#dwecember

Young Grór considers what it is to have a friend. Prince used as a gender-neutral term for dwarven royalty.

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“There! Over there!” Grór, whose eyes had been slowly drifting shut, staggered to her feet and loped over to Ixil. The Stiffbeard had piss-poor eyesight; though a swing from their hammer could crush an auroch in twain, Grór still didn’t understand the point of putting him on watch duty. “No,” the dwarf prince intoned slowly, “that looks to be some kind of avalanche on a distant peak.” Ixil puffed out his chest and arched his eyebrow at the dwarrowdam. “Well — looked like it could have been a drake!” Grór shot him a withering stare. “Everything looks like a drake to you. Like that time you called out the guards from their dinner time because you spotted a very large eagle?” Ixil bumped Grór with his hip and the prince crashed into the side of the guard-tower wall. She gave as good as she got, though, and kneed her companion in the shin with the steel toe of her boot. “It was a very large eagle,” Ixil grumbled, wiping mud from his leg and staring at the ground.

At least Grór was awake now. The chill wind blew down her collar and tousled her long, auburn hair, tossing the thick waves beyond her shoulders. She picked up her axe and leaned heavily against it, eyes streaming with the cold as she stared outwards. Nothing ever happened here. Character building, King Dáin said it was. There was no nobler cause than to watch the endless stretch of grey, snow-capped mountains. Remember Scatha, the worm? Remember how the foul beast almost took the dwarves unawares? They’re breeding like rabbits, faster than our worm-hunters can flush them out. Two of them sacked Ugzarak less than a year afore now, and the rest and coming for us. Are you marking my words, Grór? She could hear her father’s words to her now, rattling around inside her head. They had all been on high alert since one of the Stiffbeard’s holds, the northernmost hall in the lonely outcrop of Ugzarak, on the edge of the Red Mountains, had been waylaid by two particularly nasty worms. More than a thousand had managed to flee, some of them picked off by cold and hunger, but a good many refugees came to settle in Ered Mithrin.

She remembered it as though it had only happened a month ago. Battered and weary dwarves, huddling around large fires which had been constructed deep in the mustering halls of the Grey Mountains, tended to their sick and vulnerable. It was the only respite they’d had for weeks, and the king had gone to each family in turn to ask of their welfare. Grór had hung back in the shadows, watching him silently. Prince Head-in-the-clouds Frór and Thrór called her. Bundushathûr, but less majestic and more scatterbrained than the lofty sacred peak. But Grór was one to watch, and study, and notice the subtleties of a dwarf’s interaction. It wasn’t that her head was in the clouds, but it was often elsewhere. She had noticed as her father lay a caring hand on a stranger’s yak-pelt covered back, to comfort shaking shoulders as they wept for their destroyed homeland. How he lifted an elderly dwarf, who was covered in blackened frostbite, from a makeshift bier and carried them to a soft bed. He had spent a long time tending to the dwarf, whose family had died along the way. Tender, calloused hands bandaged wounds, and the king shook his head when his aides called for him to leave. No — the doors of Thikil-gundu are always open for those in need. What am I, if not the host of this great house? Grór had watched her father until uncle Borin had scolded her for slacking. “Prince Head-in-the-clouds, at least be of use and fetch more bandages!”

Grór studied Ixil. He was squinting into the sunlight again, his raven-dark heavily braided hair wrapped around his head into elaborate patterns, decorated with an assortment of multi-coloured sparkling beads. His face was proud and calm, and he seemed to not have a care in the world, a strange tune rumbling from between his lips as he hummed in vague, broken notes. He had been one of those bruised, cold, tired dwarves who had fled on the back of sledges into the bitter winter. He’d lost family, watched friends die. And how had she helped? Mocked his eyesight and kicked him in the leg? Is that what her father would have done? Suddenly, she felt guilty.

“Hey — you,” she said awkwardly, sidling up next to him. Ixil smiled and covered his forehead with a hand almost as broad as hers, peering over against the sharp sunlight. “What?” What did she want to say? What could she possibly say? Anything that came into her head sounded too contrite. Too insincere. “I like you. I mean I… I’ve never really… except my brothers. But they’re not like you. It’s good to have a friend to talk to. Being on watch can get boring, I mean—” That definitely wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. Horrifically, she felt blood creeping into her cheeks and her eyes widen in embarrassment. She’d meant to tell Ixil that it was good to have him here, as a friend, and that she was pleased he made it to the stronghold after such a disaster. That she would be there for him and his people when he needed her. That she was a proud daughter of Durin’s Folk, and that she kept her oaths. Ixil smiled widely and shuffled a little closer. The wind was screaming at both of them, forcing them to take a step back under the tower roof and press in tighter. He laid his hand against her shoulder and squeezed it. “It is good to have you to watch with, as well. I may mistake everything I see for a dragon, but know that I’ll be ready to fight one, if one comes. You Longbeards took me in. I vow to defend your home until I lose my legs or my breath doing so.”

It took Grór a while to find her tongue after that. In the short time they had known one another, she’d discovered that Ixil was an uncompromising sparring partner and appreciated rude jokes at the mess-table as much as she did. But she was taken aback by the gravity of his words, as though her friend had suddenly grown a new face that she was noticing for the first time. She thrust her arm forwards and found his hand with hers. Their fingers were numb, but they interlocked them clumsily. “Grór, daughter of King Dáin, first of his Name, at your service.” “Ixil, son of Izbar, at yours and your family’s.” He didn’t look away. A fiery intensity, a resoluteness, smoldered deep in his eyes as Grór held his fingers so tightly she thought his hand would snap. Then they parted. Something between them had changed, or maybe something inside her had shifted forever. “I will still turn you into mulch when we next wrestle,” Ixil said lightly. Grór’s eyes narrowed at the wicked grin spreading across his face. “How much do you want to bet on that, Skinny-Arm of the Stiffbeard Clan?”