Restlessness set in quickly for Morine and Bilbo from the outset of the seige. During the day, they searched through the tunnels and rooms under the stuffy mountain for the Arkenstone. By night, they shared tales to each other at the sound of the company preparing their weapons for battle.
"It's a shame we don't have a decent dinner or a stiff drink," Morine said one evening by the fire, holding up one of the remaining helpings of cram. "You are the greatest storyteller I've ever heard, Bilbo."
The hobbit set up straight as he placed his hands in his coat pockets with a smile. "Yes, well, you are a great listener."
A weak smile flit across her face as the gaze between them grew darker. Bilbo glanced toward Thorin, familiar with where their thoughts both settled with each passing day.
He asked in a small voice, "Whatever are we going to do?"
"I'm not sure there is anything we can do," she responded slowly, reflecting on what little she had learned of Thorin's character in their time together. How odd to think she had known Bilbo for the same length of time. The dwarven king remained as mysterious to her as Bilbo had become familiar. It seemed to Morine that the leader was unlikely to change his mind. Each day he was spending more time among the treasure, and the company's search for the Arkenstone took on a fervent feeling.
"Do you regret coming?" Bilbo prodded.
Morine looked to him in surprise, shaking her head after a moment's hesitation. "No." She traced the silver patterns on her quiver, faint in the firelight. "I came prepared to fight a dragon. Perhaps an army is the lesser enemy."
Bilbo's sigh echoed her own feeling of defeat. "I wish we did not have to find out," he said forlornly. "On that note, I will try to get some rest. You should do the same."
He settled onto the floor of the guard room on his stomach, away from the door where winter's first breaths were drafting in. He turned his face away from the wizard's gaze he could still sense. A twinge of guilt taunted his futile attempt to sleep as he gripped a large stone cleverly stowed beneath his pillow, hidden from the room full of people he had come to consider friends.
Muscles tense from days of mounting anxiety and dread, Morine drifted off to a light sleep. She was oblivious that the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone, was in the keeping of the beloved burglar.
The next evening when Bilbo disappeared, Morine was the only one to notice his absence when she could not find him to share her tale of sailing through the Enchanted Isles. After investigating their usual spots, she discovered that Bombur was sleeping in a side room near the wall that he was supposed to be guarding. Climbing to the top of the small opening above the wall, Bilbo was nowhere to be seen.
"Tricky little bastard," she grumbled to herself. She knew how much he wanted out of the hole they had stuck themselves in, but he would not run the risk of being caught outside by Thorin if not for something important. It was likely that he was wearing the ring of invisibility and that she could not find him if she tried. She wondered what Bilbo was up to as she settled on top of the wall to watch for him, feeling rather worried for the hobbit.
When he finally came back before midnight, she saw that he was escorted by elves part of the way back to the wall. Morine concluded he must have made an attempt at diplomacy, no doubt in want of warm food and his dear hobbit hole that he had spared no words in describing to her several times over.
He climbed the rope she wordlessly lowered down for him, looking rather tired as he scaled the wall. Bilbo sat down beside her, but he did not tell her what he had been doing. She knew better than to ask him, though she was bursting with curiosity. "He'll tell me if he wants me to know," she told herself as she marveled at his brazen defiance.
Trumpets woke them a few short hours later to announce the return of the elvenking and the man named Bard. With them was an old man carrying a small chest in his arms, his face obscured by his hooded cloak. It was he that came forward to negotiate with Thorin along with a dozen escorts. The strange embassy had obeyed the King under the Mountain's orders to come disarmed.
Thorin refused to bargain with them, spurning them due to the presence of the elves. The old man opened the chest in his hands to reveal the legendary Arkenstone, which he held aloft in his aged hand for all to behold. Thorin was struck silent and frozen in amazement, which quickly turned to anger.
Morine glanced over toward Bilbo, who quickly averted his gaze. She wondered, "Is that what he was up to last night? When did he find the Arkenstone?"
Now thoroughly worked into a rage, Thorin asked them how they came to possess the stone, to which Bilbo squeaked that he had given it to them.
Morine lay her face in the palm of her hand, unable to look at the little burglar who was living up to his role. It was a disaster for her friend, though the men would get what they had asked for in the form of Bilbo's portion of the treasure.
In his anger, Thorin cried out that he wished Gandalf were present. The old man responded by throwing off his cloak to reveal the wizard himself.
Morine gasped loudly in surprise and not without a great deal of relief.
Even more angry at the betrayal and believing that the two were in league against him since the beginning, Thorin refused to have anything to do with the hobbit, the wizard, or their friends ever again, and he ordered Bilbo leave with the embassy. The lust over his treasure had made him violent. Morine was already grasping her weapons to make for the other side of the strife when Thorin barked over his shoulder, "That goes for you too!"
"You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain," said Gandalf. "But things may change yet."
With the pity of several of the dwarves, Bilbo came down from the wall to join Gandalf, Morine directly behind him. She knew where her true alliance lay. In a rare show of emotion, she threw a look at Thorin that her brother had once called a "death glare." The king had become a far cry from the noble dwarf she had remembered meeting at Beorn's house several months ago.
Bard wisely chose not to give the Arkenstone over until Thorin gave them the portion of gold for it, since his people needed it to rebuild their town. To her chagrin, Thorin refused to hand over the payment, and she realized that he was awaiting the arrival of his cousin Dain. That hope must have been what kept the company from despairing in recent days. It seemed even now, despite Bilbo's heroic attempt to dissolve the discord, that war would be inevitable.
The group walked back to the camp at Dale with weary hearts and heavy feet. While Morine was glad that Gandalf was here to smooth the wrinkles between the groups, she knew that he brought trouble in his wake. She followed the old man through the camp. No sooner had the flap of the canvas tent closed than Morine exclaimed, "Thank the Valar you are here." Gandalf chuckled as she barely paused before asking, "And what of the Necromancer?"
"What of?" he mimicked to annoy her, though he knew as to what she was inquiring.
"Do not toy with me, Gandalf," she said, green eyes flashing dangerously. "Did you destroy Dol Guldur?"
He shook his head. "No, the fortress is still quite intact," he teased as she growled angrily. "But as for Sauron, I believe we may be free of his grip forever."
"May? Did you not kill him?" her low voice scathed, hands curling into fists.
"Not exactly," he answered more cautiously. "He fled." Never before had he seen the wrath of the blue wizard, and it was a scary thing to behold. He felt her iron stare as his hands worked on lighting his tobacco pipe to ease his nerves.
Morine was fuming as she tried to pace around the tent like a caged animal. "This is the one who caused the downfall and the destruction of an entire race and their homeland," she spat the bitter words as tears stung in her eyes at the memory of Numenor. Gandalf blinked slowly, taking the heat, knowing it was true. "Who is to say that he will only reappear yet again to threaten all of Middle Earth?" The threat hung in the tense air between them. "How could you let him escape?"
"The White Council did what it could to stop him," he reasoned. "Dol Guldur is no longer in a state that he can use it, and I believe Mirkwood may have a chance of returning to normal, though you certainly cannot expect for the darkness to recede overnight, as it seems that you had hoped." She cast her eyes to the ground and shifted her stance. "At any rate, I am glad that we were able to run him off with his tail between his legs, I believe, as he was clearly defeated in the end. If he would make himself a menace again, I will take full responsibility," he offered her, long white eyebrows weighing heavily on his wrinkled forehead.
Her pacing came to a stop, uselessness washing over her. She should have been fighting for her home. The weeks she had traveled through the unfamiliar northern forest by herself and the days she had spent in fear traversing the desolation were a waste of her time and her new abilities. A small part of her was even angry at being separated from Beorn when they were only beginning to know each other, though she hushed that tiny voice.
"Why did you send me here?" she asked, taking a seat next to Gandalf. It was difficult for either of them to believe that a single man had slain Smaug, though Bilbo's secret discovery of his weak spot was the true reason for the fortuitous event. She wanted to believe that Sauron would be gone for good, but her gut disagreed.
Gandalf sighed before saying, "I thought that you would be a help to them, whether with the dragon or keeping Thorin cool-headed, though the latter was a taller order than I had anticipated."
Morine nodded her head in agreement. "I am glad the dragon is out of the way, but Thorin has been thoroughly enchanted by the treasures of his ancestors," she informed. "I fear how far his gold lust will let this go."
Watching the smoke rings float around the top of the tent, the grey wizard said, "As do I. If not for Bilbo's trickery, there may have been no foreseeable end of this sparse. Even with the negotiation, I believe that he is waiting for the arrival of his cousin Dain and his army to arrest a more favorable compromise for the dwarves, or else begin a war. For it may be that in his eyes, the Arkenstone is worth the bloodshed of many."
There it was. He spoke to her growing fears as her heart sank. War was the last thing the people of Esgaroth needed after their town was destroyed by the dragon. Morine doubted that Thorin would show compassion in his current state. She simply nodded her head.
He seemed to sense the true reason for her asking his motivation in sending her to join the company. "You may prove your usefulness before the end," he consoled as he stroked his beard in contemplation. "We are not out of the woods yet. Dain and his army will likely arrive tomorrow, and who knows what troubles they may bring."
The plain canvas of the tent became a blur, her eyes clouding over in thought. She was grateful for the diplomacy on the part of Bard and the Elvenking, who were both proving their nobility. At least for tonight, she could be content with the side she was on and enjoy the warm elvish food, free from the suffocating caverns and the near tyranny of the King under the Mountain. It was a shame that he had changed so drastically, and she hoped for his sake that he would soon see his own folly and recant.
The last of the wintry sunlight was fading fast when Gandalf broke the silence. "Well, it is high time that I showed you to your tent, or else have to hunt for it in the darkness." Only a short walk away, he had prepared a tent for her next to Bilbo's. The hobbit had tucked in for a good night's sleep immediately following an oversized hot meal. She could hear his snores as she ducked inside.
"I almost forgot that you have a visitor," Gandalf said at the same time that she opened the flap to step inside. The dark figure sitting in the corner startled her nonetheless.
Without response, she entered the darkness of the tent and quickly lit a lantern that was handy. For a tiny, fleeting second, her stomach leaped at the possibility that it was Beorn, followed by a sinking feeling that she would not know what to say and suspicion that Gandalf had guessed their true feelings for each other.
The visitor was clad in a long sky blue cloak that outlined his strong broad shoulders, but he was not tall or big enough to be Beorn. He stood up and took a few steps toward the light. Throwing off his hood, black lustrous curls fell onto his shoulders and into his shadowed face. The paltry light was not enough to see well, and Morine lifted the lantern in her hand. His strong jaw line and chiseled cheekbones like her own came into view, and his light green eyes sparkled with mirth.
Nearly dropping the lantern, Morine gasped, "Romen!"
