Believe in Me
Disclaimer: I would try to come up with something clever, but the Spanish AP Exam fried my brain.
A/N: No seriously, I'm having lethargy-inducing flashbacks to SATs. Anyhoo, I figured I owed you guys a chapter! Yikes. Things are getting mad around here, but I'll be done with high school (no, it hasn't sunk in) in three weeks, so it'll all be okay :) I apologize in advance for the awkward chapter breaks for the next couple updates...the chunks of time are waaaaay longer than what I've had in here so far, so the splitups were super funky to try and figure out.
Also! A bunch of stuff related to this story is now up on my deviantart. You should go and see it because I have an obsession problem. Those two clauses do not exactly correspond. Oh man.
100 followers, wooHOO! :D My current moral support consists of: TokyoGirl7, KimKitty, IAreCharlina, nibbs8, Ginger-ninja-squid-fish, Doodler100, reighnstorm90, AngelsWisper, FasterThenMyBullet (I think you're the 100th follower!? If so, then yay!), bird89, AemiKili (Right?! Heck, I didn't even see it coming xD There IS a reason for the sudden appearance of Thorin's almost nonexistent humility' it's just...to be revealed. Blargh but it feels so out of character~), Hiding in the Shadow (ISN'T IT JUST DEMORALIZING?! My poor baby T_T But don't worry, eventually he'll be rid of all these ridiculous misinterpretations (evil cackle). Ehehehe. It may backfire as well; we'll have to seeeee...! (rolls away into the night) Oh and thanks! Good), Vaughn Tyler (Thanks!), Guest (Yikes! :P Glad you dropped a line, thanks!), i (Guest) (Um I disagree; this review was literally the best thing. Hahaha, but actually, I was close to skipping through the hallways. I'm so glad this has made you so excited! I guess incoherency is a good sign...? Heh. Well thanks anyway, I'm super flattered! :D), Glamdring42 (Why thank you! :), and of course the lovely readers.
Chapter 13
In Which Several Small Battles Are Fought (And a Large One, More or Less)
Bilbo appeared to be developing a tic. Eisa was quite fond of the Burglar by now, but she was ready to tie him up and gag him if only to stop his nervous habits and fretting.
"He's a wizard!" Bofur was now trying to placate him as he ladled out portions of stew for the Company. "He does as he chooses. Here, do us a favor. Take this to the lads." He nodded down the hill to where Fíli and Kíli were (presumably) still keeping watch over the ponies, perhaps just trying to get the hobbit to do something to keep him from going out of his own skin.
Eisa wondered if the brothers were in fact doing their job. It was doubtful, and she considered following Bilbo with her own bowl of stew, but thought better of it. Even if she was back in Thorin's relatively good graces, she didn't want to overstep and put herself on the line again. Besides, the two didn't get much time alone, and they probably appreciated it when they could.
It was only when they came sprinting back into camp just minutes later that she realized that Bilbo still hadn't returned. "Thorin!" Fíli shouted, and everyone whirled. Someone's stew spilled, and the bowl tumbled to the ground.
"What is it? What's happened?" Thorin was suddenly right in front of the two, and everyone scrambled to stand up and get their wits about them.
"Trolls, three of them, further down the hill. They're taking the ponies," Kíli explained quickly, barely even out of breath.
"And where is the Halfling?" asked Thorin as though he dreaded the answer.
"Creating a diversion. Hopefully," said Kíli.
"But we have to hurry; he hasn't got a clue," Fíli urged his uncle.
"Right. Everyone to arms, on the double!" ordered Thorin. "You did the right thing," he told his nephews in a hushed voice before reaching to retrieve his sword.
Eisa followed along with everyone else, grabbing her axe—perhaps it was just very good luck that she'd thought to sharpen it—and following the Company into the forest with hurried steps. They made their way down the hill, into the undergrowth where the ponies had been left to graze, and Fíli and Kíli led them around to the right through some impossibly thick brush. Branches, vines, and all manner of things that snagged tugged at Eisa's clothes and long hair, and she tried to concentrate on staying relatively quiet. She had never encountered trolls before (and from what she'd heard, she didn't want to) but she was glad she was in a group if she had to do so.
Her comparatively slim figure made her one of the fastest in the group, and when they halted abruptly and took cover, she dived down behind a log next to Kíli. "I leave you two alone for a few hours and this is what happens?" she murmured, jesting despite the situation.
He snorted and shook his head resignedly, but was interrupted by Fíli and his sharp eyes. "Curse it, they've caught him," he swore, and made to stand up.
"Wait." Thorin pressed down on the blonde's shoulder. "Wait to see what the Halfling does."
Kíli shifted beside her, and Eisa craned her neck to see through a gap in the bushes and winced when she saw Bilbo dangling upside down between the thumb and forefinger of a mountain troll. These were of average size, so it could be worse, but she had never actually seen one before, so it took her a moment to take in their height.
"Are there any more o' you little fellas 'iding where you shouldn't?" leered the troll in a horrendously boorish accent. It was at least something that they could speak competently, Eisa supposed; there were plenty of cave trolls that were little more than savage animals.
"No!" Bilbo fibbed weakly, struggling.
"'E's lying!" jeered a second troll.
"No I'm not!" cried Bilbo in desperation.
"Hold 'is toes over the fire! Make 'im squeal—!"
But suddenly it was the troll that gave an unseemly squeal, when the ring and thunk of steel hitting flesh resounded throughout the clearing along with a shout.
Eisa straightened up rapidly and looked around for Kíli, for that had been his voice, but he was suddenly gone and had attacked one of the trolls from behind!
"Drop him!" he bellowed. Eisa and the rest of the Company stared at his back, and Thorin might have cursed.
"You wot?" sneered the troll that had Bilbo.
Kíli spun his sword expertly and gripped it in both hands, and Eisa could hear the mad grin in his voice when he threatened, "I said…drop him."
Thorin signaled forward swiftly and held up his hand, telling everyone to wait at the ready, and Eisa rose to a standing crouch.
The troll didn't appear to be taking kindly to Kíli, and with a roar he took the dwarf's words literally and hurled the hobbit at him, bowling them both over just as Thorin let out a cry of his own and charged, the others close behind.
Eisa hurdled the log and then Bilbo's flailing legs with ease, and all of a sudden they were all in the midst of the trolls' camp and there was a huge ugly trunk of a limb in front of her. She swung her axe with all her strength as if she were felling a tree, but it didn't do nearly the damage she expected and she reeled away, nearly falling over only to be pushed back up by one of the dwarves.
Surprised, she looked about her for a brief second but then refocused her energy, deciding to concentrate on using her size to her advantage. She came very close to completely hacking off a gigantic toe that was in her way (temporarily ignoring just how revolting that was) and earned a monstrous shriek for her efforts, then ducked between a pair of legs and rolled, lashing out with her axe on the way. As the troll stumbled from another attack—the dwarves were everywhere at once, almost moving like independent parts of a single entity—it stepped on her axe, wrenching in from her grasp and causing her to swear. As soon as she stood, she was confronted with a horrid face and a reaching hand, and she had just realized that she couldn't reach any of her daggers fast enough when someone hollered "Eisa! Catch!" and a sword abruptly landed in her hands.
Without thinking, she sliced once, twice, across the horrible hand, nearly severing a finger and opening another gash in the tough skin. Then she leapt to the side, letting herself fall to the ground as she was taken aback yet again when a dwarf—it might have been Dori—jumped over her with sudden agility as if he had expected her to be in that precise spot at that precise time. She saw Dwalin avoid a swipe from a troll by leaping off the edge of the massive cauldron and tuck-and-rolling to a stop in a similar maneuver as Thorin fiercely launched himself off the older dwarf's back to attack the troll that had a hold on Ori. So maybe the key was to go with the flow, she reasoned.
Just then, she saw Fíli take a hit from behind and she shouted in anger, cutting at the backs of the troll's knees as Bifur joined her. She flung out a hand and yanked the blonde to his feet, shoving the sword that she now recognized as his back into his hand so that she now had room to draw the very long dagger from her belt and the short one from her forearm. Not far away, Thorin was fighting ferociously, and she covered his back for a moment, stabbing viciously into the bottom of a repulsive raised foot.
Dori's blow to somewhere the sun didn't shine (no pun intended, as these were in fact trolls) and Dwalin's subsequent knocking out of several teeth with his war hammer almost made her cheer in victory, but things went downhill from there. In a blur, one of the trolls suddenly charged the makeshift pen that the ponies were now escaping from, courtesy of Bilbo upon further inspection. Fíli and Kíli were flung to the side through the air by another troll, and Ori was knocked to the ground, nearly taking Eisa with him as the dwarves prepared to regroup around Thorin.
"Bilbo!" Kíli cried suddenly, followed by a "No!" from Thorin, who had to hold his nephew back.
The rest of the Company realized what was going on when they looked to what the trolls were holding between them. It was the hobbit, and from where they were all standing, it looked very easy to pull him apart. "Lay down yer arms," ordered one of the trolls triumphantly, "or we'll rip 'is off!"
The poor Halfling looked terrified, as though for a moment he really believed that the dwarves would gladly run the risk of letting him die. Eisa certainly hoped that that wasn't the case, and with that thought, she looked at Thorin hopefully.
When he paused, her stomach dropped, but a second later he thrust his sword into the ground defiantly. Kíli followed suit, looking unbearably frustrated, as did the rest of the Company. Eisa dropped her daggers, seething at their helplessness, and Ori was the last to fling his slingshot to the ground with childish dismay.
"Disarm—all o' ye!" the troll went on. "Everything off. I don't want to be findin' no pointy things in my dinner."
Left with no choice, the fuming dwarves began to strip themselves of every protection they had. Eisa shed her long coat, then unbuckled her belt and had to unstrap the light sheath from her right forearm to free her second hooded coat. But she was damned if she would remove the hidden shorter knives from her boots.
Now, it was entirely inappropriate in multiple ways, but Kíli found his eyes wandering for a few brief moments. They were at the mercy of three hungry trolls with no visible way out and a hostage situation, and yet he couldn't stop looking at the way the surprisingly slender dwarf maid clenched her now ungloved fists in aggravation and then brushed off her fitted breeches out of habit. Her normally neat hair and braids now tumbled down her back in considerable disarray, and he noticed suddenly just how small her waist and ribcage were. He knew that the others were purposely averting their eyes, as it was hardly proper to have everyone mostly disrobing with the young woman here, but he couldn't help but steal glances and absently wonder what the pale green color of her shirt brought out in her strange silt-colored eyes.
His thoughts were interrupted as the girl was suddenly seized up, giving a small shriek, along with Bofur, Bifur, Dwalin, Nori, Dori, and Ori. "We'll start with these!" announced a troll gleefully as Kíli forcefully bit back a shout of protest, and before any of them knew it, they were all seven of them hog-tied and fastened around an alarmingly large spit. Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, Óin, Glóin, Balin, Bombur, and Bilbo were all stuffed into sacks tied at the tops with only their heads sticking out. They looked not unlike enormous sausages, which was probably not a good comparison to make in the interest of not being eaten. Eisa might have laughed if it had not been for just that - and also if she had actually been able to see them, for the spit kept rotating at inopportune times. As it was, several chunks of her hair were dangling down dangerously close to a few of the higher-reaching flames, and her normally strong stomach was not appreciating the jolts of the turning spit.
She could, however, hear the indignant shouts from the dwarves on the ground, and while Kíli was being quite vocal, Fíli's voice sounded strangely muffled. When the spit rotated so that she could see the rest of her companions, she realized that the blonde dwarf had been flung on his face and was having about as much luck in righting himself as an overturned turtle.
Her perverse urge to laugh (which might have had something to do with slight hysteria) was quickly stifled by one of the trolls complaining, "Don't bother cooking 'em! Let's just sit on 'em an' squash 'em into jelly!"
"That's not how that works," Eisa groaned to herself amidst the cries of those around her. This was humiliating. Captured and being slow-roasted by a few of quite possibly the dumbest sentient beings to roam the land.
"They should be sautéed and grilled, with a sprinkle of sage," another troll fantasized.
"Ooh. That does sound quite nice," agreed the first, warming up to the idea of fine dining.
Yes, perfectly charming, thought Eisa as the trolls went on. It really did seem like a pleasant way to prepare a meal if the main component had not been, oh, say, dwarf. But quite frankly (although it just might be enough to ruin the flavor of them all) she wouldn't be of much use to anyone vomiting her guts out, which was what she felt like doing. And she didn't care whose or what limb was digging into her ribs, but all she knew was that it was not helping the condition of her innards, and she wriggled about trying to dislodge it somehow.
Finally something shifted, something slipped, and she abruptly dropped an alarming few inches closer to the fire, which was uncomfortably hot and attempting to sear her hair yet again. She nearly yelled, but then caught on. Something had loosened somewhere, and she didn't care where, because that extra little bit of slack was all she would need to twist around and reach into one of her boots for a knife.