Chapter seven
After we all got back into our respective clothing, helped Bombur fit back into his and grabbed our things from our original camp, we inspected the stone trolls a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Ori sidled up to me as we got nearer. Bifur stuck a sharp edge of his axe up Bert's stony left nostril.
"They are perfectly safe now," Gandalf knocked his staff on Bill's face.
"Where did you go?" I came up to him, hands on my hips.
"To look ahead," he replied with equally impertinent manner.
Thorin paced over, his arms crossed. "What brought you back?"
"Looking behind," Gandalf waggled his bushy eyebrows at us mysteriously. "Nasty business, but I see you are all still in one piece,"
"No thanks to your burglar," Thorin snorted.
Gandalf gave him a reprimanding look. "He had the nerves to play for time, none of you thought of that."
Thorin deflated a little. I shook my head. He thought little of the hobbit.
Gandalf turned again to the three statues. "They must have come down from the Etenmoors."
"Since when do mountain trolls venture this far south?" Thorin sighed.
"Not for an age." Gandalf's face darkened. "Not since a darker power ruled these lands. They could not have moved by daylight,"
"There must be a cave nearby," something glinted suddenly in Thorin's eyes. He headed into the trees.
"Wait!" I ran after him. The rest of the dwarves blundered after us.
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The smell hit us first. Well, it hit Bilbo first. He started making dry retching sounds.
"We must be close then," Bofur commented happily.
I wrinkled my nose and braced myself.
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The cave entrance was wide and the cave was deep.
"What in Durin's name can make this kind of stench?" Fili coughed.
"It's a troll hoard," Gandalf led us in. "Be careful what you touch,"
Bilbo stayed outside with his nose plugged tight. I put a sleeve over my nose and went in. Dark and wet, the cave was filled with mostly troll refuse, rotting bits of meat and cloth and a few little piles of the coins and jewels and weapons plundered from the troll's victims. There was not much –perhaps just enough gold to fill a chest or two and a pile of rusty swords and rotting bows. There was even an iron gate with a couple of rotting hands stuck on them, as snacks I supposed. I swallowed dryly. Gandalf lit a torch with a bit of magic and handed it to Thorin who went off deeper into the cave with Gandalf and Dwalin.
Bofur eyed the gold. "It's a shame really, just leaving it lying around for anyone to take,"
Gloin nodded. "Nori, get a shovel,"
Nori gave him a secretive little smile and went out to find one and when he returned, they set to filling up a chest and burying it in the cave floor. Dwalin looked on with exasperation. I picked my way over towards Thorin, trying not to step on anything unpleasant unnecessarily. Rummaging through a collection of blades, one suddenly caught his eye.
"These blades were not made by any troll," he turned another in his hand and handed the first to Gandalf who had wandered over.
"Nor by any mortal man," Gandalf inspected it and I peered over Thorin's shoulder at the one in his hands. "They were forged in Gondolin, by the High Elves of the first age," Gandalf exclaimed as he unsheathed the sword reverently.
Thorin's lip curled at the mention of elves.
"I'll take it –," I began eagerly.
"Thorin, you could not wish for a finer blade!" Gandalf chided.
Thorin gave him an unfathomable look but unsheathed his blade. I could see that he was impressed. He kept it.
"Let us leave this foul place, come on, let's go –Dori, Gloin, Bofur," Thorin left.
I sighed and rooted around for another, but there were no more ancient elvish blades lying about. Picking up a few acceptable looking arrows, I made my way back outside. Gandalf was handing Bilbo a blade. Ancient Elvish again! It was a dagger really, but I wanted to squeak. I patted my elvish sword comfortingly. It was a young blade and had only seen my fights. I wondered what the balance of the ancient swords felt like when being wielded. The swords probably knew more about fighting and death than anyone alive in Middle Earth then.
"I –I've never used a sword in my life," I heard Bilbo stutter.
"And hopefully you'll never have to," Gandalf bent down. "Listen, true courage is knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one."
Bilbo's face was full of apprehension.
I smiled quietly to myself to headed off to the rest of the dwarves.
There was suddenly a sound of twigs snapping and a thumping of something hitting the forest floor.
"Gandalf!" Thorin called. "Someone is coming!"
My hand jumped to my blade.
"Stay together, arm yourselves!" Gandalf hurried towards us as the noise neared from out left.
WHUMP! A brown blur flew out of the bushes and came screeching to a halt amidst our armed group of jumpy dwarves. It was a grimy old man who looked like had fallen asleep under a log and the forest had grown over and into him. His bulging eyes stared out at us under his huge floppy hat covered with twigs and leaves and moss. Patched and worn, his brown robes draped over his sled. Wait... were those rabbits pulling his sled? One of them stared back at me, intelligence written all over its face. It twitched its nose daintily and gave me a coy little look. I squinted. What?
"Radagast!" Gandalf exclaimed, "What are you doing here?" Radagast the Brown! A mad old man and an earthy old wizard.
"Gandalf!" Radagast yelled back, "I was looking for you! I need to tell you something! Something –something is terribly wrong! Something is terribly wrong –something..." He stamped in frustration as we all looked on quizzically. "It was just on the tip of my tongue! I swear Gandalf, it was right at the tip of my tongue –," he stuck his tongue out. Bilbo jumped.
There was something spindly there.
"Oh, silly me! It wasn't a thought at all! It's a stick bug!" He pulled it off his tongue and put it on his hat.
Thorin shifted awkwardly beside me. We glanced at each other. I couldn't help but smile. His lips rose slightly at their corners and my heart stuttered for a moment.
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Gandalf and Radagast wandered off a little ways away to speak of wizard matters. I itched to get closer and listen to their words.
"Don't mind them," Gloin muttered beside me as I craned my neck, trying to read the old men's lips.
"I want to know what is going on!" I insisted, but I flopped down in the leaves with a sigh.
Thorin paced by.
"Thorin let me see your sword,"
He stopped mid-step with a suddenly blank face.
"Thorin," Dwalin called from behind me, "Show it here,"
Thorin composed himself and turned to us. "Of course," and unsheathed it. The sun glinted off of the blade like quicksilver.
My hand hovered over the blade, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it. Thorin saw my face and took my right hand in his. My heart flew to my throat as my eyes widened. He placed the grip in my hand and let go. The blade swung down in my loose grip, but I recovered quickly and stopped it from touching the ground. I raised it slowly and swung it over my head and flourished it before me. The balance was beautiful.
"Have you seen the folding of this steel? The softer metals still can be seen from the surface –it is like looking into the depths of an ocean –so soft and so hard at the same time." I sliced it through the air.
Dwalin gave me an approving look. "You speak like dwarven smith."
"I had the best teacher," I smiled.
Dwalin raised his brow at me, and then at Thorin, who had the grace to nod, not particularly to anyone. He almost looked a little flustered, if he could ever look like that.
Grinning, I handed the sword reluctantly back to Thorin. Our fingers brushed again and almost dropping the sword before he had a grip on it, I swallowed audibly like a toad.
"I'm thirsty," I commented quickly and then kicked myself as Thorin watched me with a hint of confusion in his face.
A sudden howl saved me from my embarrassment.
"Are there wolves out there?" Bilbo wailed.
Bofur's eyes widened, "No, that is not a wolf, that's a–,"
All of snatched up our weapons. A rumbling growl came from behind us. A warg about thrice the size of me and rippling with muscle under its ragged, matted hide crouched at the top of a steep hill. It leapt in a blur and landed before Thorin with a snarl. Not wasting a moment, Thorin swung the elvish sword right into the warg's throat and it twitched before crashing down before him. I heard the sword cut into bone before the blade stuck in with a thud. Another thundering roar came from behind Thorin who was still trying to yank the sword from deep within the neck of the first warg.
"Tallis, Kili!" Balin cried as the second warg bounded down the slope towards Thorin's back.
My arrow sprouted from the warg's chest, as Kili's found its way to the warg's shoulder. It tumbled past Thorin still flailing to get on its feet before Dwalin pounded his hammer into its skull. Thorin finally got his sword out.
"Warg scouts!" he turned to us, eyes ablaze, "Which means an orc pack is not far behind!"
"Orc pack!?" Bilbo shouted; his eyes like saucers.
"Who did you tell about your quest other than your kin?!" Gandalf thundered.
"No one," Thorin rumbled.
"Who did you tell?"
"No one! I swear. What in Durin's name is going on?"
Gandalf exhaled with difficulty, "You are being hunted."
We all looked at one another, panicked.
Dwalin was already making his way up the hill, "We need to get out of here,"
Ori ran right into him from the direction of the troll camp, where our horses had been gathered, "We can't, we can't! The ponies bolted!"
"Even my horse?!" I screeched. Ori nodded. Oh Iluvatar!
Radagast suddenly spoke up, "I'll draw them off!"
Gandalf gripped his arm, "Those are Gundabad wargs. They will out run you,"
"These, are Rustabell rabbits," He shook his fist and squinted up at Gandalf, then off into the trees. "I'd like to see them try."
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The next moment, I found myself hiding at the edges of the forest, ready with it sprint for the large rock formations on the plateau plains. I gulped as Radagast burst out of the trees with his rabbits and shot off with no less than fifteen wargs pounding behind him and six of them with orc riders.
"Go, go!" Gandalf shoved us forward and we all sprinted madly with the formation that Gandalf had told us to run towards. Thorin soon took the lead as we scurried from boulder to boulder, trying to stay out of sight of the orcs being led on a wild goose chase. We must have looked like a little trail of lice running and trying to hide on a big bald head. Utterly exposed, we were relying on the hope that the wargs and orcs would never take their eyes off of Radagast.
"Ori, no!" Thorin was able to stop in time and snatch Ori back behind a rock as he nearly charged ahead into plain view of the wargs. Once a dwarf got running, it was difficult for them to stop –they were like stones rolling down a hill.
We all dove behind a rock formation as the wargs drew close. As we held our breaths, a sound of clicking claws on rock rose up on the rock formation above us and the sound of a sword unsheathing. There was a warg and orc above us. Thorin nodded to me and Kili. I drew an arrow and knocked it as I danced back from the rock. The warg sniffed me out first but I missed and shot it in the chest rather than its eye. Kili's hit the orc in the chest also as the two huge monsters tumbled down. They both screeched and roared as I shot another arrow at the warg, hitting it in the eye and killing it instantly. The warg however, stood up with its sword raised as Bifur, Dwalin, and Thorin finished it off. But it was too late. The warg and the orc's echoing shrieks had brought the rest of the party thundering towards us.
"Run!" Gandalf cried.
We all obliged.
To this day, I still cannot understand how an old man, thirteen dwarves, a hobbit and I outran a pack of wargs for so long. But eventually, the wargs began to outflank us. We had a large rock at our back as the wargs circled us and came down from the ridge of a hill.
"We're surrounded!" Fili cried.
Kili shot and killed another orc. I hit another warg, but some of them moved back from our range. I let out a shout of frustration and raised my sword.
"Where is Gandalf?" Thorin turned sharply around.
Dwalin snarled, "He's abandoned us,"
No, he was wrong. Gandalf was near.
The wargs circled closer and standing beside me, Ori was an idiot and used his sling shot to shoot a little rock into the face of a rather evil looking warg. It shook its head like a dog and grinned, showing its rows of serrated teeth as the orc on its back raised sword. I pulled him back behind me by the scruff of his neck.
"Stay behind me," I told him.
The warg barred its teeth.
Suddenly, from behind us near the rock, Gandalf's voice sounded, "Over here you fools!"
I risked a glance back as I saw him disappear under the rock.
"Go!" I shoved Ori towards the rock.
Thorin leapt onto a rock beside what seemed to be the entrance to a tunnel.
"Get in! All of you!"
The dwarves all turned and sprinted. Thorin cut down a warg that leapt towards him. I knocked another arrow and sent another warg crashing onto its side. Kili shot an orc in the face.
"Kili! Tallis!" Thorin shouted as we turned our backs on the pack and charged through the grass for Thorin. I jumped past Thorin and landed on a steep incline and slide to the bottom. Kili landed on me and we rolled out of the way as Thorin slide down. We could hear the snarls nearing.
Horns, as clear as day, sounded across the plains. My ears pricked up. These were the horns of Imladris. Elves. I kept my mouth shut as I suddenly realized what we were in. Though I had never taken the secret tunnel route in and out of Rivendell, I knew of its existence. I had always travelled on horseback, so the elves had always led me out a different way. My eyes found Gandalf's and I nodded to him as we listened to the sounds of thundering hooves, the death squeals of orcs and wargs and the sound of whistling arrows. An orc tumbled in, loincloth and all. It lay on the ground unmoving. I gave it a kick. Thorin leaned down and pulled the arrow out of its neck. The silvery arrowhead gleamed.
"Elves," he spat.
"I cannot see where the pathway leads!" Dwalin's voice echoed from down the tunnel. "Should we follow it or no?"
"Follow it of course!" Bofur answered and rushed on after him.
"That would be wise, I think," Gandalf murmured as I passed. I gave him a smile.
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*The next chapter will have a scene when she has a flashback that will clear up her height in comparison to Thorin's