Warning: Attempted rape.

Chapter 2

She left Bagend to Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, the Hobbitess had gone to such trouble to get her hands on the place and Bilba found that she cared for it little. The only catch was that she had to keep Holman on as gardener for as long as he wished. Knowing she would never see her childhood home again did not claw at her chest as most other things did. There was just a numb throb as she looked at the place one final time.

With her was the pony she had not been able to sell (and had paid a neighbour boy to look after most days), enough food for her journey, her mithril mail hidden under her layered clothes, some supplies she knew would be useful and needed, as well as her trusty Sting which she had strapped to her hip. She hadn't used it since she arrived in the Shire but sometimes when she found it hard to sleep after a nightmare she would go into her back garden with it in hand and run through the moves Nori, Dwalin and the Princes had shown her.

When she reached Bree, Briar had bought a Hobbit-sized room for a week at the Prancing pony. She had reached the town after nightfall and had done little but quickly eat a bowl of warm broth before falling in to bed for the night. In the morning she went to the Blacksmiths. She commissioned four Hobbit-sized hand knives as well as a set of throwing knives. She'd never had any of her own but Nori had given her lessons with his. She was alone on this journey however and she could not rely on Sting alone.

Then Briar had asked after armour. She knew little about it. The dwarrow had worn some, of course, and she'd seen the great metal suits in the mountain but she hadn't asked for a detailed explanation. The Blacksmith hadn't minded her asking questions after having put in such a large order. She inquired about light weight armour as she was fast not strong and anything too heavy would only slow her down. In the end he had agreed to make her the plates she would need and sent her to the Leather smith with a note to organise the coverings he would need to make. It seemed the two crafts-men often co-ordinated their efforts.

It took longer than a week for everything to be ready for her to leave. Her armour fit perfectly over the top of her clothes and mail, although she could tell it was the work of Men and not Dwarrow. None in Bree had noticed her a woman but the armourer, and her cloak obscured her shape even more so. To everyone she passed she looked a hobbit lad and knew that that would make her marginally safer on the road.

From there she headed for Rivendell, the Last Homely Home.

Lord Elrond had welcomed her as he had when she past through with Gandalf. They left a dress her size in the elfish style but she found herself pulling out a clean shirt and trousers from her pack instead. Maybe that was rude of her, but she couldn't find it in herself to put on the flowing gown. It reminded her too much of the time her and the dwarrow had passed through. She had put on a similar dress then and had caused a bit of a fuss with the company. When she saw it again she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

They spent most of dinner discussing elven poetry that she had read but eventually Lord Elrond asked why she was there.

"I have decided to see more of the world." Was what she ended up telling him.

Wise as the ancient elf was, he knew there was more to the story but had seemed to decide not to pry. He had agreed to store her chest of gold. She had many of the coins hidden among her person, stitched into her clothes as well as broken up into smaller purses, tricks the dwarrow, mostly Nori, had taught her. It wouldn't be safe to travel as far as she planned carrying a chest full of gold. It had been risk to transport it all the way to Rivendall by herself.

She left within a week, ignoring all of Elrond's subtle protests about her setting off on her own. She knew what she was doing was dangerous but life was dangerous and she knew as she couldn't stay any longer in the Shire neither could she live in Rivendall, for all its beauty.

Briar was on the road that would eventually lead her to Rohan. There was many miles between the two major cities but there were plenty of towns and rest stops along the way. It took her nine months before she reached the Golden Hall of The Kings of Rohan. She met quite a few people on her journey and had ended up travelling almost half of the way there with a caravan of Men and women. They taught her many new things on the road and helped her master a few skills that the company had once began teaching her.

Not that their journey was completely peaceful. They had come across two separate groups of Manish bandits as well as a band of orcs that had left many of there number wounded and many dead. She'd found that when it came to battle, men lacked the instinctive togetherness that she had seen every time the dwarrow had fought. They'd all just known where everyone was around them and how to aid their comrades. Men fought more individually.

She didn't fault the men for this, as it seemed to be inherent to dwarrow and none of the other races, but it did leave her fighting with less cover than she had experienced on the quest. She was forced to take better notice of her surroundings when in battle. Briar had learnt that the hard way.

In some ways what happened was small, when taken into consideration that she had faced a dragon and gone to war, but in other ways, it was the single scariest moment of her life. A moment that she found herself revisiting, awake and asleep, quite often for the rest of her life.

She'd only been three months out of Rivendall and had been travelling with the men for two of them, making their way south, watchful for anything coming from the mountains, when the first group of bandits had attacked from the other direction. Briar hadn't any experience attacking or being attacked while upon horseback so it wasn't a surprise that she was thrown from her seat before even managing to draw her sword, although she had managed to fling one of her throwing knives before that happened.

One of the first things she had learnt about battle was to always, always keep your feet under you. Dwalin would shout at her 'To Your Feet, To Your Feet!' every time she was knocked down whether her opponent had stopped attacking or not. Her back hit the ground hard when she fell from her horse but instinct forced her to her feet before she had really registered that she had fallen. This was lucky as she was able to move quickly out of the way of a rider-less horse that almost trampled her.

Being small, and more importantly a Hobbit, she wasn't often noticed as she moved from one fight to another, bringing her sword up to slip under armour and into the flesh beneath or slash across the backs of legs to give her allies a better chance of defeating foes. It also made her quite vulnerable when she was spotted by two men at the same time at the very edge of what had become a battleground but had previously been road with a deep ditch on one side and dense foliage on the other.

She was closer to the trees and had decided in the moment to try to use them as cover. She was partially successful. Briar's in built stealth allowed her to move unheard but it was unlikely they could hear her steps over the ensuing battle anyway. Still, she managed to hide behind a tree and leap out at the opportune moment to plunge her sword through her poorly armoured foe. The sound of him dying drew the attention of the other man who had followed her into the trees. She had no time to hide and no where to run as he was already too close.

She had parried his first blow as well as his second. Briar had reached for one of her knives in the hopes of plunging it into his leg above his greaves as this one was wearing chainmail. He was quicker though, as he brought up his sword again. She was barely in time to bring her sword up to deflect his blade, but the blow made her lose her balance. She fell to the side, scrambling to find her feet once more when the flat of his sword smashed down on her wrist, making her drop Sting.

With her right arm throbbing, her sword laying on the ground and no help in sight, Briar made a move born of desperation. She leapt at the man, knife in hand. He managed to dodge a half step out of the way, throwing off her aim. Instead of through his neck, her knife went over his shoulder and her whole body crashed into his sword arm, relieving him of his weapon, as while Hobbits were small they were also heavy for their size.

Then the man was on top of her, punching her in the face and slamming her non-injured wrist against the floor, forcing her grip on he knife to loosen. Once it had fell from grasp, he proceeded to wrestle and punch her when he could. She fought as well as she could, as dirty as Nori had once told her to be. She became a whirlwind of elbows, knees, teeth and over sized feet.

After landing a solid punch to the man's jaw, he spat blood in her eyes, allowing him the chance to grasp her head with both his hands and slam it down on the ground beneath them a few times. Briar's recollection after that point in the fight becomes hazy.

She knows she must have stopped fighting for at least a moment because the next thing she is aware of his the feel of hands running up and down he body while her own hands flop as she tried to weakly, ineffectually, push them away. Panic pushed through her system again as she realised that the man had realised that she was female. She remembered the shock at having her bottom and breasts groped even through all her thick layers. Two things happened as her co-ordination returned to her; he reached and began undoing the buckles on the outside of her armour, she reached for her closest hidden knife.

The man have been distracted as he moved too late as her knife pierced his jugular. Blood spurted from his throat and into her face, setting her eyes stinging and filling her mouth with the coppery taste. She doesn't stop stabbing though. She was frenzied, pushing him on to his back as she stabbed him again and again. Partially blinded by the red gore dripping from her face, Briar mostly remembered the sensations in her arms as she pulled the knife back only to rapidly push it back through the minute resistance of his skin.

Briar isn't sure how many times her knife pierced his skin. All she knew is she left quite the mess when she calmed down. Her lungs had burnt from the quick and heavy breaths she was taking and both her wrists throbbed. When she tried to get to her feet, she felt the pulled muscle in her thigh struggle to hold her up. But her head hurt the most of all.

Numbly, she limped away from the body to regain her dropped weapons. She whipped them on the body's cloak before putting them back into their sheaths. Then she threw up. By the time she made it back to the road, the battle was past and a few of her companions were vocally pleased to see her safe and sound.

Briar didn't tell anyone what had almost happened to her during the battle. She did berate herself for running into the trees, away from the others, alone. She felt it was stupid of her. Briar, and her mother before her, had travelled disguised as male Hobbits for a reason.

Apart from a new awareness and understanding, she mostly brushed the incident aside. She knew what he had been wanting but it didn't matter because he hadn't succeeded. The first time she awoke panting and sweating in fear, Briar had admonished herself. He hadn't even had the time to touch her all that much and when he had it had been through so many layers, she had hardly felt it.