Chapter Five: Hruo

'How long will this journey take exactly?' Bilbo asked about a week after they had left Bree. They had ridden a while in the dark, and now were making camp for the night. 'Because I do have a gardener, but he often forgets to water the geraniums, so if I'm gone longer than a couple of weeks I –'

'It might be a bit longer than that, laddie,' Balin said. Azshar could almost hear Thorin's eye roll ten yards away from.

'Weren't you listening at your party?' Kíli asked. 'Didn't you see the map?'

'Oh dear,' Bilbo sighed.

'We're in the Trollshaws by now, aren't we?' Dori asked.

'Yes,' Thorin said. 'Our progress has been good.'

Azshar patted Winnie on the nose as she draped her tether over a tree branch. The ponies all needed to be properly tied up, but Winnie tended to stay right where Azshar left her, straying only a little to find better grass.

'Do you hear that, Winnie?' Azshar murmured. 'We've made good progress.'

'Do all elves talk to horses, or is that just an Azshar thing?' Ori wondered aloud.

'All elves do it,' Gandalf replied.

'She makes better conversation than the rest of you do,' Azshar declared, turning away from Winnie and putting her hands on her hips. 'Now is someone going to set a fire, or should I get my horse to do that too?'

'We're on it,' Glóin called. Beside him, Óin narrowed his eyes at her. Azshar smiled.

'I'm off for a walk,' Gandalf declared, getting to his feet.

Dori frowned. 'What? Why?'

'To look ahead, my dear friend. To see what I can see.'

'It's too dark to see anything at all by now,' Bifur grumbled.

'We'll keep some dinner hot for you,' Balin said good naturedly, and Gandalf disappeared into the trees.

They were camping in a clearing a little way off the road they'd been following east. It was a pretty place, so far as Azshar could tell in the dark – green and mossy, bushes with sweet-smelling white flowers and the sound of a trickling stream somewhere nearby. Óin and Glóin, who were always in charge of lighting our fires, had set a spot in the middle of the clearing, and soon smoke started to spiral upwards.

'Hey!' came a cry through the trees. 'Come look at this!'

It was Fíli's voice, Azshar thought, and she crossed the clearing and went into the bush, in the vague direction of where the cry had come from. She heard heavy footsteps behind her and glanced back to see Thorin following.

'Do I have the pleasure of your company because you don't trust me, or because you want to see whatever they've found?' she asked archly. Thorin scowled.

'Those aren't mutually exclusive options,' he said flatly, pushing past her and plunging into the trees. 'Fíli! Where are you?'

Azshar sighed and followed him, her footsteps making a lot less sound than his. After a minute or so, they emerged into another clearing – one that she could tell was man-made, not natural. At its centre was a structure that looked like it might have once been a house, but now its wood was rotting and decrepit, and its roof fallen in. It looked eerie in the half-light of the crescent moon.

It was like a dead animal, Azshar thought. It had been left here to decompose. She shivered.

Fíli and Kíli were picking their way through the wreckage, kicking fallen planks of wood aside. When they moved a particularly large beam with a thud, a flock of starlings flew out of the chimney, twittering frantically. Kíli looked up as Thorin and Azshar approached.

'Looks like there was a woodsman living here, not too long ago,' he said. 'There are a few broken plates where the kitchen might have been, and a bed frame over there.'

'He probably just abandoned the place,' Thorin said, studying it with his lips pursed. 'Two or three weeks ago, perhaps. Perhaps a month.'

Azshar frowned, the foreboding feeling rising. There was a smell in the air she didn't like, a smell of something rotten. Something didn't feel right about the whole situation, but she couldn't put her finger on it…

'Oh, look at this!' Fíli said, emptying a small wooden box out onto the floor. 'What are these? Toys?'

Something twisted in Azshar's gut, and she made her way over. There were a handful of small wooden trinkets on the ground at Fíli's feet, and she could just make them out through the darkness – a little horse with wheels, a wooden man with arms on hinges so they could swing back and forth…

'I don't like this,' she said. 'We should head back.'

Thorin totally ignored her, and Kíli huffed. 'What's the harm? The owner clearly won't be coming back any time soon, and the others will save us some supper.' He bent and picked up the horse. 'Look at this. Definitely not dwarven make, our toys are a lot finer.'

Pieces began fitting themselves together in Azshar's mind, and her heart began to beat a little faster. 'Kíli…'

'Can't have been just a woodman then,' Fíli said, unworried. 'He might have had a wife and child here too.'

'Thorin,' Azshar said, turning to face him.

He gave her his I'm not rolling my eyes right now but only to be polite look. 'If you're afraid of the dark, go back to camp.'

'No, there's something not right about –'

He was already looking away, gazing upward at the damaged roof with vague interest. She pushed down the urge to growl in frustration and snapped at him instead. 'Thorin, listen to me!' The three of them stilled, and Thorin turned back to face her. She'd crossed a line, she could see that in the way his face settled into stone, but what she had to say was more important. 'This place wasn't abandoned.'

'How's that?' Kíli asked cautiously, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

'For starters, where's the door?' she asked.

'It's…' Fíli frowned, looking at the empty doorframe.

'It's over there,' she said flatly, pointing fifteen metres away to where it lay splintered and half covered in dirt. 'Ripped clean off its hinges, not by accident, but by… something. There's an axe lying on the ground over there, instead of by the woodpile. Why? Because someone was trying to fight something off.'

'Oh,' Kíli said softly, his eyes widening.

'This house wasn't abandoned,' she said softly, 'because the parents wouldn't have left behind their baby.'

Thorin frowned. 'What do you…'

She nodded at the crib which was tucked against the decrepit far wall, half cloaked by shadows. 'Check it.'

Fíli and Kíli both edged towards the crib, both leaned over it to see what Azshar already knew was in there. They both sucked in a breath and recoiled.

'Mahal have mercy,' Fíli muttered. 'We should bury it.'

'What could have done something like this?' Kíli said. 'Bandits?'

'There are no other bodies,' Azshar said, glancing around the clearing, 'and the door was flung further than any man, elf or dwarf could have thrown it. This is something else.'

'What then?' Thorin asked. Azshar glanced over at him; his hand was hovering by his axe, his jaw clenched. She shrugged.

'We're in the Trollshaws, aren't we?'

'We have to warn the others,' Kíli gasped, and the four of them were out of there at a run. Azshar led the way, able to see better in the dark than the others, and soon they were back at the campsite, and…

It was empty.

'Dwalin!' Thorin roared. 'Glóin! Dori! Bombur!'

There was no reply, except for a rustling behind them. They spun as a group, weapons drawn and teeth bared – but it was just a wet-eyed Bilbo emerging on his hands and knees from under a bush.

'They're gone,' he gasped, pointing into the trees. 'All gone!'

'Come on!' Thorin shouted, and he, Fíli and Kíli sprinted away, crashing through the undergrowth. Azshar turned back to Bilbo.

'What happened?'

'I – I saw them all – there were – they came and –'

The little hobbit's eyes were wild, so Azshar seized him by the shoulders and fixed him with a hard stare. 'Bilbo.'

'I – yes?'

'Look at me.' He did, after a couple of seconds, and she nodded. 'Now take a nice, deep breath.' He breathed in shakily, and then out.

'Good,' she said, squeezing his shoulders gently. 'Now, what happened?'

'Trolls, I think,' he said. 'Three of them – they're absolutely enormous, Azshar, and they took all the Dwarves. They – we tried to put up a fight, but we weren't ready, and now they're all in bags and going to be eaten for supper!'

'Very well,' she said, and she let go of Bilbo. 'Stay here, alright?'

She didn't wait to see that he'd understood, but took off in the same direction Fíli, Kíli and Thorin had gone. It wasn't hard to track them, even in the middle of the night; the dwarves had crashed through the underbrush.

Soon the tracks became a path of wonton destruction. Trolls, she thought grimly. This quest wasn't going to plan, and they hadn't even reached the Misty Mountains.

It wasn't long before Azshar could hear – or more accurately, smell her target. It was a foul, rancid smell and she had to force herself not to retch as she silently approached.

'…haven't ate dwarf before,' she heard a deep, powerful voice rumble.

'Yes we have, you idiot,' another replied. 'That day when it were raining!'

'That weren't no dwarf,' a third grumbled. 'That were only a small man!'

She could see three huge, looming shadows silhouetted by the orange light of a big fire. She crept closer and straightened up, standing behind a tree so they wouldn't see her. There were the trolls – three giants with grey, leathery skin, covered in giant warts and with ugly sneers on their ugly faces.

Azshar felt oddly calm, considering what she was up against. Her hands were steady, and her head was clear and alert. Carefully, she peered out from behind the tree, trying to catch sight of the dwarves.

She soon did. They had been bagged and were lying in a row on the ground like freshly caught fish. Some of the bags were writhing about, and some of them were ominously still. Azshar squinted. There were ten bags there, meaning that –

'Game's up, you bastards!' Fíli roared as he, Thorin and Kíli leapt out of the trees, axes brandished and teeth bared. They were a fearsome sight, Azshar thought, but the trolls didn't seem to agree.

'More of them!' one cried.

'Dessert!' said another, and then they each simply scooped up a dwarf in their enormous hands. Kíli's troll flicked him on the head with his free hand, and Kíli went limp. Azshar gasped sharply and crouched lower behind the bushes, clapping her hand over her mouth. The trolls bagged the last three dwarves and tossed them on the ground with the others.

She tried to think. Thorin's rescue hadn't worked; in fact, it had done the exact opposite of work, and as a result there were now thirteen bagged dwarves about to be roasted alive. She had to do something, and she had to act soon.

Quietly as she could, Azshar slid backwards and then ran at a crouch around the clearing, trying to remain unnoticed by the trolls. They were settling around the fire again, and one of them had a long stick – or a felled tree – with which he was prodding any of the bags that wiggled.

'I'm starved,' one of the trolls said.

'Fire's not hot enough yet,' the fattest one replied.

'I wonder what dwarves taste like,' said the third – the ugliest, Azshar decided. He had warts on the back of his head.

'We've ate them before!' said the small one.

'No we never!' said the warty one.

'We did, you booby! The day it were raining!'

'It rains all the time!'

'Shut up, both of you,' the fat one said, getting to its feet. 'I'm going to get more wood for the fire.' Behind him, Azshar silently pulled herself up into the branches of a tree and began climbing.

'I'll help William,' the warty one chimed in, and they lumbered out of the clearing, leaving the smallest troll alone. She could still hear them thumping through the trees a little way away.

The last troll sighed heavily and rested his chin on his hand. Azshar watched him out of the corner of her eye as she climbed higher. The branches of the tree were getting thinner and bending under her weight as she ascended, but she didn't stop. The plan she had was rocky at best, but she needed to get as high as she could.

The troll sighed again, glancing down at the dwarves. A few of the bags were writhing as the dwarves inside them tried to figure out how to escape, but it was hopeless; the bags were tied at the top with tight knots. The trolls had obviously perfected their craft.

After a few more seconds, Azshar was as high as she trusted herself to go without falling to her death. There was a stiff breeze blowing, and she forced herself to relax as the tree swayed with her in it. With the other two trolls gone, she had an opportunity she hadn't expected. Carefully, she drew her sword, gripping a branch for balance with her other hand. She took a deep breath.

'Hey!' she yelled into the clearing. The dwarves stilled in their bags, and the troll frowned, looking around.

'Who was that?' he asked, bewildered. Her heart began beating faster.

'It was me,' she called. 'Up here!'

He stood up and spun, squinting into the dark until he found her perched in the tree.

'What are you?'

'Your worst nightmare,' she shouted back, gripping her sword tighter as he took a step towards her.

'Are you tasty?'

She thought for a second. 'At the very least, I'm better tasting than those dwarves you have.'

He took a second and third step closer, and then he was in range. She exhaled sharply, bracing herself.

'Then I'll eat you,' he decided.

And just as he started to reach up for her, she leapt. She sailed through the air, landing precariously on his bald head. The troll roared in fury, but before he had time to reach up and knock her off, she lunged forward and plunged her sword into his eye, as deeply as she could.

The troll bellowed, and she hung on to her sword for dear life as he bucked and whirled. Soon, his movements got clumsier and slower, and his roars of pain weaker as she hung from his face by her sword. Her arms started to burn, but it was a long way to drop. She gritted her teeth and held on.

'Azshar, is that you?' she heard Thorin's voice call, but the only reply she could give was a wordless shout as the troll staggered once, twice, and then fell to the ground face-first – with her trapped beneath him.

The weight was unimaginable. Azshar's legs were trapped under his chest, and her torso lay awkwardly underneath his hairy neck. For a second, blind terror washed over her; it felt like the cave, like the way she'd been crushed for years on end.

Panic took her. Her breaths came shorter and shorter, and under the troll's weight, her entire body tensed painfully. Lights drifted in front of her eyes, and she groaned through clenched teeth.

'Azshar! Azshar, are you there?' came a shout.

'Thorin?' she croaked, sucking in a shaking breath. Her dizziness abated a little, and she went limp under the troll, concentrating on pulling in deep, slow breaths.

But then she heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming closer and closer. The other two trolls, she realised.

'Thorin,' she rasped. 'Help…'

'I would if I could,' she heard him snap, and then the trolls were back. There was an enraged roar as they caught sight of their friend, dead on top of Azshar. She tried to huddle closer under the troll so they wouldn't see her.

'What happened?' William bellowed.

'He's dead!' the other one wailed.

'I can see that, Tom,' snarled William. 'But how?'

'One of them dwarves, no doubt,' the troll called Tom growled, approaching the row of bags. 'I'm going to step on them all until they're flat!' He raised a foot above the biggest bag – Bombur, Azshar realised – and she gasped.

'Wait! No, stop!' she shouted. William and Tom swung back and stared toward her.

'He's not dead!' Tom cried, but William smacked him on the head.

'That's not his voice, booby!'

'Yes – yes, it is!' Azshar called, trying to think quickly. Her heart was pounding in her ears. 'And I – I think you should let those dwarves go!'

'Fair enough,' said Tom, turning towards the bags, but William growled and pushed the dead troll's body aside with his foot. It rolled over, leaving Azshar lying on her back in the open.

'Oh no,' she muttered. William swooped down and picked her up in a leathery fist. He brought her up to his face and studied her for a second. She drew in a breath to start pleading for her life, but he flicked her in the head. Her neck snapped back. Her eyes closed.


She held Helcaruivë in her hands and widened her stance. She was breathing hard, and as she looked up, she saw a woman opposite her doing the same. The woman was tall and muscular, dressed in a tunic and gripping long knives in either hand. Her golden hair was braided and wound about her head like a garland.

'What are you waiting for?' Azshar heard herself ask. She could tell she was older in this memory, no longer a child at all. 'Is this an admission of defeat?'

The woman grinned at her and tossed one of the knives up in the air before catching it.

'We both know I am better than you,' she said. Then, fast as lightning, she leapt towards Azshar, knives swinging. Azshar dived to the ground and rolled up to her feet, spinning to face the woman again. She raised an eyebrow.

'Nerwen, my dear, I taught you everything you know.'

Nerwen charged her again with frightening speed, and they fought ferociously, their blades whirling and clashing and shrieking. In less than a minute, Azshar's sword clattered to the ground, and Nerwen's knives were crossed at her throat.

'You taught me well, it seems,' Nerwen said, and Azshar groaned good-naturedly.

'I yield.'

She removed the knives and laughed. 'And rightly so! You may be older, but I am faster.'

'I really thought I would have you today.'

'You may yet,' Nerwen said. 'Do you want to go again?'

Azshar shook my head and walked over to pick up her sheath from the side of the sparring ring. 'No. I need to wash before my audience with my father.'

'You have an audience with your father?' Nerwen asked. 'What for?'

'Just to see him,' she replied. 'Does a daughter need an excuse to see her father?'

'Most daughters do not need to arrange audiences to see their fathers,' Nerwen pointed out, and Azshar smiled.

'I suppose not. But most fathers are not my father.'

'Race you to the square?'

'Certainly not,' Azshar said.

Nerwen sighed. 'You never used to be this boring –' she began, but Azshar had already sprinted away, flying through the wide streets of the white city. She heard Nerwen cry out indignantly and begin to chase her down. She laughed.


Azshar regained consciousness with a jerk, breathing hard. Everything was dark, and her limbs were constricted by some rough, scratchy material. As her senses slowly woke themselves up, she realised she was in a bag.

'No,' she breathed, panic flooding her again. She started to writhe, trying frantically to find where the bag opened and get out. Her breaths came faster and faster, the panic swamping her – until she felt her foot connect with something, hard.

'Ow!'

She froze. 'What… who is that?'

'Azshar?' came the quiet reply. 'Is that you?'

'Yes,' she called back in a whisper. 'Who are you?'

'It's Glóin. Are you in a bag?'

'I think so,' she answered with a sigh.

'That's a right shame,' he sighed. 'It really sounded like you made quite the rescue attempt.'

'I killed one of them,' she said. 'But then he fell on me.'

'You tried your best, lass.'

'Thank you, Glóin.'

'Shut up, you two!' came a hiss that sounded like Dori. 'We're trying to listen!'

Azshar frowned and shut her eyes, trying to concentrate through the pain in her head. After a moment, it became clear what Dori had been talking about.

'You mustn't eat them!' came the trembling voice of Bilbo the hobbit. 'They – well, they taste awful!'

'Rude,' Bifur muttered from Azshar's left.

'How would you know what they taste like?' one of the trolls grumbled at Bilbo. 'And what are you, anyway?'

'We've never ate nothing like you before,' the other troll agreed.

'I'm a bur – a hobbit,' Bilbo stammered. There was a beat of silence while the trolls pondered this.

'A… burrahobbit?' one of them said. Azshar heard Nori snort.

'Burrahobbits are bound to be tasty,' the other growled optimistically.

'Hey now – just a moment – I'm not!' Bilbo squawked. Azshar stilled in her bag. He was a fool, trying to rescue them by himself. He needed to get out of there immediately, or he was going to end up as an aperitif for those trolls.

'Why not?' one of the trolls asked.

'Because,' Bilbo said, 'I… have worms. And so do those dwarves.'

'I don't,' Bombur protested quietly behind Azshar.

'I wish I did,' Fíli lamented.

'You smell like you do,' Kíli muttered.

'If you lot don't shut up,' Dwalin hissed, 'I'll feed you to the trolls myself.'

Despite the direness of their situation, Azshar smiled into the darkness of the bag.

'Can we eat worms?' one of the trolls – Tom, she assumed – asked anxiously.

'We can eat anything,' William reasoned. 'And even if the dwarves and this Burrahobbit are wormy, they're better than mutton.'

'I'm sick of mutton,' Tom agreed. 'Let's roast them!'

'No – please, just – can't you let them go?' Bilbo shouted desperately. 'You'll regret it if you eat them, I promise you will!'

'You're annoying,' William snarled. 'I'll eat you first.'

'And I'll eat that lady dwarf what killed Bert,' Tom growled. Azshar stiffened in her sack.

She heard Bilbo yelp, and then slow, heavy footsteps growing closer to her. This was it, she supposed. She felt sick at the thought of death, of being eaten by the trolls. She clenched her hands and closed her eyes. She didn't want to die… but it looked like she wasn't going to get much choice. She should have stayed in her cave.

She supposed this solved the problem of the memories – she didn't need to worry about who she was if she was dead. She thought of her mother and father. She wondered if they ever thought about her.

Her heartbeat felt simultaneously fast and slow as she felt the troll grab her bag and hoist her into the air. She released a shaking breath and forced herself to relax. There was no sense in worrying about the inevitable…

'Ah, there's no point in cooking them now, it'll take all night,' came a voice that sounded not quite troll-like enough. Azshar frowned at it, but her troll didn't seem to notice its strangeness.

'It'll take all night if you don't quit your whining, William.'

'What?'

'I said, it'll take all night –'

'I heard that, you booby, but who were you talking to?'

'You,' Tom said, baffled.

'I never said nothing, though,' William said.

'You said –'

'Just shut up and give me the lady dwarf!'

'But by the time we get the water for boiling, the sun will be up!' came the strange third voice.

'Not if you hurry up,' William said.

'What?' said Tom.

'What?'

'If I hurry up, then what?'

'If you hurry up and get the water!'

'What water?'

'For the boiling, you booby!'

'Stop calling me a booby!'

'But you are!'

'No, you are!'

Suddenly, the bag – and Azshar in it – was swinging wildly all over the place. She realised that William had hit Tom, and that she was now in the middle of a trollish fist fight. She was promptly dropped, and she tried to roll away from the fight as best she could while winded.

'You booby!'

'You're talking to yourself!'

'You're a liar!'

'You're a booby!'

'Booby yourself!'

'Shut your mouth!'

Thus it went for a minute or two – until, over the sound of the brawl, Azshar heard the sound of chirping birds. She frowned. That meant… something that she couldn't pinpoint over the pain in her head and the throbbing of her tailbone.

Then the third voice came again, but this time, instead of sounding vaguely like a troll, it sounded like a very familiar wizard.

'Dawn take you, and be stone to you!' he bellowed. And then, suddenly – silence. She could hear the birds singing.

'Gandalf?' came Ori's voice after a moment. 'Did – did you just save us?'

'I rather think it was a combined effort,' came Gandalf's voice by Azshar's ear, and then suddenly the top of the bag was open. She crawled out clumsily.

Dawn had come, and a few rays of sunlight were spilling into the clearing. Two trolls were still standing, and she nearly shouted until she realised –

'They're made of stone!' she exclaimed, and spun to face Gandalf, who was busy helping Bilbo free the Dwarves. 'Did you cast a spell on them?'

He shot her a condescending look. 'No, Azshar, I did not. Trolls usually hide in their caves during the day, because sunlight turns them to stone.'

'What awful, nasty creatures,' Bofur said, climbing out of his bag.

'Why, Bofur, that's the meanest thing I've ever heard you say,' Balin said with a smile, and Bofur blushed deep red.

'I shouldn't have – I'm sure that, as trolls go, they weren't the worst…'

Azshar made her way over to the third troll, who hadn't turned to stone by virtue of being dead. Her sword was buried almost to the hilt in his eye socket, and it oozed a greyish sludge that she assumed was troll blood. Disgusted, she braced her foot against his forehead, gripped her sword and attempted to pull it out.

But it was well and truly stuck. She pulled again and again, as hard as she could, and the sword barely budged two inches.

'Damn it,' she huffed, looking at the dead troll's ugly face. 'You really are a booby, you know.'

'Here, step aside,' came Thorin's voice behind her. Azshar frowned and moved out of the way, and he grasped the hilt of Helcaruivë with both hands. Then, bracing his foot on the troll's forehead as she had, he pulled. For a second or two, nothing moved – but then, all at once, the sword slid out, covered in slimy grey blood.

Thorin made a disgusted sound, and handed the sword to Azshar. 'I'd give that a clean, if I were you.'

'Thank you,' she said warily.

'Don't mention it,' he replied shortly, and promptly walked away. She shook her head at his retreating back, mystified, until Nori came up.

'I suppose you won't want to talk to me anymore, now that Thorin's your new best friend,' he said. She laughed.

'I'll find the time,' she promised. 'I don't know what's gotten into him, though. He hated me five minutes ago, but this feels… civil.'

'You must have a skull thicker than those trolls if you don't know what changed his mind,' Nori said. 'We might have been bagged up, but we all heard you taking on that troll. It was a mighty effort.'

'I was pretty brave, wasn't I?' she agreed, and Nori rolled his eyes.

'Better deflate your head, or you won't fit in the cave.'

'The cave?'

'Where there's a troll, there's a cave,' Nori said.

'And where there's a cave, there's treasure,' Bifur said, coming up and clapping her on the shoulder. 'Sometimes. Come on, we're going.'

Nori, Bifur and Azshar jogged to catch up with the rest of the Company, where Bilbo was in the process of defending himself from Bombur.

'I only said you had worms so that they wouldn't start boiling you,' the aggrieved hobbit said. 'I didn't mean anything else by it!'

'But we don't have worms,' Bombur said.

'I know that, but –'

'Then why would you say it? Is it because I ate your bread last week?'

'I didn't say that you had worms, I said all of you had them.'

'You think that's better?'

'Aarrghhh!' Bofur shouted.

'What?' Bifur cried, drawing his axe.

'Oh – it's just a fly,' Bofur said. 'For a second there, I thought it was a bee.'

'Quiet you lot,' Dwalin said from the front of the group. 'We're here.'

'We certainly are,' Gandalf muttered, looking faintly ill. 'It smells like this is where everything comes to die.'

They were standing at the mouth of a cave, formed by a large outcrop of rocks among the trees. Azshar couldn't see very far in, but it felt like she didn't need to – the smell made up for what she couldn't see.

'This had better be worth it,' Nori muttered, looking green in the face.

'Brings tears to the eyes,' Glóin agreed grimly.

Thorin sent poor Bilbo inside first, on the off chance that there was another troll inside. Luckily for the hobbit, the cave was empty – except for a huge pile of treasure.

'You know, I think the smell is growing on me,' Ori said optimistically once they'd been in there for a few minutes. 'It isn't so bad once you get used to it.' Fíli and Kíli rolled their eyes behind his back.

Óin had lit a torch so that they could better see the contents of the cave. There were a lot of bones and some half-rotted meat, but there were also chests filled with coins and jewellery and all kinds of riches. If the smell hadn't been horrifying, it would have been exciting.

Azshar's eyes widened as she picked up an ornate pearl necklace. 'I wonder who all these things belonged to?'

'Whoever they are, they're dead now,' Dori said.

'There's no way we'll be able to carry all this with us,' Dwalin sighed.

'We'll bury it,' Thorin said. 'Only we will know where it's hidden. We can come for it after the quest.'

'It wouldn't even make a dent in the treasures of the Lonely Mountain anyway,' Kíli smirked.

'Look at these!' came Glóin's voice from the back of the cave. 'Weapons!'

'And Elvish ones by the look,' Bombur added with a hint of disgust.

Azshar stepped around what looked vaguely like the carcass of a sheep to go and see what they'd found. There was an array of blades stacked against the cave wall, all of varying size, and all covered in thick layers of cobweb.

'Fascinating,' Gandalf said, coming up behind her and grabbing one of the largest – a sword. He pulled it halfway out of its sheath. 'They look like good blades. Not a spot of rust on them either.'

'Those aren't dwarven runes on the blade,' Glóin said, peering down at the sword. 'I can't read them.'

'Nor can I, in the dimness,' Gandalf said. 'But I know someone who might recognise them. Come along, let's bury the gold and get out of this stench.'

He took the sword, and the one that had been beside it as well. Then he bent down and picked up a long knife.

'Here, Bilbo. It's about time you had a weapon.'

Bilbo took it with wide eyes, and loosened his belt so that he had room to thrust it through. Azshar turned back and picked up the last blade, the smallest of the lot. She blew the cobwebs and dust off its plain scabbard and pulled out the knife; it was a dagger, about as long as her forearm, and in its hilt was a topaz, much smaller than the one in her sword's hilt.

The blade looked like it was made of a similar metal to her sword, and like Gandalf had said, it hadn't rusted at all. At the top of the dagger, near the hilt, were etched seven tiny runes. They were the same kind of rune that were carved into her sword. If Gandalf knew someone who could read them and tell her about the weapons… it could be a clue as to who she really was, the key to unlocking more of her memories.

She thought about the woman she'd been sparring with in the last memory she'd had – Nerwen. Maybe she was still alive. Maybe she'd be able to help Azshar. She frowned and gingerly touched the place where the troll had flicked her in the head to knock her out. There was a sizeable lump forming, and it was painful.

'Azshar,' Bofur said behind her. 'Are you coming?'

She turned around and saw that she'd been left alone in the cave, which was now empty of anything of value. Despite herself, her heart rate increased. She didn't like caves.

'Yes, of course,' she said. 'Do you think there's any chance of breakfast?'

'Óin and Glóin are lighting a fire now,' Bofur said. 'Thorin said we should get some sleep now, since none of us got any last night.'

'Fair point,' she replied. She suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of exhaustion wash over her, and she shook it off as best she could. 'Breakfast first, though.'

She nearly fell asleep as she ate the sausages Bombur had cooked for them, sitting with her back against a tree. Her eyes felt heavy, and her brain was fuzzy. It was warm in the morning sunlight.

She knew she needed sleep. She'd been putting it off for more than a week now, not wanting to recall more memories than she had to. But her adrenaline-fuelled fight against the trolls was catching up to her, and…

'Azshar.'

'Hm.'

'Azshar.'

'Oh!' Her eyes snapped open, and she realised Thorin had sat down next her. 'Yes?'

'You've taken a watch every night for nearly a week,' he said flatly. 'Why?'

'I don't need to sleep as much as you dwarves do,' she said with a shrug.

'Doesn't look like it,' he replied.

'I think I liked you better when you didn't care about my wellbeing,' she said darkly.

He sniffed. 'Just go to sleep,' he said, getting up and moving back towards his pack. Moments later, Azshar's eyes drifted closed.


Don't you just love that Tolkien gave his trolls the most English names ever – William, Bert, and Tom? 'Booby' is also straight out of the pages of The Hobbit, though I might have used it a bit more liberally here.

Thank you as always for reading, and special thanks to those who leave reviews. I love seeing what you think, and they always make me smile. I can't wait to catch you in Chapter 6, where – finally – we meet some more elves!

S