The road goes ever on and on...

[The Frenchman]

The Road goes ever on and on, Book II

Part1: Axes for hire

North of Bree, Late Winter
“The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls...”

“Ye really should nae hum that song, me old friend, it does ye no good.”

Nalnain looked up from the saddlebags he was packing, at old Rumn who was smoking his pipe and gazing at him sadly.

“Ye’re right,” he grumbled, “I do nae known I’m doing it meself”. The two said little after that. Nalnain filled his bags with supplies and the few toys he had still unsold and took to the road alone once again. Rumn watched him leave for Erebor, his heart filled with sadness and a sense of powerlessness. There was little he could do to restore Nalnain’s hope, and every year the aging dwarf grew sadder and more withdrawn.

Nalnain talked to himself quite a lot on the road. Or to be honest he talked to his wife, Star of the North, long lost in a mining accident in the Blue Mountains. Sometimes he spoke to Nalnorn, vanished many years ago in a foolhardy scouting expedition to Moria. Then for good measure he talked to his pony, who at least gave the impression of listening, since he too could hear the sadness in Nalnain’s voice, and fretted in his own way.

He decided to avoid Tharbad, and stopped a while in Imladris, though he did not stay long. The Ladies Isaniel, Galia, and Mereniel and others he knew were not there that year, away on Elrond’s business and the place made him think of little Merin. She had come with him, with another brave few, Lance and Elenuíal, on an ultimately fruitless search for Nalnorn in Moria. Stiff resistance had driven them back, and Nalnain had realised seeking Nalnorn there would do little but get his friends killed. His own life held little weight for him, but he would not abide endangering others on an old fool’s quest. How that little hobbit had liked his toys. The last time he had truly laughed was in her presence, he thought. Unusually, in view of the last few years, he found himself stocking up for battle. Why he could not say. Stooped on his pony he rode away from Imladris, as the snows melted and the rivers and gorges filled with angry turbulent waters.

Nalnain stopped at the Ford of Carrock, not because the Beornings held any love for dwarves, though they tolerated him, and he had occasionally sold a toy or two there, but because one of his few friends could in the last few years always be found there.

It was Huer No-Face who found him, unsurprisingly. He was riding to the Ford, half-heartedly massacring a happier song, when the huge Beorning suddenly stood up in the bushes and tangle of trees beside him. There was no forced jollity or slapping of backs, just a clasped hand and a nod, before Nalnain dismounted, and they sought out a clearing to camp awhile. They shared a little news, Huer had been accepted back among his people after a long exile a few years back, and since his return had been at war ceaselessly, against the Orcs, Goblins and the Wargs of both Mirkwood and the Misties. Some real battles it seemed, and a daily life made mostly of the hunt, punctuated by violent skirmishes, bloody struggles beneath the dark canopy of the forest, and tooth and claw rending flesh in steep gorges.

“What about you Nalnain?” Huer asked when his tales were told.
“Nothing” He shifted uncomfortably. “Well no news. And I tire of me trade. I be thinking of returning to Erebor for awhile, perhaps I canna seek me friend Rhuri’s council.”

Huer nodded. He knew that Nalnain was the strangest dwarf he had ever met, who had told him in a drunken moment that some of his own people called him “a mad old fool, who spends too much time with elves”, despite all that it was his own people’s council that did the old dwarf the most good, on the few occasions he actually listened to it.

“I’m thinking of getting on the road again”, said Huer, “Darkness is stirring all over the land, and I would know what the elves are saying. Perhaps someone out there has a use for our axes. My people did fine without me for a few years, they can do so again.”

“Axe fer hire” Nalnain chuckled “I had nae thought of that. You know when I was a young dwarf me father used to tell me that it always be better to start on a new road even if you have no idea where it goes. Nought new comes of roads well-travelled.” His voice grew quieter, as though he was speaking more to himself than Huer, “I might as well do it while I can still see, and fight.” He clung briefly to his left arm, and not for the first time that day the Beorning noticed Nalnain’s absent-minded attempts at suppressing the shaking of his hands.

“Then let us do so!” boomed Huer, seemingly in the hope of shouting loud enough to awaken the tired dwarf spirit. “Let us drink to it!”

Drinking horns cracked together, and two voices shouted out into the sky, upsetting the birds in the trees around “Axes for hire!”

Nalnain rode away to Erebor, perhaps he might meet Rhuri there, and find someone who needed a warrior’s aid...

[The Frenchman]

Part 2: Red in tooth and claw

Viper was gutting a local craftsman, late for the second time with his protection money, in a dark alley of Tharbad. His thugs, the brute Asnor Black-teeth and Isni the Cutthroat held the sobbing man down, while the snickering Dunman did his dirty work. There was a sickening thud of meat on cobbles, and the big tattooed man laughed:

“Let’s see you walk home draggin yer bowels along Emett!”

There was a cry in the darkness, and two children bolted out from behind some trash and down the alley.

“It’s his spawn, get the little scum!” Viper stared down the alley at his brutes giving chase. The Watch could know nothing...


Huer No-Face moved silently through the forest, careful that the pads on his paws broke no twig nor rustled no leaves. Beside him was Shadowborn, pacing effortlessly amongst the trees, his snout going from the ground to the light wind, searching. They’d been trailing the group for days, and they would soon be upon them. With a low growl Shadowborn gave the signal.
The orcs walked the trail in single file, twenty in number, led by a man in black armour, unaware of the eyes watching them from the undergrowth. They chattered at each other, shoving and insulting their companions, despite their leaders’ occasional angry calls for quiet. The two bears raced on, the path soon came under a rocky overhang, and Huer clambered up it without a sound, while Shadowborn hung back to cover the rear of the war-party.

When the leader and a couple of orcs were passed him, Huer crouched. Massive muscles and sinews expanded into a leap. The orcs did not even have time to scream when the bear fell from the sky. He landed on one with all his weight, crushing it in a yelp and short snaps of breaking ribs, he grasped with outstretched paws the heads of the two beside him and smashed them against each other, their legs disappearing from under them as their brains leaked out of their skulls.
Then they turned and were upon him, but the narrow path made it difficult for them to reach him. With a thundering roar he swept his claws about him, knocking two on each side off their feet, deep gashes across their throats and faces. Almost half the band was dead in those few instants. A few orcs at the back turned to run, and were met with Shadowborn’s charge, four pinned to the ground under fur and muscle, with nothing to contemplate but the teeth that tore at them.
Their leader ran. He’d heard the stories of the two bears that harried the orcs around Dol Guldur these last few months. Dark masses of fur, claw and teeth that burst from the forest to tear and rend. The bear with no face, the fur gone from it and in its’ places a mass of ugly scarred pink flesh. He was a cruel man, a warrior, but he knew terror then, and ran stumbling down the wooded hill.
The last orcs died, a mass of desperate, scrambling, screaming creatures facing a pitiless enemy. The two bears stood, coats matted in blood, shaking strips of torn flesh from their fur. They looked at each other once, and padded quietly down the hill.

The armoured warrior ran and ran, falling over branch, knocking into tree, losing his helm, but always running. Eventually when he could run no more, he stood panting with his back to a large rocky outcrop, sword shaking in his hand. They left him there a while, watching. When he started to move again, Huer stepped out of the trees to block his path.
The man screamed, and shook his sword at him. Huer came forward slowly. In his mind he could still see the charred half-eaten bodies in the village. His nostrils were still caked with the smell of it. He reared up, and the man stabbed him, his sword passing through the fat of his sides, and wedging itself there. It meant nothing to him. He took the man into his arms, crushing his armour and ribs with his paws. He looked into the man eyes, their pupils dilated with anguish, and then he tore his head off with his teeth.

Later, as he watched Huer wash off the blood in the river, naked in human form, his torn face pallid and ghostly, Shadowborn found the courage to speak to him.

“Why so angry still? We won did we not?”

Huer splashed water over his ruined face. For once he answered, even if he snarled his answer out like it burned him.

“Because I like it. Because I want to hear them scream and taste their blood in my mouth. Because I feel I am like them somehow.”

Shadowborn shook his head. It was ever like this, since he had found the boy after the orcs had decided to eat his face while he was still alive. He was made of rage, and yet he hated it with every fibre of his muscle. He never saw that he was the first to strike in battle, and that the lines of orcs he faced squealed in fright the first moment they saw him. Or that the men and bears of the Vale of Anduin looked to him in every fight. He paid no mind to the new name the men of Beorn had given him: No-Fear. He was Huer No-Face, and in his eyes he lived to kill.


They reached the hills near Tharbad in early spring.

“You can go in there on your own. I’d rather eat my own droppings than spend a moment in that city.” growled Shadowborn.
“Meet me in Rivendell then. They know you there now.” replied Huer, ruffling the fur on his brother’s face. The bear disappeared into the forest, with Huer looking on awhile.

He walked the streets, meeting old acquaintances. In the darker parts of town he stood and watched from the darkness. This town never changed...
Two children came round a corner at the kind of speed only death chasing you could generate, and crashed into his legs.
“Ethon, Sania. What are you doing out so late?”
The two little street urchins looked up at him, fear in their wide eyes.
“Mr Huer, please, help us?” They clung to his breeches, and the girl started to cry. Asnor Black-teeth and Isni the Cutthroat chose this ill-conceived moment to round the corner, clubs and knives in hand. They barely had time to move before the dark mass was upon them, choking the life out of them, huge crushing hands on bare throats.

“You are going to drop those and I will not snap you necks. You will give me your purses, and you will leave town, and never trouble these children again and I will not hunt you down.”

The alley rang with metal and wood falling to the ground, and the wet sound of a man losing his continence. He threw them down the alley, and they scrambled to their feet, turned and ran.

He had watched the scene from the corner, too experienced and too wary to go anywhere in town at a blind run. Viper was no coward, he eyed the large man carefully, he could take him, he’d killed many as big as him as a warrior in Dunland, and he’d killed many more men since he was in Tharbad. He’d heard of a big Beorning who used to cause a lot of trouble a few years back. There was money on that one’s head. He slid his blades noiselessly from their scabbards.

“You will go now children. You will take the purses and go to the Greyflood. You will tell them that I ask you be fed, washed and put to bed, and that I will be coming soon. Go now.”

The two siblings looked up at the giant and picking the purses up took off at a full run. He continued to stare into the darkness of the alley as their footsteps receded, till they were out of earshot. His ears were keen. He paused then took a few steps into the darkness.

Viper was waiting for him, stabbing with one sword and slashing with the other, finding only air before him, and a low voice by his ear.

“You had to come. You couldn’t leave it.”

Strong hands took his shoulders and threw him at the wall. He pushed himself from it and slashed down with both blades. Huer stepped back, and kicked him square in the chest.

“You’d kill me, them, and your men for cowardice, wouldn’t you, Dunman?”

Viper circled away, slightly winded still, and aching from broken ribs, awaiting his moment.

“This is no business of yours Beorning. If you’d stayed out of this you could have gone home to your poxy valley. Now... now I’ll take your head and gut those children like I did their father.”

Viper got the wild charge he’d hoped for out of the Beorning, and screeching with glee he plunged his right blade into the man’s stomach. The cut across the jugular he was expecting to follow with did not materialise. He looked up to find a hand clasping his wrist.
Huer took his other wrist, pushing the sword through his own body, but stopping Viper from withdrawing it or moving it in the wound. He drew closer, till his breath mingled with the snarling Dunman’s.
Viper spat in his face and struggled to twist the blade he had in him.

“Dark One’s Eyes, you’re an ugly son of a whore!”

Huer’s eyes looked into his, his pallid ruined face throbbing and expanding. Teeth lengthening...

“Tell me evil man, what do you fear?”

Screams filled the alley, and went on for a long time. No one went to look.


That night a large and slightly wet man sat by a bed, feeding two children honey cakes and stories about his brother who was a bear, and got into the most terrible trouble with bees. For the moment their fear and sadness was forgotten. They would remember to mourn soon enough. Now they slept and dreamt they lived in a great luminous and bountiful wood, and were protected by elves and bears. In the morning, he would find them a family. He had enough coin to see them fed, and he knew a carpenter’s wife who mourned her barren state.

In the meantime he had a bandage to change. Blood was starting to seep through his shirt and trousers.

[The Frenchman]

Part 3: A Song of Swords

Huer No-Face sat on a tree stump, watching the gates of Tharbad. He chewed the last mouthful of flesh from the boar leg he’d been eating, and threw away the bone. It was time to resume his journey to Rivendell, and not a moment too soon. His ears perked up, at the thunderous clatter of hooves coming down the road to Bree and beyond. He peered down the hill from the darkness of his hood. The rider came roaring forward at full gallop, before pulling the reins hard and coming to a dusty halt in view of the walls. The grey horse sweated profusely, Huer could almost smell him from his perch. His rider was in full armour, helmed, and the workmanship on the steel suit bore the unmistakeable mark of Gondor. Yet the figure wearing it was small, slim for a warrior. Intrigued despite himself, Huer skulked forward for a closer look. The horse was peaceful now, still breathing heavily, steam rising from his wide nostrils and coat. The rider’s helm was lifted...

Long golden hair tumbled out, and the rider shook her head. Huer, who had long ceased to have any interest in women or their beauty, nearly swallowed his tongue. She was so very beautiful, only some of the elven ladies he had seen in Rivendell like her rivalled the sun for the shine and warmth it brought to the heart. And she was so young, radiating vitality and an innocence that seemed to bear no relation to the warrior’s gear she carried. Like fire and water... Huer tore himself away from looking at her. Whoever she was he wished her well, and hoped the shadowy depths the road could bring would cast no sombre clouds over her demeanour and spirit. As he took to the winding secret paths that lead to Imladris, he thought of another warrior woman, he’d known when she was but a girl. Braint, little-one, Eagle, what roads do you travel now?

Luthriel of House Dol Amroth breathed the cold air outside Tharbad, and cast a disinterested eye upon the city. She had no time, no choice but to ride on through it quickly. The messages she bore from their friend amongst the Dunedain rangers of the North to her father’s cousin Imrahil would not wait. How she longed to see the Bay of Belfalas once more, but first she must deliver her letters to Imrahil, who would be in Minas Tirith for most of the coming season. This was her way of proving herself to the men of Dol Amroth, the first step to fulfilling her destiny. Her mind wandered back to her coming of age...

It was a tradition of sorts, though fashion would be a better word, that the young amongst the golden children of the city of Dol Amroth would go find a soothsayer before their coming of age. Luthriel had wandered the market until she found a suitable crone, a strange painted woman, all mismatched coloured hides and golden bangles.

Simael the soothsayer had watched the pretty, wide-eyed girl approach, with a secret calculating smile. This one would pay in gold. She was used to the pretty empted-headed rich girls of the city paying her to feed them the sweet lies that they wanted to hear. You will marry a knight, a prince, you will have six sons and live in a big white house and you will still be beautiful when you are old. She drew the polite, shy girl into her tent, and made sure she paid in advance. She took her hand... Her world exploded...

Fire, screams, blood and war. Countless nightmare creatures, faces like rotted flesh, hulking man beasts the colour of rock, towering creatures like walking mountains crushing howling spearmen underfoot. Wave upon wave of the black bannered hordes screaming death and hate at the walls of the White City. They are coming, we are losing... We are losing...

Luthriel looks up at her lord Imrahil, and what is left of the seven hundred Swan knights who rode out of Dol Amroth. She pulls off her helm to again tie up her hair. The sweat-soaked locks are getting in her eyes. Her armour is drenched in gore, orc, Southron and Easterling blood drip from its’ heavy plates. Imrahil is pointing at the Rohan charge, now losing its’ power, its’ strength draining in the flood of orcs and wicked men it faces. He spots a weak point in the enemy line, and drawing his sword orders his knights forward. One more charge. One more charge...

Killing. Cutting, blocking, turning, stabbing. Killing.

The battle is a dream. There is no thought or time for thought.

Thought and action are one.

Smashing into the massed ranks of the orcs at the battle’s centre.

Crushing them under heavy hooves.

Riding through till the compact group of knights is surrounded, and then killing, killing killing.

Have to get through to the riders of Rohan. Theaden where are you? Will I see you again? I know I won’t. I’ve known all my life. This is a good day to die.

In the centre of the heaving fighting throng there is a great orc. Many a time has he taunted the men and women of Gondor from beneath the walls of Minas Tirith. Gothmog, right hand of the Witch King you are mine.
Luthriel cuts her way through Gothmog’s bodyguards, unaware that she is leaving the band of riders hard pressed from all sides behind her. A few turn and see her, the most loved of the Swans, and urge their steeds to follow, but it is too late. Gothmog, paying no heed to her cut across his face, splits her horses’ head with his heavy mace and it buckles taking her down with it. Trapped beneath its’ dying flanks. She slashes and stabs around her but they pierce her with spears and jagged swords. Gothmog lifts the mace once more and down it comes splitting her armour, crushing her side. The Swan knights, Imrahil at their head, crash into Gothmog, sweep over her... I can’t see... Why can’t I see?

They bear her away on an unbroken shield. Two stopped to guard her as Imrahil pressed on. All around the cries are of the banner of Gondor. The King has returned... Luthriel hears nothing... She is by the sea, the seagulls flock around the bay of Belfalas, the wind is in her hair, and the waters gently stroke the white sands as they did when she was a child.

Luthriel is in the Houses of Healing, in the sixth circle of Minas Tirith. She wears no armour now, and bandages cover her torn, broken body, though blood still seeps through, and she coughs it up often also, her eyes unseeing, turning this way and that searching for something only she knows of on the white ceiling. Loreth, oldest of the healers, wets her feverish brow with a cloth, so little hope for this one, yet she won’t die.

Luthriel does not hear the tall rider’s call. Or the clatter he makes to get to her bedside, quick forgiven by Loreth. She smells him though and mumbles his name. He is crying, and holding her gently. He does not leave her, and though she is barely aware of him she feels the pain less. In the morning she looks him in the eye, and says his name out loud. Theaden... Theaden... Theaden... She looks at peace.

She starts to shake in his arms, blood welling from her mouth. He cries for help but she goes still in his arms. Loreth runs but stops at her feet. Her eyes look at nothing. She is dead.

In the Houses of Healing a whisper is taken up, from the door and quickly from bed to bed, healer to healer. “Aragorn, the King has come”...

Simael chokes back a scream, tears running unbidden down her face. The young girl is frightened, the old woman is holding her hand as though to let go was to die. She has placed her other hand upon hers, her fear no match for her concern. Simael lets go, sobbing. She puts her hand on the young woman’s flushed cheek.

“There is a war coming, a great war. And you must be ready, you must be strong, for you will die in battle, but you will win. You are a Swan knight. Take your money girl! Take your money and go. And may all the lords of Arda look on you kindly, Luthriel of Dol Amroth.”

With that Simael pushed herself out of her tent, uncaring of what she knocked over, and ran from the market. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be with her man. He was a simple fisherman, old and foolish, but he loved her. She wanted to be with him, she wanted him to hold her, while she cried herself to sleep...

Outside Tharbad, Luthriel shook her head, as though awakening from a bad dream. She had never forgotten the soothsayer, not least because she had never told the old woman her name. Ever since she was a child she had ridden the great white horses along the beach, and watched her brothers training for battle, copying their movements when alone in her room. Always she would look on from her window when the Swans rode out to war. She would be ready, and she would become a knight, it was what she had always wanted, and everything has a price...

She clung tightly to the reins, and the pommel of her sword, and rode on...

[The Frenchman]

Part 4: The Ending Dark, and his father’s son.

Only one person had really seen Luthriel ride out of Bree, where she had stabled her horse for a few days to give it a well earned rest. Even he paid her little mind, though he did wonder who the armoured rider was, and where she was going. The dwarf turned away, and went back into the Pony. He hated the rain here. Bree was a grey and dank place. Still, his new friend Hele awaited him by the fire, where no doubt she was drying her boots again. They had travelled many places together, around Bree and the Shire mostly, taking what work they could find. They had even travelled close to the Blue mountains, though he had steered them away, he had no desire to go home, since he knew no-one awaited him there.

Nalnorn spent the evening in pleasant conversation with the young Hele, well, all the mannish folk seemed young to him. Still her presence was a greatly welcome distraction from his darker thoughts and though much between them was still unsaid, there was no need to pry. She had proved herself to him in battle, and that was all that counted for him. He wondered what wager he could get her into next, and smiled.

That night however, when alone in his bed, he woke screaming from his nightmares. Dreams of endless cold passageways and tunnels, scurrying like a rat, assaulted him. Dreams of ambush and massacre, of being hunted and afraid made him clench his first and tear at the sheets. Dreams of drums in the dark made him sweat, and his teeth chatter.

A year, perhaps two, of terror, fleeing to and fro in the black of Moria, living off mushrooms and rodents, never seeing the sun had been his fate. His body had been broken, and to this day his muscles were weak, his once formidable strength sapped. He was pallid, and often sick, after such a long period of under-nourishment. His faith in Aule had sustained him, and his pride and foolish bravura before the expedition, so richly rewarded with horror and fear, had turned to humility. He had never stopped looking for a way out. Yet he was pinned in a few levels, every seeming way out blocked by rubble, or worse, jabbering, snivelling goblins in their hundreds.

The light had come. He had found a long tunnel, part of one of the ventilation channels that left one of Aule’s shrines. He had had to dig, for one long patient year, past every blockage, past every stretched span of collapsed debris. But he had found the light. A wretched pale creature, he had still stood proudly on the flanks of the mountains, staring into the sky, whispering Aule’s name. He had walked for a long time, though he remembered it not. A passing merchant on his way home had found him on the side of a forest road. The kindly man named Galdor had stuck him in the back of his cart, and taken him home to Gondor. He and his wife nursed the shattered dwarf, till he spoke again.

Now he walked the roads searching. Some he met claimed to have encountered his father, Nalnain Gentlehand of the Firebeards. Word was he had been seeking him for a long time. A dwarf named Rumn had confirmed this, and even shed tears on meeting Nalnorn. It was just a matter of time till they were reunited. Nalnorn was not the kind to sit and wait. People everywhere were in need of aid. And he would care for others as Galdor and his wife had cared for him. Nalnorn rose, the dawn was coming, its first rays caressing the open curtains. Hele would be up soon too, it was time for breakfast. Then they would answer the open road’s call.

[The Frenchman]

The Bear they call No-Face

Thanks to R_edbuzzardd & KChan27 at DeviantArt for the bits I photoshopped together.

[The Frenchman]

A bit more dynamic, though far from perfect.

[DM_Roäc]

A 15-minute composition sketch, inspired by the above image. Hope you like it. I may turn it into a full painting if I get the time

[The Frenchman]

Awesome
What software do you use for painting? Is there anything you recommend?

[DM_Roäc]

photoshop. If you've got a pen tablet I'd be happy to give you a few tips over skype some time. If you're painting with a mouse.... hard luck

[The Frenchman]

Have photoshop and (small not brilliant) Bamboo pen tablet. Email me skype details and we'll do that some time, that would be great

[The Frenchman]

Three goblins run at him round one of the pillars of the great hall. He meets the first square on with his shield, the creature’s war-cry stilled in its’ throat by the full weight of an armoured dwarf crashing into it. Nalnain cuts to the right, catching the next in the jaw, burying his axe halfway into its neck. The last stabs at him, his serrated blade scraping the rim of the crouching dwarf’s shield, sending forth a shower of sparks, leaving an opening, Nalnain reverses his axe, chopping through the goblins’ leg, then into his shoulder with the second cut, the creature screaming as its’ blood gushes out in heavy spurts. The one on the floor starts to stir, so he stands on its’ throat, clenching his teeth as it kicks, shifting his weight till he feels the snap of neck under iron boot.

The old dwarf looks around, his fading sight matters little here. His eyes were made for the darkness of the deeps. Across the hall Old Muck is pouring out arrows towards the enemy onslaught, taking orcs and goblins off their feet, clutching feathered shafts stilling their breath. Hjorgrim and Eskel fight side by side, the tall tribesmen cutting a bloody swathe through the trolls and great orcs leading the attack. Nalnain is moving before thought catches up with him, catapulting himself between them, helm first, into a troll’s groin. The foul giant groans, breath expelling from his lungs and refusing to return, compounded by Eskel’s blade burying itself across its’ mouth. The White Hawk chuckles as he rips it out, “See, we can fight side by side to perfection, I can cut over your head with ease.”
“Surely on yer travels someone has told ye about making comments ter dwarves about their size.” Breathes Nalnain heavily, taking a crashing blow on his shield. Feet rooted to the ground.
Hjorgrim, stabbing the last orc in the sternum over Nalnain’s head, laughs in turn, “Take it as a compliment Dwarf.”
The dwarf’s laughter is grim, a dark sound echoing in the tall vaulted chamber. “Bloody Men, why did I let ye talk me into this Muck!”

He had ridden into Edoras at the fall of darkness, later than he had hoped, and was standing speaking to Damas about his toy sale in the morning, when he noticed a flat-nosed man making most pleasantly smelling tea. Parched from the road he had asked for the mug, and while he sat this man, Old Muck, told him of a task upon which he had been set by the Horselords. Tired and a little confused, Nalnain listened to a tale of Rohirrim anger at undelivered Dwarven craftsmanship. He massaged his temples trying to make his headache go away, while trying to extract more information from the strange man. This task made no easier by the two tribesmen by the fire discussing the coming of a great evil amongst the Lossoth, and one of their numbers unsuccessful attempt to garner the aid of Rohan in the matter. Nalnain liked the Lossoth, not that there were many folk who served not the Darkness that the old dwarf didn’t like, but the men of the frozen wastes gave him particularly good welcome when every ten years he made the long journey to trade his toys with their children. The boys and girls he had seen in years past now strong men and women, or old and crooked. It was the manner of mannish folk to pass through his life at great speed, like wheat in the field awaiting the scythe. Yet they greeted him joyfully, and those passed he would morn silently, while he amused their grandchildren. The tribesmen’s talk disturbed him, and he felt bitter to be old and weakening, devoid of much strength these last few years, a shaking increasingly senile old fool, travelling the road selling his wares, barely alive in heart since his failure to find his son.
Nalnain spat into the fire, he was weary, but the feeble spark of Dwarven pride flickering in his heart made him grit his teeth and offer his aid. The children of Edoras could wait a little for his toys. He would not have his people’s name tarnished. All was well till he asked where this task would take them.
Faint of breath, lights bursting round his eyes, his headache a pulsating storm, Moria, Moria, dread the name Old Muck had spoken. The next hours passed in a haze. He and Eskel seemed as though they would come to blows, the old dwarf thinking that the grief and anguish brought up by the place of his great loss had been perceived as cowardice by the tall warrior. It was not the first time Nalnain would seek out Nalnorn in the Black Chasm and he prayed it would not be so ill-fated an undertaking on this occasion. He swore his axe to the party and before Nalnain knew it they rode to Durins’ lost city under the mountains, Khazad-dûm.

They walk a few more steps of the Endless stairs, till they are back on the level they had entered from, their task now complete. Nalnain trails behind, short of breath, dizzy from blows to his helm. He mutters and curses in the darkness, as the fading lights his friends carry send long flickering shadows across the walls. He is old. He feels it in his bones, in the pain in his knuckles from wielding his axe for hours of battle. He is weary, his search for Nalnorn fruitless, his life fated to fade in sad tales and song beneath the Lonely Mountain. He would rather die than sit amongst old dwarves talking of past glory, as their halls grow quiet and empty. He has forgotten about his friends now, his axe drags along the floor, and his eyes are drawn to a set of carvings. It is a depiction of Mahal offering his children, the dwarves, to Ilúvatar. His gnarled hands follow the cold stone, fingers used to delicate work marvelling at the fear and hope on the one’s face, and the acceptance and love on the other’s. He looks around. He is in a little shrine. He does not see it at first, his eyes drawn up to the rest of the stonework. He feels it in the air, faint, a breath of mountain and sky. He looks down, following his nose. The side of the shrine, what he had thought at first a pile of rock from a collapsed wall, holds an opening, small, but one that without armour he could crawl through. He pushes a few rocks aside, unthinking, then he sees it. It burns in his vision, like the fire of the forges of old, words etching themselves in the back of his skull.

“I have but one more collapse to clear till I can reach the air vents and the Redhorn. Let it be said that from here Nalnorn Gentlehand did dig his way out of Moria. Praise be to Mahal.”

Perhaps he shouts, or perhaps Old Muck turns back when he sees the dwarf no longer behind him. They all gather round him as he tells them his discovery. They greet the news with quiet happiness, though soon Eskel draws away the confused and joyful dwarf, pointing out it will all be to nought if they die in the darkness. Nalnain does not have to be told twice. He bursts out of Moria like the charging vanguard of Durin’s finest. The orcs in his path are thrown against the walls by the force of his blows. Nalnorn is alive and walking the world. They step out of Moria into the midday sun, and a new chapter in the old dwarf’s existence.

[Wonder_Horse]

Top notch thank you most kindly!