Dáin's Saga by bunn  

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The War of the Dwarves and Orcs

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The first Houses of the Dwarves to join Thráin’s new war were the Firebeard and the Broadbeam dwarves of the western mountains.

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” Náin demanded, when Dáin brought him the news. “They don’t have dragons nor orcs to worry about over there in the west. Thorin’s been visiting there for years.  No doubt he’s talked them into it.”

The next House to join Thráin was the Stiffbeards. They came marching past the Iron Hills on their long journey west.

From the northernmost hilltop of his home, Dáin saw them pass in the distance, a long grey glinting column, driving forward over the cold plain that lies between the Iron Hills and the Withered Heath. Their banners were red and gold.

Ravens swooped above their march, and Dáin thought of Hepti, the thrawn old Stiffbeard that he had thrown in the wrestling. Had he marched out to join Thráin’s war of vengeance?

The Iron Hills only heard that the Iron Fists and the Blacklocks had joined the fight later. 

Dáin’s old wrestling enemy, Narfi of the Iron Fist brought the word, coming home from the war. He had taken a goblin-dart to the ear, and though he had recovered from the poison, he was deaf, and afflicted by ringing sounds that no-one else could hear. Narfi was no longer proud, and he begged Dáin’s pardon for having been a sore loser in his youth.

Dáin shook his head smiling, and gave Narfi the honour due to an old friend, for he was not one to hold a grudge.

Narfi did not only tell that the Iron Fists and Blacklocks had come out to war.

For the great news he carried was that Mount Gundabad, the Holy Mountain, which had been infested with orcs for an Age, had been retaken.

Now, the battle was moving east, to the goblin-tunnels of the Misty Mountains.

Náin shook his head. “It makes a good tale, all the Houses coming together to free the holy mountain,” he signed, so that Narfi could understand. “But how many will be left to hold it afterwards, that’s what I’d like to know.”

But Narfi said, seeing Náin’s hand-speech: “Fine story, but half truth. Thráin promised us the riches of his House, if we could only help him win them back. That is why we came, for we have had our own griefs, and our own losses, we of the Iron Fist.

“Once we had a Ring that bred gold, or so the tales say. Men flocked to our halls then, to bring us in trade all we might wish. But we lost such riches long ago, and thought, perhaps, that the House of Durin might still know of such old spells.”

“There are no great spells and mighty treasures any more,” Náin told him.

For in those days in the Iron Hills, all believed that the Ring of Eregion, that long ago the Ringmaker of the Deep-elves gave to Durin, had been lost with Thrór when he went unwisely into Moria.

Last of all the Houses came the Stonefoots, though nobody in the Iron Hills was sure if that was because they had set out last, or because they had a long way to come.

Nobody had met a Stonefoot. It was said that the spoken tongue they used in public was different to the common speech that the Longbeards mostly used. The word was that Thráin had learned the language of the Stonefoots’ distant home.

“That’s just the sort of thing that Thrór would have done. Learn a whole new language because he thought it made him look good, instead of just employing a translator!” Grór said. And he wept a little more for his lost brother.

*****

For five years the war went on in the dark places deep beneath the Mountains, moving southward as the orcs of the Mountains gave up their secrets one by one and fled southward through the mountain-tunnels.

After them came the might of the Dwarves, hidden from Men and the watchful eye of the Sun as they marched through the mountain-roots. 

Battle after battle they fought, pursuing an elusive foe that could never quite be pinned down.

Dáin followed news of the war eagerly, whenever he could get it: in letters from Dís, which still arrived from time to time, and from occasional Iron Fists and Stiffbeards, injured in the fight and travelling home, who stopped at the Iron Hills to break their journey.

And all the while, he grew broader in the shoulders and stouter in the chest, though he was not yet of full age. Dáin like all the Longbeards was handy with both hammer and battle-axe, though he had not yet used either in war.

******

In the sixth year of the war, Thráin sent another message to the Iron Hills. This time the message was brought by Thráin’s eldest son, Thorin himself.

He arrived with a small company, all of them armed with axes, bows and daggers, and dressed in mail that had clearly seen battle. 

Their battered sky blue shields were marked with the anvil of Durin, and the end of Thorin’s long golden beard was tucked into his belt.

Grór got up from his tall chair, frowning darkly as Thorin's name was called.

Thorin bowed deeply, in a courtly manner. He was well-spoken and made a fine impression on those who stood nearby.

He spoke for some time about how pleased he was to visit the Iron Hills, and to meet his great-uncle’s grandson Dáin for the first time, and to meet again with Grór, and Náin and Ranndaughter.

As he turned, tall and elegant as he was, to give his greetings to Náin, his words ran short, and he came to a stuttering stop, for Náin was smiling broadly, and holding in his arms a tiny child, born only a few days earlier.

“You can meet another member of your family too,” Ranndaughter said, with the smug expression of someone who has successfully sprung a surprise. “A very new one, just hatched.”

“A child! A new child of the House of Durin!” Thorin was delighted by this. He abandoned his previous formal and rehearsed speech to greet the infant in more suitable language. “Have you given a name?” he asked the proud mother.

Náin shook his head. “Not yet. Time enough for names when the child is older,” he said, for the custom in the Iron Hills, as in the Grey Mountains aforetime, was that a child was given an outer name only on the twelfth birthday.

The child took hold of Thorin’s finger with a tiny hand. “Already the grip of a warrior!” Thorin said, with obvious delight.

“Thorin,” Grór asked, “Why have you come here? Didn’t you understand our message? I’ll be clear. We aren’t joining your father’s war.”

“We hoped that you might think again,” Thorin replied. “The war is going well. You surely must have heard that we have cleared the orcs from Mount Gundabad, and from all the orc-holds down the Misty Mountains, so far that where our host lies now is in sight of the peak of Barazinbar himself.”

“In sight of Baraz the Cruel?” Grór said. “It’s a long dark fight you have fought. We have heard a little of it, yes. How many have you lost, Thorin?”

“Death cannot be escaped in war,” Thorin answered swiftly.

“I know that as well as you do, lad. I asked how many.”

“I am not sure of the exact count...” Thorin admitted, removing his finger from the grip of the newest member of the House of Durin.

“No? Not even a number for the fallen of the Longbeards, for your own people?”

“Many,” Thorin admitted, still without giving a number. “Many have fallen, more have been injured. My father would greatly value your strength to bring this war to a swift and final end.”

“A final end? There’s no such thing,” Helgisdaughter said.

“He’s got all Seven Houses,” Grór grumbled. “What does he need us for?”

“To retake our ancient home,” Thorin told him. “To re-take the great Dwarrowdelve of our fathers: Khazad-dûm. My father thought that might tempt even your caution.”

Grór grimaced without speaking, and Thorin went on smoothly “But whether it does or not, I have brought with me my father’s youngest child, my sister, Dís.”

The next tallest of the blue-shielded warriors beside Thorin himself put her shield on the floor, and bowed. Like him, she had a golden beard, though she was not as broad of shoulder as Thorin.

“Dís Thrainsdaughter, at your service,” she said, her face grim and set.

“My father asks a favour, as kin to kin,” Thorin said. “He wishes that you would take Dís to foster, here in the North, far from the war. She is not yet of age, and... we would all sleep better, knowing that she is far from the battlefront.”

Grór nodded slowly. “I see. And the war is going well, you tell me.”

He fell silent. Thorin said nothing. Dís shuffled her feet, and the baby began to wail.

Dáin stepped forward smiling. “Welcome, Dís, to the Iron Hills. It’s good to meet you at last after so many letters: I am your cousin Dáin. Is it your wish to stay with us?”

Dís gave Thorin a brief sideways glare, but she nodded. “So my father and mother have ordered.”

“It’s not your own wish?” Dáin, several years younger than Dis, was not of age any more than she was. But he was well known as an agreeable person to everyone thereabouts, and so his father and grandfather let him speak for the household.

“It is my own wish.” She did not sound eager, but she had answered. That is all that law demands of a child counted battle-ready but not yet of age.

“Welcome, then, Dis, to our household,” Grór said.

Thorin bowed and thanked him.

“But we won’t be going to war,” he snapped, before Thorin’s effusive thanks had ended.

*****

Dís

It was strange to have Dís living in Dáin’s home. The person who had written the letters and the person who ate breakfast and grumbled about the baby crying seemed two very different people.

The long gossipy letters about ball-games, brothers, wrestling and arguments had made Dis seem a familiar friend. Now she was not.

Dáin was used to setting his hand to whatever task was needed, even if that was helping with the pigs or the harvest.

His father had always done the same, and was praised for it: Náin, everyone said, would always tackle the hard work. Moreover, Dáin’s best friend Vili was not of high family, and Dáin would not set himself apart from Vili.

Dis was not used to such a life at all, and said so loudly.

Dis had been born among the glories and comforts of Erebor, and had lost her home to the Dragon when she was ten years old.

Since then, she had been travelling with her parents: to the Blue Mountains, to Dunland, into the far east to the Blacklock home, and back to Dunland again before the war took her to Gundabad and the chill slopes of the northern Misty Mountains.

She had rarely lived in one place for long, and this meant, it seemed, that she had never had anything to do with pigs, or the growing of oats, nor spinning and weaving wool nor tanning pigskins or working leather.

There were, in fact, an astonishing number of things that Dis did not know and refused to learn.

Everyone found this annoying, apart from Helgisdaughter, who took to Dis as if she were her own child, and grumbled along with her, and Dáin, who had resolved to like Dis from her letters and was not about to give up on her.

Dáin’s friend Vili was doubtful about Dis. But since he was not prepared to lose Dáin, his best friend in all the Iron Hills, he decided to like Dis too.

They discovered that Dis didn’t know much about smelting. Dáin and Vili were astonished. Everyone in the Iron Hills knew about smelting.

But Dis settled in her new place, and they found some things she did know well : forging, poetry, casting, axe-work, and politics.

Above all, Dis knew about war.

Dís had travelled and fought with her father’s host. Nobody in the Iron Hills knew more of the progress of Thráin’s War.

She had seen Gundabad, the holy mountain, the very waking-place of Durin himself.

She had entered into the holy halls, as no-one had seen them for thousands of years.

She told Dáin and Vili , as they listened in fascination and the pigs snouted in the paddocks, of the endless filth of the orc-tunnels, the long ruination.

It was hard to tell, she said, where the original roads and pathways of the temple had run, she said, so many goblin-tunnels had scratched their way through the rock. But the great hall still stood, carved and worked where the goblins could not easily reach.

It was impossible to tell now, exactly where Durin had awoken. But she had seen ancient graves there, their seals still unbroken, despite the scars and desecration.

She told, too, of the deep battles, far beneath the Mountains, in the places where orcs and goblins had squeezed and chipped their strange erratic routes into natural caverns. Dáin listened in fascination as Dis explained how they had followed their enemy through rough crevices in the rock, oozing with foul water, foul air.

Where the enemy might bring down the roof to cut you off, to be left hungry and thirsty at the roots of mountains, until you were too weak to fight off the reaching hands, the whispering voices.

Vili shuddered and stopped his ears.

Then they learned that was why her father had sent Dis away. She had been caught in the deep tunnels, lost for a day and a night. She had only been found again by chance.

“It isn’t fair,” she said, angrily, at supper one evening. They were eating good pork sausages and pickled cabbage and yet she was not content. “Our other cousins are there. Dwalin, Balin and Gloin are all years younger than me.”

Náin frowned. “Young Dwalin is with your father’s army? But the little lad must be years short of his majority: he was born after the Dragon came to the Mountain! Is he even battle-ready?”

Dis shrugged. “Who isn’t battle-ready, nowadays? Even cousin Glóin is there with the host, and he’s a child. They only sent me away because I’m a girl. It isn’t fair.”

“No,” Náin said, looking at his eldest son. “Few things in life are fair.”

“It’s against all custom for the women of our house to march to war,” Dáin’s mother added, coaxing. “By all accounts you have done a fair share of soldiering. It’s not what I’d wish for my own daughter.”

Dis glared at her. “If more women of the Mountain had been outside it, then the Dragon wouldn’t have killed so many of them,” she said, sticking out her beard pugnaciously.

For she was a woman of the line of Durin, and one of great spirit. None of the customs applied to Dis, unless she so chose.

Her outer-name will be long remembered among Durin’s Folk, and among Men and even among the Elves.

*****

Tharkûn

It was about this time that the Grey Wanderer, Tharkûn the Staff-bearer, came to the Iron Hills.

Grór screwed up his dim eyes when he heard Tharkûn’s voice. “Why have you come now?” he demanded of the wizard. “When last I saw you, I was a youngster. You spoke to my father of some dark hidden threat. But it was a Dragon that killed him.”

“The First-Dáin was a great loss to us all, in these darkening days” Tharkûn replied. “I knew that some evil was stirring: I knew, as I told your father, that the Iron Mountains were in peril. I did not know that the Cold-drake was on the move, not until it was all over. It has been long since evil moved so openly in Middle-earth, and so I looked for some more subtle threat. Too subtle.”

“There’s nothing much that’s subtle about a Dragon,” Grór said, and laughed bitterly. “I hope you haven’t come with some new warning, Tharkûn. There’s no gold here, only hard work.”

Tharkûn shook his grey head. “I know of no direct threat to the Iron Hills, Grór. I happened to be passing, and thought I might look in to see how things are going with the House of Durin.”

“Well enough,” Grór told him, with a definite note of pride. “You’ve met my son Náin, haven’t you?  Two children he has now!” He turned as the cheerful voices approaching were suddenly hushed, as they noticed Grór was speaking to a visitor.

Grór smiled. “Here he is! This is my grandson, young Dáin, a promising lad, and his cousin Dis. This is Tharkûn, a Wizard out of the west, who knew my father.”

Dáin, Dis and Vili bowed, and Tharkûn inclined his grey head, removing his tall blue hat.

“Dis... now on what side of the family would you come, my lad?” Tharkûn asked.

Dis stood up very tall and straight, lifting her beard. “I am Dis, Thráinsdaughter, of the House of Durin,” she said.

“Great Elephants!” Tharkûn exclaimed, though nobody present knew what he meant by that. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Princess Dis. I thought all of your family was with the army.”

“She was,” Dáin assured him quickly, “And she is battle-tested,” he said proudly.

“Yes, well. My brother’s family were all a little eccentric sometimes,” Grór muttered.

“My family asked me to come here for safety,” Dis told the wizard reluctantly. “But I think they were wrong. I should have stayed with them. I don’t usually do what people tell me, and I’ve resolved to do it less in future.”

“It is your father’s war that concerns me,” Tharkûn said. “Thráin has taken a great revenge for your brother’s death, but... has it occurred to you, Grór, that he may have overcommitted himself?”

“What do you think?” Grór snorted. “Why do you think I send him no help?”

“A time is coming,” Tharkûn said, “When you may have to choose. The Houses of the Dwarves are falling, Grór . Of the Seven Houses, Firebeards and the Broadbeams are a fragment of what they once were. This latest war will see an end to their people, save in memory: they will be part of the House of Durin, and no more — if they are lucky enough to survive at all.”

“They have fought nobly in our war,” Dis told him, proudly. “The Blue Hills knew my grandfather well: they came at once when my father called for aid.”

“I don’t have any doubts about that,” Tharkûn said “But still, most of the Dwarves of the Blue Hills went to Khazâd-dum long ago, and neither Tumunzahar of the shining pillars, nor Gabilgathol of long memory is what it was in the morning of the world.”

“Thráin has the aid of all seven Houses,” Dáin pointed out.

“He had that for a while, but perhaps, not much longer. The east is no longer at peace. The Stiffbeards have long fought the Goblins of the far north-east. I hear they have recalled their warriors, for they are needed now at home. The Stonefoots and Blacklocks are far away: they have sent all the help to Thráin that they will offer, and they too have misfortunes of their own.”

“You think we should march out to help Thráin,” Dáin said, coming to the conclusion as he spoke.

“I think they will need your strength, before the end.” Tharkûn said. “There are grim rumours spreading about the House of Durin, Grór. A price has been set on Thráin’s head, or so I hear, no less than the price upon the head of Elrond of Rivendell.”

Grór grunted and turned away. “You’d think even orcs would have the wit not to strive for a reward offered by Azog.”

“Not only Azog,” Tharkûn told him. “There is a Necromancer in Mirkwood, and his power and influence is reaching out across the land. The word is that he would see an end to the House of Durin. And this war has not been easy on Thráin. When last I saw him, he had lost an eye.”

Dis gasped. “Is my father... no, he must be well. You would have said before if he was not.”

“When last I saw him, he was well,” Tharkûn agreed, “and the eye well on the way to being healed over, though it will not see again.”

Grór narrowed his eyes, which now saw no more than a blur of light. “Young Dis here would have me march out to war,” he said. “And so would Dáin, for young hearts are eager, and don’t reckon well with risk. But I am too old to go to war.”

“Náin is not,” Tharkûn said. “Your people are well-equipped and well-seasoned, O Grór. Náin could lead them to victory.”

“Maybe,” Grór said, and he refused to discuss it any more with Tharkûn at that time.