Tom. Farrimer and Bilbo merely ran after leaving the cavern. Without knowing where they were or where they needed to go, the directions they took were arbitrary. The choice as much on the grounds of the absence of dwarvish voices as any sense of direction. Where possible they took passages that looked as if they were leading upwards, though this was often misleading as well.
Eventually they were stopped by a blank wall, all three crashing into it in their blind flight. They lay, stunned and blowing like horses after a race, trying to make sense of the few noises that echoed through the tunnels to them. Until it dawned on them that those noises were becoming more scarce until they stopped altogether. Then they were left in silence and darkness.
"An' a nice pickle we're in, an' no mistake," Tom muttered under his breath.
Quiet as he said it, it was picked up in the silence and echoed around to haunt them.
"Sshh!" Bilbo hissed in alarm.
They sank into silence again until it became unbearable again.
"We need to get out of here," Farrimer declared at last struggling to his feet. "Don't know what the dwarves are doing now, but sooner or later they will come looking for us."
With reluctance the others followed him.
"Appen we ought to find some light," Tom suggested after he had tripped and skinned his knuckles for the fourth time. "They ain't put no lamps in down here."
He had a point, the tunnels they found themselves in were lacking in any form of lighting and this was puzzling all of them. For until now there had always been at least the occaisional torch on a bracket and they had been sure they had followed those in their earlier flight.
"Perhaps we went the wrong way?" Bilbo offered hopefully, "An' come into tunnels they don't use anymore, bound to be some. They had problems in some shafts remember?"
It was a comforting thought to put minds to rest, though they were helped little by the occaisional pillar that blocked their way as they stumbled forward. Finally Farrimer found an extinguished torch still in its place upon the wall and after a some minutes, Tom and Bilbo managed to persuade it into life.
The fluttering light revealed a bewildering scene. The pillar that had blocked their way before turned out to be a white statue of a dwarf in mid-flight. So life like they could make out the individual hairs of the dwarf's beard, Farrimer fingered it to check and the hair crumbled at his touch.
Bilbo, spotting another torch in a bracket, took it, intending to fire this from the one that Tom was holding, except that this also crumbled as he pulled it form its place.
"Well this is odd!" Farrimer voiced all their opinions.
Forward progress now proved to be less painful, but no less slow, with the help of the light. The passages they followed playing host to dwarf statues in various poses, some gripping axes standing ready to strike out, others obviously in open flight, whilst most just looked surprised or puzzled. Tom attempted to light more torches as they came upon them, but the whitened torches refused to fire, even under the heat of his own flame.
Nor did the light help them find a tunnel they recognised. They continued to wander until a noise brought them up short.
It had been a small noise, perhaps the sound of a pebble on the stone floor, but in the hitherto silent mine it was out of place. They felt the felt pricking of a hidden sixth sense again as they turned this way and that trying to identify the source. It came again, this time they at least realised from which direction, from behind them. Somebody was following them.
They pushed forward again, ears straining for the sounds of their follower. The noises were small, but more evident.
From the shadows, Bilbo and Farrimer were grabbed and pulled bodily into a side tunnel. Tom, at the front, carrying the torch, spun in alarm at their strangled cries, to have it knocked from his hand. It flared briefly as it struck the floor for him to catch sight of a white faced dwarf, then he to was bundled.
"Leave it to go out!"The dwarf hissed in his ear when he struggled. "Or they'll find us. Now run!"
The three Hobbits stumbled after their new captors as well as they could, often stumbling to be pulled to their feet again by rough hands on their collars. All that seemed to be certain was they were heading upwards.
Just as suddenly they were brought to a halt again and pinned firmly against the wall.
"What..!" Farrimer began indignantly, only for a hand to be clamped across his mouth.
From ahead there was the noise of stone sliding upon stone.
They listened in dread until it faded, then they were pushed forward again.
Finally they were brought to a much easier stop and there was the sound of a heavy door being shut behind them.
"Kalath, light a lantern!" The command uttered aloud, startled the Hobbits and they stood silently as in the darkness a match flared and was introduced to a candle.
In the dim light that followed they could see that they were in a store room, crates stacked neatly against the walls, whilst their captors were a company of six dwarves. One of whom Bilbo recognised as Nain, one of their earlier captors.
"We are safe for a while here," Nain declared. "I think they haven't searched here yet and I think it has a wound to lick. The others we can handle. Now we eat and drink a little and plan our escape."
From the rear of the store the dwarves produced dried meats and weak beer. The Hobbit's realising that they had neither eaten or drunk for more than a day, sat and chewed thankfully as they listened to Nain's tale.
Nain and his small band had been working in Shaft Eight, a very old working that sank many tens of feet below the one that the Hobbits had been sent to act as rescue party in. They had not heard the alarm or the panic and had merely returned to the main halls at the end of their shift as normal. To be met by white statues similar to those that the Hobbits had seen.
Alarmed they had headed for the entrance, but their wits had been sharp enough to spot the white mist snuff out the remaining torches and pass out through the portal. Before they could follow it, it careered back again, overwhelming one of their party, before they had gathered the wits to run. And run they did, though the mist had chosen not to follow them, merely to head into the darkest and deepest corners of the mine.
After a little while, Nain and his small troop had regained their wits enough to try and make their way back to the entrance again. To find it blocked. What formed the blockage, Nain seemed unable to bring himself to explain properly. It was rock of a type, he admitted, but insisted that they were alive, if not living and they had been forced to flee again. Again whatever it was had not pursued for long. But others of their kind had followed them periodically and it was one of these that the Hobbits had been rescued from earlier.
To his story the Hobbits added their own.
Whatever they had discovered in the Mithril cavern had all but scoured the mine of living things, with just their small band left to hide.
They speculated for a short while about what may have forced the mist to return so hurriedly, before they settled to rest as well as they could, always straining for noises at the door.
