The Whirlwind 3: Kíli

"Finally!"

There was a pause in the heaping tension as all in the room turned after the whispered word, their questioning eyes finding their host. In response, the Easterling raised his arms, palms up, as in an apology for the interruption. He then hopped up to sit on the edge of his desk, eyes shining back at them with evident curiosity, but lips firmly locked.

Bard was the first one to dismiss the Easterling and his strange outburst, and rounded his glare onto Uncle again. "I recognised your name from an old tapestry, Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thor, King Beneath the Mountain. You're planning to enter the dragon's lair."

Kíli's fist clamped on the disfigured hammer he was holding.

"That dragon's lair," Uncle hissed through clenched teeth, "is the home of my people. Whether we are to enter it or not, is none of your concern."

"None of our concern?" Bard repeated, an incredulous chuckle escaping him in obvious anger. "We live in the shadow of the Mountain. When you wake the dragon, where will its rage first turn to?"

Before Uncle had a chance to respond, a new voice entered the fray, soft and young. "...the bells shall ring in gladness, at the Mountain King's return, But all shall fail in sadness, the Lake will shine and burn!" The Dwarves, Men and a Hobbit spun back to the door, where Bard's son still stood, his back glued to the wood, his voice reciting as from a half forgotten memory, but growing stronger with every line. "The prophecy! Da- the prophecy speaks of this day!"

A soft huff caught Kíli's attention but when he turned his head towards their host, he found the Easterling unmoving, perched on his desk and watching the proceedings with furrowed brows.

"Aye, that song reached us even back at our home, west of the Misty Mountains," Balin spoke, his tone gentle when he addressed the young boy. "Perhaps it was the many miles and mouths it travelled, but the message as we know it was rather different, and promised a more cheerful ending. All sorrow fail at the Mountain-king's return,if I remember it correctly."

Bard's mouth twitched but he nodded, albeit reluctantly. "Aye, people sing that version, too. Ignorant, foolhardy people, blinded by greed. But there are many of us who won't ignore the warning and risk the fury of the dragon for the traitorous promise of gold and riches!"

"You say you won't risk Smaug's fury and yet, you do so every day, every hour and every minute you spend living on this lake," Uncle intoned, voice remarkably calm for the heated moment, steady with utter conviction. "If the dragon still lives, it will wake up at some point. Be it today, tomorrow or when your children have bairns of their own. And he will turn his hungry eyes at the closest meal he sees. You won't stop him by cowering in your houses, praying he slumbers forever."

Bard didn't have anything quick to say to that and Thorin used the silence, taking a deep breath to calm his voice even further before he spoke again. "Prophecies are only what one decides to take from them. Be it hope or a warning."

Through the corner of his eye, Kili saw the Easterling shifting. In the tense stillness in which the rest of the room was following the exchange, their host's unruffled reactions were all the more noticeable. He now leaned back to rest against the tapestry on the wall, his head tilted in contemplation as Uncle continued.

"But trust me, Master Bard, we don't need a warning to know what a dragon's fury brings. We remember. And yet, we dare to hope. We dare to act on our hope and take what's rightly ours."

"You are but fourteen strong. How exactly do you hopeto kill the dragon when a mountain full of Dwarves and a city full of soldiers both failed?"

Uncle didn't answer right away. Instead, he turned to Balin, his chin inclined in a query, until Balin dipped his head in silent approval.

"Our plan is not to fight the dragon, at least not right away," Uncle revealed then. "If Smaug is dead, we reclaim the Mountain and send for the rest of our people. Should he slumber still, we'll come back with an army prepared to face him in a battle."

"And what if you wake him, long before your army arrives?"

"That is the risk we shall all bear."

Bard snorted, all humour gone. "All? It will be this city that burns, whilst your people rest, save, hundreds of miles away."

"My people? My people, my kin, are right here beside me, Master Bard. It's their dear lives I'm putting in danger, and yet I see the value of doing so."

"For what? A pile of gold? Is your greed so great that you value treasures over the lives of your family?"

A ripple went through the taut wall of dwarrows. It wasn't long before violence broke out, Kili thought.

When Uncle next spoke, his voice turned ice cold. "We have lost much more than treasures when Smaug chased us from our home, bargeman. It is their chance for a future I weigh against my people's lives. Nothing less than that."

They fell silent, Uncle and the bargeman both, eyeing each other with equally unrelenting determination. Kíli shifted his weight back, wincing at the reawakening pain in his thigh, but still ready to leap into the imminent fight.

"The dragon is alive."

The words slashed through the crescending tension, their host's voice soft and unhurried. Kíli still startled at it, spinning violently towards the sound.

The Easterling sat on the edge of his desk, but now with his back ramrod straight. "He's also a rather light sleeper. I don't know what you intend to do at the Mountain, but if your steps lead anywhere close to his horde, you will wake him." He spoke clumsily as before, though that had little effect on the flat conviction in his tone.

"And what would you know of that, boy?" Dwalin snapped, but the beat of hesitation that had preceded his jab hadn't gone unnoticed. It merely confirmed what Kíli had suspected for some time - none of the Company harboured hopes that only a corpse awaited them at the Mountain.

Harry seemed unperturbed with the glares directed at him. "I travelled to the Mountain and I put my ear against the stone of your gates. Smaug's breaths... reverberate through your halls. They hitched when I knocked."

Stunned silence followed that statement. Kíli exchanged a glance with Fíli, his eyebrows involuntarily raising.

"You knocked at a sleeping dragon's door?" Bard repeated in his bewilderment. "Why ever would you do such a thing?"

A wistful smile twitched at the corner of their host's lips but Uncle latched onto Bard's question before the Easterling had a chance to answer. "Why indeed, Master Harry? Pray tell, what were you doing at Erebor's gates?"

The Easterling's own eyes hardened in reply to Thorin's glare. "I don't appreciate your... insinuation, Dwarf King. You were right—people of this town live in constant danger from the dragon. I only wished to confirm whether the threat was still real. So take your suspicions and shove them where they won't blind you to the truth of it."

Dori wheezed at the lad's audacity towards their king whilst Dwalin went straight to raising the misshapen harpoon in his hands.

Harry's eyes flicked to the readied weapon, but he carried on speaking to Thorin, seemingly unperturbed. "When I stepped to the gates, some pebbles got loose. That faint sound was enough to catch the sleeping dragon's attention. If you enter the Mountain, you will wake him."

The Easterling fell silent and Kili's eyes shifted to Uncle. Standing off to the side, he saw but a profile of Thorin's face, but he still observed it closely, watching for any clues to Thorin's thoughts. Would he trust the Man's warning? And if so, would he let it change their plans?

At last, Uncle moved, his features settling into grim determination. "Well, in that case, we'll just have to make sure our steps tread lighter than yours, Master Harry."

Uncle did not look at the Hobbit in their midst, but to Kíli and the rest of their Company, he might as well have. Kili saw Bilbo twitch under the attention that was very pointedly not aimed at him.

Kíli let his Uncle's determination wash away some of his doubts. They had a map to a secret entrance and a hobbit who had sneaked, undetected, around Elvish pointy ears in their halls for weeks. They had a chance to succeed and they would.

In front of them, the Easterling visibly deflated. "Somehow, I knew you'd say this."

With that, he turned to the bargeman, his face contorted into a grimace, as if he bit into something particularly sour. "I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but you should probably help them."

Bard, who had fallen silent for the past exchange, recoiled at that, as if physically struck. "What on all of Arda are you saying, Harry?"

"Look at them and think for a moment, Bard, my friend. They'll go to the Mountain no matter what we say or do. And I'd rather not be unconscious or tied up in my attic when they run away to wake the dragon."

Now it was Bard's turn to freeze in contemplation, scrutinizing the group in front of him. Kíli wondered what sight they made, in borrowed coats and blankets, without their beads and jewellery, hair wild and braids undone, brandishing misshapen harpoons and hammers for weapons.

An instant later, Bard closed his eyes. His whole body seemed to have gone slack, his features also collapsing with resignation. His was the face of a man who was willingly walking into a disaster. Kíli tried not to feel insulted by it.

"We're going to regret this," Bard said softly to the Easterling.

Harry nodded without hesitation. "Aye, we probably will."

The bargeman chuckled at that, the sound dry and humourless. Then he turned to face Thorin, his back once again stiff and straight. "I propose a trade, my lord."

Uncle tilted his head, listening.

"We'll help you to get your proper iron-forged weapons from the armory, and sneak you out of town. In exchange, you'll tell me how you plan to kill the dragon in case he wakes."

Uncle's brows rose but the bargeman wasn't done talking.

"I see you have plans and ideas that make you confident you'll enter and walk out of the Mountain unnoticed. By all means, trust in your secrets. But for the sake of my people, and for the sake of yours, do prepare for the eventuality that the beast wakes."

Uncle's eyes narrowed. "You would have us sit here, disclosing our plans, and let you run off to alert the guards?"

The bargeman scowled fiercely at the accusation, the Easterling sighed in exasperation but it was the boy at the door who was the first to speak up. "If you don't trust Da's word, you can keep me here as surety."

"Bain- no."

The boy finally detached his back from the door and made a wobbly step forward, his cheeks flushed under the intense scrutiny of everyone in the room, but lifting his chin, anyway. "The trust has to start somewhere, Da."

"And you would trust them with your life?"

"I- the prophecy-"

"Forget the prophecy! This isn't a song to follow, Bain. These are our lives—and the lives of your sisters—that we're risking here."

"No, Da, please listen—it has partly come true, right? The prophecy. I mean, the King Beneath the Mountain has returned. Whether it now all ends in sorrow and flames, or in joy and gold: that's for us to decide."

For a short instant, Kíli was left staring, stunned at such conviction coming from someone as young as this. His words were clumsy, aye, but they still resonated with Kíli's superstitious roots, the same way they must have impressed on the rest of the dwarves, if the moment of hushed silence was anything to go by.

Bard reached for his son, clasping his shoulder. "Where has all this wisdom come from?"

"Well, certainly not from his father," the Easterling grumbled, a soft smile playing on his lips.

The bargeman reached for him with his other hand, and managed to ruffle Harry's hair before the Easterling hastily stepped out of reach, hissing in indignation.

"We will keep the boy as surety whilst you go fetch the weapons," Uncle agreed, leveling an impatient frown at their antics. "Weapons we have already paid for. You say you propose a new trade, yet you have not made a new offer."

"My continued help, in light of the risks you failed to disclose at first, risks to my family and my friends no less, is my new offer."

"Furthermore," the Easterling spoke up, "it's not as if Bard is asking something entirely new from you, either, Thorin, son of Thrain. Don't pretend you haven't spent every night of the last hundred and seventy years thinking of how you'd exercise your vengeance. Now comes the moment to adjust the ideas to the current situation, and then tell us how we can help. That's all Bard's asking. If you need some time for that, then I'm willing to chip in, and let you stay here for as long as you must."

There was a beat of hesitation before Uncle turned to share a long look with Balin. When he next spoke, some of the fight left his voice. "We cannot linger more than a night."

"Why ever not?"

Durin's Day, it must be close, Kíli realised, chiding himself he hadn't thought to ask for the date. He'd lost count of the passing days in Mirkwood and the elven dungeons, but he was sure Balin hadn't.

That wasn't the reason Uncle offered to the Men, though. "There's a pack of Orcs on our tails. They would have traced us to the lakeshore by now. By tomorrow night, they will reach the town."

Oh. Kíli twitched, completely forgetting that minor detail. The wound complained at the abrupt movement, sending a jolt of pain up his spine. He bit his tongue to keep the groan in.

Bard stepped forward, eyes once again ablaze. "And you forgot to mention this when you stepped onto my boat?"

Uncle withstood his gaze, eyes locked with the Man. "I'm giving you the warning now."

"There's good food getting cold," Dori quickly jumped in, as the tempers started climbing once again. "Let us have dinner. We shall resume the talk after."

So they did. Ate and then talked rather a long deal, the hour growing late and then early again, the ink black of the lake behind the windows already fading with the promise of dawn before the last of them retired to bed.

Against his best efforts, Kíli slept through most of it, slipping back to consciousness only under Oin's rough ministrations, and only for short moments. He'd ask Fíli in the morning to fill in the gaps.


A/N:

A story that had made me fall in love with the dwarrows of Erebor is the amazingly written Hobbit AU

Where Wilder Hearts Roam by eveninglottie

This story made me laugh at places, and made me pause in contemplation almost as often. A great romance story between Thorin and a female Hobbit joining the Company instead of Bilbo, with the two of them taking turns telling us their story.

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(I'd like to give something back to the authors that have directly or indirectly inspired me in my own writing. At the end of my chapters, I'll be mentioning stories that I'm more than happy to recommend for your further reading)