"Where is Fili?" Betta asked, and the tone of her voice told him more than the question. He pointed to the back of the cave where he had left his sleeping brother and smiled to see her hurry across the slippery stone floor to Fili's side. He followed.
"He is asleep. I cannot wake him," he said. They had reached his brother, and he looked down at Fili's pale face. Now that the excitement and confusion of battle had worn off, Kili was able to worry over his brother's continuing unconsciousness. If Fiil had suffered the same attack that Kili had, should he not be awake by now as Kili was?
Betta knelt down beside Fili and laid one hand on his forehead, the other rested lightly on his chest. She leaned down to listen to his shallow breathing. For a moment, she was taken back to the sick-bed of her mother, the fever and anguish and candlelight vigils, long days waiting for death. She swallowed her fear and reminded herself that Fili was a stubborn and indomitable dwarf, not a weary old woman worn down by long grief.
Kili was watching her closely, and she put on a brave face but was honest with him. "This is no natural sleep," she said. "He is feverish and shivering. We must build a fire. He needs heat and water."
Kili knelt down beside his brother, and she drew back to give him room. He touched the back of his hand to Fili's cheek and felt the heat burning through the white and wind-burned face. "You are right in that," he said, frowning. "He must have been dealt a harder blow than mine. Although, he would undoubtedly insist that it is because I have the thicker skull and was therefore spared."
He bowed his head, and his eyes spied something that he had not noticed before. "What is this?" he asked, taking up his brother's right hand. The fingers were clenched tight in a fist, but it seemed as if he held something.
Betta shook her head. "I do not know. Perhaps his hand still grasps the hilt of his sword? I cannot believe that Fili would be taken without a fight." She kept her true thoughts to herself, and hoped that her sudden dread did not show through the redness of her cheeks.
"Perhaps that is so…" Kili said. If he saw anything in her face, he put it down to worry and grief such as he also felt. His heart was full of doubt and fear, but he shrugged his shoulders and searched for something to do that would occupy his anxious thoughts. "He has been more frozen than I thought. You are right, and he needs a fire."
He went to gather wood from the troll's fire pit. There were still a few smoldering embers in the soggy mess, and plenty of dry wood from the pile in the corner, but the ground around the pit was too full of puddles to move the sick-bed there. He brought the wood back to Fili's side and, while he prepared a new fire, his eyes turned often to his brother. He saw Betta take off her cloak and fold it for a pillow under Fili's head. From the way she looked at his brother, Kili guessed that once Fili woke, there would be little argument over who followed whom and in which direction.
With a warm fire burning, the healthier color returned to Fili's cheeks and he seemed to breathe easier. Kili crouched close beside his brother, warming his hands over the flames. The wood had been cold to handle. He took off his remaining glove and frowned ruefully at it, thinking of its lost mate, but to his surprise, Betta took the other from her pocket and handed it to him. He took the glove, but before he could ask how she had come by it, she spoke first.
"How were you caught?" she asked him. "Did the creature come upon you at the stone?"
"That would have been easier," he said. "No, we discovered that you were gone and though Fili wished to keep his little brother safe and return to Ered Luin, I convinced him that we must go in search of you. The mist separated us, and I was taken from behind." He reached back to rub the sore lump on the back of his neck. "I do not know how Fili was captured. I woke to find us both here, and formed what plans I could from that. I heard you speaking from above, and it gave me hope, but when I saw you fall…"
Kili frowned and shook his head. "It is a miracle that you were not killed. You had a clever plan, but too much risk!"
"It was not clever enough," Betta said, "and I see now the folly of it. If you had not woken when you did… And I never would have thought to overturn the cook pot. Even with a knock on your head, you had more sense than I."
"Well, I would not have thought to climb the roof and trade riddles with the beast as you did. And even after your fall, you still spoke well and with an eye for our enemy's weakness. I have always said that I thought you had a cool head on your shoulders, but tonight you showed it!" He nodded to her with respect. "I will agree that we are at least quite even in our cleverness, and I only wish that Fili were awake to be amazed by all that we have done."
Even as he said the words, he felt his stomach clench and his heart seemed to beat loudly in his ears. Here he was, talking cheerfully and warming his hands while his brother lay possibly dying. Fili would not have been so neglectful if it were Kili who had been struck down by a troll.
Scolding himself for his lapse, Kili removed his brother's empty sword belt – the sword itself was stuck into the snow where the troll had left it after picking his teeth clean – and unfastened the many buckles of his coat and cloak. He examined Fili's body for wounds and found none but the usual collection of scrapes and bruises. There was no reason for his brother's fever that he could find, and the only unaccounted injury was the paralysis of Fili's right hand. Betta helped him when he asked, though she seemed to keep her distance otherwise, and Kili thought that it was strange until he remembered how she had spoken of tending to her mother in sickness. He assumed that it was the shadow of that painful memory which restrained her.
Once his brother was lying as comfortably as could be contrived, Kili knew that they must have food and water. They could not make a feast of snow. He stood up suddenly and felt a sharp pain in his forehead. With a groan, he sank down again, holding his head in his hands. Betta moved to help him, but he waved her away.
"It is nothing. It will pass," he said. "We need food and warm water. My pack was lost when the troll came upon me, and I do not see Fili's. I would guess that his was lost the same way. Do you have your supplies?" he asked her.
"I left them hidden down below," she said. "I will go and…"
"No, stay. You took a hard fall. I know from experience that, though the bruises may not pain you now…"
"I assure you, they do."
"…though they may not cause you very much pain, yet," he corrected, "soon you will be sore and stiff as a board. Rest while you can. Tell me where your pack is, and I will fetch it for you." She was about to protest against his going out alone, but he put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Please, let me do this for you. There is no more that I can do for my brother, and I cannot stand here feeling helpless and doing nothing."
Betta saw the sadness in his eyes and relented. She described for him the road below the troll's cave that led down to the fallen hut, and she told him in which corner she had buried her bag and bow. When she was finished, Kili nodded and turned to go, but he hesitated for a moment, looking down at his brother.
What he thought in that quiet moment, Betta could not say. She had tended to her own grief often enough but had seldom seen it in another. Her brothers, her uncles and her father had all died on the battle field, far away from family, but she hoped that they had had some friend or comrade to look on them as kindly as Kili did his brother now. She remembered the few hours that she had passed alone in the hills after leaving the brothers and saw it now as madness. Her whole life of lonely wandering had been madness, a self-imposed exile that she wished were over. She wished…
Kili sighed and turned away. Betta watched him walk out of the cave with shoulders set and head held high, but she knew that he was weighted down by misery.
The block of ice that had been a troll covered nearly all the mouth of the cave. It would stand guard there for many years, perhaps forever, until the sun melted its features away or a stone fell from above and knocked it from its post. Betta looked up at the great hole from which she had fallen and marveled at the height, and that she had survived it. Against the blue sky, she could see large, white flakes of snow falling down through that hole and many others. The damaged roof would not give them much shelter if there was a storm; indeed, it was not a safe shelter in good weather. The troll had broken the ice in so many places that she would not have slept a night beneath it for any amount of gold.
Betta turned her back on the remains of the troll. It would be a little while before Kili could make his way down the slippery slope of the road and then back up again. She only hoped that he would not fall off of it and injure himself any further. The guilt that she already bore for their troubles was too heavy; any more weight added to it and she would collapse under the load.
She searched the troll's front porch, always with one eye on Fili at the far end. There were many supplies but little of use. Most of the cloth and leather in the pile that she had landed on was rotted and full of mold. Half of it was frozen, the other half damp and stinking like a wet dog. The collection of iron tools was also useless to Betta's eyes, although Kili might be able to find something to do with them; she did not dare to touch the sharp and rusted edges but found a broken fragment of a shield that was only lightly rusted and sufficiently bowl-like. She scooped up a lump of fallen ice and melted it on the fire.
Fili still did not wake. He had made it through the worst of his fever and his face radiated only the healthy heat from the fire. He had passed from unconsciousness into dreaming, but those dreams were troubled and his face was pinched with worry and anger. Betta brushed aside the strands of blond hair that stuck to his sweating brow and bathed his face with warm water from the bowl. The handkerchief that she used was the same blue cloth that she had tied for a flag outside the copse of trees above Evendim where Fili had found her in a blizzard long ago. He had offered her back the pearl, then, and she had refused to take it.
Betta touched his clenched fist and guessed what it was that he held so desperately close. She had fooled herself into thinking that there was protection only in that stone, that there would not be a price.
Fili deserved none of the pain that she had caused him. Her pity for herself was gone and she told herself that it would have been better for them all if she had gone alone into the north. Kili should have been warm and safe inside Ered Luin, not clambering over icy hills battling wolves and trolls. She should have taken her leave of them as soon as she had her first suspicion of what was to come.
But there would be no leaving them now. Looking down at Fili's face, lined with hunger and cold and anxious dreams, she knew that she could not leave him again, not in secret or outright, not until he sent her away. If he asked her to go south, she would go, even if it meant following him to Ered Luin where his uncle would force them apart. She would find no answers in these empty hills, no buried treasure. Betta had made up her mind: when Fili woke, if he woke, she would tell the truth for once, admit her guilt and submit herself to judgment.
"I am sorry," she whispered. She bent down to lay a gentle kiss upon his forehead.
At that moment, Fili tossed his head and muttered in his sleep, strange words in the old dwarf tongue that Betta did not understand. He thrust out his hand as if defending himself against some unseen enemy, and she drew back without touching him. She read a dark omen in his actions, and a shadow fell over her heart and her face. Still, she took his arm gently and laid his hand to rest upon his chest, and once more, he fell back into deep sleep, but she did not dare to come near him again.
When Kili returned, he found Betta tending the fire and was disappointed that she was not tending his brother instead. Not that Fili needed much more attention. His fever was nearly gone and his sleep, though deep, was quiet. His face was smooth and he let out a soft snore as Kili set down Betta's bag and handed her her bow.
"We must guard that weapon carefully now," he said. "Mine is of no more use to us." He nodded to the pile of weapons where his own bow lay broken in two, the pieces held together only by the string.
"At least your back was not broken with it," Betta said.
"Nor yours by the fall," he said. He looked at his brother sadly. "He still has not woken…"
"But he sleeps easier," she assured him. "You found no injury. It is only the long journey, the hunger and the cold. He has been pulled at both ends nearly to the breaking point, and this last battle was too much for him."
Kili frowned at her words, but he was comforted. He nodded. "Let him sleep, then. I wish that I could, but I worry too much. The air has changed. I smell a storm coming on, and the snow has already begun to fall." He looked up through the holes in the roof and, indeed, the snow was falling thicker than before. They were far enough back toward the black cavern that it would not reach them, but if it grew any worse, they would need to seek shelter in the darkness beyond.
"We cannot set out until Fili wakes. Even if he were able to walk I do not know that I would risk travelling in this weather. But if we wait too long…"
"Then our path will be covered over," Betta finished. She had followed the old troll's trail through the snow to find this shelter, but if a storm came and white-washed all the hills, it would be impossible to find their road again. Even if they turned their faces south in hopes of finding warmer lands, there was no straight path through these hills but the one that they had left behind.
"You should have gone home when you had the chance," she told him.
He looked at her in surprise. "You expect us to leave one of our own company here, to die in the frozen wastes?"
"I expect you to listen to your brother. Fili had more sense than either of us, and if you had done as he wished, you would be safe now and not about to be snowbound in a troll's cave."
Kili did not know what to make of the anger in her voice. "I will not play my brother's game with you," he said. "I will not argue. It is done and we are here. When Fili wakes, I promise, he will be glad to see you. You may tell him, if you like, that I was wrong to chase after you and that you wish he had gone away." He smiled and added softly, "but I do not think you will tell that lie."
Betta stared at him and knew that he was right. She did not admit it aloud. Her thoughts were on another thing that she must tell Fili when he woke. She looked down at him, at his fist clenched tight around that damned stone, and felt the pain of her guilt worse than any bruise or broken bone. What would Kili say when he heard what she had kept from them? She did not know, but she feared more the judgment of the elder brother.
Aw, thanks you all for the warm welcome back. I didn't realize how much I missed all you regular reviewers after my month-long break. I only hope that Betta will get an equally warm welcome from Fili when he wakes, but we'll have to wait and see...
-Paint