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The light falling on Balin's tomb was fading again. The days were getting shorter, and the nights were filled with horrible noises, screams, and the endless, endless druming in the deep of Khazad-dûm.
Óin's party had left five days ago, along with their last slivers of hope.
“We could flee,” Kulinn suggested. He peered through the small gap they had left in the western door, their only way out since they’d destroyed the eastern exit. “As soon as we reach the lower halls–”
“No,” Ori interrupted. He struggled to write neatly even though his hand was shaking. He needed to record what had happened, so everyone … someone might know of their fate one day. “We'll wait for Óin's report. And if we can't get out through the Western Gate, then...”
“Then we're fucked,” Gechar completed Ori's sentence, throwing the last bit of dried meat into their small cooking pot. Their supplies were running out, but Ori was sure they would not starve. They wouldn't live long enough.
“Someone's coming!” Kulinn yelled and both Ori and Gechar jumped to take up arms, pointing their spears at the gap and trying to get a glimpse through. For a short time, it was impossible to tell if the small group running through the cavernous hall was friend or foe, but soon they heard Khuzdul curses and saw long beards in the clear bright light of dwarven lamps. Further back was a moving mass of dark bodies, firing arrow after arrow as they gave chase.
“We have to open the door and bar it again as soon as they're inside!” Ori ordered needlessly. Kulinn and Gechar helped him dismantle the heap of broken furniture from in front of the gate. The old, half-rotten wood was weak anyway, and a bench that had remained jammed across the double door crumbled as a dwarf burst through.
“We cannot get out!” he gasped, clinging to Ori. His name was Drún, if Ori remembered rightly, and Ori gently set him down while he counted the dwarves that had returned.
The group had looked larger. They were only four.
Four, and none of them was Óin.
“What happened?” Ori asked, but Drún was shaking from head to toe and staring at nothing. Battle Fright, Ori thought, and instead asked another of the dwarves that had returned.
“The stream had been dammed up, and there was a vile monster in the lake,” Harba answered. Her beard was singed and blood was dripping from a long gash across her forehead, but she was smiling grimly as she shoved a cupboard back towards the door. “We tried to push the orcs into its jaws, but instead it took half of us.”
“Óin fought bravely,” Murgin added, “we all will miss him…” Gechar handed him a bow, and he turned back to fire upon the orcs.
Ori put a boulder larger than his head on top of their barricade. The dwarves surrounding him knew about the Company, and that Ori and Óin’s relationship spanned decades. But Ori felt his own grief fade beside the thought of Gloin’s, and Gimli’s. Would Oin’s family, or his own, ever hear of their fate in the dark of Khazad-dûm?
The pounding on the barricade crescendoed as more and more Orcs and goblins joined the charge. The dwarves readied themselves for the enemy to break through, standing in a half-circle before the door, but then all the noise and the foul yelling suddenly stopped. For a few seconds, all they could hear was their own ragged breathing.
“Have they given up?” Kulinn whispered.
“No.” Ori shook his head but sheathed his sword. “They're getting reinforcements.”
He had feared his fellows’ reactions, but all that he heard and saw was resigned acceptance. Kulinn and Harba stayed close to the door, watching for any orcs that might have stayed behind, while Némur tried to wake Drún from his stupor, and Gechar returned to his cooking. There might not seem to be much sense in food now, but if Ori had learnt one thing, it was that fighting with a full stomach beat fighting hungry. He was about to ask Gechar for a bowl of the stew when Murgin approached him.
“We won't last the night,” the other dwarf stated with a sigh. Murgin was a few years older than Ori, another veteran of the Battle of Five Armies, and had joined Balin's expedition into Khazad-dûm with the same hopes that they all had had.
They were all such fools.
“But we'll die fighting.” Ori responded, glancing at Balin's tomb, where the Book of Mazarbul was still lying open, his last words dry now. “And someone will read about us, one day.”
“One day,” Murgin echoed, and bowed. Ori frowned before he realised that he was, in fact, the ranking officer there.
“None of that, Murgin,” he said, putting his hand on the other dwarf’s shoulder. “We are brothers.”
Murgin nodded, a small smile on his lips, and mirrored Ori's gesture. “May Mahal shield you,” he said, and Ori repeated his words just as the light falling through the shaft finally vanished, and everything was wrapped into a darkness that even Gechar's cooking fire couldn't fight.
“We need the lamps,” Ori said, and soon he saw the first sparks. There was some quiet whimpering from a corner where he knew Drún was sitting, and Némur whispering something. “Maybe see if Némur and Drún could use help?”
As the lamplight grew, he saw Murgin nod and go to them. Gechar brought him a bowl of lukewarm stew and put another lamp next to the Book of Mazarbul.
“Make sure they don't forget us,” he said, and patted Ori on the shoulder. “Oh, and we're taking bets who will kill more orcs, Murgin or Némur.”
Even with the blade hovering over their necks, they would wager and jape -- Ori grinned; he almost laughed. “Write me down for Murgin, my friend,” he said, dipping his quill into the ink.
“You'll lose that one, Ori!” Némur said, supporting Drún, who still looked pale but at least took the stew that Gechar offered him. Ori made a rude gesture in Némur's general direction, before he tried to find the best words to record their last hours.
He wrote in short sentences what had happened, keeping the report of Óin's death brief and simple.
Then the drums returned. They felt it in their stomachs first, the deep, deep rolling still far away. But with every passing minute their enemy approached, and the rhythm became clearer. The stone vibrated under their feet and the air quivered.
“I would give my right hand to kill every single Orc with a damned drum,” Harba growled, nocking an arrow and spitting into the darkness beyond the door.
“You'll need both your hands to kill them,” Kulinn said, inspecting his axe before he kissed the blade. “Or do you think you can make them drop dead just from looking at your ugly face?”
“No, but a glimpse of that the rat's nest you call a beard could!” Harba responded, grinning. Ori sighed, realising that the other dwarves were just downplaying their fear. They couldn't get out, and were facing their imminent death, but they were dwarves. Dwarves did not cower. They endured. They were made of stone and rock.
We cannot get out.
Ink dripped from his quill. The other dwarves were taking their positions in front of the door, and even though Drún still looked like he would piss himself, he gripped his spear at the ready.
The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep.
Ori's gaze fell on his sleeping roll on the other side of the room, nestled into the corner farthest away from the door. It was hard to see the details in the light of the few lamps, but Ori did not need to see to know what was lying atop the simple linen blankets. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to remember the warmth of the quilt that his mother had made for him and his brothers. It had all the colours a dwarf could imagine, made from scraps of fabric that Kori, daughter of Gedri, had collected over many years working as a seamstress. She had embroidered their family history into the edges, telling of their ancestors in the secret letters of weavers and needleworkers.
It was an heirloom, his most valuable possession, and had been given to him by his brothers as a way to remember them, and his whole family, even when he was alone and far away.
“Ori! They're coming!”
The shout made him open his eyes again, returning to the present. The drums sounded right outside their door now, and he could hear the pounding of hundreds of feet.
They're coming.
He closed the book, not caring if the ink had dried, ran to his sleeping roll, and quickly wrapped it in the quilt, praying to his Maker that it would survive the battle. He had no place to hide the bundle, so he just shoved it into the corner and put his blankets on top.
An arrow narrowly missed him as he joined the other dwarves in front of the door, his sword in hand. The orcs had gotten in a few good shots, but Gechar and Harba closed the last gap in the barricade with a footstool just as Ori saw the wide head of a battering ram approaching.
They couldn't get out. And the orcs had a way to get in.
Ori looked at the dwarves around him. Kulinn had come because he was a good stonemason, a true master of the art. Murgin was an old warrior, and had brought his cousin with him because Harba had always wanted to see the world. Gechar had been their cook for the last weeks, but was also a good hunter and trapper. Némur had a mind that seemed to be made for dealing with numbers, always calculating this or that. Drún was the youngest dwarf in their group, a simple metalworker who knew how to repair hinges and axes.
A lifetime ago, Ori had been the youngest in a different group of dwarves, fighting a similarly desperate battle. That day still weighed heavy in his heart, but the thought of rejoining his old friends lessened his fear of death.
They had not been afraid when they died, so he wouldn't be, either.
He gripped his sword, widened his stance, and yelled over the noise of orcs outside the door.
“My friends!”
All of them winced as the battering ram hit their meagre barricade, but the door still withstood the pounding force.
“My friends,” Ori repeated. “Ours will not be a glorious death, and there will be no songs lamenting the fallen. But we'll fight!”
Harba pounded her axe against her shield, spitting on the wood in front of them. “We will!”
“We are dwarves, we are made to endure, and too stubborn to give up!”
Every single dwarf answered with a fierce yell -- even Drún had his fighting spirit, banging the heel of his spear on the floor.
Dust and mortar fell to the ground as the door took a second hit, but they didn't waver. Ori looked into the dwarves’ grim faces, and each gave a curt nod. They were ready.
He realised only then that he was one in a group of Seven. Seven Dwarf fathers, the seven Stars of Durin, two times Seven for good luck.
Despite everything, Ori grinned. A good day to try his luck again.
The battering ram hit a third time, going right through the door and their furniture blockade. The first orcs were swarming inside when Ori screamed the old battle cry at the top of his lungs.
“Baruk Khazâd!”
And -- he could have sworn -- three voices he hadn't heard in decades joined the yells of the living, answering as they charged into battle:
“Khazâd ai-mênu!”