PART THE TWENTIETH

IN WHICH BILBO BAGGINS (ALMOST) GOT KNOCKED DOWN WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE

Bilbo Baggins had had some of the worst days in his life.

No – the Tookish part in him swiftly censored and censured himself – that would be ungrateful to say.

There certainly was, at any rate, much fun to be had riding ponies across the country while singing merry songs along with a rowdy and carefree dwarven company of varying degrees of helpfulness. There was much fun to be had seeing a little of what lay beyond the Brandywine and into Breeland. There was a lot of fun traveling through the night, and end up in an inn just before sunrise.

But there was no fun in being bowled over by a Big Folk woman running swifter than a horse with a meaner charge than a great elephant on a romp.

The good Master Baggins would be quick to tell you, ladies and gentle-hobbits, that it hadn't been his fault, no sir! He was walking around the corridor towards the room built for hobbits in this inn, particularly happy with himself that such homelike comfort existed far from home, when wham, wham and wham! Down the corridor charged that Big Folk woman with such noise she would have woken up the Old Took from his grave. She very nearly slammed head-first into the poor hobbit, and would have rightly stomped him flat as a hobbit-pancake had bad come to worse.

As the graces would have it, Bilbo was miraculously round and alive (though needless to say very shaken). As the graces would have it also, the Tookish blood inside him decided that letting this go uninvestigated simply wouldn't do, no sir!

He eyed the two Big Folk women suspiciously. One was rather bebothered and confusticated: her lips were trembling and she was shooting pleading glances at her companion – who was that inconsiderate, ill-educated, poor-mannered woman that almost knocked him aside like a golfball!

Except she was now sitting perfectly straight like a mild-mannered noblewoman with an intrigue or three. She looked thoughtful – pensive almost, now looking at the table and now looking at Gandalf – and spoke in a perfectly amicable voice about how they could share secrets with each other. And secrets, why, hobbits were as a rule curious creatures. How could Bilbo have turned down the opportunity to listen on?

And then that queerly-shaped hair decoration on her head twitched. It was not until Gandalf said something to the tune of "eavesdropper" that Bilbo realized he'd been found.

Next thing he saw was the frightening woman pushing back her seat and walking down the aisle straight towards the open door behind which he was hiding. Bilbo saw then a huge shadow – for his size – cast upon him. A pair of bright, fierce and mischievous eyes was staring down at him.

Bilbo had half a mind to run away. Not that it would have helped if he tried: a long arm had shot towards his back from the front, and Bilbo's feet suddenly felt light. He was now lifted three feet above the ground by the nape of his collar, like a kitten being carried away by her mother.

Before he could properly react, he had been inexorably escorted into the common room, and brought back to the table. There was Gandalf, and with him Bilbo's only chance for escape.

"Gandalf!" he cried. "Help me!"

"Eh?" said the woman taking him prisoner. "Do you know him, Gandalf?"

Now Gandalf looked about Bilbo - somewhat amusedly. "Please, do put him down, Miss Kongou," said Gandalf. "I would prefer our burglar unhurt and untouched by trauma as long as I can (and preferably not until the dragon's door itself, if I can help it)!"

"Eh? Burglar?" She lifted him up like a bird of prey examining a helpless critter, until their eyes were level. "So that's why he's been listening on us, eh?"

"Um... Kongou-san?" said the younger woman. "I-isn't that a bit too..." She seemed to swallow her tongue for a blink of an eye. Her face turned a little red. "-too much for him already? I-if Gandalf-san has vouched he isn't an enemy..."

"Oh." She took one last stare at him, and gave him a big nod. "Sure, I guess?" She put him on the last empty chair at the table – but not before giving him a stern stare.

"There, that's a good lady, Miss Fubuki," said Gandalf. "You must pardon my dear friend here. He's new to this whole burglar profession (though not that new to its skills), and is doing all he can to practice the art. If all goes well his skill would be needed later."

"Still," said the woman called Kongou, still fixing her stare on him. "It is impolite to listen to other people talking from behind closed doors, you know."

Now Bilbo would have liked to point out that one, the door to the common room was most definitely not closed when he came behind it. And two, he hadn't even managed to catch the women's names, much less any secret juicy business they might be having with the wizard. But then again, Bilbo wasn't so fond of being hoisted into the air again, no sir! So he stayed quiet.

Just then the innkeeper came around with more ale, and Bilbo thought nobody would mind if he would impolitely help himself to some.

Indeed, nobody minded. Gandalf's head was even nodding just so subtly, as if to tell him he could have all the ale he wanted.

"Now, Master Baggins, I thought you've already been abed," said Gandalf. "I thought this would be a good time to discuss with my friends here a business of which we are in the very middle. And it's quite a difficult negotiation too, if you would ask them."

With the women alternating looks at him, Bilbo thought it would do wonders for his longvity and his hairy feet being kept on the ground by not asking too many questions.

It turned out he didn't have to ask any in the first place. Once again the door at the end of the common room swung open, and inside shuffled not one, but two dwarf-sized shadows.

"What is the matter, Gandalf?" said Thorin, because it was really him. He hadn't changed out yet, and was clad still in his travel-cloak and hood covered in dew. Behind him was Balin, similarly unchanged out into more comfy wears. They looked, if Bilbo was to estimate, one part annoyed, one part curious, and one part rather (and rightfully) tired.

They swept towards the table at the corner, and no sooner had they came within an arm's length of Gandalf, their attention shifted from the wizard to the two women sitting opposite him.

Gandalf sat motionlessly: though his eyes did twinkle in amusement as the dwarves came close. "Ah, yes, Master Thorin," he said. "My apologies for the uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) commotion."

Thorin did not look at Gandalf. "Who are these... women?" he asked, looking now at Miss Kongou and now at Miss Fubuki.

At once tension rose in the room. Or at least it seemed to: that sort of atmosphere tended to arise when a gruff dwarf would suddenly find himself surrounded by several pairs of blinkless eyes as though he were a strange object.

"Just a few acquaintances," said Gandalf, "who happen to be staying at this very inn." He lowered his voice. "In fact, by sheer coincidence they are the acquaintances I've been telling you about."

Despite Gandalf saying so, Bilbo thought there was nothing coincidental about their meeting. Well, there was something, and that was himself: somehow he couldn't imagine Gandalf having expected him to dangle off the iron grip of this monstrously tall and strong and terrible woman because of some (yet) harmless eavesdropping.

"You've got interesting choices of acquaintances, I must say," he said. "Choices that don't do our quest very much good."

"As the common words of wisdom goes on the road, Master Thorin," said Gandalf without missing a beat. "All that is gold does not glitter."

The terrible woman's eyelids were twitching rapidly. Her friend was desperately shooting her glances that obviously said "calm down" for anyone who bothered to look. Thorin didn't take it at all into consideration, or so Bilbo thought.

"You've told me they could help us on the quest," said Thorin, surveying the women. "These women? Who look so willowy and untouched by travel dust? Help us with a quest with a dragon sitting at the end of it?"

"That I have, and I still stand by what I said," said Gandalf. There was a spark in Gandalf's eyes that was half displeasure and half – if Bilbo read him right – 'are you bloody out of your mind, dwarf?'

"Well, then, I'm quite curious!" said Thorin, and now he looked back at the two woman, one at a time, so thoroughly. "What can you do, women?"

Now the fearsome woman stood up. "Hey, we can talk about what we are able to do later," said Miss Kongou. "What we can talk about right now-" She harrumphed loudly. "-is that I've heard a few things about you – Thorin, isn't it?"

When Thorin nodded that haughty nod as was his wont, Miss Kongou simply picked up Bilbo's empty wooden ale cup from across the table, and with a series of cracks and crunches of her palms reduced it to the consistency of fine brown sugar.

It was all Bilbo could do not to faint and murmur "Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!" Gandalf, too, was taken a bit aback – literally: he was inching just slightly from the woman. "Miss Kongou, I don't think a threat-" he began.

"And what, pray tell, have you heard?" said Thorin. His face had lost a bit of colour, and who could have blame him? Well, apart for the uncalled-for rudeness, that was.

Now the woman narrowed her eyes. She was pouring the content of her palm out into one of the other mugs, and looked through the curtain of falling wood-grain at the great Thorin Oakenshield himself.

"Let's say," she said, "you were okay in my book to start with." She rubbed her hands clean of dust. "Prince of a lost realm. Vagabond on the road. On a mission to reclaim his homeland. Tell you what, that's pretty darn romantic, I've read my share of novels." She paused. "That is, until you started speaking." The intensity of the exchange of stares made Bilbo gulp.

"I speak my mind as I should," said Thorin, "For which I offer no apology."

"You could - Thorin-san, isn't it? You could apologize for being wrong," said the other woman softly. but Bilbo had lived long enough to distinguish between meekness and silent anger. This instance was the latter. "We haven't even said to want any part in this adventure of yours. And about that willowy part... please do not make unfounded assumptions!"

Now Gandalf rapped his long finger against the table. "Ladies, gentlemen!" he said. "Let's not lose our patience here. You've all got a part to play (least if I have anything to say about it) in what is to come-"

"Well, you heard Bucky," said Miss Kongou. "We haven't even said yes."

Now Balin tugged hard on Thorin's sleeve. He'd pushed himself to the fore before Thorin could object – and from the unhumoured look of his face Thorin would have a lot of objections.

"If my cousin would not apologize, miladies, then I would apologize on his behalf - for it is not becoming of a dwarf to unduly insult a woman," he said, and bowed down with his hat in hand. "All the same I beg your understanding. He has been quite troubled, you see, about our adventure – I shall not hide what it is, for it seems you are well aware of our plight." Here Balin drew a stiff breath – and his face only relaxed when the two women seemed to have sat back down and kept their fiery gaze on him rather than on Thorin. "My cousin Thorin is perhaps too taken with anxiousness, and not merely because of the dragon he had mentioned. Terrible things seem to stalk the road of late, and we are beginning to doubt and despair of our goal-"

Now this instantly and irreversibly drew the younger woman's attention.

"Did you say... terrible things?" she said, suddenly sounding terribly alarmed. "Could you tell me more, uh-"

"Balin, miss, at your service," he introduced himself very quickly, and then withdrew back to the sullen dwarven story-telling voice once more. "Indeed the tales I have heard are tall and incredible. Tales off the roads are as a rule spine-chilling and all the same liable to be exaggerated, but these – if but a fraction of it were true, then we would be in a bad spot indeed."

Just with those words he'd got the two women's full attention. At once Bilbo did not know what to credit: Balin's charisma as a story-teller, or the implication he was bringing forward.

"Ragged men on the road – perhaps Rangers, perhaps not – have brought stories of terrible cave trolls in those part of the world where they yet walk. Only this time the horror was not in the devastation that they wrought, but that they suffered!" Here he began to wave his hands about. "Imagine a big tall troll, immensely strong and implacably tough, as we know they are. Now imagine such a beast found in pieces, like something altogether terrible had ripped them apart limbs from limbs and set fire to the remains!" There was a gasp. Actually, two: the one was Bilbo's. "And, this is even more astonishing! It didn't happen just once, and they said there is a place near the Misty Mountains where an astute traveler could find the remains of a dozen trolls similarly destroyed!"

Bilbo had expected the women to go white in the face in fright, as he was rapidly losing color himself.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Miss Kongou barely hid an embarrassed giggle. "Ah." Her face turned a bit red, not white. "I guess some of that was my doing. They were throwing rocks at us!"

At once both Thorin and Balin looked to Gandalf. What they were probably awaiting was perhaps a snide comment, or a snipe, or any of that witty sarcasm the wizard had no shortage of. Instead all Gandalf showed them was a sullen face and and equally sullen nod.

Then he stood up, and spun around towards the counter.

"Master Barnabas, my good man, we would appreciate a good deal of privacy," said Gandalf darkly. "Like the dwarves should perchance say: Dark for dark business, and dark because what we are about to see should not leave this room – not at any rate unless absolutely necessary."

The innkeeper took the hint. At once he set aside the trays full of food he was about to cart to the table. He ran towards the doors on either side, and closed it shut. He put out two of the three lamps. He drew the curtains up – just on time, for the earliest light of day was starting to emerge through the horizon. Then, wordlessly, he left the room. It felt almost like Gandalf had asked this of him on several occasions before this.

Now Gandalf turned towards the fearsome woman. "Miss Kongou," he said. "If you could perhaps show us what you are." His eye glinted in the candlelight. "I would owe you a great favour to be repaid at a later date."

Then there was a defiant smile on her lips, no, not defiant, but so full of confidence it became frightening again.

"K-Kongou-san?" said Miss Fubuki. "I-is that wise?"

Miss Kongou looked quite ecstatic. "Might as well go the whole way," she said. Her voice was altogether too energetic it made Bilbo's feet hair raise.

From her back a great piece of iron appeared, as broad as she was tall and as thick as a dwarf from shoulder to shoulder. Upon it there were many oddly-shaped objects, dominated by large, glinting tubes fixed on great iron armoured boxes like safes. At once Bilbo thought of the firework-launchers in his distant memory: except those tubes were so large and so dark and so absolutely frightening.

"The fast battleship Kongou, second remodel, at your service!" she said. "Specialized in making short work of, among others, cruisers, convoys, airfields, silly airplanes that fly too low..." She chuckled in a deeply self-deprecating tone. "Just not submarines."

"You are not- you are not a woman." said Thorin. "What sort of sorcery is this?" Balin was more quiet, but his stare betrayed the same sort of morbid astonishment.

"Oh, I don't know, the sort that goes BOOM?" said Miss Kongou, patting on one of the the large pipes (barrel?) veering to her side. There was an altogether too eager grin on her face. "Let's say when this baby goes off you don't want to be anywhere within a hundred-yard radius of ground zero. Or five hundred, just so to be safe."

Bilbo's imagination began connecting the dots, and suddenly it dawned to him exactly what happened to the unfortunate trolls.

"Trolls," murmured Bilbo. "Blasted apart. Set on fire."

And when the last line was drawn, an indescribeable, existential dread rose within him, and at once he realized the only thing in the room keeping Bilbo, nay, the whole of Bree in one piece was the woman's unwillingness to use whatever that monstrosity was on them.

He understandably felt a bit light in the head. Which was to say, everything was going slightly blurry.

"Nope."

Bilbo Baggins, the brave burglar-to-be, fell face-first on the table with a mighty thwump.