Chapter 24: To Prove Yourself

Her leg burns - burns like someone is holding a blue flame over the muscle and bones with each step. Her blades are tightly held in each hand, ready to strike in less than a moment's notice as she runs down the hill with the Dwarves, Wizard, and Hobbit. Wargs howl and growl behind them, a constant reminder that their heels are being chased. But they could never hope to outrun such a beast. It is a surprise to Gailien that she has not fallen to the back of the company already, the first to be slaughtered. But with each step, even though it burns, it also becomes numb at the same time. The pain becomes so much a part of her that to be without it seems an unsettling normal.

The wargs catch up in little time. Blood rushes to her ears as they hear the sound of flesh being cut. A slightly tingling sense crawls up her right arm and with instinct-driven nature, she changes her step, kicking off a tree to the side which launches through the air. Underneath her, where she stood less than a second ago, a large grey warg snaps its jaw up towards her. With a swift movement, while still in the air, one arm extends downwards, slicing through the beast's face.

She lands back on her feet, rolling out the momentum before sprinting again and the beast whimpers in pain – now blind. Then the edge of their path is met. A cliff, and to fall would be a terrible demise. Now they are trapped between two deadly options and the morbid thought runs through her mind – which would be quicker to die by?

"Up into the trees!" Gandalf cries. "All of you! Come on, climb! Bilbo, climb!"

With the trees as the only chance they have been given, Gailien runs towards them, Dwarves jumping up around her. A hand extends down from one of the branches in front of her and without delaying, her hand reaches to the sky to clasp it. They swing her up with her own momentum and for a moment, she is looking towards the dawning sky. Time slows as the branches still, her hair blowing behind her as her legs swing up in front of her. Then the sky disappears, replaced once again by the ground as her stomach hits the branch.

Pulling her legs over, she thanks the Dwarf. "Glad to see you still alive," she gaps out in short breathes to Fili.

"Could say the same to you," he grins.

"They're coming!" Thorin's roar calls to them. Gailien looks up as a boot falls into her vision and she is glad to find Kili sitting on the branch above them. And Bilbo's red coat is visible in the tree just in front of them. As the wargs circle them, there is no fighting below which is momentarily soothing, knowing that all the Dwarves have made it into the trees.

The wargs circle under them, surrounding but not yet attacking. Like the trained hunters they are.

Gailien is not a born fighter. She has not been training her whole life to fight in battles, nor has she mastered her own weapons. She's competent – and no more than that. Her foresight has been used to avoid conflict, the escape and use safe passages. Her body, a marred image of a half-Elf woman that knows how to swing a sword, how to take a life. But not the image of a warrior who has seen enough battle to know the taste of their enemies' blood.

So as she is circled, she does not feel pure rage fuelling her, preparing her to slaughter. No, she feels like the prey she is – being hunted. Yet the Dwarves around her, just as tall and half as young still look more like warriors than she ever will.

A white warg grazes its paws over a pointed rock, a tall pale, scarred orc sitting astride. Though she has never seen him before, tales she is told never leave her mind and the name pulsates through her head like a metal ball. Azog.

"Do you smell it?" He taunts. "The scent of fear? I remember your father reeked of it, Thorin son of Thrain." His raises his left arm which has been cut clean off above the wrist. In the place of a hand, a large metal spike has been forced through his skin before it healed. "That one is mine. Kill the others!"

Her fear for Thorin mixes with fear for herself as the wargs are given their command. They leap from the ground snapping at their feet which still dangle dangerously below them. Lower branches are easily snapped away by their jaw. Fili and Gailien stand, reaching up to the higher branch with the younger brother who pulls them up. The wargs pound at the tree trunks, clawing and tearing at the bark, even knocking its own pack mates away to be the first to taste their blood.

A few manage to climb the lower branches, even the one Fili and Gailien resided on before but they break under the weight. Weak trees. They are weak trees. That thought sends a shiver of dread through her spine as her fingers curl around the thin, pliable wood. The two princes and woman are shaken, holding to the branch above them.

Then it happens, the trunk of their tree snaps and the wargs' weight tips it backwards. Gailien half turns, watching as the next tree moves closer – or rather, they to it. The three of them leap through the air. Smaller twigs and sticks scrap against her face but her hands manage to grasp a thick enough branch. With the momentum of the fall, her body swings up and over, letting her legs wrap around the branch.

The sweet moment doesn't last long as the wargs move with the Dwarves. Around her, most of the Dwarves have been forced to the same tree, their own falling. Almost every branch has a Dwarf, Hobbit, or woman clinging to it, scrambling to get higher away from the wargs' jaws. Under all their weight and the creature's paws, their new tree begins to tip.

"Ahhh!"

Gailien screams as the tree tips at an alarming rate. The Dwarves above her are already jumping to the next - the final tree. The tree that has rooted itself on the very edge of the cliff. Every instinct in her bones is fighting against jumping to it, telling her that she'll have better odds on the ground than on that tree but she fights her own body with all her might, launching off her branch towards the final tree.

Her hands are out in front of her, searching for something to cling to and it finds a high branch. Her fingers become raw from the wood scraping at them but as with her legs and her arm, it is numbed. Hurling her elbows over the branch; she pulls herself to her feet standing next to Kili who clings to the trunk. From above them, a pinecone engulfed in flames is hurled by the wizard to the ground. With all the dry grass as fuel, it quickly lights a large fire and the beasts shy.

"Fili!"

Fili glances up at the Wizard's call, catching a flaming pinecone. Quickly, he juggles it in his hand as Bilbo lights his own. Kili catches another given by Gandalf and with one hand on the branch above, and one hand on a pinecone, Gailien lights her own from his then tosses it at a large black warg.

"Orc scum," she hisses loudly, baring her teeth.

More pinecones are thrown, fingers being slightly burnt in the process, but none take any notice or care. Then the cracking appears again. The root of the tree tips, breaking away from the dry dirt it has grown in. Gailien drops the pinecone in her hand, both hands rising to the branch above as they begin to fall backwards. With nothing underneath her, her feet slip away from the branch, dangling from her arms.

She forces her head to stay looking straight as the ground below them is too far away to survive any fall. Thorin is opposite her, in the branch what used to be below but now looks directly at her. They all cling to those branches for their lives. Kili has managed to hold onto the trunk, using a new branch as a foothold.

"Mr Gandalf!" Gailien switches her front. Dori clings to the branch, his feet hanging towards the abyss below with Ori hangs from his leg. With a swing of her legs, Gailien soars through the short space, her arms hugging the same branch as Dori. She means to pull Ori up, but Dori loses his grip.

Her throat tears in a hot agonising shriek. Her arms falter around the branch as unbearable weight tugs at her leg. Her bad leg. The leg that has already been burning now has the weight of two Dwarves clutching to it with their lives. Her cry stops but the pain doesn't. It drags her down, and if she had been only grasping the branch with her hands and fingers, all three of them would have fallen, but it is locked under her shoulders, her head struggling to stay above.

It is hard to breathe with the pain, vomit threatening to spill as nothing around her is comprehensible but the branch and the weight. She cannot even hear her name being cried out. Her eyes clench shut, loud growling whimpers the price of her efforts. To let go would mean their deaths but it would mean whatever depths of pain she is in will end and that sense of salvation is enough to make her contemplate it.

It is not until Dwalin is calling for Thorin that Gailien can even open her eyes. Thorin, in all his might, marches towards the pale orc. And then all contemplation off letting go ceases. Because that is the thing about fighting. You have to have a reason to – something more important than your own life and then you can face the impossible.

"Thorin!" His name passes her lips in a desperate attempt to call him back. To stop whatever madness of revenge courses through his veins. Because her reason is walking to his death. Running through the flames and wargs to the pale orc who smirks. Fresh hot tears stream down her face, running over her mouth and cheeks, dripping off her chin.

The warg and rider leap off the pointed rock, clawing at Thorin. The Dwarf King is forced to the ground. Beneath her, Dori's grasp slips, sending a new wave of pain. "Hold on," she pleads down to him. "Please."

Thorin stands again, bracing himself but the pale orc rides at him with a swinging mace. Gailien can't tear her eyes away, screaming once again as the mace collides with the King. The white warg leans down, clamping him between its jaws and Thorin's own screams meet her ears. It is a sound that she never wants to hear again.

There is nothing more in the world at this moment that she wants more than to put her blade through the Orc and warg. To hear their squeals. The warg tosses its head and Thorin is flung through the air, landing heavily on a stone and does not rise.

Gailien's grip falters again, her burn scraping against the wood through the bandages but she does not fall. Her reason is still there, alive so she will still fight.

Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins, the burglar-Hobbit from the Shire who really has no place being on such a quest holds his sword firmly in his right hand. His large leathery feet pound against the burnt ground before pressing off, leaping through the air and tackling the orc who has its sword raised to behead the King Under the Mountain.

With a valiant effort, the Orc is killed by his glowing blue sword, only to be met by four more wargs and their riders. Gailien's lesson pumps through his mind and he has never been more thankful for that morning. He swings it about as the wargs prowl towards him. Four against one.

The Dwarves yell mighty war cries, emerging from the high flames with their weapons and their teeth bared. Once they were cowering in the trees, now they fight with the true might of the Dwarf race. Gailien wishes to be there, fighting by the Princes' and Bilbo's side but her grip is slipping. The branch drags across her upper arms before she is forced to wrap her hand underneath it instead but even that doesn't last long.

Then she drops.

A silent gasp passes her lips as her back faces the ground, her arms reaching up to the retreating tree. Dori and Ori's screams are silenced by her mind, replaced by the wind coursing as hard as a river rapid past her ears. Then her back hits something solid. She is not greeted by death, only a feathery back of an eagle.

They soar through the air, away from the fires on the cliff but more join, Dwarves on their backs. Gailien scrunches her face, her entire right leg feeling like it has been filled with molten lava. She lies on her stomach, arms trembling and neither they nor her legs can keep her up.

"Thorin!"

Fili's cry for his uncle is heart-wrenching. Gailien drags herself forward to look past the eagle's neck. Fili and Kili share an eagle, sitting upright and unharmed. Dwalin. Bilbo. Gandalf. Dori and Ori. Balin…. And Thorin is on no eagle back, but clutched in the claws of one, his arms limply hanging.

The eagles fly for leagues over mountain and forest and if she could marvel at the view, she would. Blackness seeps around the edges of her vision from the pain but she forces herself awake. They could have been on that eagle for days but she has no sense of awareness except what her body feels.

The eagles begin circling a rock, Thorin being the first to lay down upon it, followed by Gandalf and Bilbo. Thorin lays motionless on the rocks. Gailien's eagle slowly glides down, landing near the edge. Bracing herself, Gailien slowly slides off, landing on her left leg but her right is forced to the ground to balance her. The whimper is caught by her teeth as the eagle flies away, letting the next Dwarf land. Her arms still shake, fingers twitching against her thigh as she heavily limps closer to the fallen Dwarf. Gandalf is bent over him, mumbling some spell and Thorin's eyes finally pry open.

"The Halfing?" is his first question. Gailien briefly – and with great effort – smiles to the brothers who have landed.

"It's alright. Bilbo is here," Gandalf assures. "He's quite safe." And the Hobbit is, standing opposite the Dwarves, almost perfectly fine except the emotional trauma. Thorin lifts himself up with help from Dwalin and Kili.

"You!" He growls. Gailien's partial smile drops and she has to blink rapidly – to keep the growing blackness at bay and to make sure that she is truly seeing and hearing what is coming from Thorin's mouth. "What were you doing? You nearly got yourself killed! Did I not say that you would be a burden? That you would not survive in the wild, and you had no place amongst us." If her clasp onto the last strands of reality were not slipping like silk through wet hands, Gailien would have marched forward right then and there. At first, Bilbo is hurt – shocked, by Thorin's words but submits himself in resignation. "I have never been so wrong, in all my life." A solid hiccup of a cry jumps from her lips without warning as Thorin embraces Bilbo in a well-earned hug.

The Dwarves cheer, patting each other's back. "But I'm sorry I doubted you," Thorin adds.

"No, I…I would have doubted me too," Bilbo counters in both modestly and honestly. "I'm not a hero, nor a warrior. Not even a burglar." A few Dwarves laugh as the eagles fly off.

A sudden hot flush erupts in her chest.

"And I also wish to formally apologise-" Thorin turns around to the company "-to Gailien. She has my full trust and I will not hear of any ill words spoken of her in this company." Most of the Dwarves smile – even Dori whose life would be no more without her efforts. Gailien may have also hugged Thorin, ran to him and let herself be swallowed by the fur line coat. That is, if she actually heard the words.

Gailien is staring straight ahead – at Thorin but nothing reaches her ears or her mind besides the pain in her leg and the trembling of her muscles. Thorin frowns, noting her blank look. "Gailien?" He takes a step forward.

Her eyes roll to the back of her head and without warning, she collapses to the ground.

Alright, this is the end of Part 1 - the rest will still be in this same book so as soon as Chapter 1 of P2 is ready it'll be published straight to here.