Fili, Kili and Billana stay in their chamber as long as they can that day, the atmosphere heavy as they wait for the inevitable. One way or another, this day or the next, they will leave the mountain to enter a battle for their lives and those of the rest of the Company. They huddle together, hardly daring to speak, as they come together for what they all fear could be the last time. Fili tries to persuade the two of them to leave, no one will notice two extra ravens around the mountain and there is still some time for them to find a safe place to go and live their lives. If the battle is won they can return, if he lives he will wait in the mountain for them, but there is no sense in all of them risking their lives, there is no sense in all of them dying. He goes silent when both Kili and Billana insist that they won't abandon him. They are in this together, all of them, they all go out to fight or none of them do. Billana doesn't say it, suspects that they have already thought the same, she simply knows that if they do not survive the coming days, she will not either.
Dwalin comes for them in the early afternoon, his expression blank but tension rolls off him in waves. Thorin wants them at the wall, he tells them, and they all exchange a long look before gathering as many of their weapons as they can easily lay their hands on. They know what is coming, what will likely await them as night falls, and they have no desire to be caught without should the inevitable happen when they are listening to Thorin's latest ravings.
"Whatever you three did," Dwalin mutters, "keep your heads down and your mouths shut. I don't want to be picking up pieces of you, or having to choose sides."
"We know," Fili tells him, "and we have no intention of asking it of you. We were just trying to find a solution."
"Is there really an army of orcs coming?" Dwalin asks softly.
"Yes," Kili replies. Dwalin sighs.
"When it gets here, you three need to stay in the mountain," he says. "I promised your Amad that I wouldn't let anything happen to the two of you."
"We can't hide in the mountain like cowards, Dwalin," Fili objects, "and we won't. Our place will be out there, with our people." Dwalin scowls at him. "This isn't a discussion we have time for, and you will be needed at uncle's side when the time comes." The guard nods brusquely, the conversation put to an end by the fact that they can see the exit onto the walls ahead of them. This is not something that Thorin will need to hear.
"Assurances have been made," She hears Thranduil yell up. "Generous ones at that. Will you not come down and speak with us? This battle cannot be won if we fail to coordinate our efforts."
"There are none here," Thorin snaps, "who would dare to defy my will. Who would have dared to give you assurance on my behalf?" Thranduil watches him silently, his raised eyebrow in an unspoken challenge and slowly Thorin turns to look at them all, eyes roaming over them until they fall upon her. "You!" He snarls. "You have done this? You have betrayed me!" He reaches for her and Fili steps forward.
"No, Uncle," he says. "It was me. I went and spoke with Thranduil on your behalf." Thorin staggers back a step.
"You?" He breathes. "You would betray me? I could believe it of Kili, he has ever been the more susceptible to lure of a pretty face, but you, my heir, you I had thought better of."
"You are changed, Uncle," Fili replies, straightening. "You are not the king we followed to the mountain. We need to prepare and we need allies. I am only doing what you taught me to do. I am doing the best thing for our people and that is to heed the warning given to us and find allies against this threat to the home we have just reclaimed. As I promised I would, a promise that you demanded of me before we even left Ered Luin."
"I asked that vow of you only if I were rendered incapable of completing such a task myself," Thorin roars.
"But you are!" Kili almost screams. "You don't see it! And the rest don't want to. Smaug's spell has changed you and Fili doesn't want to be forced to say it, but I will, you aren't fit to be king! You are the one who taught us that a king without a mind is no king at all."
Billana's breath catches in her throat as Thorin draws his sword, aiming for Kili and even though she cannot see her husband's face she thinks that he might be as stunned by this development as she is. She clutches at the dagger at her belt, the charmed stone catches the rays of sunlight in a spark of intertwined golden and midnight fire as she slams it into the stones at their feet. Thorin's sword clashes harmlessly off the shield that springs up around them, his shout of rage muted by the fire that surrounds them all even as he yells for Dwalin and Balin to take them and do what they have prevented him from doing.
"I'll not touch my daughter, Thorin," Balin tells him, "or her husbands. I'll not bear the guilt of that as well."
"Nor I," Dwalin shakes his head. "I made a promise to your sister that I mean to keep. I won't allow a scheme of yours to take her sons from her."
"Nori!" Thorin bellows.
"You where my loyalty lies, Thorin," the thief says, standing next to Dwalin. "I stopped giving my loyalties to kings a long time ago."
With every word, every sign that the Company are turning against him Thorin's face grows more pale, the golden sheen over his eyes more pronounced as the curse seems to press upon him. Fili and Kili are tense next to her, watching their uncle with expressions that she would call desperate. The sword falls from Thorin's numb fingers and only moments later he follows it, landing heavily on his knees as something dark and oily in appearance rolls over him. The entire Company take a step back, although Billana, Fili and Kili stay safe in their shielded bubble as they watch. Finally, as a raven lands on the wall, an agonised scream escapes him and the shifting darkness flows from him like water, vanishing into the stones beneath him as Thorin slumps forward. Oin catches him, the pale green of his gift already lighting up his hands.
"It's gone," the healer tells them. "Whatever the dragon did, it's gone."
"How?" Balin asks.
"We took everything from him," Fili replies. "We did the one thing that he couldn't imagine us doing and turned our backs on him." His voice is hushed, as though he is nearly in tears from how this has played out. Then he spots the raven. "Dain is here," he breathes, "I only hope he got the message."
From the lack of insults being traded in front of the mountain, Billana assumes that he has, but they don't get a chance to find out as there is the sound of another horn and the ground begins to rumble. A second raven tumbles onto the wall, this one with an arrow through its wing and its eyes glazed from pain. Just a slight touch from Billana's magic tells her that this raven cannot survive his injuries, and her own strength is too depleted to allow her to work quickly enough, even as the light of the sun is covered as though a heavy cloud has moved over it.
The orcs have arrived.
Chaos erupts at the foot of the mountain as the gathered armies of elves, Men and dwarves turn to face this greater threat. Billana can vaguely hear shouted orders and the rumble of running feet as the orcs approach and the elves move into formations that she has no words for. To the east she can see an army of dwarves thundering forwards, some on foot others riding rams and boars. The sense of the animals racing into the battle strikes her hard, the screams and calls of enemy and friendly alike, the excitement of the wargs for their feast of flesh and the determination of the rams and boars to keep their people safe. She gasps and slams down on her magic, shoving every thought and sensation from every animal out there as far away as she can, forcing her attention back to the Company who all stand frozen and caught between the desire to aid their people in the battle and not knowing what to do about Thorin who is still nearly unconscious on the floor.
It is Kili who approaches first, passing Billana's little dagger back to her with the briefest of touches to her cheek in thanks, taking his uncle from Oin's care and calling the dwarf king's name softly. Thorin stares back at him, not seeming to understand what he is seeing, then a broken noise comes from his mouth and he drags the younger prince against him. His grip must be crushing as he mutters in a low voice to his nephew, Billana's Khuzdul is still fairly rudimentary, but she knows that Thorin is apologising for his words and behaviour, begging the forgiveness that she knows Kili will give without thought. She hangs back when Fili joins them, happy that her husbands can forgive their uncle but not certain that she can do the same even though she knows that so many of his actions and thoughts were as a result of the curse Smaug had placed on him. Billana knows what it is to be scared. Being scared is what has kept her alive and relatively unharmed for years and it is not something that she can forget how to feel. That the others are happy and willing to forgive will need to be enough, it will take her time and she can only hope that her family can accept that.
"We need to be out there," Kili says finally, "others are fighting and dying for us. We cannot hide here."
"And we will not," Thorin gets to his feet, swaying a little as he issues orders to open the wall that the others have built in whatever manner they must so that the fourteen of them can join the battle.
She has no idea what difference fourteen of them could possibly make.
"Billana," Fili calls her over before she can follow the rest down the stairs. Kili waits with him, his face grave. "We need you to do something for us-"
"If you ask me to stay in this mountain, Fili," she says, "so help me, I'll-"
"We aren't asking you to stay in the mountain," Kili tells her quickly, "We're asking you to watch."
"Watch?" She asks.
"For Azog," Fili says, "for whoever it is that Gandalf thinks is working directly with 'the enemy', whoever that might be, for anything else that we might not see. Can you do that?"
It's just another way of trying to keep her out of the fighting, she knows, but she cannot refuse them, they will need to be able to focus and if staying above everything is the only way to help them do that, it is what she will have to do. She nods in agreement and Fili exhales in relief, kissing her as quickly and passionately as he can in the moments that he has before Kili does the same. It feels like a goodbye, too much like one, and tears fill her eyes as she looks at them both. She drags her little sword from her belt and hands it to Fili, it isn't much, not as big as he is used to or paired with anything, but if she is to be above them and watching then it is of no use to her at all. He takes it gravely, then both of them turn and disappear back into the mountain. She chokes down a quick sob before changing, taking a falcon's form while keeping her own voice just in case she needs to communicate with anyone.
She loses sight of Fili and Kili in the melee below quickly, although she tries to keep track of them for as long as she can, and she dedicates her time to doing as they asked and dropping on top of enemy soldiers as and when she can, raking her talons over skulls and clawing at eyes. Her efforts may not directly kill any orc or warg, but they allow others who might have died that moment to recover and survive. It seems to take hours, hours of avoiding orc and elf arrows, of wheeling away from the bats who obscure the sun and the grasping jaws of wargs, but finally she finds Gandalf, surrounded by half fallen buildings and a pile of orc corpses.
"There you are, Billana," Gandalf says. "You should not be out here, my dear."
"I couldn't stay in there," she replies, watching as four war rams make their way towards the towers on Ravenshill. Her sharp eyes can see the vast white form of Azog at the top of that tower. Abruptly she realises who must be riding those rams. "What are they thinking?" She gasps.
"Cut off the head of the snake," Gandalf muses, "although it will not the Azog's death that will end this. There is another."
"I need to be there," she says, the thought coiling in her with a desperate kind of certainty.
Gandalf doesn't stop her as she launches herself into the air. Her body is screaming with exhaustion but she pushes herself towards the hill, her focus so intent that she almost misses the dark mass of bodies that are beginning to move around the mountain. A second orc army from the north and they are moving directly towards the area that Thorin has been making for. She flies harder than she ever has in her life, wheeling desperately away from half seen arrows as she catches up to the dwarves.
Only Thorin and Dwalin are there when she reaches the top of the hill, screaming the dwarf king's name as loudly as she can.
"It's an ambush," she gasps, landing on a rocky outcrop above him. "There's another army coming this way. Where's Fili and Kili?" Because they will be with their uncle, they have to be with their uncle.
"In there," Dwalin points at the tower.
"Get them," Thorin orders, but it is too late and Billana's heart stops as she hears a dark voice bellow Thorin's name.
They turn to look at the top of the tower, see Azog stood there shouting in his vile tongue while clutching Fili by the back of his neck. The golden mage's movements are sluggish, his hair matted and blood drips slowly from an open wound on his forehead, one that must have done enough damage to fatally slow him down. The white orc's laugh is triumphant as the vile prosthesis he wears emerges from her husband's chest.
Fili falls.
Billana screams.
A.N: And this is where I dive for cover and bury myself in a bomb shelter for a couple of days... be back on Wednesday when I've finished my assignment.
This was always going to happen. I've had the end of this chapter (with a few tweaks) written since I started.
