Prologue

Erebor was swallowed in a dark shadow; a shadow that shook the very ground at its awakening. They said it was the day greed soaked the soil. And then there was the fire that glinted in the eyes of a child's mother; bright and cruel it rose, like a bloody dawn. They also said it was the day a thousand farewells became wingless.

When the day was gone the fire flickered, trembled, curled into tortured ashes. Ash fell, silent and soft; it was the steps of children along the staircase before dusk. It was the boats through the water; those that left, and those that sank.

The Mountain had not seen a storm as such.

"This is the storm of a dragon," Balin shouted. Behind him the last of the flames shivered from the blackened horizon.

Thorin Oakenshield stepped down from the boulder. Balin thought it was grief that clenched his hands but he opened them, and there lay the talisman he had laced around his neck since childhood. "We have nothing now."

He cast the necklace away and the Dwarves moved on. Their sky was tattered and so they claimed every sky they slept under, across the plains and mountains and the wanton stars. Many a king had become a wanderer. They could endure – no wanderer ever forgot his home and, perhaps, the years would gift them luck.