Chapter Five

Kili gave the command to ride forward, motioned for Skirfir to remain on guard with the medics and ladies, and mounted his Rohirrim short horse to ride ahead.

Behind him, the highborn daughter of Yngvli complained loudly, completely unaware of the possible danger, demanding that the young archer be banned from her presence. Her father might be a merchant, she shouted, but her mother was Grey Hills royalty!

"Royalty, I tell you!" Her screech nearly echoed around them.

Kili felt a moment of sympathy for Skirfir, but only a moment. Bigger concerns were upon them.

"Arms at rest," he shouted to the dwarven soldiers who were with him, leading them ahead. "Unless you see an actual orc!"

They stopped in two columns at the top of a rise, waiting for the Dale men to approach.

To his relief, the oncoming men were slowing their horses to a walk and their weapons remained pointed at the sky. They halted several lengths away.

Kili unbuckled the flap on his fighting leathers, revealing his royal sigil in a show of faith with their ally.

A lone man dressed in battle gear rode forward, his bow on his back.

"Well met, Lord Kili, Prince of Erebor." The man held up one hand in a gesture of neutrality.

"Well met, young Bard, King of Dale." Kili returned the gesture. He couldn't quite get used to the lad, recently come to the throne when his father Brand perished in the Last Battle, but he liked the man. Not the same Bard as old Bard the Bowman, to whom they had come to love all those years ago, but his namesake. Bain's grandson. As tall as his great-grandfather and perhaps someday, more wise.

"We heard rumors on the wind," Bard stated. "Of orcs and ambush."

"As did we. Yet I arrive to find not but a single carriage, overturned." Kili rode forward until their horses stood nose-to-tail so they could talk in private. "And a raven tells me there are no orcs for miles, dead or alive," he said. "Which could not be true if there had been an actual ambush. Yet someone would have us believe this staged accident is the result of orcs attacking innocent highborn ladies."

Young Bard kept his expression blank.

"Your opponent is an amateur," he said. "Anyone who ever fought beside you on the field of war would never underestimate your battle sense."

"I thank you for your vote of confidence."

Bard's posture relaxed. "Would this have anything to do with the ongoing negotiations your Kingdom is hosting?"

Kili suppressed a wry smile. "We are meant to miss that point, I believe. Are the visitors causing problems in Dale? Some of our merchants and minor nobility have little experience outside Dwarven culture. I apologize if they overstep…"

Young King Bard held up a hand again, smiling wryly. "You are a rare Dwarf, Lord Kili, to worry about relations with men. But no need to apologize. We are making out like bandits, as my grandfather would have said. If we have to cat-foot around a few fusspots…" He shrugged. "No real harm comes of it."

Kili nodded. Though he could imagine…dwarven visitors with gold burning holes in their pockets, all too eager to seek bargains in the legendary marketplaces of Dale, and all too prone to imagined insults and cheats.

"What's the sticking point in the negotiations?" Bard asked, obviously aware that the scene before them meant things couldn't be going well.

"Me, apparently." Kili looked over his shoulder at Master Yngvli's daughter, still play-acting her distress. This ruse to gain his attention was not only blatant, it was insulting. "I'm starting to worry about a claim against family honor, in fact." He tried to make a joke of it, but the thoughtful expression on his friend's face told him he wasn't successful.

"Be wary," Young Bard said in all seriousness. "In Dale, we have an old saying: Mordor hath no fury like a woman scorned." He looked pointedly at the fussing dwarf maid.

Kili nodded sagely. "Wise words, wise words."

"What are you going to do?"

Kili kept his expression very still. "Tread carefully."

The man snorted, then sat up when someone else caught his eye. "Is that Nÿr?"

"Is that…?" Kili's head swung around to follow the man's gaze to a group of healers tending to the dwarf soldier lad with the cut hand. He recognized her then, the healer trainee in blue.

"She worked with the healers in Dale at one time," Bard said. "Before the war."

"Ex…excuse me?" Kili asked, turning back to his friend, eyes wide.

"Someone's foster-daughter. Everyone's sweetheart when she was a child. There's a rumor, you know, about some involvement with a Man who tried to make off with her. Swords were involved…the drunkard was killed."

Kili stared at his friend. Some involvement with a Man...?

Bard didn't seem to notice. "I was just a youngster," he shrugged. "I'm sure I never heard the whole story. The matter was hushed up."

Kili blinked. "Not surprising." Men were narrow-minded about such things. Dwarves were fiercely protective of love, but they accepted it in many forms...wherever they found it. Between each other, anyway. But a dwarf maiden and a man?

Bard kept chattering. "In any case, glad to see she's getting on so well."

Kili raised an eyebrow. "Yes. She just returned from Ered Luin."

King Bard raised a hand to his troops and winked at Kili. "Do me a favor? Give her my best," he said. Placing his hand over his heart, he inclined his head. "At your service, my friend." He smiled.

Kili returned the gesture, "At yours and your family's," he replied, hoping he successfully hid the unaccountable shock he was feeling.

As the contingent from Dale turned and cantered back toward home, Kili motioned for the dwarf soldiers with him to return to the accident. He put the senior Captain in charge of mopping up and rode a little apart from the action, hoping he appeared watchful rather than unsettled. He slipped his right foot from the stirrup as he sat, absently stretching the muscles and rubbing the scar of the old injury. He tried to ignore the discomfort, but the excitement had aggravated it.

He watched as the carriage was deemed sound enough for use, having, as Kili suspected, sustained little damage in the staged rollover.

He heard Yngvli's daughter complaining long and loud once again, but he stayed well away, trusting the Captain and Skirfir to handle her. In truth, she was getting a far larger escort than she'd asked for and he felt little reason to encourage her with personal attention. His lads managed to get the lass back into the carriage and get it moving back to the Gate, and he followed at a distance, shadowing the little caravan as if watching their backs.

But as he rode, his thoughts were despairing. That healer maiden…and rumored involvement with a Dale man. And then this worthless highborn lady…had she really sent a petition to his brother?

Part of him howled in denial, but another part of him just felt deflated.

His brother would have recognized this as the beginnings of the deep depression that always came with the annual curse, but Kili couldn't see it himself. Feeling like he'd been gutted, his thoughts swirled illogically. What did it matter who Chose him in marriage? Despite Fili's efforts to place him off-limits, he'd always felt this day would come…that someday they would all be backed into a corner and he would be expected to step up and make a loveless political marriage.

But he didn't want to.

He closed his eyes. Mahal, he didn't want to.

He was not surprised, then, when back at Erebor, the distressed maiden's father met the incoming carriage in a fit of rage, demanding Lord Kili's accountability.

Sighing, he dismounted and handed his horse's reins to a waiting groom. He walked slowly toward Yngvli, knowing full well how the next hour of his time would play out.