Title: A tale about friendship, Part 31?

Author: Dís Thráinsdotter

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

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 31, The Dragon attacks

"Were you happy when you left Laketown?" Dis asked Balin who answered

"I was very happy, we were going back to our home. The rest of us were also happy with the exception of Bilbo, he looked worried as I remember it." Melian nodded and said

"He told me that he had seen the Mountain and it had been frowning at him. I think he feared that the Dragon was sitting on the Mountaintop."

"What were you doing after Thórin and Co. had left?" Gandalf asked Melian who answered

"I was going back to the usual work and life returned to normal, just as the Master wished it to do. Many of my patients were curious to hear about Thórin & Co. and others asked if I thought they would be able to slay the Dragon. My grandmother, mother and I sometimes discussed what we would do when Dale could be rebuilt and Erebor had been retaken. Grandmother said that the Dragon wouldn't leave us in peace so we took the books and scrolls about healing, as well as the precious books that had gone through the family for generations to the small house on the shore where we prepared medicines. Making large amounts of medicines means having fires going through the night and the Law of Esgaroth makes it illegal to have large fires going in the city after nightfall. In a city with wooden houses one has to be careful with fires as they can spread quickly and ruin most, if not all, of the houses." Bard nodded, he remembered the signal that was blown every evening that meant that the cooking fires had to be put out.

Balin sighed at the memories and said, "We came to the meeting place that we had agreed upon with the Men bringing the ponies and after spending the night there we packed as much as possible while storing the remainder in a tent. When we came to the edge of the desolated area that Smaug had created around the Mountain both Thórin and I sighed, we remembered the flowering grooves that had been so carefully tended by the Men of Dale but now we could only see blackened stumps. Not to mention that the area was quiet, no animals could stay near the Dragon, as they would be eaten on sight. We couldn't make camp within sight of the Front Door because the Dragon would have attacked it but I, Fili, Kili and Bilbo went to take a look at it. I felt sad when I saw the ruins of Dale, so many of my childhoods happier memories were connected to the houses of Dale and they had been reduced to heaps of stones. Followed by Crows who gave us rude names we went back to the others.

Finding the back door was the first task and it took a while but Bilbo, Fili and Kili found it. Then we tried to open the door, now that I think back it seams like we had all forgotten that we needed to wait for Durins Day and then the keyhole would be revealed. When the day finally came and we found the keyhole we felt that the Mountain would soon be ours. Bilbo went into the Mountain and I followed him a bit so I could call for help if needed. He came back with a cup and we all looked at it but then Smaug woke up. The sounds of his fury were frightening and we were lucky to escape inside the mountain with most of our supplies but the ponies bolted and we didn't expect to see them again. The following night Smaug smashed the entrance to pieces and blocked the door so we couldn't get out that way. Then he left and we didn't know what happened to him for a few days."

Melian smiled when she thought about the day the Dragon had come to Esgaroth and said "that day everyone I saw spoke about the light on the Mountain that had been seen by the night guards and the meaning of it, some of them thought that it was some sort of signal fire made by the Dwarves but I wasn't sure of it. A fire has to be quite large to be seen from Esgaroth, even if one takes into account that the Mountain is quite high and can't be closed quickly so the fire growing and fading didn't make sense to me. In the evening my mother and I were making cough syrup, we knew that winter would come soon and colds would come with it so we would need large amounts of the syrup. My siblings were at home with father, which proved to be a good thing. Suddenly a fire was coming closer and at first I thought it was a forest fire but then we saw that it was the Dragon, coming in a great speed and spreading its fire around. We heard the signals that meant that the bridges had been cut and understood that we couldn't get back to the town so we decided to stay where we were. ´It is better not to be seen by Smaug, he cares not who he eats´ mother said and I agreed with her reluctantly.

So I stood in the shadow of the house and looked in the direction of the town. To see the large shape that was Smaug sometimes illuminated by his fire was a truly frightening sight. I shook when I saw the Dragon sending his fire towards the houses of the town, knowing that father and my siblings were in one of them. Even mother looked scared and that made me feel even more frightened because I thought nothing could scare her. It was a relief to see that our warriors were still there, keeping the Dragon at bay but we knew that it wouldn't last long. And it didn't, soon enough we could see houses falling to pieces sending the fire to the nearby buildings. We thought that we wouldn't see the townspeople again.

What angered me and mother was to see the Master hiding in his gilded boat, he was the one who should be in command of the defence of the city and he was abandoning it. Small wonder that so many of the warriors abandoned their posts and Smaug´s fire could spread unchecked. There was only one place in the city that was defended, we could see the arrows going up there and that told us that Bard was still in the town."

The children looked at Bard who said, "Unlike the Master I felt that I had to remain and fight Smaug. I kept my men at their posts as long as I could but when they were out of arrows I had to let them go. When I only had one arrow left I nocked it and then a Thrush came to me, telling me that Smaug had a bare patch on his chest and advised me to aim the arrow towards it. When the Dragon returned I saw the moonbeams bouncing off the diamonds on Smaugs chest and the dark patch. I sent the arrow towards that patch and it went into the Dragon, piercing the heart of the beast. The death shriek of the Dragon was the most horrible sound I had ever heard and then he fell, straight down on Esgaroth. The Dragon's body and the waves his thrashing caused destroyed what the fire hadn't destroyed. In a few seconds the town was reduced to a heap of timber on the bottom of the lake."

Melian nodded in agreement. "It was horrible to hear that sound and watch Smaug falling from the sky. Where the town had been we saw a lot of waves and then, as the waves settled, mist was gathering on the water. It was then I remembered what my grandmother had said, that the Dragon would cause grief also in his leaving. We knew for certain that Smaug was dead and we also knew that he had left grief in his wake. It took a while before the mist had dissolved and then we could see the boats on the water, filled with the better part of the population of Laketown. Some of them were injured, both from the fire and also from house beams that had been flying around. Others had been caught in the houses when the town floundered. To my relief and my mother's my father, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents were alive though some of them were scorched. We were so happy to see them that when father said to us that our house had been burned mother simply said ´houses can be rebuilt, lives can not´ and hugged him.

We were quite annoyed to hear many persons complaining that their houses had been ruined and their treasures spread about on the lake bottom, they couldn't see that the better part of the population was still alive, that the fields and cattle hadn't been damaged and the woods were still there. Mother grumbled under her breath when suddenly someone reminded the others that if everyone had remained on their posts the Dragon would have been kept at bay longer and that the Master had been the first to flee and not the last, as he should have been. Mother and I, my maternal aunts and their daughters were busy treating the injured and didn't have time to say anything but a lot of people were praising Bard and said that he should have been King of Esgaroth. The Master objected to their words but everyone showed him that they were fed up with him.

Suddenly Bard came back, he had jumped from the town into the lake at the last second and had escaped the debris that had been scattered about. Now that he was back the Master couldn't give him any foul names so he looked for the next person he could shift the blame onto, and Thórin & Co. were conveniently absent. The Master gave you all sorts of foul names and I was just about to protest against them when Bard almost caused my heart to stop." She looked at Balin and said, "He reminded us that you had probably met the Dragon first and it would be a waste of effort to curse you. I understood what he meant, that the Dragon had probably killed you all and I would have wept if I had had the time. As it was I had many patients to care for and no time for mourning. My mother saw me and told me ´don't pull your beard yet, the first tidings are seldom truthful´. So we kept working and I hoped you had escaped Smaug even if the chance was small."

Bard nodded and said to Melian "I saw that you were close to tears but I had no time to calm you, there was so much to do. There were a few small houses and shacks on the shore and they had to be used as shelter for the injured. The rest of us had to sleep outside them and this caused a lot of complaints until I told them that if they were to have the few beds that could be found the injured would have to sleep on the ground and that stopped their complaints. The Master turned everyone's attention to the Mountain and the treasure that was supposed to be found there, and I must admit that I also gave it some thought. Not because I wanted it for myself" he said with a glance to Balin and Dáin "but because I knew that with it I would be able to rebuild both Esgaroth and Dale. The Master had found a small tent that he took in order to sleep in it and some of the others also had tents, but most of us didn't have anything to sleep in other than our clothes. I had to act and did so, but always in the Master's name. The following day I sent messengers to Thranduil, telling him what had happened and asking for aid. We needed aid in order to put up huts in time for the approaching winter. As it was many fell ill during the following days, some of them from grief and others because they had been sprayed with cold water from the lake. Many of them passed away during the following months."

TBC