17. The Sun Almost Rises

A/N: Welcome back, reader friends. Many many many thanks to Nasagurl, nimacu, Freya's Dragon, and Jozko Mrkvicka for your superb reviews. Now, a quick logistical note about this chapter - as far as the film adaptation of An Unexpected Journey goes, the timekeeping in this part of the story makes no goddamn sense to me. It's supposed to be the middle of the night when the company falls into the mountain, and then by the time they get out it's somehow the evening of the next day? Which would mean they're captured/running for about sixteen hours? Feel free to offer your own solutions to this puzzle, but as far as I'm concerned, all of this actually unfolds over two to four hours. Everyone on board? Sweet. Let's go.

Sarah felt like her knees would never forgive her after this. The lowermost tunnel was grey with darkness, but at least now they were running in a straight line.

'I can't see a thing!' Dori cried, prompting Gandalf to light up his staff.

'Not long now — can you taste it? The air?'

He was right: they skidded around a final bend and ran towards cool, crisp air. Sarah had never been so ecstatic to see the murky, witching-hour grey of night in her life. She couldn't tell if the tears springing from her eyes were from joy, exhaustion, cold, or all three.

She didn't stop running through the spruces and fir trees, didn't even slow down, until the others did. Only then did she fall against a rock and gasp for breath.

As Gandalf conducted a head count using his staff as a lamp, Sarah heard footsteps come to a stop beside her.

'You came back.' Kili stared at her as if coming out of the tunnels had lifted a veil from his eyes. 'You came back.'

She was off the forest floor, spinning in a circle. He was spinning her. He was hugging her.

When he put her down again, Sarah wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. Smoke and spices. Warmth. Everything.

Though the embrace couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, time seemed to bend around them, carving out a place where the rest of Middle Earth ceased to exist. The only thing that brought Sarah back was a sudden patch of heat on her cheekbone.

Kili stepped away abruptly, eyes wide. Sarah stared right back, her fingertips gravitating towards the spot where he'd kissed her.

She giggled, not even caring how silly it sounded. She was once again grateful for the cover of darkness — no one seemed to have noticed their little reunion. Well, no one except Fili, whose typically inscrutable face had stretched itself into dropped-jaw surprise.

Stunned by his own actions, Kili started to ramble: 'I'm sorry. I … I was just so happy to see you and I got a bit carried away and ... a lot just happened, and we all nearly died at least three times and … well. You did it first.'

Sarah took a much-needed sip of water, made tricky by the fact that she physically couldn't stop smiling.

'And Bombur, that makes fourteen,' Gandalf said triumphantly. Then he realized who was missing. 'Where's Bilbo? Where is our Hobbit?'

The Dwarves' faces fell. They glanced around, squinting through the dark, calling Bilbo's name even as it dawned on them that they hadn't seen him in a long while.

'Where is our Hobbit?!' Gandalf repeated, searching their faces. Sarah couldn't convey anything to him while the others were around. She kept her jaw shut tight.

'Curse that Halfling!' Gloin said. 'Now he's lost? I thought he was with Dori!'

'Don't blame me!' Dori protested.

'When did you last see him?' Gandalf asked.

'I think I saw him slip away when they first collared us,' Nori said uneasily.

'Well what happened, exactly?' Gandalf said, stricken. 'Tell me!'

It's going to be fine, Sarah reminded herself. Bilbo was already here, they just couldn't see him. Let their worry play out, it won't last long … still, it was painful to watch Thorin's expression turn bitter.

'I'll tell you what happened,' he said, likely casting his mind back to Bilbo's premature farewell at the mouth of the cave. 'Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it. He's thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door. We will not be seeing our Hobbit again. He is long gone.'

Sarah thought the tense silence would never end. Then, to her and Gandalf's visible relief, said Hobbit stepped out from behind one of the trees.

'No, he isn't.'

'Bilbo Baggins,' Gandalf sighed, his fear melting into joy. 'I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life.'

'Bilbo!' Kili exclaimed. 'We'd given you up!'

'How on earth did you get past the goblins?' Fili said, incredulous.

'How indeed …' Dwalin said.

Sarah watched Bilbo stall with nervous laughter as, subtly, under the cover of shadows, he slipped the One Ring into his waistcoat pocket. Incredible, really, how many catastrophes could be traced back to such a tiny object.

'Well, what does it matter,' Gandalf said loudly. Sarah wondered if he knew that she knew that he knew. 'He's back!'

'It matters. I want to know,' Thorin said. To say Bilbo looked apprehensive would be putting it mildly. 'Why did you come back?'

Though he probably hadn't even intended it, Bilbo's position atop a flat rock elevated him to everyone else's height. For the first time since they'd set off from the Shire, he was holding his head high.

'Look, I know you doubt me,' he said to Thorin. 'I know … I know you always have. And you're right, I often think of Bag End. I miss my books. And my armchair. And my garden. See, that's where I belong. That's home.'

Sarah had heard his speech before, knew exactly where it was going … and yet his words wrapped tight around her heart with a new kind of force. The sky was beginning to turn — not light enough for birdsong, but clear enough for Bilbo to look out across all their faces.

'And that's why I came back: because you don't have one. A home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can.'

There was a change in the air — the Dwarves retreated into themselves, suddenly quite overcome with emotion. Even Dwalin softened his grip on his axes. Bilbo and Thorin shared a smile of newfound understanding.

Then the Hobbit glanced towards the back of the group, further down the mountainside. 'Sarah?' He hopped off the rock and hurried towards her, grinning in disbelief. 'Sarah!'

For a second neither of them were sure quite what to do. But then Sarah, still riding the long-overdue oxytocin high from Kili's embrace, knelt down and put her arms around Bilbo. He seemed only too glad to reciprocate.

'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You came back? When? How? Why?'

Sarah pulled back from him and stood. The Dwarves had turned towards her as well — like Kili, they'd been so swept up in the chaos of their escape that they needed a moment to register she was actually standing there for real, and hadn't just been some kind of collective hallucination. Sarah glanced at Gandalf; after everything they'd just been through, they both looked ready to descend into fits of laughter.

'It's a long story,' she finally said to Bilbo. 'I'll tell you later.'

He pointed, head turning rapidly between her and the company. 'Your voice! Her voice! When did—'

'Oh hell.' Sarah backed away with an arm raised in horror to the slope far above them. She was so overtired, so dehydrated, that she'd forgotten just how soon after their escape that Azog and his Orc pack would descend on the company. 'I mean seriously.'

'Out of the frying pan,' Thorin said, summoning more endurance from somewhere.

'And into the fire,' Gandalf groaned. The wargs began tearing down the mountain, their howls cutting all forest quiet to shreds. 'Run. RUN!'

At least this time it was all literally downhill. Cold air rushed past Sarah's ears as she slalomed around trees, on the lookout for when the slope would suddenly turn into a perilous cliff edge. The trees began to thin out and the sky, glittering with a last layer of stars, opened up before them. Behind her, a couple of the wargs' growls died on the wind as Bilbo, Dwalin and Ori managed to slay them mid-pounce.

'Up into the trees!' Gandalf shouted, coming to a halt with her near the cliff edge. 'All of you! Come, Sarah, climb! Bilbo, hurry and climb!'

As the others launched themselves into the trees, Sarah remembered that they would all end up crashing into the same one — she didn't want to risk jumping between branches and slipping, so she made straight for the furthest tree.

'They're coming!' Thorin shouted.

She hadn't climbed a tree since she was a kid, but she tried to get past the mental block by pretending she was on Hampstead Heath again, where the leafy floors were lined with mighty oaks and sycamores, just waiting to be explored. She swung her legs up, then her arms, and found footholds wherever she could. She refused to look down until she was almost at the very top.

JESUS CHRIST THIS WAS HIGH. Sarah held onto the trunk and tried not to think about how soon this was all going to go sideways, in every sense of the word.

Gandalf stopped a few branches below her. As soon as he saw just what they were up against, he coaxed the first moth that flew by and whispered to it. He was summoning the Eagles.

'Good man, good plan,' Sarah said under her breath. He couldn't have done it sooner: she looked down at the unmistakable, bone-white profile of Azog the Defiler. The staggering height of her tree branch was suddenly a blessing.

One tree ahead of them, Thorin was frozen in place.

'Azog.'

The Orc taunted him in Gundabad Orkish, enjoying every guttural word.

'It cannot be …'

Azog gave his orders, and the rest of the wargs leapt at the trees. They weren't built to climb, but their back legs had plenty of fight in them, as did their dagger-sharp teeth. The Dwarves in the higher branches lunged to pull up anyone hanging off the lower branches.

When the wargs figured out that they weren't going to be able to sink their jaws into the company this way, they changed tack. The beasts rammed into one of the trunks and clawed at the bark, until the first tree swayed, then crashed into the next one, and the one behind that, so swiftly that Bilbo and the Dwarves had all but two seconds to fling themselves into the last tree standing. Sarah drew a sharp breath as the trunk rattled and creaked beneath her. Dori and Ori wound up just above Gandalf, their voices quaking as much as their limbs.

The wargs flashed even more teeth, glaring up at the tantalizing prospect of a victory feast. Gandalf reached to twist a pinecone off a branch; Sarah followed suit, using Miriam's lighter to do the work of his magic. She balanced three in the crook of her arm. After a full season of dry summer heat, they lit up easily.

'Dori! Ori!' They looked up in time to catch a cone each. Further below, Fili, Bilbo and Kili threw their makeshift grenades at the wargs, until a line of flames cut them off from the company. The Dwarves cheered.

'Yeah!' Ori punched the air. 'Take that, you filthy— OHHHH ERU!'

Sarah gasped as the sky tilted above her. The tree couldn't take all of them at once: it creaked and buckled off the side of the cliff like broccoli under steam. Climbing to the highest point on the tree suddenly didn't seem like such a smart idea after all. Sarah kept her arms locked around her branch and her legs around the trunk, point-blank refusing to look anywhere but the sky. The tree rocked and bounced for a second before stilling.

'Mister Gandalf! Aah!'

Dori and Ori slipped almost straight away — Gandalf only just managed to extend his staff in time for Dori to grab on. Ori, hyperventilating like it was an Olympic sport, had nothing to hold on to but his cousin's leg. He stared at the landscape below, the trees so tiny they looked like buds.

'Ori!' Sarah called, forcing herself to look down — if only as far as his face. 'Ori, look at me. You look at me right now!'

He did, eyes gleaming with panic.

'That's it. Keep looking at me. Breathe. Slowly. Hey, I said look at me. Ori, it's going to be okay. It's all going to be okay. Just hold on.'

'As if … we have a … choice!' Dori winced. He was one of the strongest in the company, but even he was struggling to bear the weight of an entire Dwarf on one foot. Sarah was fighting to hold herself up too, plus her satchel and sword.

The tree shifted. For a sickening moment she thought she'd tipped the balance of the tree into a premature tumble, but when she peered down the horizontal trunk she saw him. Thorin, on his feet, sword drawn, looking - there was really no other way to describe it - metal as fuck. He charged his old enemy with a lone war cry, going up against both Azog and his white warg.

Sarah couldn't bear to look as the Orc's club caught Thorin on the chin, or to hear his agonized yells as the warg clamped its jaw around his arm. She was too far up the tree to move …

But that didn't matter, because she opened her eyes again just in time to watch Bilbo stand tall and draw his own blade, shining blue like the encroaching dawn.

'Go on Bilbo,' Sarah said, though he was too far away to hear. 'Knock 'em dead.'

He unleashed his own war cry and left any vestiges of respectability behind on the tree, slaying a warg and the Orc riding it. Emboldened by his example, Fili, Kili and Dwalin forced themselves up and off the tree, offering a united front before Bilbo could be overpowered.

Just as the Hobbit was tossed to one side and came dangerously close to skidding off the cliff altogether, Sarah heard the most glorious sound.

'The Eagles,' she whispered. She threw her head back and rejoiced: 'The Eagles are here!'

Dori's grip finally gave out — he and Ori were the first to fall from the tree, hollering all the way down … and the first to be rescued, landing on an Eagle's back like a giant mattress.

Sarah searched the skies for a ride of her own. How was this supposed to work, exactly? Should she wait for one to come to her or - dear God - take a leap of faith, like Gandalf shortly would? She held on to the tree in a pretzel shape for another minute, but when her shoulders felt like they were going to dislocate themselves in tandem, she had her answer. She let go.

Falling from that height was nowhere as near as fast as she'd imagined it would be. It wasn't like falling at all. It was more like sinking. Sinking into an ocean of air.

Then her spine collided with something both hard and soft. 'OOF.' She rolled over and just about managed to get a hold of her saviour's neck. 'Oh, oh thank you! Thank you your … Eagleness!'

The gigantic bird swooped around the cliff edge and cast a shadow over the Orcs and their remaining wargs. Other Eagles crossed their path, alternating between shoving wargs off the mountain and collecting bewildered Dwarves in their talons.

'No no no no no—' Bilbo screamed as an Eagle swept him off the cliff before catching him on its back.

Sarah's Eagle descended towards Thorin, now lying unconscious near a boulder, and gently scooped him up in its talons before rising into the dawn.