Winter made good on its threat a little before daybreak. The sky began to peel and then to flake, sifting steady snow across the Mountain. The early light that grew behind the clouds brought no revelation to the valley; the swirls came thick and fast, hiding Dale from view. Kili was on the wall, heart cold in his throat. It wasn't his turn to keep the watch, but that didn't matter to him anymore. He simply couldn't stand to be anywhere else. Even if there hadn't been a pair of armies to be concerned about, he wouldn't have gone inside. Erebor was soured for him. The very smell and taste of it was toxic on his tongue. Worse than that was Thorin, though—he couldn't bear to see him mad with treasure-lust. On this sleepless night he had thought much of his uncle as he remembered him at home in Ered Luin. Proud and stern, of course, but wise and noble too, a dwarf of honorable purpose. Kili wondered how his mother would react if she could see her brother now. With shame? With wrath? With sorrow? Likely all of the above. It was Thorin who had greatest need of Dis's runestone now, the token that lay in Tauriel's keeping . . . come back to me.

Kili felt a sudden stab of guilt. He'd just thought of the Blue Mountains, and not of Erebor, as home.

"Do you see that, lad?" Bofur's lilt startled Kili out of his guilt-trip. "Or are my eyes playing tricks on me again?"

Kili followed his sightline out beyond the wall. At first he couldn't see anything but the ever-weaving tapestry of snow. But as his eyes adjusted, they began to show him something else: an undercoat of gold beneath the blizzard. It was getting brighter, moving closer to them.

"It's no trick," he said beneath his breath. "It's Thranduil."

Bofur bruised their ears with a curse, then turned and fled down the stairs, almost losing his hat in the process. Kili could hear him rousing the others, spreading the ill news as fast as he could. The siege would be, it seemed, short-lived. The Elves would end it now.

They came like phantoms in the snow, beaten gold and fearless-faced. In the midst of them rode Thranduil on an elk whose antlers were wider than Kili was twice tall. He, of all of them, was clad in silver, his long hair like December moonlight on his shoulders. Bard was on his white horse beside him, dark and grim against the storm. They knew something the dwarves did not—Kili could tell from their expressions. His first thought was that it had to do with Dáin, but if that was the case, why then did they look so smug?

The dwarves were flooding silently onto the parapet. Kili felt something brush his arm and turned to see Bilbo staring at the army with a peculiar mix of dread and determination. But he had only a moment to wonder at why the hobbit didn't look more surprised before Thorin ascended the stairs. There was fire in his blood—Kili could see it sparking, livid, in his eyes. He seized the wall with shaking hands, glowering down at Bard and Thranduil as they issued from the ranks and rode forward, up the steps to where the Front Gate would once have overshadowed them. Now there was only the wall.

"If you have come again to bargain with me," Thorin boomed, "then you have come in vain. Do you not know the meaning of the word siege? You find me now as you did yesterday, when you began it. My mind does not change with one rising and one setting of the sun."

"Not your mind, perhaps," said Thranduil, reins held politely in both hands, "but night alters many things of greater worth. Winds of fortune change, and blow to different lands."

"Speak plainly," Thorin said, "or do not speak at all. So long as you remain unwelcome on my threshold, I will not treat with you."

"Indeed?" replied the Elvenking. "Then there is nothing that can sway your heart, if not your mind?"

Kili's skin was crawling now. Thranduil knew the answer to that question—so why was he asking it again?

"Nothing," Thorin said. "Nothing that you or your faithless friends could offer me."

Thranduil turned his head almost imperceptibly towards Bard. The former bargeman slipped his hands inside the pocket at his breast. "Not even this?" he said, and held aloft the Arkenstone of Thráin.

For all that Kili had imagined it, he was unprepared. He had seen many stones of mighty value, sparkling ore, gems that rivaled summer dawns for splendor, minerals like shadows on the ocean floor—but never had he witnessed anything that could compare to this. The Arkenstone was snow-light leaping from Bard's hand, was winter dreaming of the fallen spring, was the moon without a sky. It was the heart carved out of the bosom of the Mountain, beating bright within the gathering storm. It was a beauty to behold, a thirst to be quenched, a desire to be sated.

"The Arkenstone," breathed Thorin. Kili glanced across Bilbo to see his uncle's face ravaged with awe and disbelief. He shook his head. "No," he said. "No."

Fili was beside him, fighting a losing battle against his wrath. "Thieves!" he cried. The beads in his beard were trembling. "How came you by the heirloom of our house?"

"We are not thieves," said Bard. He held the Arkenstone as casually as he might have held an apple. "This was a gift to us freely given. And yours it may be again, in exchange for what we claim as our own."

"No," Thorin repeated. "No, it is some trick. The Arkenstone is inside these halls. It has never left the Mountain! Go back to where you came from, lords. False trinkets cannot sway my mind or heart."

Even as his uncle spoke Kili knew he was wrong; this was the Arkenstone, the seed of Thorin's discontent. But he didn't understand. How could it be possible?

Bilbo cleared his throat. "It's no trick, Thorin." He looked like he was going to be sick. "It is the Arkenstone. I know, because I gave it to them."

Kili's blood stopped pumping through his veins. The world itself seemed to slow around him; even the snow faltered as it drifted down. Everybody looked toward Bilbo, who took two precautionary steps away from Thorin, back pressed against Kili's shoulder. The King under the Mountain turned, in awful majesty, to face the hobbit. He was utterly betrayed.

"You?" he said, cheeks pale as chalk. "You would steal from me?"

Bilbo smiled then, a nervous, equivocating smile. "No," he said, in a tea-and-biscuits voice. "No, no, no. No. I may be a burglar, but I like to think I'm an honest one."

Thorin's fingers curled into fists. "So it was honesty that compelled you into treachery?"

"No treachery," Bilbo said. "I took the Arkenstone as my fourteenth share, that's all. I'm willing to let it stand against my claim."

Kili's blood had started moving again, but it felt like it was going in the opposite direction now. He was painfully aware of the hundreds of Elven eyes upon them.

At Bilbo's words Thorin's temper broke. "You have no claim over me, you miserable hobbit!" he shouted. "You—you—you undersized burglar!"

And with that he charged him. He seized Bilbo by the shoulders and began to rattle him wildly, as if to shake the skin right off his bones. The other dwarves stirred in alarm, but no one moved to interfere, having no beginning of an idea what they would do if they tried.

"Durin's beard!" cried Thorin. "By Durin's beard I curse you, and that wretched wizard Gandalf! I rue the day I ever met him! Would that he were here so I could show him just what I make of his choices. And as for you, Master Baggins, I will cast you from this wall! May you be sundered!" He grasped Bilbo by the collar and heaved him up against the parapet. But before he could do as he promised, a voice rolled like thunder from the ground below, and the air itself darkened.

"Stay your foolish hand, Thorin Oakenshield! You wished for Gandalf, and here he is! If you don't like my choice of burglars, you may give him back to me, but if he isn't exactly how you found him in Bag End, we will really have a quarrel then! Now let him go, and remember yourself."

Thorin had frozen at the sight of the wizard in his familiar gray raiment emerging from the army. Later Kili would wonder if Gandalf's words had magic in them, because Thorin's hands sprang open, and Bilbo slid from his grasp.

But he did not answer right away; instead Gandalf went on. "You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain," he said, stepping up between Thranduil and Bard. "Firing arrows at neighbors and threatening hobbits! Hmph. I should never have let you out of my sight."

Whatever spell Gandalf had cast on Thorin dissipated. "And I should have known better than to enter it! From the day we met at Bree I should have known your mind. You are all of you in league! Was this your plan all the way from the Shire? To rob me of my birthright and then to bleed me dry with it?"

"No one has stolen anything from anyone," said Gandalf calmly. "At least, nothing that no one deserved to have stolen from them."

The dwarves were quiet a moment as they puzzled over this. Bilbo began to creep stealthily away from Thorin. Bard seized the lull to speak his piece, the Arkenstone still resting in his hand.

"We have no wish for your bloodshed, and your birthright we will gladly return," he said. Beside him, Thranduil looked on with what appeared to be mild interest. "For one-fourteenth share of the treasure. Bilbo's share, as he has agreed to it."

"Bilbo Baggins forfeited his share when he turned his coat against me!" Thorin roared. He rounded on the hobbit with a mind to knock him about again, but Bilbo was already safely out of reach, the other dwarves hastening him to the end of the wall. Thorin trembled with anger when he saw Bofur helping him over the side and onto a rope that draped down to the ground below. "Begone then!" he said. "You have the armor of Durin's folk upon you, but not their blessing. Go quickly, ere I sting your loathsome feet! Never again—never again will I have any dealings with wizards or their Shire-rat friends. Begone!"

"Come now, Thorin." Gandalf sounded more like a schoolteacher scolding a delinquent student than a powerful wizard attempting a negotiation. "Is this how you wish to begin your rule? Slavering, squatting on your pile of gold like a particularly ugly dragon? You are better than the last King under the Mountain, or else I thought you were. Put aside your pride. No one wanted it to come to this, but no one wants a great many things, and yet here we are."

Bard had waited long enough. He tucked the Arkenstone back inside his coat as Bilbo scrambled down the rope to safety. "Thorin," he said urgently. "The time has come. Will you have peace, or war?"

The answer came not from Thorin's lips but from over the eastern ridge: the high, plaintive wail of bagpipes, blazing through the snow. Every head of every dwarf, Elf, man, and wizard turned toward the sound. Kili's throat pulled tight when he glimpsed the figures on the ridge, the unmistakable shapes of many, many dwarves all clad in plate and mail. A single rider went before them astride a tremendous pig, a hammer hefted in one hand. Kili didn't need to recognize him to know who it was.

"Ironfoot," Gandalf murmured.

Thorin smiled. "I will have war," he said.

For Dáin had come.


Tauriel had seen it all from Dale. She had remained behind when the Elven-host moved out, a decision which had not come easily. But even with the Arkenstone she could not have stood with Thranduil, nor with Bard—she could not have waited helplessly while wanton enemies were made. Not without speaking her mind, that is, and she had a feeling that her mind, when spoken, would only make matters worse.

Instead she had spent the last several hours busying herself among the Lake-towners who had come north with them, refugees who could not be parted from the would-be soldiers in their families, and those who looked for warmer lodging here than they had had at the lake. Tauriel had found plenty to do building better shelters and working with Sigrid amongst the ill and wounded. Bard's family had come with him, and despite their tender years had quickly been accepted as de facto leaders in the camp. Tauriel's respect for them grew daily, as did her friendship with them.

She was helping one of Tilda's friends when they heard the pipes. The drone rose up like a smoke-curl from the chimney of the east. All of Dale fell still when it sang. Tauriel heard her heart thump once, painful in her chest, and then go silent as it listened. The pipes trilled again. Orcs? she thought blindly. From the east? Orcs do not play pipes . . .

Then she realized. The elleth leapt up and raced faster than her thoughts for the battlements of Dale. The perimeter was manned by those people of Lake-town who had taken up arms in theoretical defense of the city, as well as a small contingent of Elves which Thranduil had left behind under his son's command. Legolas was already there when Tauriel arrived, peering out at the eastern spur of the Mountain. The host that lined the ridge was no rabble of Gundabad, no force from Dol Guldur or Moria. They were dwarves.

Theirs was a formidable army, a silhouette of steel. Her eyes made out their armaments from a distance: merciless hauberks, fine silver mail, two-handed mattocks, broadswords, shields, iron helms and iron shoes. A small cavalry on rams followed at the rear. Tauriel was exceedingly confident in the skill of her people, but she had to admit the dwarves would make brutal opponents. Which, she supposed darkly, was exactly what they intended to be. Kili had never mentioned anything about other dwarves, and neither had Bilbo when he visited Dale last night, but she had to assume that they had come on Thorin's behalf, to help secure the Mountain. But if they wished to defend it they would have to reach it first, and scores of Mirkwood Elves lay between them and that goal—Elves who would not simply step aside. If what the newcomers wanted was a fight, Tauriel knew Thranduil would be only too happy to give it to them.

Snow caught and melted in her eyelashes. Tauriel watched as the dwarf at the head of the column urged his pig down the hill. The Elven-host turned in one fluid, golden motion towards the threat; she could see the soldiers parting like grass as Thranduil and Bard moved on elk and horseback through the ranks. The moaning of the pipes faded to a memory as the three leaders met upon the plain, keeping a safe distance between them. Tauriel could not hear the words that passed between them then, but she could imagine them, and they filled her up with fear redoubled.

What can we do? The thought echoed in her mind, answerless. No, not answerless—hopeless. For the answer was nothing. If Thorin had sent for these dwarves, then he had sealed his fate, and so had Thranduil, and so had Bard, by being there. They had all chosen to stand precisely where they were, armed with weapons and hatred and petty, petty greed, and nothing that Tauriel, exile and sometimes dwarf-friend, could say or do would stop them.

Were those tears in her eyes, or was it snowmelt? She could not tell.

"My lord Legolas!" An Elf named Eglanion, who had once been under Tauriel's command in the guard, came running up to the prince. Legolas tore his gaze from the spectacle below to look at him. The ellon's face was white. "My lord," he gasped. "The scouts you ordered to the west have just returned."

"What did they find?" Legolas demanded. "How close are the Orcs?"

"They are here," said Tauriel before Eglanion could reply. At the mention of the west she had turned to face it, and had seen what any woman could see—no Elf vision required. By "here" she meant Ravenhill, the ruined guard-tower west and slightly north of Dale. A strange contraption had been built upon it, several poles with what looked to be wings attached to them, controlled by means of clever ropes. A group of pale-skinned Orcs manipulated them, shifting the wings into a deliberate configuration. In front of it all, gazing out across the battlefield, stood the largest of their number. He looked like Bolg but not so wild; he was possessed of a cold and vicious authority, a calculated bloodlust, more frightening than any reckless savagery. A long, gleaming blade protruded from the end of his interrupted arm, leaving no doubt in Tauriel's mind as to who he was.

"Azog the Defiler," she said softly.

Then a horn-blast rocked the valley, ugly and deep-throated, like the roots of the Mountain groaning underneath the earth. It felt like a summons for all fell things to come forth, and come forth all fell things did. They spilled over the southwestern spur in a deluge: great Orcs of Gundabad, snarling Wargs with riders and without, trolls and other monsters beyond name, machines of war and goblins scattering like beetles on all fours. Tauriel had never seen so many Orcs in one place, and though she was accustomed to the sight and feel of killing them, she had never pictured them in this kind of organization. To her mind Orcs were packs of trespassers easily dispatched with only half a dozen archers, not a massive army that answered to one voice.

"My lord?" said Eglanion when the horn-blast died away. The Elves and Lake-towners were stirring, the sparks of panic kindling amongst them. "What are your orders?"

Down in the valley, the dwarf-host was on the move. Their leader urged them down the eastern slope, curving around the Elves to take up a defensive formation at the mouth of the valley. Tauriel could hear their armor clanking into place as they built an iron wall with their bodies and barbed it with long-limbed pikes. It was imposing, but it would not be enough. Thranduil's host behind them had not moved an inch. And would they not? Tauriel glanced at Legolas, throat burning with anticipation. His jaw was set.

"We defend the city," he said. "Eglanion, take command of the main gate. Keep the causeway clear. I do not know whether Dale will come under assault, or the Orcs will focus on the Mountain, but we must be ready for any outcome. I will take archers to the western wall and thin their ranks as I can."

"I am going with you," Tauriel said at once.

"Of course you are," he said, surprising her. He smiled. "Surely you did not think I would let you stay behind a second time? I need my hunting partner at my side, Tauriel. Now come. We have Orcs to kill."


Wow...the influx of follows and reviews since the last update has been crazy amazing. I am so lucky to have such awesome readers and I promise you I cherish every single one of your reviews! It's great to hear about your opinions and interest in where this story is going. Hopefully I'll be able to write an ending that will make the majority of you happy; alas all of you would be impossible haha. I'm going to write the ending my heart needs, I think. I hope you all made it through the holidays and that you're recovering from BotFA...I'll do my best to help if you're not :) Happy reading!

Love, Quill