LITMIR.BIZ

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hands, and a little light appeared, coming round a corner: from a passage at the back of the outer grot there stepped another Dwarf bearing a small torch.

      ‘Ha! I missed him, as I feared!’ said Andróg. But Mîm spoke quickly with the other in their own harsh tongue, and seeming troubled or angered by what he heard, he darted into the passage and disappeared. Then Andróg was all for going forward. ‘Attack first!’ he said. ‘There may be a hive of them; but they are small.’

      ‘Three only, I guess,’ said Túrin; and he led the way, while behind him the outlaws groped along the passage by the feel of the rough walls. Many times it bent this way and that at sharp angles; but at last a faint light gleamed ahead, and they came into a small but lofty hall, dim-lit by lamps hanging down out of the roof-shadow upon fine chains. Mîm was not there, but his voice could be heard, and led by it Túrin came to the door of a chamber opening at the back of the hall. Looking in, he saw Mîm kneeling on the floor. Beside him stood silent the Dwarf with the torch; but on a stone couch by the further wall there lay another. ‘Khîm, Khîm, Khîm!’ the old Dwarf wailed, tearing at his beard.

      ‘Not all your shafts went wild,’ said Túrin to Andróg. ‘But this may prove an ill hit. You loose shaft too lightly; but you may not live long enough to learn wisdom.’ Then entering softly Túrin stood behind Mîm, and spoke to him. ‘What is the trouble, Mîm?’ he said. ‘I have some healing arts. Can I give you aid?’

      Mîm turned his head, and there was a red light in his eyes. ‘Not unless you can turn back time, and then cut off the cruel hands of your men,’ he answered. ‘This is my son, pierced by an arrow. Now he is beyond speech. He died at sunset. Your bonds held me from healing him.’

      Again pity long hardened welled in Túrin’s heart as water from rock. ‘Alas!’ he said. ‘I would recall that shaft, if I could. Now Bar-en-Danwedh, House of Ransom, shall this be called in truth. For whether we dwell here or no, I will hold myself in your debt; and if ever I come to any wealth, I will pay you a ransom of heavy gold for your son, in token of sorrow, though it gladden your heart no more.’

      Then Mîm rose, and looked long at Túrin. ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘You speak like a dwarf-lord of old; and at that I marvel. Now my heart is cooled, though it is not glad. My own ransom I will pay, therefore: you may dwell here, if you will. But this I will add: he that loosed the shaft shall break his bow and his arrows and lay them at my son’s feet; and he shall never take arrow nor bear bow again. If he does, he shall die by it. That curse I lay on him.’

      Andróg was afraid when he heard of this curse; and though he did so with great grudge, he broke his bow and his arrows and laid them at the dead Dwarf’ s feet. But as he came out from the chamber, he glanced evilly at Mîm, and muttered: ‘The curse of a Dwarf never dies, they say; but a Man’s too may come home. May he die with a dart in his throat!’ ¹⁸

      That night they lay in the hall and slept uneasily for the wailing of Mîm and of Ibun, his other son. When that ceased they could not tell; but when they woke at last the Dwarves were gone, and the chamber was closed by a stone. The day was fair again, and in the morning sun the outlaws washed in the pool and prepared such food as they had; and as they ate Mîm stood before them.

      He bowed to Túrin. ‘He is gone, and all is done,’ he said. ‘He lies with his fathers. Now we turn to such life as is left, though the days before us may be short. Does Mîm’s home please you? Is the ransom paid and accepted?’

      ‘It is,’ said Túrin.

      ‘Then all is yours, to order your dwelling here as you will, save this: the chamber that is closed, none shall open it but me.’

      ‘We hear you,’ said Túrin. ‘But as for our life here, we are secure, or so it seems; but still we must have food, and other things. How shall we go out; or still more, how shall we return?’

      To their disquiet Mîm laughed in his throat. ‘Do you fear that you have followed a spider to the heart of his web?’ he said. ‘Mîm does not eat Men! And a spider could ill deal with thirty wasps at a time. See, you are armed, and I stand here bare. No, we must share, you and I: house, food, and fire, and maybe other winnings. The house, I think, you will guard and keep secret for your own good, even when you know the ways in and out. You will learn them in time. But in the meanwhile Mîm must guide you, or Ibun his son.’

      To this Túrin agreed, and he thanked Mîm, and most of his men were glad; for under the sun of morning, while summer was yet high, it seemed a fair place to dwell in. Andróg alone was ill-content. ‘The sooner we are masters of our goings and comings the better,’ he said. ‘Never before have we taken a prisoner with a grievance to and fro on our ventures.’

      That day they rested, and cleaned their arms and mended their gear; for they had food to last for a day or two yet, and Mîm added to what they had. Three great cooking-pots he lent to them, and firing also; and he brought out a sack. ‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘Not worth the stealing. Only wild roots.’

      But when they were cooked these roots proved good to eat, somewhat like bread; and the outlaws were glad of them, for they had long lacked bread save when they could steal it. ‘Wild Elves know them not; Grey-elves have not found them; the proud ones from over the Sea are too proud to delve,’ said Mîm.

      ‘What is their name?’ said Túrin.

      Mîm looked at him sidelong. ‘They have no name, save in the dwarf-tongue, which we do not teach,’ he said. ‘And we do not teach Men to find them, for Men are greedy and thriftless, and would not spare till all the plants had perished; whereas now they pass them by as they go blundering in the wild. No more will you learn of me; but you may have enough of my bounty, as long as you speak fair and do not spy or steal.’ Then again he laughed in his throat. ‘They are of great worth,’ he said. ‘More than gold in the hungry winter, for they may be hoarded like the nuts of a squirrel, and already we were building our store from the first that are ripe. But you are fools, if you think that I would not be parted from one small load even for the saving of my life.’

      ‘I hear you,’ said Ulrad, who had looked in the sack when Mîm was taken. ‘Yet you would not be parted, and your words only make me wonder the more.’

      Mîm turned and looked at him darkly. ‘You are one of the fools that spring would not mourn if you perished in winter,’ he said. ‘I had spoken my word, and so must have returned, willing or not, with sack or without, let a lawless and faithless man think what he will! But I like not to be parted from my own by force of the wicked, be it no more than a shoe-thong. Do I not remember that your hands were among those that put bonds on me, and so held me that I did not speak again with my son? Ever when I deal out the earth-bread from my store you shall be counted out, and if you eat it, you shall eat by the bounty of your fellows, not of me.’

      Then Mîm went away; but Ulrad, who had quailed under his anger, spoke to his back: ‘High words! Nonetheless the old rogue had other things in his sack, of like shape but harder and heavier. Maybe there are other things beside earth-bread in the wild which Elves have not found and Men must not know!’ ¹⁹

      ‘That may be,’ said Túrin. ‘Nonetheless the Dwarf spoke the truth in one point at least, calling you a fool. Why must you speak your thoughts? Silence, if fair words stick in your throat, would serve all our ends better.’

      The day passed in peace, and none of the outlaws desired to go abroad. Túrin paced much upon the green sward of the shelf, from brink to brink; and he looked out east, and west, and north, and wondered to find how far were the views in the clear air. Northward he looked, and descried the Forest of Brethil climbing green about Amon Obel in its midst, and thither his eyes were drawn ever and again, he knew not why; for his heart was set rather to the north-west, where league upon league away on the skirts of the sky it seemed to him that he could glimpse the Mountains of Shadow, the walls of his home. But at evening Túrin looked west into the sunset, as the sun rode down red into the hazes above the distant coasts, and the Vale of Narog lay deep in the shadows between.

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