that would tell her whether she had struggled all that way for living or dead dwarves, but whatever was in the cave was silent now. She heard something large and heaving being moved about, the clatter of metal, the cracking of wood in a fire.

What she meant to do next would have been brave if there had been any choice in it, but when one cannot go back, then to go forward is no great feat. As it was, Betta was saved the trouble, the master of the cave himself appeared, lunging into view and squatting down in the doorway. He looked down into the valley, picking at his teeth with a broad, short sword. A dwarf's sword.

Betta clenched her teeth and pressed her back as hard against the cold wall as she could, willing the shadows to cover her. It was only yesterday that she had sat beneath the shelter of a standing stone and told Kili the old tale of Helm Hammerhand and how the Hillmen of the south described him hunting through their villages like a snow-troll during the cold, winter nights. In Dunland, Betta had sat apart from the crowd, shrouded in her hood and cloak as that tale was told, and she had heard the small child pipe up to ask, what was a snow-troll?

The old man telling the tale had laughed at the child and said that there was no such thing, but he would not have laughed if he had stood next to Betta upon the ledge and saw what she saw there. Betta herself had told Kili when he asked the child's question: there were no snow-trolls. There were trolls, and there were trolls that lived in the snow, but a snow-troll was a myth, a story told to the young, like the talking trees of Fangorn or the White Men of Ered Nimrais; these things lived only in legend and rumor.

But her certainty turned to doubt and Betta would have believed even that the great eagles could speak with human tongue, for there was no other name for the thing she saw now than Snow-troll!

Its great bulk was so much that she had difficulty comprehending it. The creature's head rose up more than four times the height of her own, and he might easily have looked over the roof of a two-story farm house. His arms could have twice circled the largest wagon off her father's farm, and a shrug of those broad shoulders might crack a boulder. The troll's skin was as white as the snow he lived in and mottled as snow was by dirt and debris; the angles of his limbs were sharp and sheared off, and his body creaked and groaned when he moved as if it were made up of so many protesting sheets of ice all grinding together.

But it was the troll's face that truly froze her blood. It was as smooth as polished ice, cut in at the cheekbones and the wide, flat ridge of his brow. There was no nose that she could find, and only chipped holes in the ice façade where coal black eyes looked out unblinking. The mouth was a frozen, lipless crack, fringed with a frosty beard of ice crystals. When the troll opened his mouth to pick at his teeth – sharp, shining teeth like so many swords frozen together – the strands of his beard shivered and rang softly like a thousand tiny bells. It should have been a pretty sound, and it might have been in any other place. Here, and with this monster before her, it was cold and cruel and echoed over the lonely, empty hills.

The troll laughed to himself, a terrible sound, and as his great shoulders shook, snow fell from them as gently as it might fall upon the ground on a warm, winter's morning. He stood up, shook himself again, dropping a light blizzard before he turned and shuffled back into the cave, his footfalls sounding like the soft thump of a falling weight of snow. Betta recognized the sound and shuddered. She had heard it once before, outside the standing stone just before Kili fell suddenly silent and listening. She had heard that inward rush of breath, the harsh sound of wind where there was no wind, and she shivered under her thick coat and cloak.

How had this thing come upon Fili and Kili? Had they fought and been defeated, or had it found them still asleep and taken them by surprise?

No one would have blamed her if she had turned back then. Her enemy was taller than a house, wider than a wagon. His arms were strong and his skin thick; you might break your axe against him and see no more than a chip taken out of that frozen hide. Betta was no warrior, nor even a thief or a burglar who might out of a sense of professional pride attempt to steal her companions out from under the lidless eyes of the ever-watchful sentinel. What help could she be against this creature?

But help she must be, she knew. Huge and strong, her enemy was, but also slow and – so she thought – unaware of her. She might surprise him and… what? How do you kill a snow-troll? None of the old stories told her that. How do you kill the snow-capped mountain? She had no weapon but her bow and small knife, and neither would be of use here.

She shivered, but she also rallied her courage and crept closer to the mouth of the cave. She must know whether the dwarves were alive or dead. If alive, then she must attempt a rescue, but if they were devoured, then she told herself that it was her duty as their surviving companion to carry the news of their deaths back to their uncle. The grim King Thorin would not be glad to hear it, especially coming from such a messenger as she was, but he must be told.

Betta had reached the mouth of the cave, but she was not wholly unobserved. The old Sentinel knew his neighborhood well, and he had sensed something amiss as he sat upon his front stoop. Undoubtedly, he thought that it was only some creeping orc come to steal a haunch from his larder. It was not unusual for his fire to attract visitors, and he knew just how to deal with them.

As Betta looked into the cave, a great, deep, ponderous voice rolled out to greet her.

Stronger than the moon, am I
Roll about, roll about
Suck the gold from mountain side
Roll about, roll about
Guard of the graveyards, they call me
Swallow the sun, I say to thee
Roll about, roll about
And call me Troll!

At the last line, the troll struck his great fist against the frozen wall with an echoing crack like thunder. Betta jumped and nearly rushed forward into the cave in her irrational fear. There was a power in that song, something strong and strange. The rhyme was fair nonsense to her ears and she did not know that it was a spell taught to the old Sentinel by his Masters long ago. The original verse was meant to summon forward any who tried to pass in secret by the guardhouse down below, but over the years, the old Sentinel had left out some lines and changed others to suit his fancy, and so much of the power had been lost to it.

The Sentinel did not know this. His song usually brought running any orc or animal that was nearby. When nothing appeared, he shrugged his heavy shoulders and returned to thinking his slow thoughts. It had taken all of Betta's strength to hold her place, but now she tore her eyes from the hulking beast and risked a look around the cave.

Outside was cold and inhospitable, but inside the troll's dwelling was almost homey. A great fire burned in the center of a wide, round room, and melted the snow for several feet around, revealing the gray stone beneath. Over the fire was a huge, iron cauldron, rusted and stained with the passage of years. It had never been well-made but served its purpose and was suspended by rope and chains from a makeshift tripod of rusted iron spear-shafts and splintering staves. It was a precarious perch, but the wear of the parts showed that it had performed this function for many long years.

About the perimeter of the cave, stacked along the walls, were various piles of debris and salvaged metal-works. There were mounds of broken stone, their sides still adorned with carved shapes and symbols; iron tools, spears and bars, stacked like so much rust-covered kindling; a great bundle of broken tree trunks that leaned in an angle of the room like a tight-grown forest; next to that was a stack of folded leather and scrap cloth; and finally, at the back of the cave, was the troll's cold-larder. There was piled high the stock of a butcher, the pride of a hunter, the large and the small, the hoofed and the hairy, killed beasts of all shapes and sizes.

Betta looked quickly away, afraid that if she searched the mound of meat for too long, her eye would catch sight of an all too familiar beard or boot.

The cave that she looked into proved to be only the front hall of the sentinel's great house. Behind the ice-walled dwelling was a wider, darker cavern. The light of the fire did not reach it, and to Betta's eyes it was only a black, gaping mouth. What was back there, she did not know and, for now, she did not care. There, lying before the darkness, were two dwarf bodies, one fair haired and the other dark with thin beards and fine buckles.

Fili and Kili had not been stacked with the rest of the meat. They were cast aside into a corner, toppled one over the other. They did not move, and Betta was too far away to know if they breathed or not, but in her heart she knew they were not dead. Why else would they have been laid apart from the other carcasses? Why had their weapons been removed and thrown far from the dwarves themselves unless there was still a chance that they might get up and use them?

The troll was crouched before the fire, stirring the water in the pot. There were few corners in that wide, round room, and no place to hide in the front hall. The heat from the fire had warmed the ice of the walls until it was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting not clearly, but reflecting none-the-less. Even the debris piled around was stacked up against the walls with no space behind where she might take cover. She could not even slip through the front door without being seen, for the troll nodded his head this way and that and she could not be certain in which direction those beady, black eyes were turned. There must be a back door, perhaps through that black cave, but she would need daylight if she meant to search for it.

As if in answer to her thoughts, at that moment, Kili groaned and turned upon his side. He rolled off of his brother and into the snow. Fili made no sound and did not move, but the troll heard and turned his head with a grunt. He eyed the unconscious dwarves for a moment and then, when they did not move again, he turned himself slowly back to stirring the stew.

"Patience, my lad, let the Yellow Witch rise. We shall have a fine meal this day," the troll said. He often spoke to himself, the old Sentinel, but there was no need for Betta to wait for him to say more. She knew that she must rescue the dwarves before dawn. They would need no rescue after.

Sorry this one's a bit late. And it might be a while before you get the next chapter. I'm going to attempt November's National Novel Writing Month challenge. The deadlines and word count requirements aren't my usual method, but I've had an idea for an original story waiting in the wings and this just might be the kick in the pants that I need to get it down on the page.

Of course, this means that my brain cells will be wholly occupied on something other than fanfiction, and I may not be able to post another chapter to QtF for a while, possibly not until December (we'll see how well this goes), but I expect you'll all be too busy watching your TH:AUJ EE over and over and over again to notice a break in my little tale.

As always, your reviews are my motivation, and I appreciate each and every one. I promise, I will be back in December. See you then :)

-Paint