by any man who follows me. So I swear.’
Then Mîm clasped Túrin about his knees, saying: ‘Mîm will be your friend, lord. At first I thought you were an Elf, by your speech and your voice; but if you are a Man, that is better. Mîm does not love Elves.’
‘Where is this house of yours?’ said Andróg. ‘It must be good indeed if Andróg is 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.’
‘Judge my home when you see it,’ said Mîm. ‘But you will need light on the way, you stumbling Men. I will return in good time and lead you.’
‘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, Mîm?’
But at this the Dwarf fell on his knees again in great trouble. ‘If Mîm 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 Mîm set more value on 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 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. Mîm 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 Mîm 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 Mîm 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.’
Then Mîm 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 Rûdh, 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 Rûdh gazes far and wide. Well, Mîm, 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,’ Mîm answered.
The company set out westward, and Túrin went at the head with Mîm at his side. They walked warily when they left the woods, but all the land was empty and quiet. They passed over the tumbled stones, and began to climb; for Amon Rûdh 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. About the lower slopes of Amon Rûdh there grew thickets of aeglos; but its steep grey head was bare, save for the red seregon that mantled the stone. 14
As the afternoon was waning the outlaws drew near to the roots of the hill. They came now from the north, for so Mîm had led them, and the light of the westering sun fell upon the crown of Amon Rûdh, 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 Mîm 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. 15 Then suddenly there was a rock-wall before them, flat-faced and sheer, towering high above them in the dusk.
‘Is this the door of your house?’ said Túrin. ‘Dwarves love stone, it is said.’ He drew close to Mîm, lest he should play them some trick at the last.
‘Not the door of the house, but the gate of the garth,’ said Mîm. Then he turned to the right along the cliff-foot, and after twenty paces 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 upwards 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 Mîm’s house, Bar-en-Nibin-noeg, 16 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 Rûdh 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. 17 From the cleft a path led, and passed soon into a little grove of dwarfed birches growing about a clear pool in a rock-hewn basin. This pool 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 Mîm 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,’ he said, ‘Bar-en-Danwedh, the House of Ransom; for so it shall be called.’
‘That