The group had been walking along for about an hour when they heard what sounded like footsteps. Freezing instantly, Aragorn and the hobbits cautiously drew out their swords, while Legolas armed his bow, and Gimli readied his ax.
"My, my, what a surprise!" said a voice, and around the corner came Gandalf.
"Gandalf! It's wonderful to see you again!" Frodo cried.
"What brings you out here?" Gandalf asked the group as he walked along with them.
"We're heading for Isengard," Aragorn explained. "We fear that Bilbo and Elrond have been taken captive by Saruman."
"Saruman. Will he ever learn his lesson? I will join your party; with your leave, of course; and help you find them," Gandalf offered.
"Of course, you may come with us!" Aragorn said, which put smiles on the hobbits' faces.
"Let's pick up the pace," Gimli suggested, which they did at once.
"Where am I?" Bilbo asked himself, awakening from a long sleep due to a strange liquid Orcs had forced them to drink.
"I don't know where we are," Elrond replied, already awake and overhearing him.
Suddenly they heard a door clang, and light came in to the cold, dark room where they were.
"Enjoy your meal!" an Orc said jokingly as he roughly dropped an old wooden tray with two stale pieces of bread and glasses of water on the dirt floor and left.
"My, that looks simply scrumptious!" Bilbo said sarcastically.
"Yes, I would have to agree with you there," Elrond said. "But it is better than nothing."
"I suppose you're right," Bilbo agreed, and they ate their "meal".
Three days after meeting up with Gandalf, the company decided to send Pippin up a tree to see if he could spot any sign of Isengard being near.
"Do you see anything?" Frodo called up.
"Yes," Pippin replied. "We are very close! No more than a two hour walk is my guess."
"Wonderful!" Aragorn cried; and, once Pippin returned from the tree, they set off at an even quicker pace.
"I can see bits of Orthanc through the trees," Legolas said about an hour later.
"Then we must continue on very carefully," Gandalf warned. "Who knows what in Middle-Earth Saruman has planned this time!"
"Well, it looks to me as if he has another Orc army," Aragorn said, stooping over large tracks.
"Yes, I feared that he would," Gandalf agreed.
"So we're in Orthanc!" Bilbo said, who had been listening to Orcs talk outside the door of the room. "How long do you think we've been gone?"
"I am not certain, but my guess would be about a week and a half, knowing that it is about a week's journey just to get to Isengard from our home," Elrond replied.
He was almost exactly right in his guess. It had been ten days since the Orcs had captured them in Rivendell.
"I wonder if Frodo has received my letter," Bilbo said. "I sent him one a few days before we were taken. I feared that something evil was going to happen soon, though I couldn't explain what or why. I asked him to come to Rivendell, thinking that he could help me if anything did happen."
"You sent him a letter?" Elrond said, brightening a bit.
"Yes. Yes, I did," Bilbo replied.
"Well he most likely has received it, and he probably came to Rivendell right away! He could be coming here as we speak!" Elrond said.
In fact, at that very moment, Aragorn was stooping over the Orc tracks within sight of Orthanc.
About half an hour later, they again heard the clanging of the door to their prison.
"Are you enjoying your stay here?" Saruman asked smugly.
"Oh yes, very much so!" Bilbo replied sarcastically and with a glare.
"Glad to hear it," Saruman said with an evil grin.
"What do you want from us?" Elrond asked angrily.
"What do I want from you? I'll tell you what I want," Saruman replied, leaning into Elrond's face. "I want revenge. Not only on you, but on everyone that opposed me." Then he looked at Bilbo and said, "Especially on that filthy little Halfling you call your nephew and your friend Gandalf the fool. Everything would have gone fine if it hadn't been for them!"
"Well, I personally am quite glad everything didn't go 'fine' for you," Bilbo said, a comment that Saruman answered with a glare.
"But this time it will," he replied, "I have you for bait and the fish will soon bite."
And with that, Saruman left them to ponder what he had said.
"I suppose that means that they're coming for us, and he knows it," Elrond said.
"Yes," Bilbo agreed. "But I do hope that Frodo and whoever is with him are safe."
"I'm sure that they are," Elrond said, trying to comfort Bilbo even though he wasn't too sure to believe what he was saying or not. "He probably has Gandalf with him."
"Yes, you're most likely right," Bilbo replied, brightening a bit at the thought of Frodo having the wizard with him. Then the hobbit curled up in a corner and fell fast asleep.