Title: A tale about friendship, Part 26?

Author: Dís Thráinsdotter

E-mail: Overall rating: M, for violence and orctorment. This chapter: M

Summary: A group of children are told the tale of their friendship with the dwarves in general and the Folk of Durin in particular.

Warnings: The overall rating of this fic is M, as parts of it deals with violent battle and torment. There are also Original Characters in the fic, but no Mary Sues. Unbetaed, all mistakes belong to me.

Disclaimer: I don't own any one of Tolkien's characters, never have, and never will. The only ones I own are the people you have never met before.

Chapter 26, And out of them again

The children looked astonished at Gandalf and Frerin asked him "how did you get to the cavern?" Gandalf answered

"I nipped through the crack before it was closed. Then I followed the Orcs and their captives to the cavern and prepared some magic. I unleashed it on the fire and torches, slew the Orclord and told my friends to follow me. When we could make a short break I unbound all of them and they were very grateful. As Balin told you I had rescued Orcrist and gave it back to Thórin, and then we ran on. But it didn't take long before we could hear the Orcs running after us."

Balin added, "If we hadn't been running fast before we were by the time we heard them. Poor Bilbo couldn't keep up the pace, as you know we are able to run very fast when we have to, so we took turns carrying him. After all, we had to make sure that our Burglar reached the Mountain with us. But the Orcs were still gaining on us; they are able to run faster than we are, they had made those passages themselves and they were very angry. Suddenly Gandalf and Thórin fell back, and we heard Gandalf tell Thórin to draw his sword. The Orcs were running at full speed when they turned a corner and found Gandalf and Thórin waiting for them. They didn't like that the least, they cried out ´Biter and Beater´, which are their names for the swords and a number of them were slain before the rest of them fled.

When their footsteps died out we went on and it took a while before they returned to the place of the first fight. When they did they must have put soft shoes on their feet and put out their torches so they could come close to us unseen and unheard. Suddenly Dori who were again carrying Bilbo cried out in surprise and then a group of Orcs, I'm not sure of how many they were, were upon us. Gandalf and Thórin fought with their swords and the rest of us hit everything within our reach. At times it meant that we hit each other but Gandalf´s staff had gone out so we didn't see a thing. Suddenly Gandalf made a blinding flash and the Orcs ran away yelping. He told us to follow him and in the confusion we didn't have the time to make sure that everyone did, we ran until we came to a chamber with an exit going past the guards and out through the door. Then we ran down the road until we came to a small dell, covered by bushes and were able to catch our breath. It was then we found out that Bilbo was missing."

The children gasped and Thrór said "poor Bilbo, I hope that he wasn't caught by the Orcs" looking worried for him. Gandalf shook his head and answered, "fortunately he wasn't. Dori carried him when one of the Orcs grabbed Dori´s legs and tripped him. During the fight Dori had been unable to locate the Hobbit and had been certain that he had followed. We were arguing about what we should do for some time when he suddenly showed up in the dell, having avoided to be spotted by Balin."

Balin blushed and told the children "I have been standing on look-out more times than all of you have had dinner combined and no one had until then been able to creep under my very nose without being spotted. Not even a mouse had been able to do that and there Bilbo got past me unseen and unheard, and Gandalf told me what he thought about a look-out who let people run into them without warning. I had to take off my hood to him as that was very well done.

Then Bilbo told us that he had hit a rock when he fell from Dori´s shoulders and lay unconscious for a while, he didn't know how long it took for him to wake up again. When he did wake up he was in an unknown passage and he followed it until he came to a lake inside the mountain. There he had found a creature that he called ´Gollum´ who challenged him to a game of Riddles. He won that game but the creature tried to kill him. He had to run up the passage and in the dark ´Gollum´ had passed him without seeing him. He thought that Bilbo knew the way out and went to the passage in order to block it. Finally Bilbo was able to jump over him and run to the exit. There had been lots of guards there and he had been forced to dodge them. He had also lost buttons when he went through the door crack in order to get out and we could see that his waistcoat and shirt were torn. But he had made it out of the mountain and then he had been able to find us, sneak quietly and carefully past me and go down into the dell.

When he had finished his story Gandalf told us for the second time and Bilbo for the first how he had been able to rescue us. When he had finished he said that we had to go on. The Orcs would no doubt come after us and they can smell a trail for hours. Bilbo didn't sound happy when he was told how many days we had spent inside the mountains, we hadn't eaten anything for three days, but it was important for us to get away from there. ´It's better to lose supper than to become supper´ Gandalf told Bilbo and we went on down the road. After a while we came to a place where there had been a landslide and we went down into the remains of it. It didn't take long before we were in the middle of a cauldron of boulders going down the mountainside. Finally we were able to find shelter in some trees that stood on the side of the mountain. The good part of it was that the Orcs would have a hard time finding our trail among the loose stones and couldn't go down unheard. Then we turned south in order to get away from the Orcden as soon as possible. But we soon found out that we weren't out of the woods yet."

TBC