9. The Howl of the Wild

A/N: Back for more? Well, you're in luck: there's plenty still to come. Thanks again to Jozko Mrkvicka for reviewing! Pull up a reading nook and settle in ...

'Thieves! Fire! Murder!'

Sarah had never quite understood why Radagast opened with those of all words, but he knew how to make an entrance, she had to give him that. He pulled the reins on his Rhosgobel rabbits and came to a swift halt.

'It's Radagast the Brown!' Gandalf sighed, pleasantly surprised and confused. The Dwarves sheathed their weapons, on edge after their brush with death, not to mention sleeplessness. 'What on earth are you doing here?'

'I was looking for you, Gandalf. Something's wrong. Terribly wrong. I—' Radagast interrupted himself to stare over Gandalf's shoulder, right at Sarah. 'I … oh my. Oh my goodness. But …' He stepped towards her as if she were behind a glass cabinet. 'I don't believe it. It cannot be. And yet—'

'And yet it is,' Gandalf supplied. 'Yes, Radagast, may I introduce our very own strange lander: Miss Sarah Stokes.'

'Eru bless me,' the small Wizard said, bowing at the knee. 'Never in all my years did I think I would meet a strange lander. My lady ...' He peered up at her eyes. As if he were reading them. 'What a world you have wandered from. A woman of the year twenty-twenty, imagine that.'

Sarah raised her eyebrows. He really was sharper than he seemed. How the hell had he landed on the exact year she'd come from?

The longer he looked, the colder she felt. She didn't like the thought that there was something in her eyes she couldn't perceive, but he could. Radagast pulled back a little, his face overcome with sadness.

'Oh my dear. The things you have seen, in such a short lifetime. Things no one should ever witness, and yet so many of your generation already have.' He took another step back. 'I am so sorry. So terribly sorry.'

Everyone except the Wizards looked mystified. Sarah recognized this peculiar feeling: she felt … seen.

Gandalf cleared his throat. 'Radagast, are you going to tell me what is so urgent that you have travelled all the way from the Greenwood at such speed?'

'Ah, yes,' Radagast said, coming back down from Earth to Middle Earth. 'Sorry. Goodness gracious, all sorts of new developments today. Come, let us speak in private.' He glanced around at Dwarves as if he'd only just noticed they were there. 'If the rest of you good folk don't mind.'

The Dwarves held up their hands, quite content to let the Wizards go off to the side. Sarah shook off her shock and tied her hair back as calmly as she could — it wouldn't be long until the warg pack crashed their party and they all had to run like hell.

'Funny little Wizard, isn't he,' Bombur said. 'You'd have thought he'd be tall like Mister Gandalf.'

'Was that bird muck on his hat?' Bofur frowned.

'What did he mean?' Bilbo turned to Sarah. 'When he said, "the things you've seen". What things?'

The others waited for her to respond. Sarah wasn't sure if she was more tired or wired. She flipped to the most recent page in her sketchbook without adding anything new:

'It's a long story. Too long. Ah. Right.'

'Twenty-twenty,' Kili said, wide-eyed. 'As in, the year two thousand and twenty? So you haven't just travelled through worlds, but through time as well?'

Sarah vaguely considered taking a stab at explaining the haphazard chronology of human history, how the years stretched both backwards and forwards via BC and AD, but decided against it. She put her sketchbook away and looked in the Wizards' direction. Radagast hadn't pulled out the Witch-King's blade yet. They still had time. Ori wandered up the hillside to check on the ponies.

'Next meal stop,' Nori yawned, leaning on his ax, 'let's make time for a nap, yeah? I'm knackered.'

'I'm with you there, laddie,' Balin agreed, resting on a tree stump.

'What did you find in the cave, Uncle?' Fili asked, wandering over to admire Thorin's new sword. The Dwarves talked amongst themselves and tried to stay awake.

Bilbo approached Radagast's rabbits and cautiously petted one of them. They came all the way up to his elbow, as if someone had taken a regular rabbit and supersized it.

'Quite sweet, aren't they.' He encouraged Sarah to come and look. They made a kind of purring noise under her palm, their heads both silky and rough, like straw. It made her think of all the dogs on Hampstead Heath in their little jackets, begging to be petted. She'd missed this too.

And then the howling started. It twisted the air, instantly snapping everyone out of their languor.

Bilbo shot up like a meerkat. 'Was that a wolf? Are there wolves out here?'

'Wolves?' Bofur said. 'No, that is not a wolf.'

Just as the words left his mouth Sarah saw the warg at the top of the hillside, preparing to leap. Up this close, it was huge. She pointed frantically: OH MY GOD!

Bofur ducked just in time to avoid being shredded under the warg's claws — Thorin didn't hesitate to spear it with his sword. Then, in a move Sarah couldn't help but find extremely attractive even under the circumstances, Kili nocked an arrow faster than she could blink and shot down a second warg.

'Warg scouts,' Thorin said, his sword already dark with blood. 'Which means an Orc pack is not far behind.'

'Orc pack?' Bilbo said.

'Who did you tell about your quest?' Gandalf said urgently. 'Beyond your kin?'

'No one,' Thorin said.

'Who did you tell?!'

'No one, I swear! What in Durin's name is going on?'

'You are being hunted.'

'We have to get out of here,' Dwalin said.

'We can't!' Ori cried, running down from the hilltop. 'We have no ponies — they bolted!'

Bilbo looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up.

'We'll have to run,' Gloin said.

'I'll draw them off,' Radagast said.

'These are Gundabad wargs,' Gandalf snapped. 'They will outrun you.'

'These are Rhosgobel rabbits!' Radagast countered archly. 'I'd like to see them try.'

As Radagast mounted his sledge, Thorin moved towards Bilbo and Sarah. 'Will you be able to keep up?'

Yes, Sarah mouthed, as Bilbo said, 'What other choice do we have?'

'Quite,' Thorin said. They gave Radagast a flying head start before he rallied the company to start running.

Sarah began at the back with Bilbo, resisting the temptation to sprint too soon and drain her energy. They leapt over fallen trees and weathered scratches from branches until they emerged from the forest into very open, very exposed scrubland, sporadic rock clusters and brush their only source of cover. Sarah kept her satchel close to her side and gave silent thanks that it was the only thing she had to lug around — the others had all manner of packs, bedrolls, weapons, and coats (and in Bilbo's case, a walking stick) to bear.

Don't think, Sarah told herself, just run. Just run. Breathe and run. You're just running through the countryside, and there are dogs yapping in the distance. Massive dogs. Massive attack dogs bred to be as fast and aggressive as possible and oh Jesus Christ, she was in way over her head. She'd never been so indebted to her past self for running regularly, even before the pandemic. Without her stamina, she'd be a goner.

But why oh why did she have to run in jeans. Why.

With Gandalf steering them and Thorin keeping a constant head count, they stopped and started, stopped and started, making a break for it when they ran out of rock to hide behind. Sarah could only guess that all this extra energy was a combination of adrenaline and that bizarre surge of restlessness that comes from staying up twenty-four hours in a row. Her boots pounded the earth, picking up speed until she was at the front of the pack with Gandalf, Thorin and Dwalin.

Radagast managed to distract the Orc pack for a while, but one of them eventually clocked that they were being led on a wild rabbit chase, and broke off to sniff them out.

Sarah threw herself beneath a cliff face along with the others, flattening herself against it with Bifur on one side and Bilbo on the other. Her lungs were on fire but, mercifully, her ragged breaths were mute. With Dwalin's arm over him like a seatbelt, Bilbo clasped a cold, sweaty hand around Sarah's and held on tight. She squeezed it back, the two of them in white-knuckled solidarity.

Thorin listened to the warg scout's movements above, then nodded to Kili, whose arrow was already drawn. He took a breath and stepped out at the perfect moment to shoot the warg off the clifftop. Bifur and Dwalin lurched forward with their axes and finished the job, both on the beast and the Orc, with terrifying efficiency. Faintly, they all heard the Orc leader call out in their horrible language, followed by a cacophony of warg howls — they needed to move.

'Run!' Gandalf shouted, as if they needed to be told twice. The company hurtled down the slope, into even more exposed land. They couldn't stop anywhere now, they just had to keep going.

Though no one could hear it, Sarah was screaming between every breath. She prayed the adrenaline would last long enough for them to reach the secret entrance to the Hidden Valley, and that her knees wouldn't give out before then.

'There's more coming!' Kili shouted.

'Kili, shoot them!' Thorin shouted back. Sarah watched Gandalf change direction and speed up even more — the old man could move. He'd found the entrance: a large rock, still a ways off.

'We're surrounded!' Fili yelled, sword at the ready but unsure where to point it first. Kili shot another Orc off its warg. 'Where's Gandalf?'

Oh shit, where was he? Sarah had only looked away for a second, but that had been long enough for Gandalf to disappear into the rock. At least, she thought it was that rock. Or was it that one? Oh great. Now she'd have to wait with her nerve-shredding fear until he called for them.

'He's abandoned us!' Dwalin shouted. The Orcs were closing in on them, poised to fight, snarling with glee. The stuff of actual nightmares. Gandalf come on, Sarah thought. Please. In your own fucking time.

'Hold your ground!' Thorin yelled.

Fili backed up towards Sarah, sword raised parallel to his face. 'Stay close.'

'This way, you fools!' Gandalf called. Sarah was so glad to see him she could have killed him.