"Bilbo," she hurried to him as he unlatched the door, easing it open. "How -"
"Burglar, remember? Come, we must hurry – we need to free the others," he urged as she scooped up the medicine and hustled out.
"Where -"
"Below, now come on!"
He scampered off down the path and she was forced to chase after, not an especially hard task even as he took the stairs as many at a time as was advisable. He slowed after a few moments then pulled to a halt as there came elvish voices, and the pair pressed against the wall as they grew steadily louder. The blood drained from Sylven as she looked up as saw the shift of shadows as the elves on the root above their head made their way upward towards the distant sound of merry making.
"Bilbo?" she whispered, but he urged her on and they rushed further down towards the area more familiar to her. As they grew close, they heard a voice they knew.
"-nearly dawn," Bofur sighed.
"We're never going to reach the mountain, are we?" Ori said mournfully.
Bilbo walked up to the first of the many iron doors, "Not stuck in here your not."
He rattled the keys, and Thorin rushed forward to the door grinning from ear to ear. Sylven breathed in sharply as her hand burned so hot it brought tears to her eyes. She looked about half blind as the dwarves began to call out in relief, searching for Kili amongst the faces appearing at the doors.
"Shh!" Bilbo hissed. "There are guards nearby!"
He freed Thorin, then Balin, and then each of the others in turn. Sylven rushed across one of the bridges as Kili was freed, and he rushed to embrace her. She gasped in pain, murmuring, "Shoulder, Love."
"Sorry!" he bleated, pulling back in horror. His eyes went to the chest. "Where did you -"
"Come on," Dwalin urged, the dwarves beginning to meet at the base of the stairs leading back towards the gates they'd entered through.
"Not that way!" Bilbo ignored them and started heading downward. "Follow me!"
Looked passed between the company, but they followed the jingle of keys further down into the fortress as the hobbit went at an alarming pace. They continued until the trees of the fortress became roots, spreading out into a flattened area. Bilbo began to slow until they were down to a creep, edging down the stairs until they came to a room laden with leviathanic barrels and the smell of distilled spirits. He stopped, and Kili behind him paused as Bilbo eyed a pair of slumbering elves at a table, an empty jug of wine between them.
Bilbo moved forward, edging along the barrels and watching the elves as he whispered, "This way!"
Kili looked around them, and hissed. "I don't believe it! We're in their cellars!"
"You're supposed to be leading us out not further in!" Bofur snapped to Bilbo as they moved passed down a few stairs to an area dominated by a stack of smaller more human sized barrels.
"I know what I'm doing," Bilbo puffed up.
"Shh!" Bofur snuffed, going on to examine the empty barrels as all the dwarves and Sylven moved down onto the lowered area.
Kili crouched at one of the end barrels, examining the elves as Bilbo said as loud as he dared, "Now everyone, climb into the barrels!"
"Are you mad?" Dwalin grumbled. "They'll find us!"
"No, no!" Bilbo shook his head furiously. "No they won't, I promise you. Now please, please, you must trust me!"
The dwarves looked amongst themselves, discussing the plan doubtfully. "This is mad," Kili insisted. "We should go back while we -"
"Do as he says."
Thorin had only to speak, and the matter was closed. Looking grimly at the barrels, Sylven slid the box into one as the dwarves started clambering up around her. She grunted as Ori stepped on her hand, and the burning ran up the veins of her hands making her eyes water.
"Sorry!" he squeaked, disappearing bashfully into the top barrel.
"Let me help -" Kili hurried forward.
"I've got it," Sylven snapped, waving him off and forcing her hands to clasp the top of the ring. She leapt, swinging her legs in and gasping through clenched teeth as she landed inside, releasing her hold and pinning her arm to her side, shifting the box with her feet to make room as she squatted uncomfortably in the tiny space.
Bilbo appeared as he walked down the line insuring everyone was inside a barrel, counting them all quietly to himself on the way back toward the little stair. Bofur poked his head out of his barrel. "What do we do now?"
Everyone, Sylven included, moved up to look to the burglar.
Bilbo smiled faintly. "Hold your breath."
"Hold my breath?" Bofur looked to the others in disconcert. "What does that?"
Bilbo gripped the handle of a lever, and with all his might drove it downward. A loud lock latch unsealed, and the world pitched to the side thrusting Sylven over the box into the wall of the barrel with a smash. She gasped, and the world turned a blue that burned her eyes as sudden horrible cold flooded her barrel and water smashed down her throat.
Then the barrel came lurching up, and the water left in a torrent as she spat it back up and thrashed some of it out, bobbing about like a mad top in the water. She coughed pathetically, blinking blindly. A hand closed around her barrel and with a yank she pulled to a stop, the river roaring around her in limited light. She rubbed her eyes, looking around at the dimly lit cave as the other barrels bumbled and ran into each other, the dwarves gripping hold and linking up.
"Hold on to me," Balin's voice urged her and she reached out, grabbing hold of the nearest barrel so their arms crossed as he continued to hold her from being whisked away by the angry maelstrom. "Deep breaths now dear, that's the ticket."
"Sylven?" Kili called.
"I've got her," Balin promised. "Where's Bilbo?"
"He hasn't come through," Nori pointed to the wooden passage from which they'd fallen, now sealed once more.
"Do you think they've got him?" Dori asked slowly.
"Of course they haven't," Bofur snorted. "Don't be da -"
He was drowned out by a scream, and a tiny plank straight form came sliding off the wooden platform from above, splashing terrifically for one so small as he hit the water. Bilbo came thrashing up, gasping for air as Nori reached out a hand, dragging the Hobbit to his barrel.
"Well done master Baggins," Thorin said heartily, and Bilbo waved meekly from the water as Thorn released the other dwarves, waving his arm. "Go! Come on let's go!"
They began to pick up speed as each released the others, and Sylven braced herself against the wooden planks as they swirled further down the stream, towards a growing light.
"Hold on!" Thorin warned, and she took a deep breath, pressing the box to the floor. The barrel swung forward, and she couldn't contain a scream as they soared through air down a waterfall, smashing into the water once again. She forced herself up, sloshing out the water as they broke surface and continued to wheel onward, the barrels blessedly buoyant. There was no time to see the land they were passing through, beyond that there was trees above and rock around. Barrels rammed one another as they hurtled by, dragged between rocks and white rapids.
And then came the long, shrill horn they had not heard since the planes.
Sylven raised herself higher in the barrel, locking on to a set of ruin like structures built over the river, four or five elves upon it drawing their blades. One bounded up the steps, grabbing another massive wooden leaver and dragging it down.
The water snapped and hissed, and a door of iron bars drew shut with a clang of iron, sealing off the river. Thorin hit the gate first, but the barrels began gathering quickly as the company caught up. Being prepared for the impact made it easier to hide the noise of pain as she knocked against Kili.
And then there was the dreaded sound of steel shearing air, and one of the elves staggered forward, head twisting upward as an arrow speared his chest from behind. He fell forward, collapsing over the edge of the ruins and smashing into the water as up upon the gate a mutation crawled, roaring in glee and gnashing its teeth.
The elves turned to face it, but more orc came streaming in from over the other side and down from the hills around the river, climbing the walls and swallowing up the elven forces even as they moved with impossible speed and power. An orc leapt from the stone, flying through the air and smashing onto Dwalin's barrel. He roared back just as fiercly, throwing the beast off and into the water to be swept underneath them and more orcs began to rain upon them, not all killed or even weakened by their elvish prison guards.
"Get under the bridge!" Thorin ordered.
"Sylven!" Kili grabbed her barrel, swinging it round and dragging them round to so she was under the rock ruins and he was in the daylight.
"Kili no!" She reached out wildly to grab him as he looked above.
"Stay down!"
He didn't follow his own order, or his uncle. Sylven couldn't hear her own screams as Kili leapt out, jumping through the barrels passed an orc and throwing himself onto the steps of the elf gate. An orc dove for him and he ducked, grabbing it by the head and dashing it's skull against the rocks.
"Kili!" Dwalin roared, throwing the weapon of the orc he'd beaten. Kili reached out, snatching the sword from the air and opening the orc's navel with a roar so like his uncle it was as if they'd switched places. Kili continued fighting upward, Fili winding back his arm and throwing a knife into an orc pursuing his brother. Kili clashed against another at the top, severing it's head, then slashing out the legs of another attempting to leap the gate.
Sylven pulled herself out of her barrel, tumbling into his in an attempt to see. He grabbed hold of the leaver, her heart leapt into her mouth.
There was no river. No battle. No sound beyond the one she heard next.
An arrow, black from shaft to fletching, flew through the air and buried itself in his leg driving him down to one knee. He grunted, eyes flying wide in shock. Sylven screeched his name, her world turning to black. He fell onto his back, holding his leg as he struggled against the pain.
An orc descended upon him, knife in hand.
Sylven tried to rise, tried to do anything. He was out of reach. She couldn't save him, couldn't do anything. The buzzing in her body and mind was threatening to consume her.
You will suffer greater tragedy than you have ever known.
"No," her voice was hoarse, broken.
Then an arrow knocked the orc from its footing and it went wheeling over the edge of the wall. Another attempted to take it's place and Kili turned to look, but like a spirit of vengeance the brown elf who'd saved him in Mirkwood fired again and again struck true, the orc's corpse tumbling down the stairs as she turned her bow and used it to block an orc that leapt in front of her, swinging and drawing out a blade and cleaving it's head from it's shoulders, an orc roaring in their language sending a new wave after the female elf.
Kili forced himself to his feet as the world turned to light, and Sylven found air rushing into her lungs as he gripped hold of the wooden leaver once more as elves came rushing out of the woods from every direction it seemed, the orcs forced to turn and fight the full wroth of Thranduil's forces as the wood elves defended their home.
Kili reaved upon the wooden beam, and it gave way, the way creaking wide again. Syvlen and Fili grabbed the rocks and Kili's barrel, holding it between them as he collapsed again, the rest of the dwarves diving down another waterfall and down the river again.
"Kili!" Fili shouted as the orc chief gave a command.
Forcing himself to sit up, Kili threw himself over the edge.
Sylven heard the arrow snap off and gasped in horror, the barrel sloshing and smashing free of her hold as Kili was sweapt away by the current. Sylven looked back and saw the brunette staring with the same horror at her. Sylven felt a flicker of something, but then then an Orc dove onto the woman and their connection was severed. She shoved off the rocks, following the dwarves down, further down.
The trills and howls of orcs made the chaos of their progress infinitely more terrifying as the river dragged them down into the awaiting full force of their pursuers. Arrows lodged themselves in the barrels even as the water threatened to swallow them whole, and between the diving and the spinning Sylven could do nothing but cling for dear life and burry herself low. But the orcs were not the only ones here. The elves followed ever after, making no attempt to assail the dwarves but rather intent on scourging the stain upon their lands.
Sylven's barrel plunged, and she felt iron snare around her neck and drag her up as she was driven out of the water to the ricketing scree of an orc clinging to her barrel.
It'd lost it's weapon in the attempt, but it's gauntlets bit into her skin as it pulled her face so close she smelled the desiccation on it's breath. Then she was sprayed with black blood and the gauntlet was torn from her neck as the orc was ripped from her by an elvish arrow.
She turned to look, but saw only a flash of blond hair before she was driven round a bend in the river.
The elf prince continued to fly after them, and Sylven watched as he launched off the rocks and landed onto the heads of Dwalin and Dori, a foot on each of them as he drew arrow after arrow and continued to fire upon the orc host. He spinned as if made of water himself, balancing upon one foot as the river rocks drove Dori and Dwalin apart and continuing to fire. Not a single arrow missed.
He leapt off Dori and onto the shore to kick an orc off it's feet, riding it's body down a sheer in the cliff and then leaping again across the dwarf heads to the other side to attack three of the orcs, dispensing with one in a slash with the sword he'd taken from Thorin and combating against the second as the third crept upon him.
Thorin pulled his weapon over his head and then swung it forward, releasing it.
The orc went down in a wail of pain as Thorin guarded Legolas's back, the prince finishing off his opponent and firing off another arrow before he looked to the dwarf king. Sylven got one final look of him upon the rock's edge before he was swallowed up by the forest, and at last the river drove them through the last of the orc forces.
For a while they remained enslaved to the water's will, carrying them away from the sounds of battle and pursuit. But exhausted, and haunted, Sylven hunkered down within her barrel and shut her eyes, drawing within herself as she shivered in her soaked clothes, though all up and down her one arm was hot. She didn't care, not now. Kili was hurt again, and the crack as the shaft snapped off wouldn't leave her mind.
After a lifetime, she began to hear the dwarves again.
"I think we've outrun the orcs!" Bofur was rejoicing.
"Not for long, we've lost the current," Thorin said, ever the optimist.
He was right, she realized. They were no longer spinning, the river having quieted down. She forced her stiff body up, looking round.
"Bombur's half drowned!" Dwalin reported, looking back to their rosy cheeked companion who did indeed look to have taken on more weight yet.
"Make for the shore!" Thorin decided, and everyone began to paddle with their arms, heading for the rocks on the right side of the river. Sylven's weak arm make the task difficult, and most of the dwarves reached land ahead of her. Dwalin strode into the water along with Fili, the pair of them helping to drag her barrel in and pull her out. She groaned as she hit the land, laying on her back and breathing deeply as Fili fished her medicine from the bottom of the barrel.
"Here, let me look at your arm," he came over with the chest which leaked water as he moved, soggy herbs drifting out of the crack between lid and box.
"It's fine," she sat up, pulling her jacket closer over it.
"I hope you're not intending to take up theatre," Fili smirked, kneeling down. "You're bleeding all over, it's a right -"
They both jerked round as Kili let out a pained noise. He fell to one knee, pressing a cloth to his leg as Sylven and Fili scrambled up, rushing to him. His eyes were screwed shut with pain when she reached him, Fili dropping her chest beside her. Kili forced his eyes open, his face turning darkly blank. "I'm fine. It's nothing."
"On your feet," Thorin strode passed them.
"Kili's wounded," Fili held his brother's arm to keep him upright as Sylven pushed the cloth away, looking at the bleeding leg with ghostly pale skin and vivid red blood. "His leg needs binding."
"There's an orc pack on our tail," Thorin scanned the woods behind them. "We keep moving."
"He's not going anywhere until I get this tended to," Sylven pulled open her chest, taking out the damp lengths of white cloth and wringing them out.
"Go where?" Balin stepped between Thorin and Sylven as the pair began scowling at each other.
"To the mountain," Bilbo was shivering as he stepped up to Balin. "We're so close."
"A lake lies between us and that mountain," Balin groaned as he stretched his back, Sylven working as quickly as she could wrapping the cloth as tightly as she dared to Kili's leg. "And we've no way to cross it."
"So then we go round," Bilbo said simply.
"The orcs will run us down as sure as daylight," Dwalin growled, "we've no weapons to defend ourselves."
"Bind his leg," Thorin conceded, as though it were up to him at that stage in her work. "You have two minutes."
Sylven muttered mutinously under her breath, and Kili laughed as the others dispersed. "Don't take it out on the leg, please?"
"Sorry," she glowered, "Does it hurt getting yourself shot, again?"
"Sylven -"
"I think I better leave you two to this," Fili retreated despite his brother's imploring look.
"You want to be a hero?" she tied off the knot, and a vein of guilt slithered through her as pain flickered across his face. "Fine. But I'm not going to keep putting you back together waiting for the shot I can't fix. You could have died, Kili. If that elf hadn't been there, you'd have been dead."
"You think I don't know that?" he seem genuinely bewildered. "Sylven, the orcs were overrunning the gate, if we hadn't escaped they would have slaughtered us. Then we both would have been dead. I'm the fastest, I'm light on my feet. I had to be the one to go."
"Better you die than me, is that it?"
Her voice racked hollow, and she closed her fingers over her illuminated palm, drawing back. Maybe she wasn't the one with a claim to all this anger. For the first time, a different meaning to the prophecy occurred to her.
"We're alright," he pushed her hair off her face, smiling exhaustedly. "See? Everything is alright. We're so close now…"
She let him rest his forehead to her, soaking in the comfort of his warm skin.
"You can't die," she said so quietly only he could hear her. "I couldn't survive it."
"Then I won't," he tilted his head up to kiss her where he'd been leaning. His lips stiffened against her, and she felt his whole body tense. She lifted her head, following his wide eyes to a figure looming over them on a high rock, bow in hand and drawn on Ori, who was holding his boot.
Dwalin leapt between the archer and Ori, a hunk of wood in hand. He took a step towards the man and the arrow sprung loose, lodging itself in the wood and making Dwalin take a backward step as Kili leapt up, grabbing a rock from beside Sylven.
Before he could toss it, another arrow struck it from his hand, sending it flying from his hand. Kili's seemed torn between being impressed and being threatened as the man spoke. "Do it again, and your dead."
"Stop," standing Sylven raised her hands. "We've no quarrel with you."
The man considered her, and both of them hesitated. Sylven blinked, lowering her hands slightly. "You're human," she said in relief as the dark haired man lowered his bow slightly to avoid pointing it at her.
"So are you," he replied quizzically.
"Excuse me but ah," Balin cleared his throat, taking a few steps forward. The man raised his arrow again, stopping Balin in his tracks. "You're from Laketown if I'm not mistaken? That barge over there… it wouldn't be available for hire by any chance?"
Easing back to bow string gradually, the man looked from Balin to a boat sitting further downstream a ways, made small by distance. All eyes followed, and Sylven sighed in relief. This man was the first she'd seen in a very long time. It'd have been a shame to have the dwarves set upon him.