Clarity of Purpose, Chapter 14
Oct. 11th, 2014 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mithenTitle: Clarity of Purpose, Chap. 14
Chapter Summary: The Fellowship crosses the Anduin and enters the battle-broken Brown Lands traveling east--where storms and worse await them.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, the Fellowship
Fandom: Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. Begins in 2968, twenty-six years after the events of "Clarity of Vision" and fifty years before the canonical events of "Lord of the Rings." Thus, characters' ages and the geopolitical situation will be different than LoTR canon!
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3400
Summary: Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins have been parted for many years now, despite the love they bear each other. Now Thorin's research has uncovered a dire threat to Middle Earth--the Ring he carried a little while and then gave to Bilbo. Together with a group of companions composed of the different Free Peoples of Middle Earth, they must attempt to destroy the artifact before its Dark Lord can re-capture it.
“It smells of snow coming,” said Bilbo, stamping his feet and chafing his arms. “Why couldn’t this whole confounded quest have waited until spring, I ask you?” But his grumbling lacked rancor and there was a twinkle in his eye as he scowled at Thorin, who hid his smile and scowled back.
The fellowship was packing up their meagre belongings; the Rohirrim were breaking camp as well, and Théoden was deep in conversation with a group of the warriors. Finally he nodded in satisfaction and came over to where the rest of the party stood.
“My people will give us all that we need for our journey: food and water, blankets and warm clothing. Anything more that you have need of, please ask them. And further, they can spare three pack horses to carry our provisions.”
“We were fortunate indeed to meet your people,” said Thorin.
“I only wish I could bring you south, to Edoras and the Golden Hall of Meduseld!" Théoden said. "There would the boards groan with fare aplenty, and horns overflow with mead as we toasted our lost companions for their valor. And I could see my sisters again--I have four, each one fairer than the next, although the sweetest is little Theodwyn, the youngest, who has not yet seen five summers.” He sighed, gazing south. “Someday, perhaps!”
“I too shall travel with you,” said Estel, drawing near. “Azog’s band is defeated, and my duty here in Rohan done.”
“Should you not return to Minas Tirith, to report to your ruler?” Denethor said tartly, looking up from his breakfast, but Estel’s good mood was not to be broken by petty jibes.
“Your father tasked me with keeping you safe and preventing any threats to Gondor,” he said, “And I judge that traveling with you achieves both of these goals.” He smiled. “I find myself unwilling to be parted from your fellowship so quickly.”
“How convenient!” jeered Denethor, but Thorin noted that Arwen smiled too, and turned away quickly to hide it.
The Rohirrim rode south, back across the Limlight into Rohan, and the fellowship traveled east more slowly on foot, the three pack horses clopping after. Théoden introduced them as Gléowine, Goldwine, and Guthwine--”Friend of joy, friend of gold, and friend of battle,” he said, and they nodded their shaggy heads at their names and puffed great breaths of steam into the air. Snow started to fall as they went, a light dusting that scudded across the ground and curled around the horses’ hooves, and everyone hunched further into their cloaks and shivered.
The ground grew boggy as they approached the place where the Limlight joined the Anduin, and great reeds grew in clumps higher than the hobbit and dwarves' heads, pale and brittle with the cold. The shorter members of the party were forced to let the taller ones take the lead, though not without grumbling. "For we would go around in endless circles if we let you lead us, master dwarf," Legolas said with a grin at Gimli's scowl. The going was slow, for the boggy ground sucked at their boots and even Bilbo had to admit that icy mud between the toes tended to kill any joy in traveling. But he kept his spirits up as much as possible by singing songs of the Shire: harvest songs and love ballads and nonsense ditties, whatever entered his head. When his voice grew hoarse, Gimli sang a dwarven marching-song, and Théoden spent a few hours chanting the lineage of the horses of Rohan, until even Bilbo had to admit that if he never heard another “begat” that would be fine with him.
Even Denethor had a song to give the party, for as they traveled through the marshy lands a bird winged high overhead, a gull flying south, and Denethor waved to it as if to a friend. “He flies south over the mountains, to Dol Amroth and its castle on the golden cliffs above the sea,” he said, almost as if to himself, “Dol Amroth! Fairest of all cities save Minas Tirith.” And then he looked after the gull and sang:
”My sweet brown bird in the briar sings
I have no wish to clip her wings
So high she flies, so wild and free
My sweet bird over the wide, wide sea.
My sweet brown bird no cage will bear
But soars above without a care
And my heart takes flight when I hear her song
My sweet bird over the billows strong.”
For a moment, looking south, his face seemed lost in a joyful memory, and the bitterness and pride were eased from it. Then he came to himself and laughed shortly at Bilbo’s expression. “Does it surprise you that I am capable of melody, Mr. Baggins?” he said. “But if you had ever met the Princess Finduilas of Dol Amroth, you would understand that she could move even the most joyless to song. Lucky was I the day she agreed to become my betrothed.”
“Luckily she gains the rule of Gondor in the deal, to make it worth marrying you,” smirked Théoden, but at his words the smile slipped from Denethor’s face and his mood seemed to darken once more; he did not respond to Théoden, but cast an odd glare at Estel’s back before going back to plodding through the mud in silence once more.
They came to the shores of the Anduin, at the North Undeep, the great lazy bend of the river where the waters ran shallow enough to cross on foot, and picked their way carefully across the stony shoals, leading the pack horses.
“Mercy me,” said Bilbo as they reached the other side. “What a terrible place.”
The Brown Lands were aptly named: no trees and little grass grew on the scarred and scorched land, which was broken into jagged peaks and piles of rock. The going was even slower now as they made their way across crumbling shale and treacherous icy slate, and more than once they found their way blocked by a rockfall and had to backtrack to another route.
“Once these lands were fertile and beautiful,” Gandalf said that night, as they camped for the first time since crossing the river. “But war came to them, and they were destroyed and left barren.”
Bilbo shivered and drew nearer to the feeble fire, and Thorin put an arm around him. “I feel I shall never be warm again,” Bilbo muttered, leaning into him.
“It is a bitter cold,” agreed Dís, biting off a piece of jerky and looking around the looming rock-piles with unease. Her eyes fell on Arwen, sitting on the other side of the fire. “Where did you get a needle and thread, elf-maiden?”
“My name is Arwen,” she replied without looking up from her work. “And the riders of Rohan were kind enough to give me some materials.”
Dís moved to sit next to her, gazing at her work: delicate stitches of white thread on a rough black cloth. The pattern was impossible to guess yet, but it looked like a star, or perhaps a leaf. “You have a delicate hand,” Dís said. “I left a gown for my little grandson half-finished when I departed from Erebor and my fingers itch to hold a needle again. It always cleared my mind and focused my thoughts.”
Arwen looked startled, then smiled. “I miss my mother’s embroidery hoop,” she admitted, her needle dipping in and out of the dark fabric. “It would be easier work with it, but I left it in Rivendell. It was made of ivory. She gave it to me before she--before she sailed West,” she said. Her smile slipped and her fingers stilled as she gazed down at the cloth, unseeing.
“Could you show me how you make that knot?” said Dís gently. “I’ve never seen one of quite that style.” As she watched Arwen’s nimble fingers, she went on, “My grandfather gave me my hoop when he taught me my stitches. It was made of beaten bronze.”
“Your grandfather did embroidery? The King?” There was a chuckle in Théoden’s voice, and Dís looked confused before she smiled.
“Ah yes, men and elves tend to divide things into tasks for men and tasks for women, I always forget,” she said.
“If we relied on such a small group to do all the sewing, many would have to live with rent clothing!” laughed Gimli.
“Grandfather always embroidered before diplomatic meetings,” said Dís. “He said it helped remind him of the ways our lives are interwoven.”
“Did he teach you embroidery as well, Thorin?” said Bilbo with only a hint of merriment in his tone at the image of Thorin bent over an embroidery hoop.
Thorin frowned. “I lacked the patience when I was young,” he said. “He was rather disappointed with me.” There was a thread of regret in his voice, and Bilbo found his hand and squeezed it without thinking.
The conversation moved on to other things, and Bilbo realized later Arwen had never mentioned what exactly she was stitching, or for whom.
The Brown Lands seemed to stretch on forever, though Gandalf assured them that if they had been able to walk directly, they could have covered the distance in half the time. “A pity we do not have wings,” grumbled Denethor, glaring up at the sky as they were forced to sidetrack to the west once more. The eerie landscape began to wear on everyone as the days wore on, and more than once Thorin saw members of the party starting at shadows or jumping at a cascade of pebbles.
Yet even these desolate lands were not utterly devoid of life: small hopping mice would appear on the tops of rock piles top stare at them curiously with beady black eyes, and once they spotted a nimble mountain goat clambering up a steep slope with unconcerned grace. But the wind howled and whistled through the channels and valleys as if it were being dragged across stone knives, and Thorin often could sense Bilbo tossing and turning in his sleep as the eerie wailing rose and fell.
“We shall be out of here soon,” Gandalf said one morning, leaning on his staff and nodding. “At least, I certainly hope so,” he added, looking up at the sky and frowning. “This plateau gives way to the wide fields of south Dorwinion. Then the route is simple, following the Ash Mountains to the east. There should be no trouble at all,” he concluded, smiling down at Dís and Gimli, who had been complaining.
“No trouble at all,” Dís repeated mockingly as he walked away. “Wizards!”
Days later, Thorin awoke in the middle of the night, reaching for his sword without thinking before he realized that Bilbo had woken him up, shuddering deep in a nightmare. In the northwest there was a sudden flicker of eerie violet light, a spear of magenta lightning crackling across the pewter-colored clouds.
“A storm,” said a voice, and Thorin turned to see Estel looking to the north-west. “Sweeping south, from Dol Guldur.” A low rumble of thunder reached them.
“That fell fortress was cleansed long ago,” said Legolas, perched atop a jagged stone formation. A wind was picking up, blowing grit across the stones.
“It was, yes,” said Estel. Another jagged fork of pink lightning skewered the clouds. Thunder, closer this time. “But how long has it been since the elves of the Greenwood have ventured there?”
Legolas’s gaze dropped, and he frowned.
Bilbo took a ragged breath, his eyes moving beneath their lids, and Thorin reached down to shake his shoulder. As he touched him, though, lightning crackled, much closer this time, and Bilbo sat up with a muffled shriek.
“I saw them!” he cried. “Dark riders on dark horses, riding forth from iron gates. They called out--” He closed his eyes and buried his face in Thorin’s collar, shaking.
Something landed with a thud in the middle of the campfire, sending sparks and burning twigs flying everywhere. A second missile thumped down next to Arwen, and everyone stared at it: a smooth white orb about the size of an apple.
“It’s ice,” Arwen said. “Hail.”
By now the hail was pattering all around them, bouncing off the ground: Thorin cast his coat around Bilbo and crouched over him as lightning flashed and the sky split open, shielding him with his body until they could stagger to a shallow indentation in a rock, sheltered from the worst.
“Take cover!” yelled Estel, as a hailstone nearly the size of a hobbit’s head smacked into the rocks, sending chips and fragments of ice flying everywhere. Thorin watched as he grabbed Théoden’s shield from the ground and held it over first Gimli’s head, then Legolas’s, giving them cover while they scrambled to find a sheltered spot. He tried to protect Denethor with it as well, but Denethor gave him a furious look and Estel fell back.
“Watch out!” cried Arwen. There was the twang of a bowstring, and the air above Estel exploded into chips and flying ice. Startled, he threw himself to the ground, rolling to slide under the same outcropping as Arwen.
“You shot the hailstone,” he yelled breathlessly at her over the nearly-constant roll of thunder. “Very nice.”
Thorin saw her smile at him. “Well, someone has to value your life, if you will not,” she retorted.
They exchanged a giddy smile, and Thorin felt the radiance of it like a light in the darkness. Then Bilbo shuddered against him as another thunderclap rattled the camp, and Thorin tightened his arms around him. “You’re safe,” he murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.” He felt Bilbo nod against him and for a moment he believed it himself.
Then he saw Gandalf, hunched uncomfortably under a low outcropping, watching the storm with narrowed eyes and a worried face.
Lurid lightning bathed everything in a baleful glow, and Thorin tried not to shudder himself.
The Brown Lands ended abruptly, as if the final ripples of some cataclysmic shockwave had reached their terminus many ages ago. The ground smoothed out into a plateau, and the horses gratefully cropped at the brown, sere grasses which grew there. Travel grew easier, and for a time everyone’s spirits were high enough that Gimli and Legolas could bicker and Denethor and Théoden snipe at each other more easily.
One evening it was Estel and Thorin’s turn to gather firewood, in short supply on the rolling plain. They walked together without speaking for a while, gathering sticks and twigs. Then Thorin broke the silence.
“Who are you, really?”
Estel looked as if he had been expecting the question for a while and was slightly relieved Thorin had been polite enough to ask away from the others. “I am, as I said, the captain of the guard at Minas Tirith, your majesty,” he said.
Thorin snorted. “Indeed,” he said. “I doubt not you speak the truth. But somehow I think it is not the whole truth. Bilbo remembers meeting you in Rivendell, many years ago.”
Estel bent to pick up a branch. “Ah,” he said.
“So the question is, how did a simple captain of the guard come to be raised in one of the last Elven strongholds of Middle Earth?” Thorin pondered out loud. “And how did an unremarkable man of Minas Tirith win the love of Elrond’s daughter? Oh, many would miss it,” he said quickly at the alarm in Estel’s face, “But I know the face of one who sees his beloved again after many lonely years.”
Estel lowered his gaze and bit his lip.
“Arwen carries a blade,” said Thorin, and Estel’s eyes come up to meet his again, wary. “Her brother said it had been reforged, and he bore it now for another. He gave it to her to give to its rightful owner. At our council, Gandalf explained that Isildur’s sword had been shattered and the fragments kept ever after in Rivendell.”
Silence. A wind stirred the brown grasses, but Estel said nothing.
“Why have you not yet reclaimed the sword that is your birthright, Heir of Isildur?” Thorin asked.
Estel’s back straightened, and his jaw tightened. Despite his filthy hair and unkempt beard, he looked very kingly, although he did not seem to realize it. “Isildur failed all of Middle Earth,” he said. “I am heir to that failure as well as to his crown!” He shook his head. “I must win the hearts of the people of Rohan and Gondor before I reveal myself. I have been raised among Elves and Dúnedain--what did I know of the lives of the people of the east? It would be folly to expect them to trust me, to follow some stranger who shows up at their door with a sword and a mad tale. I wanted...I wanted to know them first. To be one of them.”
“It sounds like you have won their hearts already,” said Thorin. “Does Lord Ecthelion know?”
Estel grimaced. “I have never told him, but I can tell he suspects. As does his son.” He looked, for a moment, quite young, and uncertain. “Ecthelion may well gladly cede the right to rule to me. But I fear that Denethor will never recognize me as the rightful ruler of Gondor. Were Ecthelion to step down in my favor, I would likely make an implacable enemy in his son. I cannot risk a civil war that would tear our people apart. And…” He trailed off and looked away.
“And you are afraid,” said Thorin. “Afraid that Denethor is right, and that your blood is tainted by lust for the Ring.”
“I do fear it,” whispered Estel.
“And yet you wish to travel with us?”
“The fate of Middle Earth lies in the hands of your party, and I must give you aid,” said Estel. “If I gave in to my fear, if I walked away to avoid temptation, I would be unworthy of the crown which I hope to claim.”
Thorin thought on this for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “As it so happens, I have some experience with fearing that one comes from a lineage cursed with weakness. I trust you, Estel, future High King of Middle Earth.”
Estel’s eyes gleamed gray in the twilight, a grateful glance. “My thanks, your majesty.”
“So who else of our party knows?” Thorin asked as they turned back toward the camp with their armfuls of sticks.
“The lady Arwen, of course. And Gandalf.”
“Of course, the old meddler,” snorted Thorin without heat.
“I would rather you not tell anyone else,” Estel said. “Except Bilbo, of course.” He smiled. “If I cannot trust him I can trust no one.”
“I shall keep your secret,” said Thorin. “Even from Bilbo, for it would not matter a jot to him one way or the other. He will trust you or like you for yourself and your deeds, not for anything written in musty history books. If it becomes important, I will not keep it from him, but for now your secret is safe with me.”
Then he laughed.
“Poor Bilbo!” he said. “He shall be quite annoyed. For after Théoden and myself, this will mark the third time he has met royalty unawares!”
The day came at last when they topped a rise and looked out over a sweeping vista, a plain that stretched east nearly as far as the eye could see. In the far distance, there was a glint of water that Gandalf declared was the Sea of Rhûn. To the south, a long line of mountains, wreathed with mist and smoke--the Ered Lithui, along which they planned to travel. And in between them--
Behind him, Thorin heard Gimli gasp, heard Legolas mutter something in Sindarin as if he were spitting something foul from his mouth. To the south-east, far below them on the plain, a cloud of dust and smoke, the kind churned up by thousands of marching feet. He could see the dark specks, trudging away from Mordor: an army of orcs, on the move.
On the move north.
He felt Dís’s fingers digging into his arm, heard her hissed intake of breath.
”They travel to Erebor,” she said.
Chapter Summary: The Fellowship crosses the Anduin and enters the battle-broken Brown Lands traveling east--where storms and worse await them.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, the Fellowship
Fandom: Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. Begins in 2968, twenty-six years after the events of "Clarity of Vision" and fifty years before the canonical events of "Lord of the Rings." Thus, characters' ages and the geopolitical situation will be different than LoTR canon!
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3400
Summary: Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins have been parted for many years now, despite the love they bear each other. Now Thorin's research has uncovered a dire threat to Middle Earth--the Ring he carried a little while and then gave to Bilbo. Together with a group of companions composed of the different Free Peoples of Middle Earth, they must attempt to destroy the artifact before its Dark Lord can re-capture it.
“It smells of snow coming,” said Bilbo, stamping his feet and chafing his arms. “Why couldn’t this whole confounded quest have waited until spring, I ask you?” But his grumbling lacked rancor and there was a twinkle in his eye as he scowled at Thorin, who hid his smile and scowled back.
The fellowship was packing up their meagre belongings; the Rohirrim were breaking camp as well, and Théoden was deep in conversation with a group of the warriors. Finally he nodded in satisfaction and came over to where the rest of the party stood.
“My people will give us all that we need for our journey: food and water, blankets and warm clothing. Anything more that you have need of, please ask them. And further, they can spare three pack horses to carry our provisions.”
“We were fortunate indeed to meet your people,” said Thorin.
“I only wish I could bring you south, to Edoras and the Golden Hall of Meduseld!" Théoden said. "There would the boards groan with fare aplenty, and horns overflow with mead as we toasted our lost companions for their valor. And I could see my sisters again--I have four, each one fairer than the next, although the sweetest is little Theodwyn, the youngest, who has not yet seen five summers.” He sighed, gazing south. “Someday, perhaps!”
“I too shall travel with you,” said Estel, drawing near. “Azog’s band is defeated, and my duty here in Rohan done.”
“Should you not return to Minas Tirith, to report to your ruler?” Denethor said tartly, looking up from his breakfast, but Estel’s good mood was not to be broken by petty jibes.
“Your father tasked me with keeping you safe and preventing any threats to Gondor,” he said, “And I judge that traveling with you achieves both of these goals.” He smiled. “I find myself unwilling to be parted from your fellowship so quickly.”
“How convenient!” jeered Denethor, but Thorin noted that Arwen smiled too, and turned away quickly to hide it.
The Rohirrim rode south, back across the Limlight into Rohan, and the fellowship traveled east more slowly on foot, the three pack horses clopping after. Théoden introduced them as Gléowine, Goldwine, and Guthwine--”Friend of joy, friend of gold, and friend of battle,” he said, and they nodded their shaggy heads at their names and puffed great breaths of steam into the air. Snow started to fall as they went, a light dusting that scudded across the ground and curled around the horses’ hooves, and everyone hunched further into their cloaks and shivered.
The ground grew boggy as they approached the place where the Limlight joined the Anduin, and great reeds grew in clumps higher than the hobbit and dwarves' heads, pale and brittle with the cold. The shorter members of the party were forced to let the taller ones take the lead, though not without grumbling. "For we would go around in endless circles if we let you lead us, master dwarf," Legolas said with a grin at Gimli's scowl. The going was slow, for the boggy ground sucked at their boots and even Bilbo had to admit that icy mud between the toes tended to kill any joy in traveling. But he kept his spirits up as much as possible by singing songs of the Shire: harvest songs and love ballads and nonsense ditties, whatever entered his head. When his voice grew hoarse, Gimli sang a dwarven marching-song, and Théoden spent a few hours chanting the lineage of the horses of Rohan, until even Bilbo had to admit that if he never heard another “begat” that would be fine with him.
Even Denethor had a song to give the party, for as they traveled through the marshy lands a bird winged high overhead, a gull flying south, and Denethor waved to it as if to a friend. “He flies south over the mountains, to Dol Amroth and its castle on the golden cliffs above the sea,” he said, almost as if to himself, “Dol Amroth! Fairest of all cities save Minas Tirith.” And then he looked after the gull and sang:
”My sweet brown bird in the briar sings
I have no wish to clip her wings
So high she flies, so wild and free
My sweet bird over the wide, wide sea.
My sweet brown bird no cage will bear
But soars above without a care
And my heart takes flight when I hear her song
My sweet bird over the billows strong.”
For a moment, looking south, his face seemed lost in a joyful memory, and the bitterness and pride were eased from it. Then he came to himself and laughed shortly at Bilbo’s expression. “Does it surprise you that I am capable of melody, Mr. Baggins?” he said. “But if you had ever met the Princess Finduilas of Dol Amroth, you would understand that she could move even the most joyless to song. Lucky was I the day she agreed to become my betrothed.”
“Luckily she gains the rule of Gondor in the deal, to make it worth marrying you,” smirked Théoden, but at his words the smile slipped from Denethor’s face and his mood seemed to darken once more; he did not respond to Théoden, but cast an odd glare at Estel’s back before going back to plodding through the mud in silence once more.
They came to the shores of the Anduin, at the North Undeep, the great lazy bend of the river where the waters ran shallow enough to cross on foot, and picked their way carefully across the stony shoals, leading the pack horses.
“Mercy me,” said Bilbo as they reached the other side. “What a terrible place.”
The Brown Lands were aptly named: no trees and little grass grew on the scarred and scorched land, which was broken into jagged peaks and piles of rock. The going was even slower now as they made their way across crumbling shale and treacherous icy slate, and more than once they found their way blocked by a rockfall and had to backtrack to another route.
“Once these lands were fertile and beautiful,” Gandalf said that night, as they camped for the first time since crossing the river. “But war came to them, and they were destroyed and left barren.”
Bilbo shivered and drew nearer to the feeble fire, and Thorin put an arm around him. “I feel I shall never be warm again,” Bilbo muttered, leaning into him.
“It is a bitter cold,” agreed Dís, biting off a piece of jerky and looking around the looming rock-piles with unease. Her eyes fell on Arwen, sitting on the other side of the fire. “Where did you get a needle and thread, elf-maiden?”
“My name is Arwen,” she replied without looking up from her work. “And the riders of Rohan were kind enough to give me some materials.”
Dís moved to sit next to her, gazing at her work: delicate stitches of white thread on a rough black cloth. The pattern was impossible to guess yet, but it looked like a star, or perhaps a leaf. “You have a delicate hand,” Dís said. “I left a gown for my little grandson half-finished when I departed from Erebor and my fingers itch to hold a needle again. It always cleared my mind and focused my thoughts.”
Arwen looked startled, then smiled. “I miss my mother’s embroidery hoop,” she admitted, her needle dipping in and out of the dark fabric. “It would be easier work with it, but I left it in Rivendell. It was made of ivory. She gave it to me before she--before she sailed West,” she said. Her smile slipped and her fingers stilled as she gazed down at the cloth, unseeing.
“Could you show me how you make that knot?” said Dís gently. “I’ve never seen one of quite that style.” As she watched Arwen’s nimble fingers, she went on, “My grandfather gave me my hoop when he taught me my stitches. It was made of beaten bronze.”
“Your grandfather did embroidery? The King?” There was a chuckle in Théoden’s voice, and Dís looked confused before she smiled.
“Ah yes, men and elves tend to divide things into tasks for men and tasks for women, I always forget,” she said.
“If we relied on such a small group to do all the sewing, many would have to live with rent clothing!” laughed Gimli.
“Grandfather always embroidered before diplomatic meetings,” said Dís. “He said it helped remind him of the ways our lives are interwoven.”
“Did he teach you embroidery as well, Thorin?” said Bilbo with only a hint of merriment in his tone at the image of Thorin bent over an embroidery hoop.
Thorin frowned. “I lacked the patience when I was young,” he said. “He was rather disappointed with me.” There was a thread of regret in his voice, and Bilbo found his hand and squeezed it without thinking.
The conversation moved on to other things, and Bilbo realized later Arwen had never mentioned what exactly she was stitching, or for whom.
The Brown Lands seemed to stretch on forever, though Gandalf assured them that if they had been able to walk directly, they could have covered the distance in half the time. “A pity we do not have wings,” grumbled Denethor, glaring up at the sky as they were forced to sidetrack to the west once more. The eerie landscape began to wear on everyone as the days wore on, and more than once Thorin saw members of the party starting at shadows or jumping at a cascade of pebbles.
Yet even these desolate lands were not utterly devoid of life: small hopping mice would appear on the tops of rock piles top stare at them curiously with beady black eyes, and once they spotted a nimble mountain goat clambering up a steep slope with unconcerned grace. But the wind howled and whistled through the channels and valleys as if it were being dragged across stone knives, and Thorin often could sense Bilbo tossing and turning in his sleep as the eerie wailing rose and fell.
“We shall be out of here soon,” Gandalf said one morning, leaning on his staff and nodding. “At least, I certainly hope so,” he added, looking up at the sky and frowning. “This plateau gives way to the wide fields of south Dorwinion. Then the route is simple, following the Ash Mountains to the east. There should be no trouble at all,” he concluded, smiling down at Dís and Gimli, who had been complaining.
“No trouble at all,” Dís repeated mockingly as he walked away. “Wizards!”
Days later, Thorin awoke in the middle of the night, reaching for his sword without thinking before he realized that Bilbo had woken him up, shuddering deep in a nightmare. In the northwest there was a sudden flicker of eerie violet light, a spear of magenta lightning crackling across the pewter-colored clouds.
“A storm,” said a voice, and Thorin turned to see Estel looking to the north-west. “Sweeping south, from Dol Guldur.” A low rumble of thunder reached them.
“That fell fortress was cleansed long ago,” said Legolas, perched atop a jagged stone formation. A wind was picking up, blowing grit across the stones.
“It was, yes,” said Estel. Another jagged fork of pink lightning skewered the clouds. Thunder, closer this time. “But how long has it been since the elves of the Greenwood have ventured there?”
Legolas’s gaze dropped, and he frowned.
Bilbo took a ragged breath, his eyes moving beneath their lids, and Thorin reached down to shake his shoulder. As he touched him, though, lightning crackled, much closer this time, and Bilbo sat up with a muffled shriek.
“I saw them!” he cried. “Dark riders on dark horses, riding forth from iron gates. They called out--” He closed his eyes and buried his face in Thorin’s collar, shaking.
Something landed with a thud in the middle of the campfire, sending sparks and burning twigs flying everywhere. A second missile thumped down next to Arwen, and everyone stared at it: a smooth white orb about the size of an apple.
“It’s ice,” Arwen said. “Hail.”
By now the hail was pattering all around them, bouncing off the ground: Thorin cast his coat around Bilbo and crouched over him as lightning flashed and the sky split open, shielding him with his body until they could stagger to a shallow indentation in a rock, sheltered from the worst.
“Take cover!” yelled Estel, as a hailstone nearly the size of a hobbit’s head smacked into the rocks, sending chips and fragments of ice flying everywhere. Thorin watched as he grabbed Théoden’s shield from the ground and held it over first Gimli’s head, then Legolas’s, giving them cover while they scrambled to find a sheltered spot. He tried to protect Denethor with it as well, but Denethor gave him a furious look and Estel fell back.
“Watch out!” cried Arwen. There was the twang of a bowstring, and the air above Estel exploded into chips and flying ice. Startled, he threw himself to the ground, rolling to slide under the same outcropping as Arwen.
“You shot the hailstone,” he yelled breathlessly at her over the nearly-constant roll of thunder. “Very nice.”
Thorin saw her smile at him. “Well, someone has to value your life, if you will not,” she retorted.
They exchanged a giddy smile, and Thorin felt the radiance of it like a light in the darkness. Then Bilbo shuddered against him as another thunderclap rattled the camp, and Thorin tightened his arms around him. “You’re safe,” he murmured. “I’ll keep you safe.” He felt Bilbo nod against him and for a moment he believed it himself.
Then he saw Gandalf, hunched uncomfortably under a low outcropping, watching the storm with narrowed eyes and a worried face.
Lurid lightning bathed everything in a baleful glow, and Thorin tried not to shudder himself.
The Brown Lands ended abruptly, as if the final ripples of some cataclysmic shockwave had reached their terminus many ages ago. The ground smoothed out into a plateau, and the horses gratefully cropped at the brown, sere grasses which grew there. Travel grew easier, and for a time everyone’s spirits were high enough that Gimli and Legolas could bicker and Denethor and Théoden snipe at each other more easily.
One evening it was Estel and Thorin’s turn to gather firewood, in short supply on the rolling plain. They walked together without speaking for a while, gathering sticks and twigs. Then Thorin broke the silence.
“Who are you, really?”
Estel looked as if he had been expecting the question for a while and was slightly relieved Thorin had been polite enough to ask away from the others. “I am, as I said, the captain of the guard at Minas Tirith, your majesty,” he said.
Thorin snorted. “Indeed,” he said. “I doubt not you speak the truth. But somehow I think it is not the whole truth. Bilbo remembers meeting you in Rivendell, many years ago.”
Estel bent to pick up a branch. “Ah,” he said.
“So the question is, how did a simple captain of the guard come to be raised in one of the last Elven strongholds of Middle Earth?” Thorin pondered out loud. “And how did an unremarkable man of Minas Tirith win the love of Elrond’s daughter? Oh, many would miss it,” he said quickly at the alarm in Estel’s face, “But I know the face of one who sees his beloved again after many lonely years.”
Estel lowered his gaze and bit his lip.
“Arwen carries a blade,” said Thorin, and Estel’s eyes come up to meet his again, wary. “Her brother said it had been reforged, and he bore it now for another. He gave it to her to give to its rightful owner. At our council, Gandalf explained that Isildur’s sword had been shattered and the fragments kept ever after in Rivendell.”
Silence. A wind stirred the brown grasses, but Estel said nothing.
“Why have you not yet reclaimed the sword that is your birthright, Heir of Isildur?” Thorin asked.
Estel’s back straightened, and his jaw tightened. Despite his filthy hair and unkempt beard, he looked very kingly, although he did not seem to realize it. “Isildur failed all of Middle Earth,” he said. “I am heir to that failure as well as to his crown!” He shook his head. “I must win the hearts of the people of Rohan and Gondor before I reveal myself. I have been raised among Elves and Dúnedain--what did I know of the lives of the people of the east? It would be folly to expect them to trust me, to follow some stranger who shows up at their door with a sword and a mad tale. I wanted...I wanted to know them first. To be one of them.”
“It sounds like you have won their hearts already,” said Thorin. “Does Lord Ecthelion know?”
Estel grimaced. “I have never told him, but I can tell he suspects. As does his son.” He looked, for a moment, quite young, and uncertain. “Ecthelion may well gladly cede the right to rule to me. But I fear that Denethor will never recognize me as the rightful ruler of Gondor. Were Ecthelion to step down in my favor, I would likely make an implacable enemy in his son. I cannot risk a civil war that would tear our people apart. And…” He trailed off and looked away.
“And you are afraid,” said Thorin. “Afraid that Denethor is right, and that your blood is tainted by lust for the Ring.”
“I do fear it,” whispered Estel.
“And yet you wish to travel with us?”
“The fate of Middle Earth lies in the hands of your party, and I must give you aid,” said Estel. “If I gave in to my fear, if I walked away to avoid temptation, I would be unworthy of the crown which I hope to claim.”
Thorin thought on this for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “As it so happens, I have some experience with fearing that one comes from a lineage cursed with weakness. I trust you, Estel, future High King of Middle Earth.”
Estel’s eyes gleamed gray in the twilight, a grateful glance. “My thanks, your majesty.”
“So who else of our party knows?” Thorin asked as they turned back toward the camp with their armfuls of sticks.
“The lady Arwen, of course. And Gandalf.”
“Of course, the old meddler,” snorted Thorin without heat.
“I would rather you not tell anyone else,” Estel said. “Except Bilbo, of course.” He smiled. “If I cannot trust him I can trust no one.”
“I shall keep your secret,” said Thorin. “Even from Bilbo, for it would not matter a jot to him one way or the other. He will trust you or like you for yourself and your deeds, not for anything written in musty history books. If it becomes important, I will not keep it from him, but for now your secret is safe with me.”
Then he laughed.
“Poor Bilbo!” he said. “He shall be quite annoyed. For after Théoden and myself, this will mark the third time he has met royalty unawares!”
The day came at last when they topped a rise and looked out over a sweeping vista, a plain that stretched east nearly as far as the eye could see. In the far distance, there was a glint of water that Gandalf declared was the Sea of Rhûn. To the south, a long line of mountains, wreathed with mist and smoke--the Ered Lithui, along which they planned to travel. And in between them--
Behind him, Thorin heard Gimli gasp, heard Legolas mutter something in Sindarin as if he were spitting something foul from his mouth. To the south-east, far below them on the plain, a cloud of dust and smoke, the kind churned up by thousands of marching feet. He could see the dark specks, trudging away from Mordor: an army of orcs, on the move.
On the move north.
He felt Dís’s fingers digging into his arm, heard her hissed intake of breath.
”They travel to Erebor,” she said.