A.N.: I promised a playlist for the beginning of this chapter, songs that inspired me whilst dreaming up plots.
'Tell Me Who You Are' Doctor Who season six
'Sibylla', 'Burning the Past' Kingdom of Heaven
'Elysium', 'Now We Are Free' Gladiator
'He's a Pirate' Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
'Shooting Star', 'Septimus', Stardust
'Young Tristan', Tristan + Isolde
A Historic Love', The Tudors
'Victoria and Albert', The Young Victoria
'All of Them!' (7:00-end of song) King Arthur
'An Irish Party in Third Class' from Back to Titanic
And of course the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy soundtrack plus that of The Hobbit.
Nobility is Not a Birth-Right
02
Another dwarf, Bilbo squeaked silently. Not another! He could not quite face opening his door to yet another dwarf—the way his 'guests' were glancing at each other with important frowns and wide-eyes (that was Ori in his knitted cardigan), Bilbo assumed it could only be another dwarf—but packed into the kitchen as he was like sardines amongst dwarves, it hardly mattered; Gandalf stooped under the kitchen doorway through into the parlour, squeezing past Kíli, to pull open Bilbo's perfectly round front-door.
A wide figure, long-haired and swathed in a heavy cloak, stood on Bilbo's front-step. The dark now fully enveloping the sky, only the hall-lamps illuminated his features, which, at first glance, were almost bored. Dark-haired, grey glinted at his forehead, and a thick beard covered his chin but was neatly trimmed; dark eyes glinted in the lamplight, and Bilbo thought himself looking upon yet another brother of Kíli's; their features and colouring were remarkably similar. (In fact, as Bilbo would later learn, this was Fíli and Kíli's uncle, and a Very Important dwarf).
Eyes upward to meet the wizard's gaze, the dwarf on the front-porch sighed. "Gandalf. I thought you said this place would be easy to find. I lost my way…twice. Wouldn't have found it at all had it not been for the mark on the door." Striding into the hall, Bilbo was for the moment distracted by the dwarf removing with one decisive tug the heavy cloak bound around his shoulders, revealing richly-embroidered tunics, fur-covered shoulders, numerous weapons concealed on his person and a shield that seemed to be made of a polished, metal-reinforced tree-branch.
"Mark? There's no mark on that door, it was painted a week ago!" Bilbo blustered, wide-eyed. Someone had scratched his lovely door?
"There is a mark, I put it there myself," Gandalf said, glancing down at Bilbo, whose jaw popped. That scratching noise he had heard upon Gandalf's departure the other day, it had been Gandalf using his staff to scratch the paint off his beautifully-painted door! "Bilbo Baggins…allow me to introduce the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield."
Behind him, without Bilbo realising, the two young dwarves, Fíli and Kíli, had been greeting the stately newcomer; richly furred, his beard neatly trimmed, he stood out with the two brothers as wealthier than the other dwarves…more kingly, Bilbo suddenly thought. Everything about their dress and choice of weapons (though Bilbo knew little of such things) was richer, finer, and now the two young dwarves, one calm and blonde, the other raucous and dark, flanked the older newcomer.
"So…" the new dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, said, staring at Bilbo in a manner that unnerved him; the dwarf stood a head taller and easily thrice as wide with the furs. "This is the hobbit. Tell me, Mr Baggins, have you done much fighting?"
"Pardon me?" Bilbo blurted.
"Axe or sword? Which is your weapon of choice?" Thorin asked.
"Well, I do have some skill with conkers, if you must know," Bilbo said, standing with his back straight and his thumbs looped in his braces. "But I fail to see…" he faltered, the imperious gaze of Mr Oakenshield unnerving him, "why that's relevant."
"I thought as much," Thorin remarked, glancing over his shoulder at the smiling Kíli and several of the other dwarves all silent to listen to him speak. "He looks more like a grocer than a burglar." The dwarves cackled and chuckled with laughter, as Bilbo, taken aback, thought, Burglar? Why on earth would they believe he was in the business of thieving?
As the dwarves tramped back toward the parlour, and the kitchen (Dori set a saucepan on the stove to prepare something hot for Thorin, who had journeyed far and, indeed, was Too Important to do anything menial like cook his own supper), Gandalf leaned against the tunnel entry and sighed, looking tired. Bilbo teetered where he stood, wondered where Dori would find anything to cook for Mr Oakenshield, and muttered, "Bother it!" and found himself perching on the apparatus where his barrel of ale had once been propped (Fíli and Kíli having removed it to the dining-room for easier access).
Something was found for Mr Oakenshield to eat, a bowl of hot, chunky stew and a flacon of ale with a plate of savoury crackling-scones that Bilbo was incredibly fond of, cooked bacon and caraway-seeds mixed into the dough for a marvellous accompaniment to thick soups and autumn stews, and while Dori seemed inclined to engage Bilbo in conversation about the recipe for the crackling-scones, the other dwarves all hung on to Mr Oakenshield's every word.
"What news from the meeting in Ered Luin?" white-bearded Balin asked. "Do they all come?"
"Aye," Thorin nodded. "Envoys from all seven kingdoms." A general mutter of approval greeted this statement, laughter and fists pounded on tables.
"What do the dwarves of the Iron Hills say?" Dwalin asked, leaning past Gandalf, who perched at Thorin's left-hand. "Is Dáin with us?" Bilbo, watching Thorin Oakenshield—indeed, the only dwarf he could see, squashed as he was in the doorway beside Gandalf—saw his expression fall and, with a flicker of disappointment, sighed.
"They will not come," he said heavily, to groans and sighs, the shaking of heads and wagging of beards. "They say this quest is ours, and ours alone."
"You're…going on a quest?" Bilbo spoke up, and it was so quiet they all heard him.
"Bilbo, my dear fellow, let us have a little more light," Gandalf spoke up, sounding a little surprised that Bilbo had spoken; the Tookish half of Bilbo had poked its nose up at hearing of a quest, and Bilbo nodded and scuttled out into his hall, seeking candles. "Far to the East, over ridges and rivers, beyond woodlands and wastelands…lies a single solitary peak." Returning with two lit candles, Bilbo peered over Mr Oakenshield's shoulder at the, to him, quite large map. Bilbo loved maps! This one had cunning runes etched at the edge, with details of a forest, mountain-range, the pathways through woods and annotations of important information—'East lie the Iron Hills, where is Dáin', 'Here was Girion Lord in Dale' 'Far to the North are the Grey Mountains & the Withered Heath whence came the Great Worms' 'West lies Mirkwood the Great…there are spiders'.
"The Lonely Mountain," Bilbo read, eyes drawn to the red etching of a fire-breathing dragon hovering above the solitary peak Gandalf had referenced.
"Aye," groaned one of the dwarves, the redhead Glóin. "Óin has read the portents, and the portents say it is time."
"Ravens have been seen flying back to the mountain," Óin spoke up. "As it was foretold. 'When the birds of yore return to Erebor, the reign of the beast will end'." Bilbo, gathering more candles from his extra stock in the empty pantry, perked up his pointed ears…'beast'?
"The…what beast?" he stammered, lingering in the dining-room doorway.
"Well, that would be a reference to Smaug the Terrible," Bofur said lightly, taking his pipe from between his teeth as he gazed at Bilbo. "Chiefest and greatest calamity of our age. Airborne fire-breather. Teeth like razors, claws like meat-hooks…extremely fond of precious metals—"
"Yes, I know what a dragon is!" Bilbo snapped, wide-eyed. At the far end of the dining-room, young Ori surged to his feet.
"I'm not afraid! I'm up for it! I'll give him a taste of dwarfish iron right up his jacksie!" he declared, and to the grumbles and scowls of his brothers, he was yanked back into his seat by Dori.
"The task would be difficult enough with an army behind us," Balin spoke up, and the clamour that had arisen from Ori's declaration—and the looks exchanged by his older-brothers—subsided. "But we number just twelve. Not twelve of the best. Nor the brightest."
"Here—!"
"Who're you calling dim?!"
As Bilbo stood, quaking in the doorway, the image of a dragon bearing down on him fully aflame and its spear-like claws snicker-snacking in the light, Fíli's voice cut through the clamour. "We may be few in number, but we're fighters, all of us! To the last one!"
"And do you forget, we have a wizard in our company—Gandalf will have killed hundreds of dragons in his time!" Kíli declared excitedly, grinning; as Gandalf tried to speak over the rabble of dwarves eagerly requesting tales of Gandalf's great executions of fire-worms, a soft chuckle came from the kitchen. Perhaps only Bilbo heard it. Or perhaps not; Bilbo saw Fíli glance over his shoulder into the kitchen.
"Oh, well, now, I wouldn't say—"
"How many then?" Dori inquired.
"What?"
"Well, how many dragons have you killed?" Dori asked. Gandalf started coughing on his pipe-smoke, and Dori leapt from his seat. "Go on! Give us a number!"
Pandemonium reigned; dwarves, Bilbo quickly learned, were highly susceptible to finding insult in a breath of fresh air, and a dozen of them, crowded around a little table, on full bellies with his cask of ale emptied between them, were like sparks amongst dry kindling. Each leapt to their feet, brandishing fists, making threats, and, fearing for his furniture, Bilbo tried to call out for them to calm down.
"Enough!" roared Thorin Oakenshield, and each dwarf fell silent and sank back into his seat, looking rather contrite. "If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them too? Rumours have begun to spread…the dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look East to the mountain, assessing, wondering…weighing the risk. Perhaps the vast wealth of our people now lies unprotected. Do we sit back while others claim what is rightfully ours? Or do we seize this chance to take back Erebor?!"
A roar of approval greeted this declaration; Bilbo had never heard of Erebor, nor heard of dragons outside of hobbit-lore; a dragon had not been seen in the East Farthing for a thousand years! They were comfortably far-off, and therefore legendary.
"We seem," Gandalf spoke up, eyeing the congregation, "to be short one member. Where is our lady? Ilá?"
"I am listening," called a voice from the kitchen, the same one Bilbo had heard chuckle at Kíli's innocent declaration that Gandalf had slain dragons by the hundreds.
"Ilá, my dear lady, please join us," Gandalf called; he could not move to seek out the lady.
"I am afraid I have business to attend to unsuitable at the dinner-table," the voice replied politely. Bilbo scuttled toward the kitchen, fearing for his silver teaspoons, and several of the younger dwarves at the other end of the table—Fíli, Kíli, Ori and the older, hard-of-hearing Óin—poured out of the dining-room entry into the kitchen.
Sitting on his worn bench was the woman Bilbo had admitted into his hole; she had shirked several layers, which were neatly folded and piled beside her on the bench, and sat in her under-dress, an over-skirt and the bottommost of her tunics; a saucepan rested on the stove, steaming away, filling the kitchen with something sweet-smelling that set Bilbo's tense, frustrated heart at ease, and a sealed earthenware pot rested on the kitchen-table beside a frayed needle-book of embroidered linen, a little spool of black thread, a small hipflask of some potent-smelling liquid, a roll of soft white gauze bandages, and a small bowl, steaming like the saucepan, and which the lady dipped an embroidered handkerchief into before squeezing the excess water from it, dabbing at her leg.
Which was bare.
Her skirt drawn up to her hip, knitted long-johns and Fair Isle socks removed from her right leg, her bare leg glowed long and lean in the light of the stove. A nasty wound, five inches long and ragged, fiery red and angry, seeping, marred the toned length of her outer-thigh; as she set the handkerchief back into the bowl, she picked up something that glinted silver; a curved needle, dangling with black thread.
"Uh…what're you…?" Bilbo stammered; dousing the wound with enough of the strong-smelling amber liquid in her flask to kill any infection, the woman held the needle into the fire for the briefest of moments before setting to the wound with a resolute frown. Bilbo's knees felt weak as he watched the woman sewing her wound together. "Is that… Do you…?"
"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Kíli asked, wide-eyed, staring.
"I…" Ori stared, wide-eyed, open-mouthed as the needle flashed in the firelight, candles brought close so the lady had better light to sew by. "I…" Ori blinked several times, and as Bilbo glanced from the lady to the youngest dwarf, the brothers Fíli and Kíli stared at him, and it seemed as if a line were being drawn where the blood was quickly leaving his face. "I don't feel very well…" Ori muttered, eyes on the tiny stitches the lady was sewing her wound with, and he promptly fainted.
"Oh dear," Fíli sighed, nudging Ori with his toe. Óin stepped over Ori quite unconcernedly, to sniff the contents of the sealed earthenware jar (to Bilbo, larger than he could carry in his fist, but to the lady, probably a small and insignificant piece of luggage).
"D'you reckon it was the sight of the wound or the lady's bare leg that did him?" Kíli remarked to his brother, half-hiding a grin as he nudged Ori; Fíli's lips—and the braided ends of his blonde moustache—twitched, and he glanced at the woman sitting by Bilbo's stove. As Bilbo listed against the wall—determined not to allow these young dwarves to see him faint as the youngest of their party had at the sight of a war-wound—he noticed Fíli's eyes lingered on the lady's bared leg, long, strong and pretty, and decidedly hairless (She doesn't even have hair on her toes! Bilbo thought, Imagine!).
Bilbo watched the woman sew. In the firelight, her finely-sculpted features were drawn with a pain she seemed determined not to show more than she could allow; her face illuminated, the rest of her in shadow, she looked incredibly severe, the shadows flickering across her features, highlighting her cheekbones, the set of her jaw as she no doubt clenched her teeth to keep from crying out in pain. Her head down, she ignored the dwarves, no doubt wishing to keep sewing and finish the job as quickly as she could.
"Boys!" someone called.
"If you're set on dragging your brother back home by his teeth," Fíli called into the dining-room, nudging Ori again with his boot, "Dori, Nori—this would be the opportune moment. Mr Baggins, d'you happen to have a dwarf-sized sack they can bung him into?"
"Er…"
"What's happened?"
"What's going on in there?"
"What lady are you speaking of, Gandalf?"
"Ilá, do please come and join us," Gandalf called softly.
The woman gave a short, impatient sigh and scowled so severely toward the dining-room, Bilbo was surprised the panelling didn't scorch.
"I am sewing up a wound, Master Gandalf," she said, with a snap like steel. "I rode directly from Edoras and encountered a small band of Orcs on the Dunland banks of the Glanduin. I wish for a moment to treat my injury."
"Ah," came Gandalf's response, perhaps a little contrite at the irritated pitch to the lady's voice—before, she had sounded warm and gentle to Bilbo; in her irritation, her voice and indeed her features were cool and hard as steel.
This was why Bilbo was not married.
"How many did you kill?" Gandalf asked. The woman paused for a heartbeat in her sewing, looking thoughtful, as if the question were absurd, her eyebrows lifting subtly to relax her face prettily.
"All of them," she said, without conceit. A chuckle came from the dining-room.
"I should expect no less," Gandalf remarked.
"What's happened to Ori?" called a voice, and Dori with his intricately-plaited hair appeared in the doorway. He sighed and shook his head at the sight of his youngest brother splayed spread-eagled on Bilbo's tiled kitchen-floor. "Oh, Ori."
"We cannot decide whether it was the sight of blood or a lady's bare legs that rendered him faint," Fíli remarked, smirking playfully as he glanced at Dori.
"Both, I imagine," Dori sighed.
"What should we do with him?" Kíli asked, nudging Ori, who remained resolutely unconscious.
"Oh… Just leave him there," Dori said, returning to the dining-room without a second-glance, and the other dwarves in the dining-room laughed. Bilbo staggered to the other bench at his table and sank onto it, as the lady finished her sewing, used a pocket-knife the size of Bilbo's forearm to cut the knotted thread and once again used the handkerchief to clean the wound; he watched her pause, reaching to fill his teapot with the singing tea-kettle, pouring two cups of tea, one of which she gave a generous dose of the amber liquid she had used on her leg, before reaching for the little pot. Óin was rustling amongst the contents of his pockets, filled as they were with pots of ointment, dried herbs, vials of liquid, and he pulled three leaves, in appearance like those of the bay-tree, from a leather sleeve.
"Here, lass, bind these over the poultice," he said, handing her the leaves, and the lady glanced up, first at his face, then the leaves. Her severe expression softened exponentially as she smiled and took the leaves; after scooping a generous amount of putty-like ointment from her jar, she spread it over the stitched wound, leaving a shining border an inch thick either side; placing the leaves directly over the stitches, she wiped her finger on her handkerchief and reached for the snowy bandage, carefully binding the leaves in place over the ointment.
"Thank you, Master Dwarf," the lady, Ilá, said, as she sighed with relief and started pulling her long-johns on; wiggling into them, she tugged on a pair of socks knitted in the Fair Isle style, then tugged on her boots, which were heavy, almost dwarvish in style, lined with fur and with steel-capped toes, thick leather soles and designed with protective metal shin-guards. They were the kind of boots worn by warriors used to hard living in the wilds of the world. Bilbo had never seen a woman sew an injury with her own steady hands.
She drank her tea in two sips, offered Bilbo the other cup, and cleared up her things into a small leather pack that she buckled as like a belt around her waist, settling the pouch quite nicely at the small of her back. Then she emptied the contents of his saucepan, rinsed it out, and left it to dry on the draining-board; Bilbo carried his tea as he followed the lady out into the hall, for more space and breathing-room to observe the meeting of the dwarves; Fíli and Kíli sat back down in their places, leaving poor Ori on the kitchen-floor.
Balin was saying, "You forget, the front-gate is sealed. There is no way into the mountain."
"That, my dear Balin, is not entirely true," Gandalf said softly, and silence fell amongst the muttering dwarves as he pulled from the depths of his grey robe an intricate key, geometric and decidedly dwarvish in design. To Bilbo it looked huge; it was the same size as Gandalf's thick fingers. But to the dwarves it was undoubtedly a cunning-looking thing, small and discreet.
"How came you by this?" Thorin breathed.
"It was given to me by your father, by Thráin," Gandalf said, and all around the table, the dwarves sat up a little straighter; the fate of their king in exile had long been debated and mourned, ever since the great battle to reclaim Moria, which only those amongst the eldest in the party could remember, let alone had survived. "For safekeeping. It is yours, now."
"If there is a key…" Fíli said wonderingly, glancing from the key now in Thorin's hands to Gandalf, "where is the door that belongs to it?" Using his pipe, Gandalf pointed to the map still spread on the dining-table, illuminated by candles; dwarvish runes annotating the left-hand edge of the map, a hand illustrated as pointing to the western face of the mountain, which featured a small rune.
"These runes speak of a hidden passage to the lower-halls," Gandalf said.
Grinning eagerly, clapping a hand on his brother's back, Kíli whispered, "There's another way in."
"Well, if we can find it," Gandalf corrected, "But dwarf doors are invisible when closed." There was a murmur of disappointment, one of the dwarves remarked that the secret-door may have once been unknown, but the dragon Smaug had dwelled in Erebor long enough to root out all secret passages in and out of the kingdom.
"He may have learned of it, in his earliest days," Gandalf acquiesced, "but certainly never used it. Especially after devouring so many dwarves and the maidens of Laketown, of which he was particularly fond. See the runes, here? 'Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast'. Not even when he was a new-hatched worm could Smaug have used such a tunnel."
"It seems a great big hole to me," piped up Bilbo, frowning thoughtfully at the map again.
"Indeed!" Gandalf half-smiled. "And this, my dear boy, is where you come in." He gave the dwarves, who had been chuckling and muttering about Bilbo's size—or relative lack thereof—such a stern look under his bushy eyebrows that they fell silent. "Hobbits are incredibly light on their feet, and, used as he is to the smell of dwarf, the scent of hobbit will be completely unknown to Smaug. That gives us, and our Burglar, a wonderful element of surprise."
Bilbo's mouth popped as his jaw dropped, gaping at Gandalf, but he was beyond speech. Bilbo, use a secret tunnel down into the bowels of a dwarf-kingdom, the lair of a man-devouring dragon that may or may not still be alive?
The dwarves seemed to be mulling this over, the element of surprise having a hobbit Burglar would give them when the time came to do reconnaissance work within the great halls and chambers of the dwarf-fortress.
"That is why I insisted on a thirteenth member in your company," Gandalf continued. "To remedy your fears over bringing upon your party bad-luck, I sent word to my friend Ilá here."
"The woman?" Thorin spoke up, and as he did so, his deep, bitter timbre silenced the other dwarves, several of whom (Balin and Bofur) frowned at his impolite tone, the others glancing at Ilá as she perched at the edge of the dining-room on a step-ladder Bilbo used to reach the higher shelves in his pantry. The left-side of her face was again concealed from the dwarves' view, so they could not see her wicked battle-scar; but given the number of weapons she had arrived bearing, Bilbo would never have dared give her cheek, the way Mr Oakenshield had just spoken so disrespectfully of her, in front of her.
"Ilá is shield-maiden of the Dúnedain," Gandalf said, giving Thorin a stern glare beneath his bushy eyebrows. "As Ranger of the North her knowledge of the Misty Mountains and the Edge of the Wild is second to few. You could find no greater asset; she has many friends in the Wild who could give aid on your journey."
Mr Oakenshield turned in his seat to address Ilá, half-hidden in shadow, giving her a suspicious glare. "And what is your interest in our quest?"
The coolness of Ilá's expression as she gazed back at Thorin would have made Bilbo's knees quake; her dark eyes slowly took in his features, the distrustful glint in his hard eyes, the way he seemed to assess her, both in terms of her trustfulness and her capability. Bilbo noticed there were no female dwarves among the party; as with most cultures, it seemed the dwarves held the same belief that women, the gentler sex, weren't up to much when fighting and hard-living was involved.
After a moment, gazing back at Thorin with an unmistakably cool look, Ilá glanced at Gandalf, addressing him with a tiny smile. "Mithrandir asked me to accompany your party," she said. Turning back to Thorin, she said with an icy bite, "And before I commit to risking life and limb, it is I whose questions need answering."
"Indeed?" Thorin glowered.
"This quest… Is it revenge and gold you seek to gain, or do you set forth to reclaim the home of your people?" Ilá asked sternly.
"I am answerable to none, least of all a ragged Ranger," Thorin growled coolly.
"You will answer me. I will not risk my life to fill your coin-purse, Master Dwarf, nor condone the risk your friends take for you," Ilá said icily, sitting straight-backed, her shoulders thrown back, gazing down at the dwarf. Bilbo glanced from her scarred face to Thorin, who looked taken aback by the cool, regal tone with which she spoke. Had he expected, as her dusty dress would implicate, she was little more than a hardened maiden from a desolated farmers' village? "Do you value the lives of this company and your people above the dragon's stolen hoard?"
Thorin's jaw worked, anger festering in his dark eyes. "Of course."
Ilá examined his features carefully, then with a quiet sigh, said, "Well, your answer is true enough now… We shall see."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Thorin snapped. Ilá fixed him with a look reminiscent of an eagle locking on to its prey.
"King Thrór's insatiable hunger for gold is not unknown to me, Thorin, son of Thráin," she said calmly. "I know the power gold has once the love for it grips a dwarf's heart."
"As such, I invited Ilá to be our lucky fourteenth," Gandalf spoke up, before the dwarves could grumble and descend into an argument, "and the voice of common-sense amongst you when I am disposed to be elsewhere."
At that, the dwarves exploded in uproar at the perceived (and intended) insult.
It is generally believed that men lack the same quotient of good sense their female counterparts are graced with; and a company of over a dozen males setting out on an adventure would no doubt come to some sort of trouble a woman's wisdom could easily prevent.
A.N.: Thank you for the reviews, and for adding this story to your list of Alerts, I appreciate it. There will be deviations from The Hobbit with regards to plot, also I'd like to start their adventure off in late-August, for no other reason than because there are better veggies available at that time! And autumn means cold evenings which means snuggling.
