As promised, here is the new chapter. I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying it so far, really I am. And to kaia: of course Kate is still clinging to the thought of getting home again. To her this is all real and not the material of fanfiction. And you're wrong about Gandalf's motivations and intentions by the way. I know what you're implying, but that idea sounded rather lame to me, so that's not what he intended. Really.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Enjoy!

Chapter 21

Backing Out

For as long as I could remember I had never been really afraid of the dark. Of course I had the oh-help-there's-a-wolf-hiding-under-my-bed-as-soon -as-the-light-goes-out period as a child, but I eventually grew out of that. In fact, I seemed to sleep better in complete darkness than with a light on, or so we discovered soon enough.

I'm afraid to say that after that trek through the dark under the Misty Mountains things never were quite the same. We were running through tunnels that were all long, all dark and all infested with the foul smell of the goblins. We only had the light of Gandalf's staff to guide us and sometimes he needed to take away even that last light in order to prevent the goblins from finding out where we were.

I'm quite sure I became quite paranoid over time. Every shadow was a goblin and every sound was a goblin sneaking up behind us to finish us off before we even had the chance to defend ourselves. I longed for the daylight and found myself wondering on more than one occasion how dwarves did it: living under the mountains, going without daylight for days on end. In that moment I was quite sure I would never be able to do that myself.

Oh, and I can almost hear you laughing as you read this, thinking it to be quite absurd coming from the woman who can call herself Queen under the Mountain. And I suppose it is absurd. But Erebor is so vastly different from the cold darkness of the goblin realm in the Misty Mountains and do not fear, I love the Mountain with all my heart, even though I still do have a love of the light of day as well, so you know where you got it from, my dearest Duria.

But back then the darkness was mostly frightening and I just found myself wishing for a way out…

Thorin

Time didn't seem to mean anything at all in these dark places. Even Thorin, being a dwarf, felt uncomfortable in these tunnels. The darkness weighed heavy on all of them and the threat of goblins didn't make this any better. He was at the back of the column, protecting their rear while Gandalf took the front. The wizard seemed to know where he was going or he at least pretended to know. It made Thorin feel a bit more at ease, if only a bit.

No one had gotten seriously injured in the goblin attack and he had whispered a quick thanks to Mahal for that stroke of luck. It were mere scratches this time, but that didn't stop him from worrying over the other injuries that had been sustained during their flight. Balin's wound was slowing him down, even if the stubborn old dwarf would be the last one to admit it. He was forcing himself onwards, never showing his weakness. Bofur was all but hopping like a limp rabbit, as Kate had once so eloquently phrased it, and Dori's bandage was turning rather red far too quickly for Thorin's liking. Bombur had repeatedly been hit by the goblins' whips, but seemed to be more or less all right. As long as they could keep the wounds clean, he would be all right, and the same was true for Miss Andrews.

Thorin could only just make out her shape as she ran beside Nori. She had surprised him in the fight. It was almost as if the Kate they knew had been replaced by someone else wielding that blade. Her skills were still worse than bad, but fortunately the goblins had all made the terrible mistake of thinking that a woman could not possibly know how to handle a sword and the rest of the group had watched out for the advisor, resulting in her coming out alive and pretty much unscathed, save for a scratch on her left arm. But as soon as they managed to make it out of these cursed mountains he would need to ask Dwalin to keep teaching her. If Azog was really on their trail – and he did not really doubt that anymore – then they would all need to learn how to defend themselves or they would be done for.

The long flight through the tunnels gave him more than enough time to think unfortunately and in the darkness he could feel the doubts creeping up at him, wriggling their way right into his heart and mind. Because if Azog was after them, then a good few things Kate had told him would be true as well. The dwarf found it all too easy now to remember the words she had spoken back in Rivendell, her theory that one of Thorin's own kin had betrayed the quest to the orcs. And if that was the case, then Azog would find him wherever he went. How would he ever succeed in leading his company back to Erebor if he had all the orcs that Defiler could command on his heels? It would be a fool's errand, even if they somehow managed to ever come out of this dreadful place again.

But turning back was still not much of an option. Balin would reason that they had come this far already. To go back now, after everything they had already seen, that would be admitting defeat, giving up before the battle had even begun. And that was not in a dwarf's nature. And if Thorin had not been the leader of this company he would have fiercely protested against the very notion of abandoning the quest. In fact, he might have even the one to be telling the leader that he was a coward. But he was the leader now and he was responsible for these men. It was his responsibility to weigh the risks, to decide what was best for them. Unfortunately he knew they only obeyed him as long as he made no mention of giving up on their mission. Sometimes it had its downsides belonging to the most stubborn race of Middle Earth.

They rested in a small cave eventually. Thorin would have preferred to press on, but it had most likely been hours since they had properly rested. The short respite in the other cave did not really count, since no one had actually rested there. And only Mahal knew how few hours they had gotten before they were abducted from the cave they had taken shelter in. Even the dwarves in the company looked dead on their feet. And so he reluctantly agreed to stop for a few hours, as long as at least three people would stand watch. He would not want to be surprised again. There had been far too many of those on this journey already.

'Are you sure that we lost them?' he demanded of Gandalf.

The wizard, who was obviously not used to having his decisions and judgement questioned sent him a stern look by the light of his staff. 'Quite sure, Thorin Oakenshield. And if you cannot take my word for it, then you are quite welcome to track back and see it for yourself!' If smoking would not have given their location away to the goblins, Thorin was quite sure he would have taken to hide behind his beloved smokescreen again. As it was he just favoured the dwarf king with as stern a look as he could manage.

Thorin knew when to back off. This wasn't worth it getting into an argument over. No doubt there would be a lot of arguing going on once they got out of here, Gandalf's altogether mysterious disappearance at the emergency exit being at the very top of the list of things to discuss.

As it was, he just settled down on a rock near the exit of the cave and prepared for a few hours watch. The others were settling down now, grateful for the break. Gandalf and Nori were the other two watchers, but they were a good distance away. Anyway, Thorin was not in the mood to talk, not really.

It would, however, seem that Mr Baggins and Miss Andrews were not yet ready to go to sleep. The two had taken a spot near Thorin and were talking in low whispers that they probably thought were soft enough not to wake the others. But this was a cave under the mountains and sound carried far here. Thorin could follow their conversation with ease if he wanted to.

'How did you do it?' Kate wondered.

'Do what?' Mr Baggins asked, clearly not understanding what the advisor had meant by that question.

'Sneak back out to find Gandalf,' she clarified. 'Can't have been easy with all those goblins lurking around.'

'I'll have you know that it wasn't.' The hobbit sounded distinctly ruffled, but with the underlying tone of someone who is secretly proud of their achievement. He sounded rather like a child. In fact, he sounded very much like a younger Fíli when he had announced that had finally learned to braid his own hair and kept insisting that it wasn't that difficult, even when he was clearly waiting for someone to tell him that it was very hard. Thorin had to bite back a guffaw at that memory.

'So, how'd you do it?' Kate urged.

'I just walked back the way we came and that was not so hard. There weren't any goblins there, not that I could see them anyway.' The burglar sounded more and more like Fíli by the second. 'But there were quite a lot of them near the emergency exit and they were all laughing and blocking the door, which by then, naturally, was closed again.'

Thorin could hear Kate snort. 'I bet,' she muttered. 'Typical case of Murphy's Law, if you ask me.'

Thorin had no idea what Murphy's Law was. Fortunately for him, neither had the hobbit. 'Murphy's Law?'

'Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong,' she explained. 'So far, that seems to sum this journey up to perfection,' she added in a low growl.

Thorin could not help but agree with her on that one. No matter what he had done – and he had done very much. Mahal, he had even agreed to listen to Miss Andrews's advice in order to make this quest succeed – somehow, somewhere along the road things eventually went completely pear-shaped and he could not come up with one good reason why. He had to put up with a wizard's antics, a useless woman and an even more useless hobbit in his company and the annoyingly propriety of elves. He had been chased by wargs and orcs, abducted by goblins and almost tossed into a ravine by stone giants. All in all things had been pretty bad already and they were hardly halfway to the Lonely Mountain. And now it was being topped off by the fact that Azog the Defiler was apparently not as dead as he had believed him to be. That in itself was bad enough, but of course Azog could not just be satisfied with being alive, he had to keep up this bloody feud as well.

Now you're doing it too! he scolded himself half a second later. He had no idea when he had begun to copy both the advisor's sarcasm and the strange words she used, but it was a rather alarming development, a clear sign that he had spent too much time in her company when he did not even like her.

'Too true,' the hobbit muttered darkly.

'Well, tell me, how did you get out?' Kate sounded a bit impatient now. Like Thorin, she must be suspecting that the hobbit was delaying on purpose, making her ask for the story rather than telling it immediately for the maximum effect.

'Well, I could not just sneak past them and the door was firmly shot, so I had no choice but to wait until they either left or opened the door themselves,' Bilbo told. 'And they took awfully long and they were joking about how easy it was to catch us all. They had never even seen Gandalf it would seem, because they never mentioned him at all.'

'So, if they were so busy mocking us whilst guarding that emergency exit of theirs, how did you get past them?' Miss Andrews sounded a bit amused now, even if it was still laced with weariness. Thorin thought it a fair guess to say that she knew precisely what the hobbit was doing.

'I was getting there,' the burglar said, sounding a bit annoyed now that the advisor had interrupted his tale. 'Eventually there was a large group coming back saying that they were ordered to bring back the ponies and luggage that was still in the cave, so they ordered the goblins that were guarding the door to open it for them. So they opened the door and went into the cave and I was very scared, because even though the door was open now, the cave was full of goblins and I had no idea how I would slip past them.'

'I bet,' Kate muttered. 'This place is entirely too full of goblins for my taste. Or for anyone's taste for that matter.'

Thorin could not help but agree with that assessment. Maybe, once, if the Mountain was retaken, someone should do something about this plague of goblins in the Misty Mountains. He had known that they lived in these parts himself too, but the numbers that had assembled in the throne room of the Great Goblin had driven the message home that there were far more of them than he had thought. And it was not a nice surprise.

'In the end I told myself that I should be brave, because you were facing far worse down there,' Bilbo went on after having muttered his own agreement. 'So I kept to the walls and the shadows and sneaked back into the cave and I believe that they never as much as saw me. They were too preoccupied discussing what horrible things they would do to you once they got back.'

Thorin found himself surprised for the second time in a day and once again by someone he had previously deemed next to useless. He had never even believed that the burglar would even make it back to the emergency exit when Nori had first told him of the task he had given Mr Baggins. It had been the right thing to do – the only thing to do even – he had agreed, but he had thought it a fool's errand, doomed to fail right from the start.

But maybe Gandalf had been in his right mind when he had selected the burglar after all. Because Bilbo had made it back to the cave past goblins and through dark tunnels. He had done what he had been tasked to do. Maybe, just maybe mind, it had not been such a bad idea to take him with them on this journey.

'Well, as you see, there's not too much harm done,' Miss Andrews remarked with an enthusiasm that Thorin did not believe to be quite genuine. 'We're all still in once piece. Was Gandalf still in the cave?'

'He was,' Bilbo confirmed. 'He had been hiding behind a large rock that was as grey as his robes and the goblins missed out on him altogether. I myself had nearly not seen him at all, had he not shown himself after the goblins had left.'

'I still can't think of one good reason why he left us behind in the first place,' Kate growled. 'He didn't even help when we were fighting at all. Why would he do such a thing?' There was frustration audible now and Thorin could understand that only too well. He experienced that himself too. Because it was strange behaviour on the wizard's part. The dwarf had seen him use his magical fireworks often enough – he had used them in the very heart of Goblin-town even – but when they had been attacked Gandalf had done nothing. Instead of fighting he had hidden behind a rock!

A look over his shoulder allowed him to see Mr Baggins shrug. 'I don't know. But he's Gandalf. He has a reason for everything he does, doesn't he?'

'I should bloody well hope so!' Kate exclaimed. Realising she had spoken too loudly, she continued in a softer voice: 'It would be nice though if he shared his motives with the rest of us from time to time, because so far I have not been able to make much sense of everything that has happened to us.'

Bilbo favoured her with a quizzical look. 'What do you mean?'

'Well, my presence here for starters,' she began. 'His determination to go to the elves for another.' She hesitated for a moment. 'I just have this feeling that he knows far more than any of us and that for reasons far beyond my comprehension he chooses not to share that with the rest of this company. I don't know why and it bothers me.'

Bilbo may not really understand what the advisor meant, but Thorin did. And he agreed. On the first day of the journey, he remembered, Kate had cornered the wizard and demanded answers of him. Of course she had been left almost empty-handed, but she – and Thorin, since he had been eavesdropping on them – had learned that day that the advisor was not the only one to possess the knowledge for which she had been brought here. Thorin had used that as a reason to send her back home in the next argument he had with the wizard, but of course Gandalf had hidden behind his smokescreen, saying that he was sure Miss Andrews had a lot more to offer than just her knowledge.

And true, the king had to admit that, after the initial reluctance, Miss Andrews had held up her end of the bargain. No, that was not what was bothering him now. It was Gandalf that was the problem here. Thorin was by now quite convinced that the wizard indeed knew every last detail of the story Kate knew, but he had never really acted on it. He had pretended not to know the message on the map and he had almost looked surprised when Kate and Thorin had gone to him to discuss taking another route over the mountains, as if he had not heard about the front gate at all, or its changed location. Sometimes he made it too easy for Thorin to forget all about his knowledge, which was just as extensive as Miss Andrews's.

'Well, he might have good reason to?' Bilbo's supposedly certain statement came out as a question nonetheless. The hobbit's determination to rely on the wizard might be touching, but Thorin mostly thought them naïve.

'Quite possibly,' Miss Andrews agreed. 'Doesn't mean we have to like it though.'

'Have you given any more thought to my offer?' The halfling abruptly changed the subject. 'To come with me to the Shire?'

Kate snorted. 'In the past twenty-four hours I have been abducted, whipped across the face, caught up in a fight and to top it off I have been running through dark tunnels for hours at a time. I haven't exactly had a lot of time to think. But even if I had, there's not really to think about anyway. I've made my decision.' She was silent for a while. 'But it seems you're still determined to leave when you can?'

The hobbit shrugged. 'What good is me staying here?' he asked, obviously meaning that as a rhetorical question.

'Well, it seems you have already forgotten about the fact that you sneaked past a large group of goblins, but I have not,' Kate pointed out. 'You do make for a good burglar, Bilbo. And Thorin, well, he may be a bit rough around the edges, but I think he did not really mean what he said to you back on the plateau. We were all on edge, soaked and scared there. I don't think any of us can be blamed for something we say in the heat of such a moment.'

Now that caused the dwarf to frown. Since when was the advisor in the habit of standing up for him? Or was this just her trying to keep Bilbo Baggins in this group, as her book would probably say? Sometimes one could read her face like it was a book open for everyone to see, but guessing her motives for acting as she did was another matter entirely. What was she thinking?

Fortunately Thorin wasn't the only one to notice that change of heart. 'The Great Goblin was right, wasn't he? About you and him?'

Kate made a sound as if she was choking. 'What? No! How on earth would you even reach such a… far-fetched conclusion?'

'You're wearing his coat,' Bilbo countered.

That made Thorin swivel around in shock. And the halfling spoke the truth. Miss Andrews was still wrapped up in his coat he had given her some hours before they had been attacked. There had not been an opportunity for her to give it back yet and she must have forgotten about it as well. Or, not entirely forgotten, since she had put a belt around her waist to stop herself from drowning in the garment. But in the given circumstances clothing had been at the very bottom of either of their list of priorities. It was only now that they were having a moment to sit down that the implications of this started seeping through. And those implications might yet prove to be food for the gossip that had already started to go round in this company.

Kate didn't seem to be thinking much of it. She arched an eyebrow. 'It's a coat,' she pointed out. 'Hardly a sign of affection.'

What kind of strange world did she come from? Thorin found himself seriously wondering about that. Of course he had wondered about where she came from – briefly, mind you – but he had always believed their worlds to be remotely similar.

'Ehm…' Mr Baggins seemed to disagree, if his facial expression was anything to go by.

There wasn't much light to see by, but Thorin didn't need that to recognise the murderous look that now was directed at the hobbit. 'It was a matter of effectiveness,' she told him sternly. 'My coat was still soaking wet, his wasn't. I might have caught a cold without it and that would have seriously delayed the quest. There is nothing more to it and you should not think there was. Quite frankly, the notion is ridiculous.'

And Thorin whole-heartedly agreed with that. He might even have gotten up and said that, had he not been stopped from doing so by the noise of footsteps coming down the tunnel. He was on his feet the next second. 'Get up!' he bellowed at his company, the volume no longer an issue now. 'We're under attack!'

Kate

Kate hardly had a second to think after Thorin's warning before the first goblins entered the small cave. Hardly anyone was on their feet already, save for the people that had been ordered to stand guard. The fear threatened to grip her by the throat, but she squashed it. This was neither the time nor place for a panic attack. The only ones to benefit from that would be the goblins and she wasn't in the habit of giving them what they wanted.

You can do this, she told herself as she picked up her sword. The images of the previous fight she had been in tried to find their way back to the forefront of her mind, but she squashed those too. Not right now.

It was frightening and chaotic all over again and really it made her want to run as fast as she could, but she had no idea where to run to and so she stood her ground, using her sword to keep the goblins away from her. She had no ideas what the others were doing and at the moment she could not really care. The moment she allowed herself to look for them would be the moment she got distracted and that just might cost her life. Now that was a prospect she didn't find herself looking forward to.

In hindsight she would never be able to say how long the fight lasted. It could have been only minutes, but it could also have been hours. Time didn't really mean anything anymore anyway. There was just the fighting, dodging blows and dealing them to her attackers, that seemed to keep coming, regardless of how many of them had been killed. Kate had no idea where they were coming from, but that too was not important. Nothing seemed to matter apart from the fighting.

Kate was vaguely aware that there was someone fighting beside her and that this someone had more than once deflected a blow that would have finished her, because her skills were so severely lacking. But there was not even time for a sideward glance to learn the identity of her guardian angel. That too would have to wait until they got themselves out of this bloody mess.

The fight ended as abruptly as it had begun. There was a flash of light, coming from somewhere to her left. It nearly blinded her and she shielded her eyes in a reflex. The bright light hurt her eyes after so long a time in the darkness. It was only after she had raised her hands to protect her eyes that she realised she had left the rest of her body wide open for attacks. Only a very foolish goblin would not make use of such an advantage and she prepared herself for the pain their blades would doubtlessly cause.

But the pain never came. There was yelping and shrieking from the goblins and Kate removed her hands from her eyes. The cave was still bathing in the light from Gandalf's staff and she had to blink a few times to see anything at all, but when she could, she could see the goblins howling in pain. Some of them had fallen to the ground as if the light had physically hurt them and others were making a run for it as fast as they possibly could.

'Follow me, everybody!' Gandalf shouted. He was already taking the lead and the company wasted no time in running after him. Kate herself only paused to grab her rucksack from the ground – there was just no way that she would be leaving that behind – and then sprinted after the rest, catching up with Nori at the beginning of the tunnel that Gandalf had chosen to take.

'Are you injured?' he asked.

'Not that I know of,' Kate replied, falling into step with him. If ever she was grateful for taking the time to work out when she was still in her own world, it was now. Had she not done so, she would surely have been out of breath already. 'How about you?'

Nori gave her a brilliant smile. 'Perfectly fine,' he assured her.

The light on Gandalf's staff had faded to only the bare minimum again, but it was enough to recognise Nori's weapon, the very same blade she had seen from the corner of her eyes several times while they were fighting. 'You were the one looking out for me during the fight?' She tried not to sound too surprised, but it seeped through in her voice all the same. Before this her relationship with Nori had been ambivalent to say the least, especially since he had tried to make off with some of her belongings while they were in Rivendell. The tongue-lashing she had given him for it was surely heard all over Eriador and things had been kind of awkward ever since, even when she had grown closer to Nori's brothers.

Nori gave her a lopsided grin. 'I'll have to watch out for my little sister, don't I?' he said. 'Dori would have my head if I didn't,' he added as an afterthought.

'Of that I have no doubt,' Kate agreed.

They ran on in silence, leaving Kate some time to think over Nori's words. She had already known the Ri brothers had come to regard her as something close to a sibling, but it had always been an unspoken agreement, something that was acted on, but never really spoken about. It made her feel comfortable, protected even. But to hear it put into the spoken word gave her a warm feeling inside. In a strange way this had created something that tied her to this world, gave her a place of her own in this world where she did not belong.

Yes, keep this up and the next thing you know you won't be going back home at all, she scolded herself the next moment. This is not one of your stupid bloody fanfictions, girl. Get a grip. And she needed to. Because she had been keeping her distance from the company on purpose. To leave them after the quest would only be so much harder if she had actually started to like some of them, never mind that she formed some kind of sibling bond with three of them. And no matter what she had tried to tell herself over the past few months, leaving would already be difficult, because these dwarves and even the hobbit had wriggled their way into her heart without her even noticing. Bugger these dwarves. She wasn't sure how many times she had thought that already, but it had to be more times than she actually cared to count.

They kept up a quick pace that was exhausting for everyone, especially the ones that were already wounded, like poor old Balin, but no one complained, because exhaustion was still preferable over getting killed by goblins. Kate could not hear or see a sign of their pursuers and she was grateful for it. It allowed her to believe that just maybe they had lost them again. No doubt they would be found again when they stopped, so even when her lungs started screaming for more air and her legs started cramping she did not slow down. It was quite remarkable what a body could deal with when in danger, really.

She tried to keep her mind busy by trying to determine how much time had passed, but it was useless. Here in the dark it was hard to tell the time of day and all this running, resting, fighting and running again had thrown her off balance enough as it was. The time was not her main concern then and it should not be now.

Eventually Gandalf came to a halt and he beckoned them to do the same. They all grouped around him.

'What now, wizard?' Thorin demanded. Kate had lost sight of him during their flight, but his mood had definitely not been improving. Not that this very much surprised the advisor. She herself wasn't in the highest spirits and the same could be said for every other member of the company. Dwarves may be hardy folk, she had come to learn, but they had all gone without food and sleep for God knows how long and they were being chased through these cursed mountains with goblins on their heels to top it off nicely. It was hardly a surprise no one was feeling exceptionally merry right now.

'Now, Thorin Oakenshield, we will need to find a way to get through the back gate somehow.' Kate had come to recognise this tone as a sign that the wizard was at least slightly irritated. He tended to take on such tones the moment someone seemed to be questioning his decisions, as Thorin had just done.

'I'm not liking the sound of this,' someone commented. It was hard to see anything, but Kate thought it would be a safe bet to say that it was Glóin.

'There are guards on the door, aren't there?' Dori chimed in.

'Good chance they sent down extra guards to it when they learned that we were doing a runner,' Kate heard herself say. 'They must know these tunnels far better than we do. No doubt they could have used shortcuts.' It was an unwelcome thought, but she did remember reading something about the company needing to get past guards at the back door. The book however had failed to mention how many there would be, but taken into consideration that their group had been responsible for the death of the Great Goblin, the goblins were extremely pissed off. They would not like to take chances and by now they had to suspect where the company was heading.

Thorin's look darkened, if that was even possible. He had not really looked very pleased before then anyway. 'Is that true?' he demanded of Gandalf, clearly hoping for a no.

Unfortunately they had no such luck. 'We did need to make a few detours in order to avoid getting caught by goblins,' the wizard replied, leaning on his staff as if for all the world they were only discussing today's weather conditions and not their escape from hundreds, possibly thousands, of seriously annoyed goblins. 'It is quite possible for them to have gotten to the back door long before now.'

Thorin looked like he might want to hit the wizard with something and Kate shared the sentiment. 'Well, isn't that just bloody brilliant of you?' she snorted. 'Because we could as well have taken the shortcuts for all the good those detours seemed to have done. And then we would have been out of this cursed place before we gave the goblins the opportunity to cut us off!' She knew she was a bit unreasonable now, but she was never too nice when her energy was running out. Kate was pretty sure that the adrenaline was the only thing that kept her going right now and she was grateful for it, because it allowed her to do what needed to be done.

Most of the dwarves stared at her after this and for a moment the journalist wasn't quite sure why. Then she recalled that she usually only spoke in tones like this to Thorin and not Gandalf. Crap.

'Please tell me you at least got some sort of plan?' she begged.

'Those lights looked rather impressive, Mr Gandalf,' Dori spoke up. 'Would that not help us in getting past the guards?'

All eyes now settled on the wizard and he was more or less forced to admit that this approach might have some chance of success. 'But you will still need your swords to cut through their last defences,' the finished.

'Charming,' Kate commented. 'You mean to say that you can't just all blow them off their feet and knock them right into the middle of next week while you're at it?' She remembered seeing the wizard doing that in the movie and could not for the life of her understand why he would suddenly be incapable of repeating that rather impressive feat.

And apparently the wizard too had reached the end of his patience. 'No, Miss Andrews, that is something I am not capable of doing!' He had to keep his voice hushed just in case there were still goblins lurking about, but the tone managed to convey the message perfectly anyway. 'You will have to play your own part or else you'll just have to stay here and wait for the goblins to find you.'

This managed to extract a low growl from Nori's throat and Dori took half a step sideward, placing him right in front of Kate. 'We're going to pretend that we did not hear that, wizard,' Nori said. No one in his right mind would miss out on the angry, threatening tone. 'That's our sister you're talking about and if I hear such a thing one more time, you're going to regret it.' Dori and Ori nodded their agreement.

For a moment Kate was flabbergasted. How on earth had this come about? And, more importantly, how had it come she had completely missed out on this development? Sure, she knew Dori had been looking out for her – or perhaps fussing over her was a better way of phrasing it – ever since she had shoved Ori out of the way of that warg, and she had grown close to the three brothers ever since. Nori had gone as far as to call her a little sister for who he looked out in a fight, but this, this protectiveness was of another nature altogether. It was endearing and at the same time it was infuriating. She thought she had seen it all when Thorin started to play the protector when visiting Rivendell. Clearly she had been mistaken.

The rest of the company did not seem the least bit surprised, which would suggest that they had all known about this new sibling bond that had been formed without Kate's knowledge or consent. She was trying to decide whether this made things better or only worse.

But it was definitely irritating and that was something she did not need to think on at all. So she tried to shove Dori out of the way and tried to wriggle out of the protective grasp his younger brother had on her waist. 'Knock it off, will you?' she snapped irritably at the pair of them. 'I can hold my own, just in case you'd forgotten. Maybe not in a fight with swords, but words are easy enough.' There was some sniggering from around the group, which she pointedly ignored. 'We need to get out of here ASAP and…'

'ASAP?' Kíli asked. 'What in Durin's name is that?'

'As soon as possible,' she explained, before continuing where she left off. 'Point is, we need to get out and the longer we're standing here twiddling our thumbs and getting wound up over the words of a wizard, the more guards there will be on those doors. If we wish to avoid them, we had better get moving. As in right now,' she added when no one seemed to be preparing to do something.

Thorin was the first to act. He gave a curt nod and directed his attention towards the wizard again. 'You know the way out?' he demanded.

A curt nod was the reply.

'Then lead on.' The dwarf king didn't seem to like the idea any better than any of the others, but there wasn't really any choice in all this. They had to get out of this place before their chances of escape would grow even slimmer. Of course both book and movie claimed that they would come out of this alive and relatively unscathed, but Kate knew better than to rely on her knowledge these days. It hadn't warned her for the emergency exit and for all she knew it could be wrong about the back door as well. At any rate she had no ambition to find out what would happen if they lingered here any longer, but it would just so happen that these dwarves were very difficult to spur into action. Fortunately Thorin seemed to have taken her recent advice to grow himself a brain seriously.

Gandalf led them down yet another tunnel. They were descending for real, Kate could tell. It was easier to run now, even if the real challenge now was to not trip over her own feet. And really, it wasn't long before she could see light at the end of the tunnel.

And no, this was not the headlight of an oncoming train, but there was still the minor complication of goblin guards at the end of this tunnel. Thorin gave Kíli and his bow a pointed look and then beckoned towards the guards without saying as much as a word. The intent was clear though.

The guards, positioned with their backs towards the company, were wholly unsuspecting. Kíli's first arrow took out the first one and before his friend had even the chance to notice that something was amiss, he too fell to the ground with an arrow sticking out of his back, as dead as the proverbial doornail.

'That was a stroke of luck,' Fíli commented. There was a twinkle in his eyes again that had not been there while they had been the goblins' honoured guests.

But this was yet one of those occasions that proved that cheering in advance was most definitely not a wise thing to be doing. They hurried down the corridor and came into the cave that led to the back door on the other end of it. It was open, the bright light of day flooding in and Kate would almost have sighed in relief, were it not that there were at least a hundred goblins – but quite possibly a whole lot more than that – between them and said door.

'Bloody hell,' she whispered in shock.

'Mahal's hammer!' Nori agreed, a little louder, beside her.

The rest of the company just stared. They were outnumbered ten to one and Kate didn't need to see the others' faces to know that this was by no means a good thing. She had no idea what the odds had been whilst they had been fighting in the dark caves, but something told her that they had been slightly better.

'Maybe we should have…' she began softly.

But Gandalf interjected. 'Cover your eyes,' he warned.

Kate was about to ask what he meant by that, but the answer came soon enough. The light on Gandalf's staff intensified and bathed the cave in light that was as bright or brighter as the light of day. The effect was immediate: the goblins started yelping and screaming as if the wizard had been stabbing their eyes out instead of just lighting his staff up a little. But maybe for them those two things were remarkably similar. After all, Kate did remember reading about goblins having no love of daylight at all.

'Run!' Gandalf's command surely must be audible at the other side of the mountains. At least it would succeed in alerting every goblin in this blasted realm to their whereabouts.

But none of that mattered now. Because there was the door and most of the guards in front of it were crawling on the ground like a bunch of overgrown and very ugly cry-babies. And Kate ran. Nori was on her left side, cutting off several heads while he was at it, at least of those goblins who were still trying to hinder their flight. Thorin was on her other side, putting Orcrist to good use with one hand, while dragging her with him with the other. His grip on her hand was painful, but for the moment the very least of her concerns. They were so close now! Something scratched her leg, but she hardly felt it anymore. Run faster, faster! Her own thoughts were cheering her on and when she finally crossed the threshold of that bloody door, she felt like she had won the marathon.

The daylight hurt her eyes after having been in darkness for so long. It made her eyes tear and her head ache, but she felt as if the entire mountain range had just been lifted off her shoulders. They had made it out. They had made it out and they were all still alive. None of the company had stopped running yet, but the triumphant laughter she could no longer hold back.

'We did it!' she cheered, sending Thorin a brilliant smile. Who cared about his grumpy attitude when they had just outwitted a bunch of bloodthirsty goblins anyway?

And of course he had to try and dampen her high spirits. 'That we did,' he agreed. That tone would have been more appropriate at the funeral of a close relative than at a successful flight from their enemies. Bloody dwarf.

The group came finally to a halt somewhere downhill in a small clearing between some high pine trees. Everyone was panting and some of them definitely looked a bit worse for wear, but the general mood was cheerful, overly so maybe, because they had escaped and were all still alive.

It was only when the excitement began to die down that Kate finally realised they were missing someone.

From Thorin's notes: Where in Durin's name is that troublesome burglar?

So, hopefully that will have put everybody's minds at ease concerning a matter of hobbits and rings, which I have been asked questions about since chapter 16. Sometimes it just takes some time to get to a certain point.

Next time Kate's mouth is a lot quicker than her brain and that has some consequences she had not expected. Until then reviews are still more than welcome.