‘Where is this house of yours?’ said Andróg. ‘It must be good indeed to share it with a Dwarf. For Andróg does not like Dwarves. His people brought few good tales of that race out of the East.’
‘They left worse tales of themselves behind them,’ said M?m. ‘Judge my home when you see it. But you will need light on your way, you stumbling Men. I will return in good time and lead you.’ Then he rose and picked up his sack.
‘No, no!’ said Andróg. ‘You will not allow this, surely, captain? You would never see the old rascal again.’
‘It is growing dark,’ said Túrin. ‘Let him leave us some pledge. Shall we keep your sack and its load, M?m?’
But at this the Dwarf fell on his knees again in great trouble. ‘If M?m did not mean to return, he would not return for an old sack of roots,’ he said. ‘I will come back. Let me go!’
‘I will not,’ said Túrin. ‘If you will not part with your sack, you must stay with it. A night under the leaves will make you pity us in your turn, maybe.’ But he marked, and others also, that M?m set more store by the sack and his load than it seemed worth to the eye.
They led the old Dwarf away to their dismal camp, and as he went he muttered in a strange tongue that seemed harsh with ancient hatred; but when they put bonds on his legs he went suddenly quiet. And those who were on the watch saw him sitting on through the night silent and still as a stone, save for his sleepless eyes that glinted as they roved in the dark.
Before morning the rain ceased, and a wind stirred in the trees. Dawn came more brightly than for many days, and light airs from the South opened the sky, pale and clear about the rising of the sun. M?m sat on without moving, and he seemed as if dead; for now the heavy lids of his eyes were closed, and the morning-light showed him withered and shrunken with age. Túrin stood and looked down on him. ‘There is light enough now,’ he said.
Then M?m opened his eyes and pointed to his bonds; and when he was released he spoke fiercely. ‘Learn this, fools!’ he said. ‘Do not put bonds on a Dwarf! He will not forgive it. I do not wish to die, but for what you have done my heart is hot. I repent my promise.’
‘But I do not,’ said Túrin. ‘You will lead me to your home. Till then we will not speak of death. That is my will.’ He looked steadfastly in the eyes of the Dwarf, and M?m could not endure it; few indeed could challenge the eyes of Túrin in set will or in wrath. Soon he turned away his head, and rose. ‘Follow me, lord!’ he said.
‘Good!’ said Túrin. ‘But now I will add this: I understand your pride. You may die, but you shall not be set in bonds again.’
‘I will not,’ said M?m. ‘But come now!’ And with that he led them back to the place where he had been captured, and he pointed westward. ‘There is my home!’ he said. ‘You have often seen it, I guess, for it is tall. Sharbhund we called it, before the Elves changed all the names.’ Then they saw that he was pointing to Amon R?dh, the Bald Hill, whose bare head watched over many leagues of the wild.
‘We have seen it, but never nearer,’ said Andróg. ‘For what safe lair can be there, or water, or any other thing that we need? I guessed that there was some trick. Do men hide on a hill-top?’
‘Long sight may be safer than lurking,’ said Túrin. ‘Amon R?dh gazes far and wide. Well, M?m, I will come and see what you have to show. How long will it take us, stumbling Men, to come thither?’
‘All this day until dusk, if we start now,’ answered M?m.
Soon the company set out westward, and Túrin went at the head with M?m at his side. They walked warily when they left the woods, but all the land seemed empty and quiet. They passed over the tumbled stones, and began to climb; for Amon R?dh stood upon the eastern edge of the high moorlands that rose between the vales of Sirion and Narog, and even above the stony heath at its base its crown was reared up a thousand feet and more. Upon the eastern side a broken land climbed slowly up to the high ridges among knots of birch and rowan, and ancient thorn-trees rooted in rock. Beyond, upon the moors and about the lower slopes of Amon R?dh, there grew thickets of aeglos; but its steep grey head was bare, save for the red seregon that mantled the stone.
As the afternoon was waning the outlaws drew near to the roots of the hill. They came now from the north, for so M?m had led them, and the light of the westering sun fell upon the crown of Amon R?dh, and the seregon was all in flower.
‘See! There is blood on the hill-top,’ said Andróg. ‘Not yet,’ said Túrin.
The sun was sinking and light was failing in the hollows. The hill now loomed up before them and above them, and they wondered what need there could be of a guide to so plain a mark. But as M?m led them on, and they began to climb the last steep slopes, they perceived that he was following some path by secret signs or old custom. Now his course wound to and fro, and if they looked aside they saw that at either hand dark dells and chines opened, or the land ran down into wastes of great stones with falls and holes masked by bramble and thorn. There without a guide they might have laboured and clambered for days to find a way.
At length they came to steeper but smoother ground. They passed under the shadows of ancient rowan-trees, into aisles of long-legged aeglos: a gloom filled with a sweet scent. Then suddenly there was a rock-wall before them, flat-faced and sheer, forty feet high, maybe, but dusk dimmed the sky above them and guess was uncertain.
‘Is this the door of your house?’ said Túrin. ‘Dwarves love stone, it is said.’ He drew close to M?m, lest he should play them some trick at the last.
‘Not the door of the house, but the gate of the garth,’ said M?m. Then he turned to the right along the cliff-foot, and after twenty paces he halted suddenly; and Túrin saw that by the work of hands or of weather there was a cleft so shaped that two faces of the wall overlapped, and an opening ran back to the left between them. Its entrance was shrouded by long trailing plants rooted in crevices above, but within there was a steep stony path going upward in the dark. Water trickled down it, and it was dank.
One by one they filed up. At the top the path turned right and south again, and brought them through a thicket of thorns out upon a green flat, through which it ran on into the shadows. They had come to M?m’s house, Bar-en-Nibin-noeg, which only ancient tales in Doriath and Nargothrond remembered, and no Men had seen. But night was falling, and the east was starlit, and they could not yet see how this strange place was shaped.
Amon R?dh had a crown: a great mass like a steep cap of stone with a bare flattened top. Upon its north side there stood out from it a shelf, level and almost square, which could not be seen from below; for behind it stood the hill-crown like a wall, and west and east from its brink sheer cliffs fell. Only from the north, as they had come, could it be reached with ease by those who knew the way. From the ‘gate’ a path led, and passed soon into a little grove of dwarfed birches growing about a clear pool in a rock-hewn basin. This was fed by a spring at the foot of the wall behind, and through a runnel it spilled like a white thread over the western brink of the shelf. Behind the screen of the trees, near the spring between two tall buttresses of rock, there was a cave. No more than a shallow grot it looked, with a low broken arch; but further in it had been deepened and bored far under the hill by the slow hands of the Petty-dwarves, in the long years that they had dwelt there, untroubled by the Grey-elves of the woods.
Through the deep dusk M?m led them past the pool, where now the faint stars were mirrored among the shadows of the birch-boughs. At the mouth of the cave he turned and bowed to Túrin. ‘Enter, lord!’ he said: ‘Bar-en-Danwedh, the House of Ransom. For so it shall be called.’
‘That may be,’ said Túrin. ‘I will look at it first.’ Then he went in with M?m, and the others, seeing him unafraid, followed behind, even Andróg, who most misdoubted the Dwarf. They were soon in a black dark; but M?m clapped his 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 M?m 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. Now Andróg was all for going forward. ‘Attack first!’ he cried. ‘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 smal