[The Sixth Wizard]

Dárin slowly picked himself off the ground, groaning. Not for the first time he had silent doubts about this journey, and they seemed well founded now. He marched over to the rest of the battered band. Angrily he stared them down.

"You elves! I can't take it any more! No-one can! It is simply impossible to cope! Arianna almost died and she isn't even a mortal! No, we must go back. There are many miles to Tharbad still, are we to be harrassed by bandits and no-goods and wraiths?

"Face the facts! We are in over our heads here, and caught up in a plot too large for our livelihoods. We should go back to Rohan and ask the aid of the King, or abandon Thin-Gloomy, terrible a prospect though it is. Shall we forfeit our lives for one dwarf?!" Dárin rose nearly to a shout at the end.

Awaiting an answer, he turned and kicked a stone. He knew it was mad to forfeit Thin-Gloomy, and it went against his determined dwarf nature, but what use was it to go into unknown danger, where they were perhaps heavily outnumbered?