A Willing Heart

One

He came with many others like him, just as the darkness settled upon the city. And just like his kin, he looked tired, his blue robes dusty and dirty, the fur collar that lined his outer coat caked with mud.

They'd just gone through a deluge the night before, I heard one of his companions say as they sought shelter for the night. Their eyes looked hollow, as if they'd just stared at death right in the eyes and lived to tell the tale, for indeed they had. And as I watched them walk past my window, seeking to visit the blacksmith at the end of the lane in search for work, I wondered if many of them wished death would have taken them instead. For now they wandered the lands, a proud people without a home to call their own.

For death had had a name. And it was Smaug.

The news had reached our small town four months earlier, and as soon as the messengers left to spread the news to other neighboring towns, people began to wail in fear, holding on to their children as tightly as they could as they looked to the skies for any sign of the drake from the North. Ears pressed to the ground to listen for the faintest growl of its wings, heart thumping wildly within their chests as their minds drew wild and crazy images of carcasses strewn upon the floor.

But the dragon never came. And why would it?

It had found its new home within the grand halls of Erebor, where these wandering groups of dwarves used to live, their home snatched away from them in a blink of a smoldering eye.

Already there were talk of dwarves descending upon the neighboring towns upon the west of us, refugees in search of shelter and some work to pay for supplies as they continued their journey south, and then west to the Blue Mountains.

For a proud race, Jürgen, the blacksmith who lived next door to me said, they probably did wish death had taken them.

"For now they come to beg for work and anything else they can get, having had to leave all their treasures behind them when Smaug came. What use are those jewels now?" He asked me then as he continued to pound his hammer upon the smoldering metal before him, the clanging sound echoing throughout the narrow cobblestone courtyard that separated his home from ours.

Yet though the dwarves were not his problem, even Jürgen had to admit that he would seek to know more about the ways in which they forged their treasures.

"Did you know that the Narsil, the sword of King Elendil of Numenor, was forged by the greatest smith of Middle Earth? A dwarf by the name of Telchor?" Jürgen said one day when I made him some lunch, for sometimes he worked without taking a single bite of anything till he would make his way to the pub later that night, famished and grumpy.

"Really?" I asked, even though I'd heard the story before. Jürgen had always wanted to learn about how dwarves forged their weapons and take a peek into their secrets. He'd seen their workmanship first hand, though not in weaponry, but in something more delicate, yet it was one that we kept secret between us.

"His master was named Zirak the Old," Jürgen said, "and I would give anything to learn his secrets, though he and Telchor lived in the First Age, long before you and I were born, child."

And with that, Jürgen put down his tools, dusted his hands against his apron and went inside his house to clean up before digging into the food I had made for him, set inside a basket that included loaves of freshly baked bread and dried fruits.

Now while Jürgen's home was large, with stone walls and even a balcony that overlooked the hills beyond the East, ours was quite meager in comparison. But what the blacksmith didn't have - a stable - we did, and there we had three horses of our own, in addition to the ones that travelers often lodged with us for a fee.