The next day Beleg set out, and Túrin went with him a bowshot from the camp, but said nothing. ‘Is it farewell, then, son of Húrin?’ said Beleg.
‘If you wish indeed to keep your word and stay beside me,’ answered Túrin, ‘then look for me on Amon Rûdh!’ Thus he spoke, being fey and unwitting of what lay before him. ‘Else, this is our last farewell.’
‘Maybe that is best,’ said Beleg, and went his way.
It is said that Beleg went back to Menegroth, and came before Thingol and Melian and told them of all that had happened, save only his evil handling by Túrin’s companions. Then Thingol sighed, and he said: ‘I took up the fathering of the son of Húrin, and that cannot be laid down for love or hate, unless Húrin the Valiant himself should return. What more would he have me do?’
But Melian said: ‘A gift you shall now have of me, Cúthalion, for your help, and your honour, for I have none worthier to give.’ And she gave him a store of lembas, the waybread of the Elves, wrapped in leaves of silver; and the threads that bound it were sealed at the knots with the seal of the Queen, a wafer of white wax shaped as a single flower of Telperion. For according to the customs of the Eldalië the keeping and the giving of this food belonged to the Queen alone. ‘This waybread, Beleg,’ she said, ‘shall be your help in the wild and the winter, and the help also of those whom you choose. For I commit this now to you, to apportion as you will in my stead.’ In nothing did Melian show greater favour to Túrin than in this gift; for the Eldar had never before allowed Men to use this waybread, and seldom did so again.
Then Beleg departed from Menegroth and went back to the north-marches, where he had his lodges, and many friends; but when winter came, and war was stilled, suddenly his companions missed Beleg, and he returned to them no more.
CHAPTER VII
OF MÎM THE DWARF
Now the tale turns to Mîm the Petty-dwarf. The Petty-dwarves are long out of mind, for Mîm was the last. Little was known of them even in days of old. The Nibin-nogrim the Elves of Beleriand called them long ago, but they did not love them; and the Petty-dwarves loved none but themselves. If they hated and feared the Orcs, they hated also the Eldar, and the Exiles most of all; for the Noldor, they said, had stolen their lands and their homes. Nargothrond was first found and its delving begun by the Petty-dwarves, long before Finrod Felagund came over the Sea.
They came, some said, of Dwarves that had been banished from the Dwarf-cities of the east in ancient days. Long before the return of Morgoth they had wandered westward. Being masterless and few in number, they found it hard to come by the ore of metals, and their smith-craft and store of weapons dwindled; and they took to lives of stealth, and became somewhat smaller in stature than their eastern kin, walking with bent shoulders and quick, furtive steps. Nonetheless, as all the Dwarf-kind, they were far stronger than their stature promised, and they could cling to life in great hardship. But now at last they had dwindled and died out of Middle-earth, all save Mîm and his two sons; and Mîm was old even in the reckoning of Dwarves, old and forgotten.
After the departure of Beleg (and that was in the second summer after the flight of Túrin from Doriath) things went ill for the outlaws. There were rains out of season, and Orcs in greater numbers than before came down from the North and along the old South Road over Teiglin, troubling all the woods on the west borders of Doriath. There was little safety or rest, and the company were more often hunted than hunters.
One night as they lay lurking in the fireless dark, Túrin looked on his life, and it seemed to him that it might well be bettered. ‘I must find some secure refuge,’ he thought, ‘and make provision against winter and hunger.’ But he did not know whither to turn.
Next day he led his men away southward, further than they had yet come from the Teiglin and the marches of Doriath; and after three days’ journeying they halted at the western edge of the woods of Sirion’s Vale. There the land was drier and barer, as it began to climb up into the moorlands.
Soon after, it chanced that as the grey light of a day of rain was failing Túrin and his men were sheltering in a holly-thicket; and beyond it was a treeless space, in which there were many great stones, leaning or tumbled together. All was still, save for the drip of rain from the leaves.
Suddenly a watchman gave a call, and leaping up they saw three hooded shapes, grey-clad, going stealthily among the stones. They were burdened each with a great sack, but they went swiftly for all that. Túrin cried to them to halt, and the men ran out on them like hounds; but they held on their way, and though Andróg shot at them two vanished in the dusk. One lagged behind, being slower or more heavily burdened; and he was soon seized and thrown down, and held by many hard hands, though he struggled and bit like a beast. But Túrin came up, and rebuked his men. ‘What have you there?’ he said. ‘What need to be so fierce? It is old and small. What harm is in it?’
‘It bites,’ said Andróg, nursing a bleeding hand. ‘It is an Orc, or of Orc-kin. Kill it!’
‘It deserves no less, for cheating our hope,’ said another, who had taken the sack. ‘There is nothing here but roots and small stones.’
‘Nay,’ said Túrin, ‘it is bearded. It is only a Dwarf, I guess. Let him up, and speak.’
So it was that Mîm came into the Tale of the Children of Húrin. For he stumbled up on his knees before Túrin’s feet and begged for his life. ‘I am old,’ he said, ‘and poor. Only a Dwarf, as you say, not an Orc. Mîm is my name. Do not let them slay me, master, for no cause, as Orcs would.’
Then Túrin pitied him in his heart, but he said: ‘Poor you seem, Mîm, though that would be strange in a Dwarf; but we are poorer, I think: houseless and friendless Men. If I said that we do not spare for pity’s sake only, being in great need, what would you offer for ransom?’
‘I do not know what you desire, lord,’ said Mîm warily. ‘At this time, little enough!’ said Túrin, looking about him bitterly with rain in his eyes. ‘A safe place to sleep in out of the damp woods. Doubtless you have such for yourself.’
‘I have,’ said Mîm; ‘but I cannot give it in ransom. I am too old to live under the sky.’
‘You need grow no older,’ said Andróg, stepping up with a knife in his unharmed hand. ‘I can spare you that.’