"GL2" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

Rhovanion (especially in the northern parts) their kindred must
already have occupied much of the land. There dealings
between Men and the Longbeards must soon have begun. For
the Longbeards, though the proudest of the seven kindreds,
were also the wisest and the most farseeing. Men held them in
awe and were eager to learn from them; and the Longbeards
were very willing to use Men for their own purposes. Thus there
grew up in those regions the economy, later characteristic of the
dealings of Dwarves and Men (including Hobbits): Men became
the chief providers of food, as herdsmen, shepherds, and land-
tillers, which the Dwarves exchanged for work as builders,
roadmakers, miners, and the makers of things of craft, from
useful tools to weapons and arms and many other things of
great cost and skill. To the great profit of the Dwarves. Not only
to be reckoned in hours of labour, though in early times the
Dwarves must have obtained goods that were the product of
greater and longer toil than the things or services that they gave
in exchange - before Men became wiser and developed skills
of their own. The chief advantage to them was their freedom to
proceed unhindered with their own work and to refine their
arts, especially in metallurgy, to the marvellous skill which these
reached before the decline and dwindling of the Khazad.

This system developed slowly, and it was long before the
Longbeards felt any need to learn the language of their neigh-
bours, still less to adopt names by which they could be known
individually to 'outsiders'. This process began not in barter and
trade, but in war; for the Longbeards had spread southward
down the Vales of Anduin and had made their chief 'mansion'
and stronghold at Moria; and also eastward to the Iron Hills,
where the mines were their chief source of iron-ore. They
regarded the Iron Hills, the Ered Mithrin, and the east dales of
the Misty Mountains as their own land. But they were under
attack from the Orks of Morgoth. During the War of the Jewels
and the Siege of Angband, when Morgoth needed all his
strength, these attacks ceased; but when Morgoth fell and
Angband was destroyed hosts of the Orks fled eastwards seek-
ing homes. They were now masterless and without any general
leadership, but they were well-armed and very numerous, cruel,

savage, and reckless in assault. In the battles that followed the
Dwarves were outnumbered, and though they were the most
redoubtable warriors of all the Speaking Peoples they were glad
to make alliance with Men.(27)
The Men with whom they were thus associated were for the
most part akin in race and language with the tall and mostly
fair-haired people of the 'House of Hador', the most renowned
and numerous of the Edain, who were allied with the Eldar in
the War of the Jewels. These Men, it seems, had come westward
until faced by the Great Greenwood, and then had divided: