16. A Call to Arms
A/N: Jozko Mrkvicka and Realworld no Shinobi, your reviews for the last chapter were just wonderful, thank you. I'm sending you a multitude of good vibes across the sea.
Gandalf's magic obliterated the darkness, turned over the goblins' torture devices like toys, and flattened every echo in the caves until there was pure silence. The Goblin King had been knocked to his side, squashing several lackeys in the process.
Sarah took off her sunglasses and leapt to her feet as the balance between light and shadow returned.
'Take up arms,' Gandalf called to the Dwarves, who lifted their heads from the floor in a daze. 'Fight. Fight!' Any goblin who made the grave error of running to attack him was cut down like a weed.
Thorin rolled over to find his sword waiting for him in Sarah's outstretched hands. No need for words — the grins they exchanged said enough.
'Du bekar!' he yelled, rousing his kin to action.
As the Dwarves retrieved their weapons, the Goblin King dropped any further pretence of courage. 'He wields the Foe-hammer!' he cried, pointing to Gandalf's staff. 'The beater, bright as daylight!'
Sarah shook up the insect repellant again and kept as much fire between herself and the goblins as possible. She edged backwards in the direction that Gandalf had come from — that bridge went even deeper into the caves, but she realized it was going to be their only means of getting out. The Dwarves fought off the goblins with renewed vigour.
'Thorin!' Fili yelled, just in time for his uncle to turn around and raise his sword against the force of the Goblin King's sceptre. He hit back so hard that the Goblin King stumbled backwards, crashed into his own throne, and careened backwards off the platform altogether. Sarah knew it wasn't the last they'd be seeing of him, but the fall was a beautiful thing to watch all the same.
'Follow me,' Gandalf shouted, heading her way. 'Quick! Run!'
She dashed ahead with Dwalin while Gandalf ensured the rest of the Dwarves made it into the tunnel. They clattered across rope bridge after rope bridge, running single-file when the ledges grew too narrow, trying to clear the rest of Goblin Town before the other half of the kingdom figured out exactly what had just gone down.
It didn't last long — Ori made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. 'Argh! There's hundreds of them!'
'Just keep running, laddie!' Balin shouted.
Dwalin skidded to a halt when he spotted a line of goblins coming at them from the opposite direction.
'Cut it loose!' he ordered, pointing at the long wooden rail next to them. He, Bifur, Nori and Fili hauled it onto their shoulders and charged forward, working together like a rudder to slam the onslaught of goblins off either side of the walkway. Once they reached the other end, however, they realized the walkway branched off in multiple directions, and goblins were emerging from all of them.
'Christ alive,' Sarah muttered, raring her can of repellant and Miriam's lighter again. She and the Dwarves divided their focus to fight off the worst of the immediate danger.
She hadn't really had a chance to witness it until now, but the Dwarves were, every last one of them, absolutely ferocious fighters: Oin spun his flail with percussive panache, knocking goblins out like skittles, Balin wielded his sword with the skill and grace of an old-school knight, and even scholarly Ori sent a fleet of goblins to an early grave with a gigantic hammer.
Thorin was in his element, of course, mowing down goblins like nobody's business while also managing to keep an eye out for extra dangers.
'Cut the rope!' he barked, pointing to the one that secured the main structural beam beneath them. Bifur duly brought his axe down and the whole bridge sagged forward, forcing the goblins who'd tried to launch a surprise attack from above to wind up tangled in their own ropes instead.
Sarah was a little way ahead of them, and Kili just in front of her. She blasted flames into the face of anything that didn't have a beard, until the repellant ran dry and she was left holding a solitary lighter flame. The goblins nearest to her bared glistening teeth.
'Shit. Right, here we go.' Sarah unsheathed the sword Arwen had gifted her. 'We're working together,' she told the blade. 'So don't let me down.'
She didn't go out of her way to attack, opting instead to swipe in random but violent directions when the goblins got too close for comfort and hoping that the cuts she inflicted were deep enough to disarm.
Just as she got away from the worst of them, an arrow grazed her ear. 'Gah!'
She copied Kili and used the flat side of her blade as a makeshift shield against the shower of arrows. Then he found a ladder and, with her help, turned it sideways to trap the goblin archers' necks, forcing them backwards. She and Kili lunged together, using the ladder as a battering ram for as long as they could. Other Dwarves leapt down from paths above, breaking into a new sprint behind them.
'Throw it down!' Kili shouted, once they'd shaken the ladder free of goblins and clocked a large gap between the end of one cave shelf and the start of another. They tossed the ladder so it became a bridge in its own right, and hopped across the rungs to get to the other side.
Gandalf was already there, waving them over. 'Come on, quickly!'
There was so much going on at once, and so quickly, that Sarah genuinely had no idea what to expect around each bend. It was only when the company ran through more scaffolding and wound up on an unfinished section of bridge, suspended from the cave ceiling by ropes, that she remembered what was about to happen.
'Oh no,' she groaned, hoping her core strength would be enough to keep her upright as Kili cut the tie to the main ramparts, sending them all swinging vertiginously towards the other side. Don't be sick, don't be sick—
'Jump!' Thorin shouted. Bofur went first, with Sarah right behind him. The bridge section swung back the other way like a pendulum, allowing some of the goblins to leap on and start slashing at Gandalf and the remaining Dwarves. When it tilted back again, the rest of the company leapt to safety. Fili reached back and cut the suspension rope, causing the goblins on the bridge to tumble into the caverns. He barely made it onto the ledge — Kili and Thorin had to pull him in by the arms.
The Goblin tunnels seemed to go on forever, running the full gamut of the Misty Mountains. It was like the Lone-lands all over again, except this time Sarah could actually hear the sound of her own frantic breaths. They kept going, Gandalf lighting their way. Ingeniously, he used his staff to break up a rock formation overhead and send a boulder crashing down. It rolled in front of them, clearing the path of whatever goblins happened to be in the way.
Well, not "clear", exactly — Sarah avoided the goblin corpses strewn in the boulder's wake like pavement cracks. She and Kili were at the back of the group, following the others as they turned left on a sharp corner.
In her efforts not to look down, Sarah didn't see the puddle of goblin brain matter until she slipped in it and overshot her turn.
She went flying off the edge of the rock, into pitch black.
Into a rope, hanging straight down. She clasped it with all the strength in her body.
As she spiralled into the darkness, her hands burning like a motherfucker, Sarah heard Kili shout her name from above. She tightened her grip through the searing pain and finally managed to stop, her legs out in mid-air.
'Go! Kili, just go!' she shouted back. 'I'll be fine!'
How? She didn't know. But she'd have to be. She was not going to die here. Not in a world that wasn't her own, and certainly not at the bottom of a miserable goblin cave.
Her hands were on fire, and her satchel weighed her hips down like a millstone. Sarah breathed jaggedly until her mind recalibrated. Think, Stokes. Think.
She assessed her surroundings. There was a second rope beside her, a hook hanging from the end of it. At the end of her own rope: several bulky sandbags. She craned her neck up to see where the ropes led … they were on the same pulley system. Hers was a counterweight.
Sarah still had her sword in her belt. Though every muscle in her body screamed with the effort, she took the sword in one hand and used the other to hold onto the rope, leaning back and wrapping her legs around it until she was almost upside-down. Her satchel strap slid down to her neck, adding potential asphyxiation to her list of problems.
She hacked - once - twice - thrice - at the rest of the rope beneath her, sweat falling in reverse up her brow. The rope was starting to fray. She took a final swing and sliced clean through it.
The rope accelerated upwards immediately, while the second rope plunged further into the darkness. She almost dropped her sword on the way, righting herself just in time to see the ledge reappear.
Kili was still there, a one-Dwarf army against a new wave of goblins. Sarah launched herself from the rope and onto the ledge, knocking a few goblins off their feet as she rolled on her side. She kicked even more of them away, then started slicing at their Achilles tendons. When enough of them were dead to buy some getaway time, Kili pulled her to her feet and - before she could yell at him for going against her orders - they sprinted to catch up to the others.
He pointed to the distance where Gandalf, Dori and Nori were halfway across a particularly high bridge. 'There they are!'
She and Kili saw the Goblin King, hauling himself up the scaffolding beneath, before the rest of them did. They froze when he burst through the planks and faced off against Gandalf, more than twice the Wizard's size.
Knowing that Gandalf would prevail, however, Sarah rapidly turned her mind to other concerns. She and Kili wouldn't make it to the bridge in time, before it broke apart from the rest of the structure and sent the rest of the company free-falling all the way to the bottom of the mountain. How the hell were they going to catch up?
That was when she noticed a line of wooden planks propped up against the wall, and had possibly her most outlandish idea yet.
'OW!' the Goblin King screeched as Gandalf stabbed, sliced and, finally, diced him. ' … That'll do it.' He collapsed forward and, after an ominous creak, set the company's unexpected ride in motion.
'No!' Kili yelled, watching his kin hurtle out of sight.
'They'll be fine!' Sarah said, pressing a plank into his arms. In response to his bewilderment, she added, 'Gandalf's with them — they'll be fine. But we need to catch up. Now. Take this and follow my lead.'
She put her plank lengthways under the toe of her right boot. The slope down the cavern put all ski runs to shame. It was ridiculous. It was virtually impossible. It was their only option.
'I really hope this works,' she murmured, before planting her feet at both ends of the plank and tipping forward.
There was definitely no screaming on the inside now — she felt like she was going to lose her voice all over again, have it ripped right out of her.
Kili didn't hold back either. He caught up on her other side, windmilling his arms and trying to stay upright as they stone-surfed down the cavern walls faster and faster, skipping over gaps, leaning and ducking to avoid boulders and stalagmites.
Their screams got exponentially louder the closer they got to the bottom, where the company had just landed in a heap.
With thirty feet to go, Sarah's plank broke apart under her boots and she sailed through the air, slamming into a wall and landing on her side. Kili managed to skid all the way to the mountain floor before his own plank snapped in half, causing him to trip and bowl right into Sarah until they were entangled in each other's cloaks and limbs.
She stared down at him. He stared up at her. Then the fact that they were both alive hit them and they stumbled apart.
'Sarah! Kili!' Gandalf hurried over to them, wheezing. 'Are you all right?'
They each raised a thumb in response, too stunned to utter a word.
'Well … that could have been worse,' Bofur said, too soon — the Dwarves groaned as the Goblin King's corpse fell directly onto the broken ramparts.
'You've got to be joking,' Dwalin hissed, his arms trapped. Sarah ran - well, still disoriented, she zig-zagged - to help him and the others out from between the boards.
'Gandalf …' Kili said, also regaining his bearings. 'GANDALF.'
Sarah didn't need to look to know he was pointing at the unstoppable avalanche of goblins coming for them, undeterred by the gradient of the slope.
'Come on Balin, up you get,' Sarah said, hooking her arms under the elder Dwarf's own.
'There's too many,' Dwalin said, helping Ori. 'We can't fight them.'
Coming from Dwalin, that was saying something. Kili got his brother and uncle out from under the ramparts, all of them covered in rock dust.
'Only one thing will save us,' Gandalf said. 'Daylight. Come on!'