In response to the reviews! -Yeah -It was a little uncreative wasn't it? Well, next chapter will be different. (I think) Also, I am mostly sure that orcs and goblins are actually the same thing! Some people think that orcs are physically bigger than goblins -which is a pretty valid point, but actually Tolkien just uses the terms interchangeably in the Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion. Also, Orcrist = Goblin Cleaver? That's just what I think though, and I am prone to reading too fast and missing or misinterpreting things from books! Thanks again for the reviews and the support! I will try my best to write to something engaging!

Chapter eleven

My fingers plucked my bow out of air right before it could have fallen away from me. The rushing air and the echoing yells of the dwarves filled the space around me as I struggled to find some sort of direction as things blurred in the instant I fell. A smooth wall slammed into my back, but it was on a steep angle and I slid right off into the air with a sickening speed and nearly broke my shoulder as I slammed into another rock wall further down below. I heard a snap –the bowstring of my bow had snapped in two. It seemed as if we were going down a huge smoothed pipe that funneled into the depths of the earth. Someone crushed the air out of my lungs as we flew towards another turn in the tunnel. Suddenly, I was freefalling and there was something below and WHAM I landed on a pile of dwarves. Someone landed on my foot accompanied with a bolt of pain up my leg and another landed square on my back. Nausea hit me as I struggled to breathe into my winded lungs. It seemed that we had had fallen into a platform that looked strangely like half a cage around us. Jagged wooden boards held together by rusted nails, misshapen fasteners, and half molten bolts curved around us like a bowl. There was a path of wooden planks that was held up by with rickety, rotting scaffolding and as I looked around in horror at the hundreds of orc-paths and twisted version of a mine that rose around me, sounds of the screeches and chattering of orcs began to echo around the expansive cavern. It was dim, but the yellow torches stuck at random on the wooden structures shed enough light to see by.

Cries of, "Get up! Get up!" filled the air there was something moving towards from the path. It was a massive horde of orcs racing and clamouring towards us. Struggling to get up, we clawed at one another and shoved one another off and onto the next person. Just as I got up, someone tried using me as a step ladder and I went down again into the massive tangle of dwarves. The orcs were nearing and we shouted louder, but nothing could be done as they descended on us, ugly, distorted arms and faces and legs everywhere, pushing and shoving and pulling and prodding and yanking and moving us by force of numbers down the path. Everyone shouted for one another as we were separated in the mass and swept away. I was as tall as most of the orcs, but I could barely see past the warty, blistered skin of the orcs around me –their leering faces and rotting teeth and stinking breath in my hair and their filthy hands scrabbling across my skin and clothes.

I tripped on a plank and went down. I panicked, struggling to stand as orcs trampled over me. Something hard glanced off my forehead and a dizzying pain nearly blinded me for a moment as I felt hands yank at my arms and pulled me along forcefully until I found my feet. My bow was still gripped in my hand, but it was useless now. There was a rumbling sound –like a crowd much bigger than the one escorting us and I looked around for a moment realising that it was a crowd –thousands of orcs were climbing and perching on their rickety wooden scaffolding jeering and howling. Flickering flames cast a sick glistening glow over all the orcs who were pounding their fists into their chests and the wood and one another.

My feet found much smoother plank flooring and suddenly the orcs parted and I found myself amidst the dwarves panting and wiping at the trickling blood above my temple. My sword was suddenly ripped from my scabbard and my bow pried from my hands. Thorin was to my left and Kili and Ori standing before my in the front. Gloin was to my right. A smell hit me in the face. I nearly doubled over. It was cloying like dead rotting meat, sour like stale unwashed bodies, and stinking of open sores that bled pus and blood. I swallowed dryly as the Goblin King in only a loincloth stepped on a pile of half dead orcs to get off his crude throne heavily, blasting us with another wave of his smell. His skin was covered in warts and boils and tumors and his sagging body hung in rolls of fat. A hanging, fatty goiter hung from his chin and his stringy grey hair hung in sparse ropes down his spotted scalp. His crown was made of bones and wood and he held a scepter topped with the skull of some fanged and horned beast.

"Who would be so bold to come armed into my kingdom?" His voice was gravelly and slightly nasally. "Spies?" His voice rose to nearly the point of breaking theatrically, "Thieves? Assassins?"

"Dwarves, Your Malevolence," an orc snarled.

"DWARVES?"

"We found them on the front porch."

"Well, don't just stand there! SEARCH THEM!" The orcs descended on us again. "Every crack, every crevasse!"

I stood their stiffly as hands reached down my jerkin and felt up my thighs. One of my dwarvish daggers was removed. The other was on the inside of my thighs which I squeezed resolutely together and so the stupid orcs didn't find it. One of them grabbed Oin's hearing trumpet and threw it to the ground. I started to bend down to snatch it up but the orc smashed his foot into it and it was crushed.

"What are you doing in these parts?!"

We were silent.

"Speak!"

We all glared at him in silence.

"Very well, if they will not talk, we will make them squawk!" He turned to his subjects. "Bring up the Mangler! Bring up the Bone-Breaker!" The orcs made a clamour that crashed about in the cavern. "Start with the youngest one!" He pointed a cracked and horny finger at Ori.

"WAIT!" Thorin roared beside me. He stepped forward. I wanted to pull him back.

"Well, well, well! Look who it is! Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King, Under the Mountain," The Goblin King made a fancy bow. "Oh! But I am forgetting! You don't have a mountain! And you're not a king! Which makes you –nobody, really." He leaned closer to Thorin, "I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head. Nothing attached –just a head. Perhaps, you know of whom I speak." He stepped back towards his throne. "An old enemy of yours: a pale orc, astride a white warg,"

"Azog the Defiler," I heard Thorin rumble softly, but with such menace. "He was destroyed."

The Goblin King gave him a reproachful look.

"He was slain in battle long ago!" there was shaking disbelief in Thorin's voice.

"So you think his defiling days are over, do you?" He turned to a teeny, misshapen orc scribe. "Send word to the pale orc that I have found his prize."

There was a roar of voices from down below that ripped up. A sound of marching reached our ears. Their torture machines were being brought up from the depths. The Goblin King sang and laughed and sang and cackled as the orcs cheered. We were in the process of being bound. I writhed and kicked as the dwarves around me did the same to shake off the hands and the ropes. Suddenly, there was a screech that rippled out from near the Goblin King. There was a clang and the Goblin King himself leapt backwards onto his throne with a squeal.

"I know that sword! It is the Goblin-Cleaver!"

The whips hit Thorin first before I, too, soon felt the bite of the leather fall on my body.

"The Biter! The blade that sliced a thousand necks! Slash them! Bite them! Eat them! Kill them! KILL THEM ALL!"

And orc leapt at my head and I ducked. I spun wildly and saw that half a dozen orcs had felled Thorin and held him down flat on the ground.

"Cut his head off!"

An orc raised a jagged knife. I opened my mouth, but no scream came.

A blinding light blasted forth. I felt the orcs tumble away from me in the moments I was blinded. I fell backwards and it was silent.

Was I dead?

A voice, soft and strong, "Take up arms! Fight! Fight!"

It was Gandalf. I scrambled to my feet and leapt for the pile of weapons the orcs had amassed and snatched up my sword and bow. I threw Kili his bow and spun Fili both of his. To Gloin I threw his axe and to Thorin I slid Orcrist before I had to fight off three orcs that came at me with a desperate savagery.

"He wields the Foe-hammer! The Beater –as bright as day!" the Goblin King was on the ground somewhere ahead.

I slashed at an orc's head and it went rolling. Diving down, I rolled into two and sent them flying and as I righted, I stabbed another in the chest. I slammed my bow into a face, heard a squeal and grabbed a wayward arm and swung the unlucky owner into the circle of my blade.

"Ori!" I heard someone cry.

But Thorin leapt in between Ori who had been knocked over and the Goblin King's scepter. With a wild battle cry, he sliced at the arm of the Goblin King and found his mark. The Goblin King let go of a scream and fell backwards and off the platform, taking a whole bunch of orcs with him.

"Quick!" Gandalf was shouting again. I could see him now, since many of the orcs were on the ground rather than in my way. "Follow me!"

We all sprinted after him. I didn't see much after that. It was nearly blind running with orcs and blades popping up in my face and me and the company doing whatever it took to get them out of our way. Slashing and kicking and stabbing, we flew down and up the scaffolds, sometimes swinging over abysses with ropes and sometimes collapsing structures behind us. As we neared the cave walls, Gandalf struck an overhanging of rock with his staff and it broke off and we now had a boulder rolling before us, clearing the way until it tumbled off a corner and we were back to fighting. Thorin and Gandalf cleared the way pretty well and we dealt with the others clamouring from below or above and from the sides as we passed. There was a bridge the linked one side of the mountain cave to the other. Passing that bridge was unavoidable. As we thundered onto the wooden planks, the bridge exploded in the middle and the Goblin King burst up before us. The orcs behind us had caught up and more had amassed behind the Goblin King.

"You thought you could escape me?" The Goblin King swatted at Gandalf and the old man jumped back and had to be righted by Gloin and Bifur. "What are you going to do now, wizard?"

Gandalf leapt forward and shoved his staff right into the Goblin King's eye. The Goblin King dropped his scepter with a yelp and grabbed at his bleeding eye yowling. Gandalf sliced a cut into the Goblin King's gut. The king fell to his knees.

"That should do it," he groaned.

And Gandalf slit his throat and he fell heavily on his face. A sudden rumble came from around us. The bridge was cracking. The entire piece we were on detached and slipped downwards with sickening drop. We flew downwards, smashing into bits of scaffolding and rock and the world burred around us as we picked up speed. Luckily, the cave crevasse narrowed and our bit of bridge was able to be slowed a little be the rock walls before we landed on the bottom with a bone-jarring thump. I nearly bit clean through my lip. I lay on my back, sandwiched between planks under me and a dwarf above me. I blinked slowly. It was Thorin. His mouth was open and his nose nearly touching mine. We panted. I could feel his weight. I swallowed with relief that we were not all broken and dead and I relaxed and suddenly I was filled with this inane, idiotic urge to press my lips into his and rip off my clothing. His eyes darkened with something I hoped was desire. Heat flushed through me.

"Well, this could have been worse," it was Bofur.

Suddenly there was a crash and Thorin's face was painfully in my shoulder and boards and nails and things dug agonizingly into me. Something big and fat and probably the Goblin King made a late entrance and landed on our little pile.

Kili ground out a, "You've got to be joking!"

As we manoeuvred our way from under the debris Kili started shouting. "More orcs!"

We looked up. The cave walls were covered in a layer of them scrambling down towards us. We started pulling and yanking on one another with a renewed fervour.

"We can't fight them," Dwalin was helping Nori up, "There are too many!"

Gandalf turned to us, "There is only one thing left to do! Run!"

We fled after the wizard, tripping and stumbling in the dark, but still running nevertheless. Time lost meaning in the inky black darkness with only Gandalf's staff to shed a feeble light up ahead. I could not tell if we ran for an hour or two or just for a minute. The path began to slope up and up and up. I slipped on gravel and knocked people over and was knocked over multiple times. Finally the ground levelled suddenly and there seemed to be light ahead.

"Almost there!" Gandalf cried.

We charged forward in the last made dash as light streamed in from an opening that led to the outside world. Bursting into the open air, we still kept on running and running through the pines, down the slopes. Gandalf slowed as I heard him counting the number of our company aloud. We all began to slow and gather around him, panting and wheezing and coughing.

"Fili, Kili –that makes twelve, and Bombur -that's thirteen dwarves! And Tallis and –where's Bilbo?" He paused, searchingly, "Where is our hobbit!?"

We all glanced about wildly, but the hobbit was not there. A feeling of horror shot through me. We had to go back and get him. How did we lose him? I didn't remember seeing him during our escape, nor when we were with the Goblin King. But he was so small! But what if he was still there? I nearly burst into tears thinking about the poor hobbit either dead or alive and all alone somewhere and the thought of going back into the caves.

"Blast it!" Gloin exploded. "Curse the Halfling! Now he's lost and –I thought he was with Dori!"

"Don't blame me!" Dori cried.

Gandalf cut in, "When did you last see him?"

Nori spoke up, "I think I saw him slip away when we were first captured!"

Gandalf paced furiously, "Tell me, what happened exactly?"

"I'll tell you what happened." Thorin's voice was full of spite. "Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it! He's thought of nothing but his soft bed and warm hearth since he last stepped out of his hole. We will not be seeing our hobbit again. He is long gone."

We stood there, in silence.

"Nope, he's not!"

We all turned and there he was, scraped up but in one piece. Thorin looked almost ashamed.

"Bilbo Baggins," Gandalf chuckled. "I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life!"

Kili's grin threatened to split his face. "Bilbo! I've given you up!"

Fili shook his head in amazement. "How did you get past the goblins?"

Dwalin squinted at the hobbit, "How did you..." he murmured.

Bilbo laughed awkwardly.

"Why does it matter?" Gandalf laughed, "He's back!"

"It matters," Thorin continued, "I want to know, why did you come back?"

Bilbo turned to him. "I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right, I often think of Bag End." He shrugged. "I miss my books, and my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong. That's home. And that's why I came back." He looked at the dwarves circled around him. "You don't have one. A home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can."

A shiver passed though the dwarves. I swallowed with difficulty. Whatever the hobbit had gone through to get to this side of the mountain, he had changed and it seemed now that he really understood what the dwarves were like. Thorin hesitantly bowed his head towards the little hobbit.

The wind carried something on it. It was a howl from behind us. None of us needed to say anything. We recognized the sound.

"Out of the frying pan," Thorin closed his eyes.

"And into the fire!" Gandalf finished. "Run! Run!"

My shaking legs nearly gave out under me as I took the first step, but my racing heart and the fear of the wargs and orcs behind me spurred me on. The last rays of the setting sun were disappearing. Darkness and growls sped towards us from the higher slopes of the mountain.