Fate Touched 32 (Patreon)

I don’t own Tolkien. If I did, I would never have sold even the appendices to Amazon.  Just… pathetic. Nor do I own Harry Potter.  I could say more there, but eh, too annoying and silly to put it here LOL.

This was the HP winner for October. Given my priorities this month, it took me until the 27th to get to it.  Despite that, I think it worked pretty well.  I didn’t want to go full hack-and-slash, and I wanted to show Harry being friendly and human with other humans, which came out pretty well. Saruman’s part in it, I’m a bit more iffy about. 

Still, I hope you enjoy this.  It’s been Grammarlied, but no one else has seen it.

Chapter 32: A Campaign’s Conclusion, A Hunt’s Target

The next morning, the dwarves got to work with a renewed purpose. While most continued work tending to their own gear or marking out boulders and rocks for future use, after canvassing the army, five dwarves were chosen to decide where the work would begin on Thorin’s plan.  This group consisted of three Blacklocks and two Longbeards to break any deadlock. They were chosen for their strong mix of knowledge about delving, mining, and tunneling.

According to the dwarves, these were three very different things. 

“It’s about utility, purpose, and longevity, Harry,” Thorin explained that afternoon, sitting across a small cook fire. Harry had laid a thin rock, almost like a plate, right above the fire pit, on which he placed small strips of meat jerky after softening them in a way to make them actually tender. Now, as they cooked with the heat of the rock, he added a few spices to make them tastier than normal.

“We don’t want our tunnels to last for very long, but they have to last long enough to get our corps through, and have to stand up to the punishment of our movement through them, which means they need to be shored up and stable. We also need to find the best places to start, which means analyzing the land. The miners will also need to go deep enough that, even should they think of it, the Easterlings out there won’t be able to hear us coming. Finally,” Thorin snorted, shaking his head, “we’ll need to get back up out at the other end.”

“That sounds like a lot, my friend,” Saruman murmured from nearby, his pipe sending small circles into the air.

Unlike when Gandalf smoked, these were simple circles, but Saruman had sent a few arrow-shaped smoke figures up through them a time or two as he smoked from the pipeweed he’d offered to share with Harry. Looking at those rings now, Harry wondered internally how Saruman had acquired the pipeweed. Does Radagast grow some for him? Or does Gandalf pass on some?

“I have heard and seen evidence of the dwarven skill in working with the earth. But how long will this project take?  And you mentioned shoring.  How is that going to work without any wood nearby?”

“We’ll need to use stones, and the construction of the actual tunnels to shore themselves up.  It’s possible, but it will be difficult even for my folk without prior preparation.  Luckily, my army has all those collapsible shovels.  Few of them have been lost so far, so we can all… dig in,” Thorin finished, his lips twitching behind his beard at the obligatory groan this wrung from both humans. “As for how long, that I will leave in the hands of the foremen once the sights have been chosen, and the assayers have done their work.”

The terms foremen and assayer felt off even as Thorin used them, but they were the correct translation for what he had meant. Even if only a few such among our army here are truly worthy of having those titles in normal times, he thought wryly. And they are doing a great deal of work to cover what I truly mean.

Each ‘foreman’ would be in charge of twenty men working on a single portion of the project, either digging, shoring, or removing the dirt and ground.  That last task would be used to shore up positions throughout the boulder field to add to Foldorin’s preparations, making the massive trap that he’d created here even deadlier.

“Hmm… well, I don’t know much of anything about mining, but I doubt you’ll need to worry about the Easterlings listening out for your digging. From what I can remember of history books, mines, countermines and so forth in the use of sieges were really advanced stuff,” Harry murmured, his tone vague as he tried to remember those history books.

“That is as may be, but I am not going to wager this battle, the culmination of this campaign, on a maybe,” Thorin merely growled, his head shaking.  “But I wanted to ask you if you would be willing to use your spellwork to help stabilize the tunnels if need be. This is going to be a rush job, and as Saruman mentioned, we don’t have many resources on hand, so some allowances need to be made.”

“Certainly,” Harry agreed. “Although I actually don’t have any spells that will help out with the actual digging, well, other than my Bombarda spell, but that’s too loud and far too uncoordinated. Funny, you would think there would be a spell or something to help with that, but the closest I’ve ever done to digging was helping in the garden, and even when I was with the Weasleys at the borough, Miss Weasley always had us doing that kind of thing by hand. Gnome tossing was fun though.”

“Gnomes? What are gnomes?” Thorin asked, his tone becoming suspicious as Dori and Dwalin joined them at the fire while Saruman looked intrigued at hearing more about Harry’s old life.  Thorin had already heard all about the redheaded family, but the term gnome was new.  “Because I’ve heard some humans wondering about how far they can toss us dwarves occasionally when they’re in their cups, back before our journey, and if that is just another term for dwarves …”

“No, no, gnomes stood about two hands tall or so, had incredibly sharp teeth and bottomless stomachs, and looked kind of like a potato with a head and tiny, misshapen limbs.  They’re pests who get into the gardens and tend to eat everything inside if they can. They are a kind of fairy back on earth, and I haven’t seen anything similar to them here in Middle-earth.”

“Those terms always confused me, as did the mention of your old planet at all. Are all planets just called earth? Was your Earth what this planet will eventually become? I don’t think I like that idea,” Saruman confessed, chuckling quietly around his pipe, his eyes sharp and interested despite his offhand tone.

“I don’t think I like that idea either,” Thorin and Harry said as one, before looking at one another and laughing. The newly arrived Dwalin and Dori joined the conversation, asking Thorin about something to deal with the tunnels, while Harry tried to explain alternate dimensions to Saruman. By the time he was done, the last of his jerky steaks, which frankly were a travesty, a betrayal of all things steak, but the best he could come up with at the moment, was done. 

The conversation naturally paused at that point, but Saruman kept questioning Harry lightly about things in his old world, not just magical, but technological in nature. Saruman seemed to have an incredible interest in mechanisms. He boasted about making clocks himself, and listened intently as Harry told him what he knew about such things, and cars and other things of that nature. 

Eventually, Thorin finished his meal with a resigned sigh and, standing up, stared up at where the back of the cliff could be seen.

That cliff represented both their highest point, where they had staged their scorpions from, and their least defensible territory. Unseen from where they were, a simple wall and berm had been created to protect the back of that position, pushed far enough down the hill so that Easterling arrows and javelins couldn’t bother the scorpion crews.

That made the position longer than Thorin was really comfortable with. At present, Foldorin was up there, watching over that line, along with Agni because Thorin believed that if the Easterlings tried any kind of outright assault it would be from that angle. Yes, they would be forced to attack uphill, a somewhat steep one at that, and there were numerous smaller ditches and sharpened rocks to break up any kind of full charge. Even so, it would certainly be better for the Easterlings to attack from there than it would be down here.

And I will remember that. A deathtrap is only so good as it can trick the enemy into entering it in the first place, Thorin thought, shaking his head. Even now four days after the rest of his army had arrived, Foldorin was still quietly furious that all his work was going to naught. Well, not to naught. Sieging us here has forced the Easterlings to keep their numbers concentrated on us here, not continuing to ravage the countryside or sieging Red Rock or, I hope, finishing off Parn’s Tower.

“I wish I could stay and smoke a pipe with you, Saruman, Harry, but I need to go and sit in on some meetings with the Blacklocks and their so-called leadership. Agni is having trouble wrangling his folk. Unfortunately, he isn’t very senior among them any longer. That position is held by Turok, who is at odds with Agni over a family issue between them, and Foldorin because of their previous actions.”

“When you say sitting in a meeting like that, I feel as if you mean to sit on the troublemakers,” Harry observed, snorting.  “Try to be gentle with them, Thorin. I think we all remember the… horrible actions the Easterlings took with your honored dead to try and force a response. Foldorin said it himself: his own men would have acted just as unthinkingly if not for the Blacklocks doing it first and getting in their way.”

“Good to know that your ability to read my intent hasn’t faded over much, Harry,” Thorin snorted, shaking his head.  “And I understand your point. But this isn’t about that. The Blacklocks have had time to try and correct this leadership issue on their own, but they haven’t.  My people always try to lean on seniority, but here, the term seniority will need to be adjusted appropriately to leave Agni in charge rather than Turok.  He’s a buffoon.”

Harry barked a laugh at that, while Saruman chortled around his pipe, before, with a sigh, offering his pouch of pipeweed to Dwalin and Dori, both of whom had pulled out pipes and were looking at him expectantly.  “I only have enough for a few full pipes, lads. And I rather doubt your king would thank you for using his allotment.”

“True.” Thorin stared at this, regret filling him, before he shook it off and explained. “Turok was the one that Krurlen sent out to deal with the recalcitrant folk of Red Vein.  Instead, he stayed. I’ll grant he shifted most of the dams and youngsters out, but then he led the rest out here to join Foldorin. Brave, aye, but foolish, as they had no idea Foldorin was out here when they did that.  He just wanted to use the opportunity to gain some glory.”

Thorin nearly spat that term, and Harry and Dwalin both sneered at it. A desire for glory was a remarkably stupid basis for a strategy. “Particularly when it goes against the orders of your king,” Harry added after putting his thoughts on that score into words.

“Exactly.” Thorin sighed, biting back further words on that score.  There would be time enough in the days to come to talk about the future, and why the leadership of the Blacklocks had both failed their people, but served his army well. “Fortunately, thanks to my marriage alliance with Red Rock, and the existing agreements between the Blacklock House as a whole and Erebor, I have enough clout to, as you put it, sit on them both and make them obey. Even if the idea of personally thrashing Turok is rather nice one.”

“Do not worry, Thorin, I will save some of my pipeweed from these fellows by the simple expedient of leaving now so they cannot inveigle more out of me,” Saruman joked, pushing to his feet, eager to add a bit more to his wise wizard act. “I will be checking in with the wounded for most of the day. I will see you for practice tonight, Harry.”

“Aye, I will see you then, Saruman, or earlier. I’m eager to keep learning more about healing from you as much as we need to get our spells ready for our role to come. As for you, Thorin, you’re the king. Kings have to deal with politics, sometimes even when on campaign like this.”

“Just because that’s true, and is a truth that I have known since well before Smaug came for Erebor, doesn’t make it any more pleasant, particularly when I’m dealing with the politics of another hold, and indeed that of an entirely different House to boot,” Thorin grumbled. “Although I will happily accept the gift of pipeweed, Saruman, my thanks.”

“I hope that Balin was successful in his mission to the Shire,” Dwalin murmured, the closest thing he would show to care for his brother. “A steady supply of pipeweed will be an amazing thing, even if, over that distance, steady isn’t exactly the proper term to use.”

“Which we all know too well,” Dori snorted. “I still sometimes wake up from phantom pains in my rear and other areas from that trip.”

Thorin smiled, while Dwalin snorted and Saruman chuckled. He didn’t, though, explain how he’d come by the pipeweed, which Harry noticed, but didn’t remark upon as the other wizard moved off briskly. This left the three friends together for a moment, and as Dori began to rustle about in his backpack, Harry and Dwalin exchanged jokes about whether or not Balin would have been fattened up in his time in the Shire, or if Bilbo still retained his archery skill after returning to his sedate, safe, and above all, insular folk in the Shire.

Finding what he wanted, Dori held out a small metal flask to Harry. It was a magnificently made thing, looking thick but light, and with an etching that looked like Erebor on one side and a sun on the other.  “I know you don’t like pipeweed, Harry. This will suit your palate far better, I’d wager.”

 “And what is it you have there?” Harry inquired lightly, although his eyes were fixated on the small flask in Dori’s hand eagerly. 

“Why, just some of Gloin’s latest batch of mead. He’s done something to it this time; he kept the hint of apple from the last batch but added far more heat and kick. It goes down most smoothly.”

Dori held it out to Harry, who hastily scourged his cup, holding it out for Dori to pour a few sips of the liquor into. “I figured I’d owed you for winning me a hundred and sixty gold coins from Dwalin, Thorin and even Nori. I knew it was just a matter of time before you showed up here somehow. You’ve a nose for trouble and a right dwarfish approach to friendship, so there was never a doubt you’d show up here, with Thorin and the rest of us.”

Harry blinked at that, taking back his cup and looking over at Dwalin quizzically.  “What did you all bet on?”

“What Dori just said: if you would show up in this campaign somehow. I figured you would, but it wouldn’t be quick, and you wouldn’t be alone. While I was right in terms of the timing, or near enough for the terms of the wager, I bet you would have finished Tauriel’s business up north first as a pair before joining us here,” Dwalin admitted glumly, although his expression cleared noticeably as he took a puff on his pipe. “Mmm… yes, I do hope my brother can get us a regular supply of this…”

“Ah.” For a moment, Harry’s face darkened, but both dwarves carefully did not make note of it. Separating from your One was always hard, regardless of race.

 Well, I cannot say that was an easy decision on our part. But we talked about it, and we both decided I could do more good at the front of this war.  Seeing Tauriel off into the mountains and leaving Fili and Gimli to make their own way up into the mountains against the goblins was difficult, but, well, the goblins are annoyances, causing trouble in the mountains. The Easterlings had cut off the three hill holes that were the source of most of the Stonefoot House.  The decision to help against the larger threat to your cousins was easy enough.”

“We certainly can’t argue with that. From what you told us, the attack on the army around Spider’s Bane would have been impossible without your work,” Dwalin chortled, even now taking some delight in how it had been simpler things, his skill with cooking and ingredients that had helped in the final fight just as much as helping the dwarven host get in position undetected.

“You even made a difference here when you arrived. Your attack that night broke several squads of the enemy, and disorganized the Lord Militant’s ability to command his host,” Dori added, before frowning. “In your opinion, Harry, what will the Stonefoots do from now on? You mentioned they’d lost the armies out of Stone Grip and Endo’s Hold, and that hold itself.  What about the rest of the House?”

“Hmmm… well, I got the impression that the army I marched east with, around eight thousand strong, were all the fighting men from the mountain holds beyond Varni’s Folly that could be spared, on top of most of the Folly’s men. You know they were facing goblins and ice drake attacks. Tollmaster kept back another thousand or so troops to defend the hold, and another hundred to send back to Erebor with Thunderbelly,” Harry mused. “It comes down to food and transporting it, I think.  With Endo’s Hold wiped out, I don’t know if the Stonefoot House will have enough men to really control the territory of Rolling Gates. Although from what I saw, Stone Grip at least could hold out indefinitely.”

“I’ve heard of Stone Grip,” Dwalin hummed thoughtfully around his post-prandial pipe. “That place would indeed probably be able to hold out indefinitely, or at least as close as it’s possible to come. They can grow enough food for themselves, inside the stone-like grip, as it were. Hmm… protecting food transports and keeping farms outside Stone grip and Spider’s Bane is going to be tougher. Stone Grip’s got enough farmland inside for that to not matter much, but Spider’s Bane is different.”

“Right.  Maybe if Dale could produce more food and send it north, it would remove a major weight on the House as a whole? But also recall the combined army still had to deal with the reserve army when I left.”

“Oh, that’s a given. I’m just comparing it to the Blacklocks. Given the Blacklocks were already dealing with the losses of the war before this one, it feels as if the Stonefoots will be on a better footing than the Blacklocks.”

“Militarily for sure, and going forward that’ll be the case as well. But none of the three primary holds of the Blacklocks have fallen, although they’ve lost every small hamlet in village the Easterlings have found, and there were far more of those than any of us thought there would be,” Dwalin opined, shaking his head.  “We might win this campaign, but that doesn’t mean that the Blacklocks didn’t lose in the long run. Even Red Rocks is going to take several generations to get over the losses here. If they have the time to do it. With the Great Enemy probably behind this war, who knows when another full-scale invasion will hit them.”

Dori and Harry both grimaced at that, then the wizard held up the dram of spirits towards Dori.  “Well, I’m not going to wait for this conversation to get any more depressing. Salute.”

With that, he tossed back the mouthful of ale, blinking at the heat of it, the taste of Apple and something else. It wasn’t cinnamon, as that spice didn’t actually exist in Middle-earth, but something different, rhubarb, maybe? Something gave it some heat, followed by a kick that had Harry sighing in delight. “Woo, that is good.”

“I know, Gloin is a master of brewing, I swear. It’s making his family very rich, although thankfully it hasn’t gone to his head as it has some dwarves.”

The conversation shifted into a more jocular tone at that point, all three of them deliberately deciding not to think more about the war or the future or anything serious right now. Rather, they recalled times from the last few decades, a few moments of hilarity in Thorin’s court or Erebor as a whole, sneering at several dwarves who had come into money after the kingdom was retaken, gone through it far too quickly, and ended up destitute again. While among humans, this kind of conversation would’ve been in bad taste, considering the lesson it had taught those particular dwarves, and the fact that dwarves had long enough lives to actually learn such lessons and rebuild their lives, it didn’t. Rather, it was simply a parable, a tale that could be told to young children about the importance of thinking ahead.

Soon Nori joined them, gleefully accepting a few more jerky steaks, having missed out on Saruman’s pipeweed. Nori’s stories were more about practical jokes and the shenanigans of younger dwarves than Dori or Dwalin, as he tended to rub elbows with the younger dwarves of Erebor rather than the established segment. He also had more than a little bit of gossip from even the army than either of his fellows.

It might have surprised most humans, but pranking was a time-honored tradition of dwarves behind the safety of their hold’s walls. Of course, the prankster had to get away with it without being caught, or else the consequences would be lengthy and loud. Or, worse, a prank might result in some real antipathy between the pranked and the prankster. Which, in a dwarven hold, was no small thing, so there was a line that needed to be walked there.

 Nori was really the only one of Thorin’s company that had ever gone into it, and aside from his duties as a scout, he had devoted a good deal of time to, in his own words, “Make certain that any dwarf or family who is taking itself too seriously is brought down to earth just a little bit.” This included Thorin and his wife twice in the past few decades.  “I think of it like a civil service that I perform, one that is utterly thankless in nature,” Nori said mockingly, holding a hand over his heart for a moment as if he was giving an oath.

Eventually, the four friends finished their meals or their pipes and separated, heading off to start their day. For Dwalin and Dori, this meant taking turns on guard on the outer wall, if such a thing could be called. With the protection of this fortification, Thorin didn’t need his bodyguards at present, and had reassigned the whole troop to more normal duty. Those that weren’t injured, anyway. Nori, meanwhile, headed back to the area where the walking wounded had been bivouacked. While he could still move and fight, he’d taken another wound during the fight several nights back, a cut to the leg to go with the wound on his forehead. The wound to his leg had gone unnoticed for a few days, but Harry had seen and caught it before it could go bad.

This meant that Harry was left to his own devices for a moment, and given how he’d been busy before this with the wounded and talking to his dwarven friends, he decided to take the rest of the afternoon to make the acquaintance of the men of Dale.

This was not an easy proposition. While the dwarves could move through and sometimes over the boulder field well enough, many small makeshift pathways had been made purposefully to stop humans from moving through it as easily.  

Almost forced to crawl at one point between two boulders, Harry eventually found the area where the humans had been put up. Several dozen tents had been set up, more as awnings than anything else, over this portion of the boulder field. Beyond that, the area given over to the humans was as neat and tidy as anywhere else the dwarves had set up housing, such as it was. There was no sign of refuse, as places were set up for that elsewhere, and harsh measures ensured the rules were followed; the wounded were kept in a different area, and the humans had quickly set up a communal kitchen and a central fire.

Everywhere Harry looked, the men were hard at work.  Some were repairing their equipment. They’d been kept busy helping with the wounded or up on the hill providing further fire to the defenses there, and it had been a lengthy, tough campaign. Leatherwork needed looking after, holes needed to be stitched, and packs repaired. 

Still more were preparing arrows. The men of Dale had used all of the arrows they’d had on them since leaving home and then some, but they hadn’t been able to rebuild their stock for a while, leaving them forced to scrounge up what arrows they could, or repurposing what little wood they had found on the march for arrows.

Going into the battle when Thorin had broken through to Frederick, the men of Dale had mostly used long spears taken from the javelins or spears of the enemy cavalry that had attempted to assault the Longbeard host, along with the dwarven crossbows that they had been loaned. Those crossbows were mostly stationed up on the cliff, with the men assigned there on a day-to-day basis using them in a rotation.

It wasn’t going all that well, judging by the frustrated look on many of their faces. Harry couldn’t help with that, though. Transfiguration on Middle-earth from one thing like stone to wood was the next best thing to impossible, and had become even more so when he had forged his connection to this world through Arien.

Still, the humans were not just trying to make more arrows for their larger bows from the arrows of the Blacklocks and Easterlings. A dozen men were working on creating slings. Simple things, perhaps, but there were a lot of stones about, and Harry had seen such in the hands of dwarves before this.  Even against a Blood Hand in their lamellar {check}, a stone was going to break bone or at least bruise badly.  A few dwarves were even helping them, their thick fingers surprisingly dexterous as they worked with the slings.

Regardless, it was clear the men of Dale wouldn’t play a major part in the battle to come. None of them liked that, even though according to Thorin and many of the other dwarves Harry had spoken to, the men of Dale had earned their pay and, more importantly, the continued respect of the dwarves of Erebor.

“Ho, wizard,” Matias said, having spotted Harry as he came in from the admittedly very uncomfortable entryway.  “What are you up to this morning?”

“Is it actually still morning?” Harry quipped, looking up at the sky. “And here I thought it was afternoon.”

“Most of us were on duty last night, and have only recently woken up,” Matias answered drolly. “Therefore, it is morning here, specifically.”

“Ah,” Harry chuckled, trying not to react to how some of the humans had flinched away from him. Not many, but there were still some who looked at him and remembered his spellwork from the battle several days ago.  And, like many humans, they saw magic as something unnatural, something strange and beyond the ken of normal men.

Others looked at his eyes and flinched.  Even in the daytime, Harry’s gaze was a powerful thing. Worse, many could remember those same striking, emerald orbs blazing with light the night of the battle.

Harry didn’t take offense from this reaction, just seeing it as a sad part of the human condition. After all, they might be flinching back from me, but they are still more than willing to accept magical help, even if they don’t want anything to do with it most of the time. 

Instead, he looked at Matias thoughtfully, cocking his head.  “Don’t take this wrongly Matias, but have we ever met before? You don’t look familiar enough for me to have met during the battle of the lonely mountain, at least not for very long, but for some reason, I’ve been thinking your face looks familiar to me these past few days.”

Matias blinked, then laughed, causing many of the men around them to stop what they were doing and look at him in confusion, or with answering smiles. Matias was not a man who broke out into loud guffaws like that often, and when he did, it was certainly going to be good.  “I’m surprised you can remember me at all, wizard, given how my wife certainly attempted to grab your attention and turn your gaze upon my daughter when we came asking for a tincture for my son. Some… Nine years or so ago now it was, I think.”

“…Your son had been poisoned by something, hadn’t he? Nori recommended you and your family come to speak to Tauriel and me. You knew him from his work as a scout. We were able to figure out what was going on, and Tauriel provided a tincture,” Harry said, remembering the incident, although not because of the trouble they’d gone through to help the son.

He had been a young boy of seven at the time, facing his sickness, which would have probably killed him in time without Tauriel and Harry, with all the courage and willpower a seven-year-old could have. Small he had appeared, but happy and loved, looking around Harry and Tauriel’s home with interest, and never letting his eyes linger too long on Tauriel’s ears either. 

But despite now remembering all that, what stuck out in Harry’s memory wasn’t the youngster, but rather the mother and the daughter. Both of them were extremely pretty, but the mother was the kind of person who knew she was pretty, and whose prettiness was the first thing she wanted other people to notice as well. The daughter hadn’t quite settled into that sort of thinking, but it was very clear that the mother thought the world of her daughter and had decided to try and push her forward, specifically towards Harry, the mysterious and, it was rumored, extremely rich wizard. 

Which he was. Though he didn’t make a point of it, Harry had quite a good amount of gold, held for him in Erebor’s vaults.  Most of it came from his work with the Rune Smiths, and from various patents on specific runic arrays he had come up with alongside them.  But honestly, it wasn’t like he did much with it.  The dwarves’ aid in building his home had been more of a gift than anything he had to pay for, and most of the work on things like his gambeson was paid for in other ways. He paid for only a few things from Dale or Erebor in gold: some delicacies, cheese, meats, metals, and so forth. But the fact that he never haggled and always paid in dwarven gold, along with Harry’s past actions being a tale in Dale, meant his rumors of wealth spread.

Thankfully for everyone involved, Tauriel didn’t understand enough about the choice of clothing and so forth that the young daughter had been made to put on for the trip to Harry’s to notice. Better, the daughter hadn’t been all that interested in acting interested in Harry, so it had been entirely on the mother’s side of things. Every time the mother had elbowed her or tried to urge her to lean forward or do something to attract Harry’s attention, she fought it for a second, making it clear her heart hadn’t been in it.

He and Mattias recalled it now from their disparate perspectives at the time, with some of the attempts Matias’s wife made to force their daughter to show off causing many of the men around them to laugh. More than a few admitted such attempts would have worked on them, since it was well known Matias’s daughter had taken after her mother in looks, if not in temperament, even back then.

“I honestly didn’t realize what my wife was up to insisting our daughter come along with us on the trip until she took off her cloak in your home, Harry. By that point it was too late, and there Lia was, in her best dress, with more of her bust showing than I ever wished to see, let alone let her show. But we couldn’t just back away, not after going to the trouble of the trip in the first place. Thankfully, it didn’t work on you. Heh, you should’ve seen my wife’s face curdle the moment your lady friend stepped into the room,” Matias remembered.

“Well, I’m just glad that your daughter wasn’t willing to go along with things; that would’ve made helping to heal your son quite awkward. I remember her glaring at your wife, and her gushing about Tauriel’s hair color, asking about what she did with it, while also giving your wife these little looks, as if to say, ‘see, I told you’.  My wife only noticed what was going on near the end, and at the time was just more amused by it than anything.”

“Hahaha, ah,” Mattias’s chuckle trailed off, his tone half entertained, half embarrassed by the memory. “Lia was always more of a gossip person than my wife, and she had learned from the grapevine about how attached the two of you were. Everyone who saw the pair of you before the Battle of the Lonely Mountain knew you were an item.”

He sobered a bit, shaking his head. “My wife’s actions that day were half because she thought that you, a hero and wizard who at least looks human, deserved to be with a proper human woman, a sentiment, needless to say, I don’t share. I think it is up to you to make your own relationship, come what may. That, and she was not altogether fond of the man of my daughter was being courted by the time.”

His expression shifted to one of pure delight for a moment. “Since then though, my wife’s new grandson has melted her heart.”

Harry just nodded and congratulated the man, trying to keep his expression from showing his shock with some difficulty. It’s only been nine years! And that’s girl, she was only what, sixteen, and she already has a son? I know humans in this world tend to get married early and to have lots of children, but still. It’s only been nine years. On the other hand, when did it become only nine years to me? Heh, I wonder how many generations of this man’s family I will get to know in the future.

More than twenty years into this new life of his, Harry was still getting used to the fact that he wouldn’t just reach the typical wizard old age of over two hundred or so, but that he would probably keep on living for thousands of years, his body changing only slowly over that time.

At one point, that fact might’ve been daunting. But now, with the memories of Tauriel filling his mind, of their home, and with the knowledge that the dwarves would be there nearby, well, eternity wasn’t so daunting any longer. Still unusual, but not daunting.

“So it’s true your wife is a forest spirit? And that you let yourself be ensnared to allow the dwarves through Mirkwood?” one of the other men blurted.

Harry blinked, staring at the man, then back to Mattias, then back. “If by forest spirit you mean elf, then yes…” he said slowly. “I certainly didn’t let myself be ensnared at that point, and definitely not emotionally, although I suppose if I turned my head and squint very, very hard I can see where that rumor might’ve come from considering what happened in Taur-e-Ndaedelos and how much trouble we had getting through Mirkwood. But our relationship certainly didn’t start then.”

Our interest in one another certainly did, but not our relationship, Harry thought. Hell, our connection, our interest in one another kind of started before I even reached the jail cell. To say nothing of that moment in her room with the towel.

This won some grumbles from the other men, and Harry frowned in confusion, now looking at Matias more seriously for an explanation. This didn’t seem like a case of rumor overriding truth. And what business is it of anyone else who I am in a relationship with?

“You’ll have to excuse some of my men. Not all of us were at the Battle of the Lonely Mountain, of course. Indeed, many of my men were immigrants from elsewhere into Dale over the past twenty years. They don’t seem to think that elves exist.”

“…Even if you sell some of your wine to Mirkwood even now? Let alone provide transportation to dwarven goods over the Long Lake?” Harry asked incredulously.

While Oldtown was long gone, trade still existed between Legolas’s folk, Erebor and Dale. Most of that trade went over the Long Lake, since they could transport things far more easily over water than overland. The elves took charge of it once they got to the river and then carried it deeper into the forest from there. 

“Even most of the people involved in the trade don’t actually see the elves themselves, Harry, and as I said, most of the folk here, they came to Dale from elsewhere. Even the Battle of the Lonely Mountain is history to them,” Matias reminded the wizard gently. “In fact, of all of my folk, only about a hundred and fifty men took part in that battle and volunteered for this campaign.”

“It’s unnatural, is what it is,” another man muttered, growling it almost into his unkempt beard.  “Not just the fact that Dale trades with such, but that elves exist at all.”

“…” Here he fell silent for a moment, then pointed at the man.  “How much has he had, and can I have some? I had a few sips of alcohol earlier, but that wasn’t nearly enough. Also feel as if I need at least a nice buzz to deal with such idiocy.”

While the man Harry had pointed to harrumphed, Harry understood where this was coming from. Even in Dale, where part of its economy relied on trade with the elves, a lot of people would prefer not to really acknowledge that other races existed. Harry wasn’t certain why that was. He’d come from a world where goblins, centaurs, veela and other races had been a thing after all, but he understood it was a thing in the first place. Left to their own devices, humans habitually became insular and clannish.

Still, Harry made a point of squashing the idea that his lady wife had somehow ensnared him. He was the one with the magic in this relationship, thank you very much. “If anything, it’s more my cooking that keeps her happy than anything else I do these days. And while Tauriel does have certain bits of magic to her, her ability with animals, with woodcraft and so forth, she’s not a sorceress, and certainly didn’t use magic to ensnare me. Her looks and her general character did the job without any such help.”

From there, the conversation segued neatly into relationships as a whole, with several of the married folk lamenting how long it would be before they could get back home, and the younger men among Matias’s force looking on. Some did so with whimsical faces, some with eye rolls of amusement or even some contempt. All in all, it was a very human set of reactions in Harry’s opinion, and Harry’s talk about Tauriel served more to cut away at the mystique of the wizard and sorceress of the woods than anything else he could’ve done at the moment or had done for the past twenty years back home.

Eventually, many of the folk working on arrows, slings and so forth had finished, and Harry decided to change the subject. When one man finished his story about how he’d had to woo his wife and how hard it had been to get her to agree to take his suit seriously until he had won some money in a game of chance enough to help build a home for themselves in Dale, Harry decided that was the perfect segue.

“You mentioned bones just there. I am familiar with that game. But have you folk of Dale come up with any other games of chance or strategy in the past twenty years? I can’t recall seeing any on my few trips there, but I wasn’t looking. Such games seem to be a good way to wile away the time before we’re all called away for one reason or another.”

Many of the menfolk eagerly began to shout the name of their own favorite games of chance aloud, with a few even moving over to their packs and grabbing up what looked like tiny board games, extremely well made and designed. One of them looked familiar to Harry, like a small roulette wheel of some kind, accompanied by what looked like figures and cards, all of them made of wood.

He began to listen intently as the day wound on, happy to have something to do other than hover over the healing dwarves or watch the Easterling Army. No, Harry thought, it was far better to remind myself of simpler things, easier things than the worries to come.  They’ll come regardless of what I want, so why bother.

OOOOOOO

Two days after Harry proved the fact that hand-eye coordination made games of chance very much more about skill than luck, Tauriel stood in the center of a battle between her quarry and several ice drakes.

By this point, she knew she couldn’t really call the monster an ice drake. The monster was too large; its form was too different. The ice drakes were sinuous, well-made creatures. This creature was far larger, and far more misshapen. It had a big, dragging belly that had left a nasty groove in the ground since Tauriel had picked up its trail outside that ancient nest, larger paws for its size, and a smaller but thicker tail.

Or at least, it had been at the beginning. Now? It was seventy-five of Harry’s meters, give or take at the beginning. And I’ve come, yet in that time, what, forty lar finding that ancient nest? Yet in that time, it's shrunk noticeably, at least ten meters.  Which is unnatural, to say the least, not to mention all the other changes.

A lar was a unit of distance used by elves and most of the human nations that was based on the Númenórean measurement system. Why the Silvan and Noldor elves had decided to start using it, Tauriel had no idea, but they did. And as for Harry’s use of meters, Harry had been forced to explain what those were when talking about some things, but from back in his past, and Tauriel’s thoughts had drifted to him more than once that day, let alone the rest of this journey.

For a moment, the thought of Harry filled Tauriel again, and she took a faint step backwards, her eyes no longer seeing the battlefield around her, the crushed stones, the impacts into the sheer wall of the mountain to one side, the churned-up dirt or anything else. Not even the blood splattered liberally like some mad child’s demented attempt at painting could grab her attention.

Instead, her mind trailed to Harry, and how much she missed him. How much help he still gave Tauriel, even though he wasn't here. His help with creating some of her equipment, particularly the spells he had put on a few of her arrows, was really the only reason why she was still confident she could actually do something about this monster when she caught up with it. But more than simply missing what help he could be on this hunt, it was his presence that Tauriel longed for the most.

The warmth at night, awake or sleeping in his arms. The laughter in the morning, the welcome in his eyes, the touch of his hand. To say nothing of the other things that would have caused her mother histrionics if the older woman ever learned exactly how far the two of them had gone despite not actually being wedded just yet. But that will happen soon after we return home, my love. I think I am done waiting. Twenty-plus years of courtship is long enough for propriety’s sake, and for my own.

Shivering just a bit from the cold winds coming down from the mountain, Tauriel shook that thought off and concentrated again on the scene in front of her.

And it was cold. For some reason, the beast had veered further northward, almost as if it knew where it was going, or, at the very least, knew what it wanted to avoid. Tauriel could not know the why of this move, but what she was certain of was that it was far, far colder here than it had been even at the area where she’d found the original nest. The last unfrozen water had been left behind several days ago, and the wind coming down from the mountains to the north was bitterly cold.

So cold that Tauriel was very thankful for her Elvish blood. The cold bothered her only a little, though the wind could blind her or force her into shelter.

Taking in the battlefield once more, Tauriel nodded to herself. Three, yes, three earth drakes. I would not have thought that earth drakes would be willing to work together, but they certainly attempted to do so here. Perhaps a small family of such, who had, for whatever reason, stayed together as they grew? Regardless, the monster I am trailing certainly ate well, whatever the reason for there being three of them, despite how hard a fight they put up. Indeed, she gorged herself in such a way that makes me almost think that it wants to enter hibernation.

Yet at the same time, her distended belly has disappeared… and I know she has killed for pleasure before.

Tauriel had come across two of the area’s tigers a few days back. Most of the corpses had been left where they had been killed, a clear sign they had been slain for pleasure rather than sport in a way that was very much in keeping with the drakes of this strange cursed land. But these three no, they were deliberately hunted and eaten nearly whole. I wonder if it has some kind of magic? It is the only way I can explain how something so large could sneak up on anything.

The earth drakes are one thing. Three of them together, they could perhaps have never developed any kind of wariness when facing other creatures and had not known to fear this beast. But the tigers? They certainly know they aren’t the biggest predator on the food chain around here. Better to run and fight another day than take on whatever you thought might be prey. A scent to draw them close perhaps, or maybe somehow mess with their instincts? And some way to silence its feet as well. Something like one of Harry’s spells.

Kneeling down next to one of the heads left behind, Tauriel frowned, turning it over in her hands for a second, being careful not to let her fingers touch the blood and not just because of her normal fastidious nature. Something in the drake’s blood stung to the touch something fierce even when it dried. She had made that mistake once and was not about to do it again. 

“She sucked out the brain from the back,” Tauriel murmured, pushing herself to her feet and moving over to the other two skulls, finding the same things in each of them.  “She ate them whole, bar the skulls. The skulls are admittedly even tougher than the rest of their bones, but she ate the bones and the scales alike. Some kind of dietary need perhaps?”

Shrugging off that minor mystery, Tauriel went back to a far larger one, shifting through the battlefield and out the other side until she found the next set of real complete pawprints in the snow. Yes, her stomach is no longer dragging as it had.  Her paws here are clearly different, too. The talons aren't nearly as long anymore. And they haven’t been just scraped off or broken off. I would’ve found signs of that. The legs are a little bit closer together, and the tail is even shorter than it was.  The back paws are… they almost look wolf-like. She is transforming over time, with the changes picking up speed.

Tauriel had begun to think of the monster as female right off the bat from that first nest she discovered. It just made sense, based on the idea that this creature had been the one to give birth to Smaug, which also somehow made sense. Now, a sudden surmise hit Tauriel, and she turned to look at the remnants of the earth drakes, then remembered the tigers and how the beast hadn’t even taken a bite out of them beyond what had been lost in the ambush itself. 

Perhaps didn’t just gorge on the earth drakes for their meat and scales alone. Perhaps it needs the corruption within, the touch of Morgoth that exists within these beasts even now, to rebuild what it lost in giving birth to Smaug? I had supposed that was an ordeal and a half already, but what if it wasn’t just a physical one? What if, like we elves, these creatures give of their inner energy to their eggs?

When they conceived a child, elven couples gave of their Fëa upon the moment of conception. Just their energy, not any of their personality, simply strength of spirit. It was why very few elvish couples, and none here in Middle-earth, had ever had more than two or three children going all the way back to the First Age. It was simply too draining on the soul.

That makes sense, yes. And now that it has more energy, it can use it to change its shape.  For a moment, Tauriel scowled, her tone wary and worried as she spoke aloud for the first time in more than a week.  “What monster of the First Age is this that I am hunting? And what shape will it be when I eventually catch up?”

That she would wasn’t a question. Tauriel knew that she was slowly catching up to the monster. It had taken the creature more than a century to get to the point where it was able to move, months to the point where it could leave its nest, and more to move with any purpose. By which time Tauriel had been sent up here by Oromë and had picked up the trail.

Now, she was perhaps three days, maybe less, behind the beast. Unless it was suddenly able to sprout wings, she would catch up within a week at worst, depending on the weather. She’d lost three days due to a heavy ice storm that came in probably around the same time this fight occurred. The hail had come down so heavy it left welts on her head and face, and had been so cold that even Tauriel, an elf, felt it.

But if it starts to fly, even for short amounts of time, I might lose the trail entirely. Thankfully, I don’t see any sign of wings or anything like that dragging behind it. A beast like that would need a very large set of wings, and it hasn’t changed its size enough to throw off that equation.

Tauriel glanced up at the nearby mountains, one bone of which jutted up here, then continued, creating an almost crest-like area that led up deeper into the solid stone mountains above. She couldn’t see a single patch of green up there, only gray and white.  Tauriel thought about how long it’d taken her to get here, how far she had come and the very limited map of the area she had been able to piece together by talking to the dwarves, the only people that came even close to making the Erin Mithrin their home. Another four days maybe before we come to the end of the {moors}, I think, if she changes course against straight east. Then we will be out into the ice and snow plains beyond.

“That won’t be pleasant, but neither will this confrontation. So I best get on with it regardless,” Tauriel mused aloud once more. “And hope that Harry is having an easier time of it, or, at least barring that, a warmer time of it…”

OOOOOOO

Four days later, it was about to get very warm indeed, if not in the manner Tauriel had hoped for her absent beloved.

Work had gone on day and night, and now, everything was ready for the breakout. All that remained was the final breakthrough at the far end of the three tunnels.

Initially, it had been five, as Thorin had thought to get all his corps into the enemy camp at the same time. Foldorin, however, with the wisdom of age, reminded his king that the idea of multi-pronged assaults was tough enough, and they would still need to protect the scorpions. They were an important part of the plan, given that they would be able to attack the Easterlings inside their camps.  Agni had then chimed in that if the Longbeards thought his folk would let them do all the fighting, they had best think again. 

Finally, when it seemed that even that would not break through Thorin’s occasionally very thick skull, the assayers had stated that there was no way to dig five tunnels out to the Easterling host. Indeed, even three would be pushing it, given the soil and the nature of the work.  Not because of manpower, obviously, but because of the project's difficulty and time. Like it or not, the Easterlings’ plan to starve them out was a good one. It was only because the army had already been rationing their food and water that they hadn't run out of either.

Well, that, and Harry using Aquamenti.  While it wasn’t as effective as it would be in watery old Britain, he could supplement their water nicely. Saruman also learned how to use the spell easily, and between them, water wasn’t nearly an issue. Food, though, was.

And so the plan began.  First, the harsh THWACK of the scorpions erupted in the night. Part of Matias’s contribution to the plan, those scorpions began to hammer at the walls of the siege lines in two places: one directly facing the back of the hill, and across from the known ‘entrance’ into the boulder field directly opposite it. With Saruman whispering over the bolts, yards-wide segments of the dirt wall crumbled or shattered, depending on its makeup, as the Easterlings came awake. Throughout the night, that work continued, while preparations inside the boulder field and on top of the hill did likewise until the scorpions fell silent, as if they had run out of ammunition.

Now, as dawn broke, Thorin stood on one of the raised segments of the boulder field, while Foldorin, in front of the officers whose forces would be attacking through the tunnels, Harry and Saruman. Elsewhere, the scorpions had fallen silent, but Tholi and Mik’s troops were preparing, or so it seemed, to break out.  The Blacklocks under Agni – Turok had been removed from command entirely – were also moving out of the boulder field with Mik.  Harry and Saruman would be joining them.

In the distance, the Easterlings had spent the night preparing, of course. Now, the cavalry units began to gather, moving forward into the open area between the boulder field and the siege lines.  Cautiously at first, wary of the scorpions, but faster as they declined to shoot at the horsemen.

They are right to be wary. According to the gun captains, the scorpions still have enough bolts left for three shots each after last night.  Concentrating on two places along their line was the right choice, Thorin thought, smiling grimly behind his beard as he peered into the distance, as was keeping their real range a secret.  Now the enemy knows they can hit the walls, but isn’t wary enough to believe they could hit their camps. They can and will soon.

Of course, from his position he couldn’t see the back of the hill, but Thorin trusted that if something was going wrong or odd there, Tholi would have sent a runner down the ropes.  While he still wasn’t as experienced as Thorin would have liked, he had gone over Tholi’s part with him several times, and trusted the young dwarf. Better, Nori was with his younger cousin, and while Nori had no head for leadership, he could read the lay of the land better than most.

Turning back to his other commanders, Thorin allowed his smile to widen, a feeling like he was back at his forge, poised, waiting for the right moment to pull an ingot out of the fire.  Thank you, Mahal, for the strength of my arm, my will… and that we dwarves do not go into long speeches.

 “We finish this tonight,” Thorin stated simply. “We end this campaign today by breaking that army out there, wiping it out root and branch. You have seen what they do, what they have done to the folk of Blacklock house. Now, imagine them coming to the Iron Hills, to Erebor or Dale. Doing there what they have done here. Harness that hatred, harness that will and anger as a smith does the fire of his forge, and break that army on the anvil!”

His response was a low growl, whispered oaths, and hands clenching on weapons. Thorin nodded once and then hopped off his perch.  “Move.”

The assembled officers broke apart, each Nâlbarâk Râdûn there leading off his own second and third-in-command quickly through the boulder field to their jump-off points while Matias slowly followed, hampered as always by the lack of human-sized pathways through the boulder field to where his men waited to join Mik and Agni’s force. Behind him, Harry looked over at Saruman, then bowed grandly, gesturing towards where Matias was bending over to duck under an overhang.  “Shall we go?”

“After you, my young friend,” Saruman agreed, and the two wizards made their way through the cramped tunnels and pathways of the boulder field out to where they joined the rest of the troops forming up out into the open in between the Easterlings’ siege lines and the outer edge of the boulder field.

When they arrived, Saruman did something to himself, visible only to Harry because he knew to look, a slight susurration of power. In seconds, he seemed almost to shrink in place, to hunch, looking not like himself, almost like a dwarf even to Harry. From a distance, no Easterling would be able to make out the difference, making it uncertain if the wizard was this force or someplace else.

Harry, on the other hand, didn’t bother to try and hide his presence. He and Thorin had talked about it, and part of making this portion of the army seem even more tempting had been to make certain that the enemy understood that Harry, who they knew Sauron had a justifiable hatred for/interest in, was also part of it. All of the dwarves around them were also milling in place, making judging their numbers impossible. With Mik’s corps and the surviving Blacklocks here, it would look as if a large portion of the dwarven army was trying to break out here, just like at the back of the hill.

Since those segments had been hammered by the scorpions last night, it would make sense, and the dual attack was an obvious attempt to split the Lord Militant’s attention.  The ‘mistimed’ movements would, instead, make this force a very tempting target to be defeated in detail by the enemy cavalry. Especially since the trouble the dwarves had coming out of the boulder field would also make it obvious that this force couldn’t retreat all that easily once engaged.

The Lord Militant also wasn’t going to be the one to face this force directly.  He had correctly identified the area at the back of the hill as the weakest portion of the strange defensive position that Foldorin had created. Thus, he had set himself up to watch that portion in particular.  He would now be facing a breakout in front of his position, led by Tholi. Or at least, he would see a build-up of troops on the hill, as the Longbeards formed into companies there, so his attention would be divided.

Saruman hadn’t just been concentrating on making himself look small and dwarfish. He’d also been concentrating on a few birds in the sky. They were few and far between of those in the immediate area around the siege that weren’t ravens or crows, and thus under the influence of the Great Enemy, but sparrows could keep away from the larger aerial predators with some difficulty, and Saruman had been feeding a few of them dried bread and oats since the break-in.

The older wizard’s voice was a murmur, his eyes seeing not what was in front of them, but rather from the vantage point of one of those birds.  “It seems to be working. There’s an attack being pushed out now against the back of the hill. The Lord Militant wants to attack while our own is forming up there. Infantry only, although they have a strong force of cavalry forming up in the camps.  I will need to extend my enchantment to cover a far wider area. Doable, but tiring.”

“We’ll watch out for you,” Mik grunted.  “Agni, Gilo, get us moving.”

With that command given to the Red Rock officer and Mik’s second-in-command, the mass of dwarves of both houses began to march forward towards the siege wall ahead of them. Those siege walls had numerous holes in them, but nowhere near enough for the dwarves to have an easy time getting through. Worse, the ditch in front of that wall was still there, unbothered by the night’s scorpion assault, with only a few bits here and there showing any damage or rubble within.

That ended as the dwarven host moved forward, and Harry now began to lash out towards that distant wall with his spell work. Dozens of yards at a time shattered under his magical assault, enlarging by five times the amount of torn holes already there. Better, the rubble fell towards the dwarves, filling in the ditches. It wouldn’t be very good footing, but it was enough.

High above them, Saruman sparrows dove towards the boulder field, as practically every other bird in the sky began to circle above the host around Harry.  “Oh my, all eyes are now on this particular prize,” Saruman murmured, staring up into the sky.

Harry frowned just a little bit as he lashed out with another spell, smashing another portion of the wall down. The way Saruman had said that had not been quite as ironic-sounding as it should have been, and it bothered Harry a bit. Regardless, Harry continued his work, calling upon his connection to the sun. A beam of searing light lanced down, slicing into and through still more portions of the wall and the men on it.

Beyond them still more dwarves came out from the boulder field, along with the men of Dale.

That sight seemed to prove too much, either for the distant Lord Militant or the local officer. Bugles and flags waved throughout the siege lines as runners raced.  Moments later, the cavalry units formed up into three strike forces. Two of them moved into the open area between the siege wall and the boulder field on either side, while the third formed up directly ahead of them. 

To the enemy, this must have seemed like a perfect opportunity to redo the tactic the Lord Militant had attempted the night of the break-in: a cavalry charge launched between the siege line and the boulder field. The Easterlings' cavalry force had been badly mauled in the battle now nearly two weeks ago, and in the days preceding it. However, it still made up at least a fourth, maybe more, of the Easterling army.

Now a large portion of that force committed at least eleven thousand strong. More than enough to deal with the dwarven host, even if the enemy really had been tricked into thinking this force contained half the dwarven army.

“Someone believes in there being no such thing as overkill,” Harry muttered, working his jaw for a bit as he halted his destruction of the distant walls.

Coming in from three directions was a good idea, as it would split Harry’s attention, but the enemy was too focused on the damage that Harry had done to the walls, his direct-attack type spells. There were other ways to deal with cavalry, and now, as Saruman straightened up with a grunt of satisfaction and released tension, the two wizards nodded to one another. 

“Let the men of Dale hit them with their slingstones twice; we’ll want them as close as possible,” Saruman said coolly, his fingers working on his staff for a moment, the tip of which began to glow lightly as he raised it from where he had been hiding it near the ground. “Then, heh, give a shout.”

Smirking just a bit, Harry nodded, one finger rising to touch his throat, and the pair waited for a few more moments as the cavalry charged in. Matias barked an order, and his men whirled their slings, hurling out stones at the two flanking forces.  Days of practice had made the men “Adequate” in Matias’s words, and those stones cracked home in horses and men alike.  Not anywhere near enough to stop the charges coming in, though, and the force racing towards them from dead ahead hadn’t been hit at all.

Another round of stones flew, and the dwarves suddenly shifted at a barked order from Mik. The Blacklocks shifted into the center, while the Longbeards formed an outer square.  It lacked depth, though, and wouldn’t have served to stop even one of the incoming charges, let alone three.

That was left to the wizards, and now, Harry released his next spell, as Saruman did the same.

“AWOOOOOOOOO!!!!” From Harry’s mouth came the sound of a howling wolf on the hunt. It was a repurposed prank spell from the Weasley twins, made to copy or modify noises, coupled with the Sonorous spell Harry was all too familiar with from Quidditch games and the Triwizard Tournament.

As the noise left Harry’s throat, Saruman’s will grabbed it and hurled it everywhere. The sound came not just from Harry but from everywhere, not just a single howl, but hundreds, thousands, scattered everywhere in a very, very wide area, which very deliberately included the whole of the Easterlings’ camps.

Suddenly, the four thousand-strong cavalry unit Lord Militant Khajigin had ordered to form up as reserve on his assault up the hill began to have problems with their horses. The distant sound of wolves, wolves coming closer, then suddenly on them, as if wolves had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, right in among the horses. Distance had deadened some of the effect, but not enough, and hundreds of men were thrown or forced to jump off the saddle.

The effect was even worse close to Harry, the sound louder, more immediate yet still also coming from every direction at once, as if from the very ground itself.

Easterling horses were trained almost as brutally as the Easterlings themselves. They were trained to handle the clamor of battle, of blood and injury. Yet there was a reason why goblins, orcs and Easterlings did not work together even when commanded by Warlord Khamûl. They were just some things you could not train out of a horse, and the reaction to a howling wolf was one of them.

All three cavalry charges collapsed around Mik, and Agni’s force panicked instantly. Horses bolted, reared, hurling their riders in every direction, their forward momentum ending instantly. Horses bolted, slammed into one another, confused, disordered and panicked. Only one in forty continued on their course, and even fewer were able to move far before smacking into or tripping over another horse or person.

Instantly, the square formation the dwarves and humans had been forming up in came apart as the dwarves counter-charged. The Blacklocks did so in a ragged mass, hurling themselves sideways against the left and right flanks, baying warcries, losing what little cohesion they had despite Agni’s best efforts, lost in a red rage at the chance to get revenge on their hated enemy.

The hated enemies that, thrown from their horses, trampled, or trying desperately to hang on and losing that fight, were in no position to try and fight them. The dwarves were among the panicking horses within a few seconds, killing indiscriminately.

At Mik’s barked threats, the Longbeards waited for a moment. He was unwilling to let them face both the wild horses and that chaos for a few seconds, but as the horses kept trying to gallop away in every direction, he released them and his men charged forward, weapons raised.

What would have become a one-sided massacre now became a massacre in the opposite direction, while the Easterlings along the walls of their siege lines watched in shock.  Orders were barked out, and infantry units formed up, moving forward, but the real attack had only just begun.

In the tunnels, the three corps held back from the bait force and Tholi’s unit on top of the hill waited.

A group of fourteen dwarves in the lead at the top of the ramp leading back up to open ground had their ears pressed up against the foot-thick wall of dirt at the top of the slope, ready to punch through up into the sunlight above. Now, hearing the distant howling, they all raised picks or shovels and began.

Foldorin was in the lead with several of his dwarves, and raised his pickaxe. It had been in his family since the First Age, changed over time, but still the same pickaxe, with a heavy point on one end and an axe head on the other.  Now he brought that point down into the dirt and rock above, gouging out a furrow as he bellowed in Khuzdul. “Dig, my dwarves, dig! Dig to get in among these bastards, our teeth at their throats, never to let go until the last breath leaves their bodies or ours!”

Within seconds, the combined efforts of fourteen dwarves smashed open a hole, out of which they charged. Foldorin’s pickaxe took an unlucky Blood Hand straight through the gut, the pick of his pickaxe proving once again that its point made it a very deadly weapon in dwarfish hands. The Blood Hand had barely time to issue a scream as the pick stabbed through his armor and into his guts.

Foldorin’s blow was so strong it lifted him up and into the air, hurling him into two more soldiers behind them. Those two fell to several of Foldorin’s people, as behind him, his entire corps came streaming out, spreading out, hacking and attacking an enemy who had been concentrating on moving around the camps or watching on the wall.

The three tunnels had been dug in such a way that the attacking corps hit three widely disparate segments of the siege camps. Essentially, the tunnels resembled a Y, even if none of the lines actually met, each one having a different starting point within the boulder field. Two let the dwarves out on either side of the area where the slaughter of the cavalry force was going on.  Foldorin and Khounuk led their troops up and out, spreading out in either direction along the camps, slaying the unprepared Easterlings.  Meanwhile, Thorin’s force came out nearer the back of the hill, where the Lord militant commanded.

On top of the hill, the scorpions, which had been silent for hours after their wild assault the night before, now opened up once more. Firing at full range, their bolts, most of them the special bolts loaded with Blacklock concoctions, fell into the Easterling camps. Each gun captain found the largest concentration of Easterling troops they could before firing.

The sudden artillery barrage, along with the dwarves suddenly bursting up out from the ground, disorganized the Easterlings utterly. There was no way to focus on a single avenue of attack or even several, no way to get runners through the dwarven hosts that had suddenly popped up in his army’s camps. The scorpions were doing a tremendous job of causing havoc on top of the carnage the cavalry forces were already facing, while the steel-clad stumpies were now in among his army. The lesser Easterling commanders had to concentrate on the nearest threat, and despite all Lord Militant Khajigin could do, the control of his army began to come apart.

If they had been Blacklock troops, regardless of their tactical advantages, the Easterlings would’ve been able to wipe them out with ease, given how outnumbered they were even now, despite the utter carnage that had gripped the cavalry wing of the army. However, the steel-clad stumpies were an entirely different story. As they had proven that night they broke in, when it came to close combat, Longbeards had a distinct advantage.

Worse, the Longbeards were completely organized for this. The dwarven host had been preparing for days, with lieutenants, sergeants, and so forth drilling with their men to work together even more seamlessly than normal. They spread out, creating lines of infantry that hacked and slashed at the Easterlings who desperately attempted to come together to fight them off. Attacked now from within their own camps without any warning, completely separated from where they had been anticipating a breakout, the Easterlings were in disarray.

Thorin did not, as Foldorin had, join in breaking through the last foot of ground separating the interior of the tunnel from the Easterling camp. Dori did, smashing through it in a few strikes with his prodigious strength. He led the way up onto the surface, with a bellowing war cry of, “Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!” followed by the other thirteen chosen dwarves.

Thorin was close behind, and he and Dwalin charged after their friend, bellowing their own war cries as the rest of Thorin’s personal guard followed. Cutting down an Easterling trooper, Thorin quickly organized the assault, directing his second-in-command to take a force of four hundred and watch their back as the rest of them formed up and marched forwards through the camps, slaying every Easterling they could between them and their goal, the raised platform that served as the Lord militant’s command center. 

Meanwhile, Tholi’s force instantly shifted from slowly moving to attack to a full charge.  The enemy force ahead of them, heavy infantry with a backing of heavy cavalry, wasn’t as badly disorganized as the cavalry units closer to the wizards had been, but they were still a little disorganized.  Now, a force of three hundred men of Dale popped up, using the last of the crossbow bolts to soften the front line of that attack as Tholi led his force over the berm and into them.

Done with long-range spells, Harry and Saruman moved forward, joining the wholesale slaughter of the downed cavalrymen. Three out of five of them were pinned under their own horses, or with their backs broken after having been flung from them at full speed, or, and far worse-looking, trampled. What dozens of horses trampling over it did to a human body was not very nice to look at, to say the least.

It reminded Harry strongly of what he had seen some of the trolls do in the Battle of the Lonely Mountain to dwarves who had been unlucky enough to be hit directly by their clubs. The outcome was certainly the same anyway: broken bodies. 

Thousands of them were still alive, though mostly defenseless. Now the Blacklocks finished them off, howling in bloodlust, but Agni and Mik refused to let them continue in such a manner. “Form up! One stab each, don’t linger! We’ve got enemies incoming that aren’t helpless; blast your eyes!”

The Easterling host facing them were possibly unaware of the carnage going on elsewhere, but they had yet to be reinforced. So the local commander, showing decent tactical sense, pulled his men back into cover. Instead of moving forward to try and save the cavalrymen, he husbanded his strength, using his scattered archers to attack the scattered dwarves as they slaughtered his fellow Easterlings.

“Thank goodness archery doesn’t seem prevalent in Easterling society,” Harry muttered, before flicking his hand forward, creating a protective shield in front of the men of Dale. They had formed up to face the siege lines and were now trading stones for arrows with the enemy.

Beside him, a tired Saruman raised his staff, whirling it above his head for a moment. A gale-force wind whipped everywhere, grabbing at the incoming arrows, shattering them and then hurling the bits and pieces back towards the Easterlings, where they ignited midair. “Indeed. They would be a far more dangerous force with archers to back up their infantry.  Still, I suppose that all militaries have some kind of blind spot.”

“True.  That’s a nice trick, by the way,” Harry said, nodding.

“Your shield spells are fascinating. I will be interested to see if I can learn it as I did the water-creating spell,” Saruman said in the same respectful tone, while around them, the dwarves finally broke off from finishing off the already crippled cavalry force. Several dozen of the Blacklocks remained there, shifting around the area, making certain that the downed Easterlings stayed that way, a task that would take such a small force several hours.

But the rest of the Blacklocks joined with their Longbeard cousins, and, with Harry, Saruman and the men of Dale, charged forwards towards the waiting Easterlings.

The whole siege devolved into a series of small battles. Barely a hundred still-injured dwarves remained on the hill to defend the scorpions as they kept on firing at any collection of Easterlings that weren’t too close to their own allies until their ammunition ran out. At that point, the artillery experts joined the fight occurring at the base of the hill, where Tholi and Nori led Tholi’s corps in against the gathered Easterling force there.  That was easily the hardest battle, with neither force able to get an advantage.

To one side of the boulder field, Foldorin and his force were causing havoc, matched by Khounuk and his host on the other side of where Mik’s corps and the Blacklocks were attacking. Meanwhile, much nearer to Tholi’s embattled host, Thorin led his own corps in a raging advance through the Easterling camps.

As Thorin knew, this kind of battle was perfect for the men of his House. Easterling armor was good… for humans. It held up pretty well against Blacklock, or perhaps even other Houses' weaponry. But to the steel coming out of Erebor, driven by dwarven muscle, even the heaviest Blood Hand armor could barely stop one or two blows. In contrast, their own armor, chain mail or chest plate, was far better. The maces the enemy’s heavy infantry wielded, designed to punch through chain mail or the heavy cloth armor favored by the Blacklocks, could only bruise the warriors of Erebor.

Saruman strode forward with the dwarves, eager to bring this jaunt to an end and move on. He wanted to make contracts with the Blacklocks for some of their chemicals, and with the Longbeards for a few of the mechanisms they had created in conjunction with the Stiffbeards. Glassware, liquids, other things of that nature, combined with what he had learned about warfare in general, the dwarves and Easterlings in particular, and Harry? Yes, this trip had been very profitable, a fascinating bit of adventure. But it was time to move on.

The old-seeming wizard fought with an economy of motion, as befitted his seeming age. He didn’t move much, and remained behind the wall of Longbeards, using his magic occasionally to defend, rarely to attack except in long tongues of flame that Saruman could conjure up with a millisecond of thought. His staff, though, deflected every blow that seemed to come his way like a tree trunk, and when he struck back, the hits he delivered felled every Easterling he hit, Blood Hand or regular trooper.

In contrast, Harry used cutting or penetrating spells only occasionally, when he could cut more than four Easterlings apart at a time and had a second to do it. He kept an eye on the front line as they pushed into the Easterling camp through the shattered remnants of their wall, and only occasionally launched large-scale spells, always making sure to do so well away from the line of dwarves.

For the most part, he concentrated on his sword work. The sword of Gryffindor could puncture through any kind of armor the Easterlings had with little effort, and even a slight nick was enough to poison the Easterling in question, causing him to fall to the ground screaming as the poison did its work. His own armor, the magically reinforced brigandine armor, deflected every blow that got through his defenses, of which there were far more than Thorin, had he been there, would’ve been happy with. Harry tended to overextend, get a little too excited mid-battle like this, and it showed in his combat style.

With the two wizards leading them, Mik and Agni’s troops smashed through the attempt to hold them on the other side of the siege wall. The Easterlings attempted to close from all sides, the local commander still showing a marked level of control over his troops, but that just brought them into closer combat with the dwarves and wizards, while the Dalemen hammered those men they could with their slingstones, targeting the archers scattered among the Easterlings.  A few Blacklocks and two Dalemen fell, but hundreds of Easterlings were falling to the axes and swords of the dwarves.

Elsewhere, Foldorin’s force was also pushing in both directions away from their breakout point. The two troops of five hundred dwarves were slicing, cutting, pushing hard, just as much as Khounuk was.

Thorin’s was having a tougher time of it. Much like where the two wizards were, the local commander, in this case, the Lord Militant himself, maintained an organized resistance. Worse, the Lord Militant had gathered a significant portion of the army’s heavy infantry to his position. While most of them were fighting with Tholi’s force, the rest were still in camp and had been turned to face Thorin’s corps.

The battle continued for hours, with the Easterlings never able to concentrate their forces enough to stop any one attack, as they were pulled in every direction. It was simply their numbers, and, although the dwarves would never want to admit it, the courage of the Easterlings that kept the fight going. However, eventually, Foldorin broke through to link up with Mik’s troops, having slain every Easterling between them. They spread out, soon forcing their way up to link with Khounuk, while reinforcing the assault going in the other direction, which had become bogged down facing a large force of heavy infantry.

Soon after that, Thorin and his personal guard smashed into and through a final line of defense at the foot of the platform.

As they did, dozens of long spears stabbed down, repurposed lances from the Easterling cavalry. Five of Thorin’s guard fell, stabbed through the eye or pierced just above the gorget as the Easterlings thrust down.

But that was all. Those spears were swept aside by the rest of the dwarves, and then Thorin was through, hacking one way and the other, removing an arm from one Blood Hand, then a leg from another. He was then forced to raise Orcrist to block a strike from a mace aimed precisely at his neck.

He pushed the blow away, and Khajigin whirled, snarling in his own tongue, lashing out with another blow.  “//This will change nothing, nothing! Kill us all, stumpy, and thousands will take our place.  The Warlord Khamûl, the envoy of the Great Eye, will see your race dead!//”

Thorin blocked the blow, barking an order as he surged forward. “Hold the rest off. He is mine!”

Dwalin and the rest of his personal guard pulled back slightly, lashing out instead at the Blood Hand officers and soldiers all around them. More of the Blood Hand were concentrated here than they had seen previously at any point during the fighting, and their general skill and ability to work together made them a real threat even to the heavily armored Longbeards, as the five victims of the spears had shown.

Thorin batted aside another mace below, Orcrist coming up in an economical strike to try and hit the Lord Militant’s forearm, but Khajigin was no wild berserker. He pulled his blow back quickly enough that the bottom of his mace blocked the strike, then tried to redirect Orcrist with a neat twist of his arm, before bringing his weapon around again with both hands.

Thorin matched him, one-handed. His shield had been hammered into pieces earlier in the fight. Now he lashed out with a punch at one that almost caught the Easterling in the elbow.

Khajigin used his backward dodge to lead into a full step, trying to gain some distance. This worked, and he began using his mace’s longer reach and his longer arms to keep Thorin at bay.

Thorin ducked under another strike, then three more before he was able to charge in, forcing the Lord Militant to backpedal, but he did so adroitly, grabbing at a fallen spear and thrusting it towards Thorin before Thorin could capitalize. Thorin grunted as the spear impacted his chest plate, shattering, causing him to stumble back slightly, and the Lord Militant’s mace came in at head height. Growling, Thorin raised his forearm, grunting as the impact on his arm broke something inside, despite his vambrace stopping the impact of the mace’s point from punching in.

Khajigin pulled back, whirling into another attack, but despite Thorin still being off-balance, Orcrist still came up, hitting the mace shaft right behind the head with all the strength Thorin’s Arkenstone-enhanced strength could put into the blow. There was a sound of tortured metal, and the elven-made blade sliced clean through the black steel of the mace shaft, sending the mace head whirling away.

The Lord Militant snarled and charged, shoulder-checking Thorin off of his feet, a move he only succeeded because of the loose gravel of the ramp leading up to the platform.

Both of them rolled down the slope, slamming into and through several of the legs of Thorin’s personal guard and the Blood Hand, before Khajigin rolled them both over, using his greater weight to pin Thorin. The Lord Militant’s hand came down holding a wickedly sharp dagger, the likes of which Thorin had seen in the Easterling camp his army had taken mostly intact, aiming to stab Thorin through the eye.

Before it could, Thorin’s hand clamped down on his, holding the blow in place. The human strained, bringing his other hand in to push, but such was Thorin’s strength that the Lord Militant’s eyes widened as he realized quickly he was going to lose that contest.

Before he could do anything, Thorin’s other arm, despite being broken, came up in a punch. The punch actually caused him to grunt in pain, but it also crumpled the Lord Militant’s iron mask and probably broke the jaw underneath.

He was hurled sideways, and before he could move with it, try to get to his feet, Thorin, who had not removed his grip on the man’s wrist, moved in the same direction, rolling on top of the Easterling. “I have you now…” he hissed, slamming the man’s hand on the ground until he released the dagger, ignoring the man’s wild punches to his chest and helmeted head.

As the Easterling’s free hand tried to scrabble at his face, seeking Thorin’s eyes, Thorin released his grip on the man’s other hand and brought his own to grab at the side of the Lord Militant’s helmeted head. With a roar, he shoved sideways, snapping the man’s neck.

For a moment, he stared as the light of life left the man’s eyes, then Thorin pushed himself to his feet with his good arm, looking around, only to find Dori holding out Orcrist to him.  “Wrestling in the dirt like a youngster, my King?”

“That’s rich coming from the only dwarf in Erebor who can out-wrestle me,” Thorin snorted, before his face broke into a grin and he took his sword. With a mighty cleave, he cut the Lord Militant’s head off, then, with Dori beside him, they forced their way through the press of bodies up onto the platform, where Thorin, very visibly to everyone, Easterling and dwarf alike, stabbed the head of the Lord Militant onto his own standard, before hacking down every other standard there with a roar.

The dwarves who saw that roared in turn, and the Easterlings finally began to lose heart, crying out in dismay in a way that Thorin had never heard from them before. With a final war cry, he charged down into the battle, ignoring his broken arm, Dori following him.

The battle didn’t end there, alas. The Easterlings’ greatest strength was their discipline, their lack of self. Now, with the Lord Militant gone, and several of his other commanders having been killed up to this point, command devolved even further, but the Easterlings still fought as individuals, or as scattered tribesmen, united by this or that Blood Hand officer. They didn’t break or run, but died where they stood.

Yet that was all they did: die and kill doing it. By the time night fell over the battlefield, there was not a single Easterling left alive anywhere in that camp, but the dwarves had taken dozens of dead, and the men of Dale had lost a further hundred, with several dozen more injured. The Blacklocks, thankfully, did not lose many more than they already had.

The Dead Easterlings included, unfortunately, the few womenfolk who had been among this army. As every time before, the scattered dozens of women had taken their lives the instant they knew the battle was going against their people.

Harry was standing in an intact tent, staring down at some of those bodies with Saruman when Thorin found them. His beard, clothing, and sword were all matted with blood. Neither wizard looked nearly as blood-soaked, but Thorin knew Harry well enough to know that was not a sign he’d held back during the battle. “They did it again, I see.”

“Yes. I am… When I let myself think about it, I honestly become horrified by what this says about Easterling society as a whole, Thorin,” Harry confessed, glancing over and noting his friend’s arm was in a sling before gesturing to the bodies of the women in front of them. “Not just that these women were here with this army. Given human history in my world, I could almost understand that. No, it is their willingness to take their own lives like this, the marks on their bodies… as if their wombs were sworn to the service of Sauron or his local commander anyway. It… yeah, horror is too small a word for the kind of society that embraces that.”

These are still Men. They still have souls. But their society, their culture, it is built on an evil so dark it makes Voldemort look like a child playing in the sand, Harry thought grimly, shaking his head. One of these had been pregnant, for Arien’s sake! That was obvious by the bulge of her stomach, but the fetus within had not survived long after the mother had taken her own life, dying before even getting a chance to live. 

Staring at the woman with the bulging stomach, Thorin could shiver, but kept his thoughts centered on the here and now.  “It’s done.  The Easterlings here are broken.  I’ve got scouts rounding up the horses that fled already.  We’re going to be days burning the bodies and dealing with all this before we can even move on. I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to help, and then could take messages to Red Rock and check on Parn’s Tower.”

“This is but the first of the camps we’ve examined, Thorin. Cleaning up the cursed items within will probably take the rest of the night, if not longer. I’d also think we should look for correspondence of any kind, as we have found previously. It’s doubtful, but perhaps we will be able to discover something, as Harry says the Stonefoot host did outside Spider’s Bane. Maybe even a prisoner.”

“Maybe, but do not look for me for help beyond tonight,” Harry warned. When Thorin and Saruman looked at him, Harry grimaced, a hand coming up to touch the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, ignoring the pains coming from his scarred hand in the presence of Dark-stained items. “I… since I woke up this morning, I have felt as if, as if something is calling me north. I, my soul is yearning in that direction.  I think Tauriel is going into danger, and I need to retrace my steps that way quickly.”

Thorin’s face cleared at that, while Saruman merely nodded, keeping his own thoughts inside even as he smoothly said, “In that case, my friend, you should of course hurry on your way. You have already done everything a wizard could be called upon to do here.”

“Wait till tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll give you as many horses as you think you can handle. As fast as you can move on your two feet, Harry, three or four horses will allow you to cover the distance more quickly.  They should even be able to graze as they go along,” Thorin offered.  “I’d offer to send a troop with you, but with everything we still need to do here, that’s not going to happen.”

“Just give me something that other dwarves can notice, particularly at a distance, to know I’m a friend, and that would help even more than the horses,” Harry said dryly, before shaking his head and moving deeper into the tent, his scarred hand twitching at his side, the pain an old acquaintance now.  “For now, let’s get this dirty work done.”

OOOOOOO

OOOOOOO

Far to the south, as dawn broke over the day after that battle, Warlord Khamûl slowly knelt beside a river, its banks overflowing. As he sank his gauntlets into it, he watched the water turn red with the blood that seeped from them.  That blood flowed from within the gauntlet for several turns of the glass after every sacrifice he took part in, but in this case, that sacrifice was barely a turn of the glass old.  A young dwarven warrior who had succeeded in launching an assassination on Khamûl despite the vast number of scouts and the whole army around him.

Khamûl could appreciate the youth’s determination. He had dug and hidden within a specially prepared foxhole, made in a place where the Easterling host under Khamûl almost had to camp on their way to their target dwarven hold. He had waited until the dead of night, then popped out and made his way through the Easterling camp to Khamûl’s tent.

At that point, of course, things had gone poorly for the young dwarf, as no weapon made by man or dwarf could even force Khamûl to give up his current form, let alone kill him permanently.  That, and Khamûl had been wide awake, still working on his plans for the campaign. Khamûl had beaten the dwarf bloody within seconds before his guards rushed in.

The young dwarf had been subsequently sacrificed. His eyes had been torn out. As he thrashed, his heart had been cut out slowly, so that the victim remained alive and screaming in homage to Sauron as the rites of the Blood Hand sect demanded. After that, his body had been placed on a stake for all to see along with the officer in charge of camp security.  That man hadn’t been tortured, simply allowed to kill himself to repay his failure.

Turning from watching the pure, clear water being turned red from the blood of his gauntlets, Khamûl stared further downriver, where a hill hold of the dwarves had been wiped out.  Fools, he thought with a sneer.  The king of that hold should be cursed for all generations by those of his House that survive. Whoever designed its waterways should be tortured by the spirits of the dead for eternity.

Khamûl had entered this campaign believing that it would take years to take even one dwarven hold despite the best the Cult of the Flashing Eye, a cult specializing in engineering and architecture, could do.  However, the leader of that cult assigned to his army had found out that the underground waterways that served this hill hold were connected to this river.  After sending some swimmers down, they found nothing to stop anything from getting in through the underground waterway.

It was too far underground for anyone, even the best swimmer, to get through. There were also far too few swimmers of any sort in Khamûl’s entire host, let alone this single army. However, a weighted body could be directed down the proper offshoot.  Or in this case, bodies already bloated and stinking with disease.  After that, a series of stones had been sent to close the offshoot.  It had taken several dozen lives, but it had worked.  The hold had drunk the foul water, sickened before they realized what had been done to it, and then forced to try and do without.

The dwarves of the hold had instead attempted to break out.  It had failed.  Several dozen thousand dwarves, not nearly as many as would be in a human city, but still somewhere above fifty thousand, had been wiped out. Females and children make poor soldiers, although many of the children did at least die standing.

That, thought, much like Khamûl’s appreciation for his would-be assassin, was a cold thing. An acknowledgment that was more a lessening of his hatred for anyone and anything who stood against his Master than anything truly like the term ‘appreciation’ would normally describe.  Yet it was there.

Khamûl was a warlord, first and foremost. That was how he served his Master. It was a poor general who could not recognize his enemies' strengths as well as weaknesses.

 Five other holds of varying size. Four hill, one valley. No mountain holds like Erebor or the holds in the Grey Mountains that the Stonefoot House cling to. I have reports that the sieges have begun around three of the hill holds. The fourth is my next target. The Valley… I am still waiting for reports from the army I sent up that way.  Its army is supposedly still intact in enough numbers to take to the field, unlike the others, which my armies have smashed.

For a moment, Khamûl allowed himself to feel a spurt of pleasure, the pleasure of a blade knowing it was aiming at an enemy’s vitals, that the enemy’s arms had been dealt with.  I will take each of them in turn. The fall of this hold lets me move on to the next faster than I anticipated, and perhaps we will discover other ways to get inside quickly. If not, I have the knowledge the Master gave me, which I shared with the Cult of the Flashing Eye. Slow or fast, the Ironfist holds will fall. 

Khamûl’s thoughts paused then as a Blood Hand officer nearby whistled, a short, sharp signal. A moment later, the man turned, kneeling and bowing his head towards Khamûl. “Warlord, there are a pair of crows incoming. They fly with the strange purpose we have been told to report.  One comes from the north. The other, the northwest.”

Nodding slowly, Khamûl let the man rise and turned to look in that direction, quickly feeling the presence of a bird touched by his master’s influence flying towards him, joining the many that were currently boiling around the distant battlefield. Those were feasting, and this one, and the one beyond it, Khamûl began to sense soon after, would want to join them. They were welcome to it. Indeed, he rather enjoyed the sight.

Moments later, a crow whose leg marking he recognized as coming from the host he had sent against the Blacklocks House came towards him, landing on his offered gauntlet.

The covered, hooded gaze of the warlord stared into the crow’s eyes, seeing its memory. This memory was of a battle where the dwarves had broken out through the ground and smashed the army of Lord Militant Khajigin. So, both of my other theatres of war have ended in defeat. Disappointing. Still, the real thrust is ongoing and has halfway succeeded already. Khajigin and Sûldama were simply sideshows.

The instant he sent that crow off, another landed, this time one assigned to one of Khamûl’s own lesser commanders. Those lesser commanders could not, like the Lord Militants, communicate with such birds, but there were dozens of them assigned to each of the smaller armies under his personal command to watch and relay what was being done elsewhere in his own target area.

Once more, he held out a hand, communing with the crow in question.  As its markings had told him, this one came from the army he had sent against the sole Ironfist valley hold. In Common it was called River Dagger, of all things.  As his mapmakers and scouts hadn’t reported back yet from that area of Ironfist House territory, Khamûl had no idea why, nor would he have cared overmuch.

If not for the memory of this crow, at any rate, for it showed a mixed Blacklock and Longbeard army demolishing the host this crow had been assigned to watch in a series of clashes.  They had then moved on to link up with the army out of River Dagger, which had yet to leave its hold. A planned move, Khamûl now knew, not from cowardice or self-interest, but strategy. If the commander of that army wasn’t slain in that battle, I would sacrifice him to the Master. Pathetic. And his scouts were nearly wiped out as well, judging from this crow’s memories.   

For several minutes, Khamûl pondered, then shrugged and turned. The losses thus far had been acceptable for what they had achieved, even with the other two theaters of war added in, but if the full armies of the stumpies were turned in his direction, it could go badly.  Best to cut our losses and prepare for the next campaign in twenty years or more. If we were facing humans, I would continue, but dwarves cannot be influenced by my aura of fear, and the Longbeards have proven a dangerous enemy already in the Blacklock territory.  I will not fight such without fully understanding what I am getting into. Do to otherwise would make me a poor servant of the Master.

Within moments, he had issued orders, orders that would be relayed out to the remaining hosts elsewhere in his own operational theater, while the rest of his army began to pack. The power of the Iron fist House had been mauled, the Stonefoots and Blacklocks sharply curtailed.

He would create a few bases along the way and maintain enough cavalry units to keep harassment assaults going. With their monopoly on horseflesh, the Easterlings could do so against the dwarves for a good while, further weakening all three houses, while never offering open battle. Still, this was the end of full-scale warfare. Khamûl could return to his master with a victory under his belt, if not the full victory he had hoped for, while the breeders would be busy birthing the next generation of Easterling warriors.

The next blow against the forces of the West will come from the south, the Haradrim and Corsairs. All the while, the master is building our true strength within the walls of Mordor…

End Chapter

This isn’t the whole chapter I wanted to post. But for only three days’ work, I think it’s good. I lost Friday to RL, finished Effect on Monday and only had time today to run it through Grammarly. I was forced to cut out a portion where Thorin shared some of his plans for the future, figuring I’d just show them instead later, which was fair enough. The Tauriel portion of the chapter would’ve also ended at a cliffhanger, so maybe it’s good I ended it here LOL.  Still, next chapter will be the Tauriel scene, Harry’s trip north, and then, slowly after that, the return to Erebor. Thorin will be busy in the east for a while, but Harry and Tauriel will be busy back home for a bit before wanderlust has them moving on again.