The Soldier of Erebor

Chapter One - He died on a Friday

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

!

He died on a Friday at the beginning of summer.

They laid him in the field behind the house, under an oak tree that he would sometimes lean upon to smoke his pipe. Freya sat beside her husband's grave and wept for all the loss in the world. All Lyra could do was watch from the kitchen window as her older sister clung to the grass and screamed to the heaven in a fit of wild and justified grief.

"Will Ma be okay?" asked Lyra's nephew, Jacob, in barely a whisper as he clutched his aunt's hand. Lyra knelt before the little boy and, pulling her sleeve over her hand, brushed away the tear tracks gently.

"Your Ma is a strong woman. She will be fine." Not one to comfort with well-meaning lies, Lyra truly believed this, as she knew the strength of heart her sister held deep down only to be used when the greatest need arose.

When the sun had disappeared behind the mountains to the east Lyra collected her sister from the damp ground and took her inside to sleep beside her children. Sad as it was but death was an old friend of these two girls, and so because of an understanding of the way of the world that only experience could grant; Freya never cried for her husband again.

Times grew tough for the family on the edge of Dale. Not long after her husband's death Freya discovered she was pregnant once again – and 12 weeks along as well. She had two children already: young Jacob of five years and Martha of two. Since Martha was born Freya had become pregnant one other time but lost the baby after 14 weeks, and so it was no surprise when both the sisters expected another miscarry.

But they made do. Freya could not work due to her young charges and so she tended to the strawberry bush in the garden and looked after the apple trees in the woods behind the field, planning on making jam when the fruit ripened to sell in the market at Dale. In her free moments she would spin wool bought for a reduced price from their neighbor Old Man Philip. He was sad to see Freya's husband die after knowing him since a young boy and so wanted to help out the two girls in any way he could.

Lyra thought that if he wanted to help that much than he could give them the wool instead of selling it to them, but Freya said she was being unfair, as Old Man Philips had to make a living to.

Lyra was a young woman of twenty years, six years the junior of Freya at six and twenty. Since she was fourteen years of age Lyra had held a stable job as a maid at one of the lesser Lords houses; a man name Lord Hogarth. Many of such aristocracy, the ones who could trace their lineage and lordship back to before Smaug's attack, had decided to call Dale their home once again after the reclaim of Erebor sixteen years prior. Lyra and Freya themselves had moved from Esgaroth to Dale when Freya had married ten years previously.

Lyra earned a modest wage, one considered relatively high for a woman who wasn't working in a brothel, and with the money she was earning it meant that her sister and her niece and nephew wouldn't starve come winter. With the loss of Freya's husbands work as a bricklayer, a job that had always been needed and paid relatively well due to the rebuilding of Dale over the last decade, it meant working longer hours and putting in extra chores.

The summer passed quickly and the girl's gathered as much coin as they could, but it was barely enough. The jam was sour and sold for a pittance and when the apples fell from the trees come September there was hardly enough for the family, let alone for them to sell. Old Man Philips, however, had abundance to wool and so Freya found her finger blistered and her back aching for rest most evenings.