Thank you lovely reviewers! Thanks to everyone who's favourited this story, too. If you leave a review, I am more motivated to update, but it's lovely to know there's people out there reading this rubbish. Happy New Years! Happy Christmas! Happy January!
More 'Mentally Challenged!Legolas' as requested, Mr Stereo1.
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They reached what might be Hollin, but might be somewhere called Eregion, unless the two places were just two different names for the same place (Vimes couldn't work it out). Aragorn and Boromir immediately contradicted much of their boasting by leaping fearfully into a bush at the sight of a few birds.
Vimes was standing there, scorning them, when he became aware that the entire Fellowship were hissing at him in a strangled kind of way, and gesturing madly for him to get under cover as well.
'It's only birds,' he said, bewildered. 'Anyway, if they mess on you it's good luck.' But they seemed so insistent that he finally crawled into the undergrowth. Frodo was there, making mad faces at the ring he carried. 'Oh gods,' Vimes muttered in disgust, and backed out again.
He had just enough time to select a tree and settle under its branches when the crebain flew over. Merry, Pippin and Sam nodded at him. Vimes nodded back, then they carefully avoided each others' eyes, pretending not to hear Frodo making tortured noises from his own patch of undergrowth.
Frodo started muttering. Merry gave Sam a look. Sam looked innocently away until he thought Merry had given up. He then went back to his knitting, but Pippin joined in and he was rather less subtle. A muted cry of pain from Sam, a swearword or two and suddenly the cousins were glaring at Sam overtly, hands on their hips. 'Well, it's not my turn,' Pippin was heard to say. Vimes was aware that complex hobbit social pressure was taking place around him, or more accurately, around his kneecaps.
'Oh fine!' Sam finally burst out, and flinging his knitting to the ground he darted out from the shelter of their tree. Diving in besides Frodo, he grabbed him and hauled the ring away. 'There there, Frodo,' Sam comforted him, rolling his eyes discretely at the other hobbits. 'I'm always here for you, to do your gardening and cook your dinner.'
'Oh Sam!' Frodo cried.
'Poor Mr Frodo. You have a burden. It's very burdensome.'
Gandalf suddenly bent his head under the tree's branches. 'They have passed us, but there are many spies in these unfriendly lands.'
'I liked not their intent,' Boromir announced, pretending that he was picking twigs from his facial hair by coincidence, and not because he'd dived face first into a hedge.
'They are only birds, easily defeated. But I worry for... er... the Hob... Gimli,' Aragorn said, choosing the only member of the Fellowship who probably couldn't hear him. Gimli had gone calmly back to preparing dinner as soon as the birds had passed. He looked the least bothered by what had happened. Gandalf nodded gravely, then winked at Vimes.
'Indeed. We should move on while it is dark. I know I promised you a rest,' Gandalf said to a rather disgruntled Pippin, 'but I think these birds might be spies of Saruman.'
The hobbits nodded. Gandalf didn't feel they were fully appreciating the situation.
'Spies!' he repeated. 'Of Saruman!'
'Yesh, we ashumed they were someone's spies, or the Men wouldn't have panicked like that.' Merry pointed out reasonably, mouth full.
'Panicked?' Boromir spluttered.
'I didn't,' said Vimes.
'Yes, well, that's because you have no survival skills and don't take our imminent peril very seriously!' Aragorn said.
'Maybe when I see some imminent peril, I'll start-' Vimes retorted.
'We are surrounded by it!' Boromir said, sweeping one arm dramatically, indicating a harmless tree, a butterfly, and Gimli peacefully peeling potatoes. Unfortunately, he also swept Gandalf's hat off, rather proving his point about imminent peril. Gandalf was a wizard, thus quick to anger.
'Anyway,' Vimes said, 'You said all the men panicked, but I didn't,' while pleas for mercy filled the background.
'Yes, but well, you see... we don't really think of you as a 'Man',' Sam explained.
It was Vimes' turn to splutter.
'No offence,' Pippin added quickly.
Walking by night was only made more annoying and difficult by the hobbits' relentless cheerfulness and Gimli's dwarven ability to see fairly well in the dark. Vimes was used to walking by night, but he was not used, still not used, could never be used, to being outside the city. He didn't approve of the countryside even when it had farms on it and was clearly being used to produce milk and cabbages. He knew, theoretically, that the countryside was a crucial step in the mysterious process that brought Vimes bacon, but that didn't mean he had to like the fact. The sooner they worked out how to remove the 'countryside' part of the equation, the better.
And this- all these rugged hills and dramatic mountain ranges, the silver, tumbling rivers, the peaceful woods - this was even worse. What was it all for? Where were the kebab takeaway carts? Where, in all this outdoorness, could on get a decent cup of coffee? Or a newspaper to make him furious?
What, exactly, had they done with the bloody cobblestones?
Gimli cautiously engaged Vimes in conversation about the 'Piskworld' as they walked, and Vimes had the chance to know a little more about Middle Earth's dwarves and where they differed, or did not differ, from those he knew back home. This was made difficult by Gimli's reticence about certain things. He grudgingly told Vimes that the language of the dwarves in Middle Earth was a secret, and only a few place names (Khazad-Dhum, Kheled-zaram) were commonly known. Secrecy and reserve was clearly a trait shared by the dwarves of both worlds. But Vimes felt absurdly pleased that Gimli was prepared to give his sanity the benefit of the doubt and attempt friendship.
Middle Earth dwarves were quite a bit taller. Vimes didn't dare to broach the subject of dwarven gender, not yet. He explained about Koom Valley and the trolls, and Gimli expressed surprise that trolls were allowed into polite society. He was confused by Vimes' outrage, because trolls weren't even sentient. Vimes said that this was a common mistake induced by hot weather, and Gimli looked politely doubting. Gimli didn't give a very clear answer as to what had happened between elves and dwarves in Middle Earth to end the friendship between them, but he was sure that it was all the elves' fault. He went on with relish to give an exaggerated account of the cruelty of Thranduil in imprisoning several of Gimli's uncles a few decades before.
It sounded like standard arrest procedure to Vimes, who thought there was a strong 'disturbing the peace' case against the dwarf's relatives. In Vimes' opinion, Thranduil could have saved himself a lot of future disapproval by charging the dwarves with 'looking at my officers funny', 'eyeballing my forest', or 'lingering with intent to be devoured by a spider'. As a police officer and therefore biased, he wasn't as impressed as he should have been by Gimli's acount of their daring escape, but he didn't tell Gimli that.
They were engrossed in conversation about mining (Vimes wanted to know if there were treacle mines in Middle Earth) when Legolas wandered up. They regarded him warily. He smiled at them. They looked at him. He smiled at them.
When he had wandered away again, Gimli asked, 'Do you think maybe he has some kind of devious plan?'
Vimes shook his head. 'No-one's that good at acting. But it would certainly be the perfect way to hide devious plans, if he was capable of forming them.'
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They walked and walked. They walked. They found a campsite and walked past it because 'it's too accessible.' They walked. They found another campsite, one that met Aragorn's standards of inaccessibility. Unfortunately, they couldn't all access it.
'We have rather different standards of what 'accessible' means than you tall folk,' Frodo muttered. Thanks to Sam's earlier intervention, he was now acting more normal, and was hardly even twitching violently.
Legolas finally solved the problem by climbing a tree and refusing to come down. They camped at the base of the tree, and took turns to try to startle, persuade or shake him down to earth again. Vimes won by shouting, 'Look! A tree!', causing Legolas to come down to have a look.
'I don't see why the campsite has to be so inaccessible. There's nothing dangerous around the place,' said Vimes, who knew that some evil Dark Lord was hunting them, possibly even with Minions, but still hadn't quite adjusted to how things worked in Middle Earth (despite Vetinari's lectures) which made it hard to take the whole thing seriously.
And that was when he heard the howl. The howl that made his blood run cold while also reminding him that he had blood, spillable blood. A howl like that struck terror into the hearts of criminals chased by Sergeant Angua, but here, it meant something quite different. He'd been on the wrong side of a howl like that before.
'It's like bloody Uberwald out here.' He turned to Legolas, who was nearest him. 'Legolas,' he hissed. 'What was that?' He gestured helplessly towards the sound.
The elf's perfect brow wrinkled. 'A cloud?'
'Not that. That sound!'
'A warg?'
'Are they dangerous?'
'I can't remember.'
Talking to Legolas made Vimes' brain hurt.
'What are they?'
'What are what?'
'Wargs!'
'Where?' Legolas looked around him with mild interest. 'Oh, look. Wargs.'
Vimes made some very rude hand signs at Legolas. It didn't make him feel better, because Legolas just blinked at him, then happily wandered off. 'And I hope you fall over a cliff and your brain starts working!' Vimes shouted after him.
Legolas wandered happily all the way over to Gandalf, and repeated Vimes' hand gestures.
"Who taught you those?'
Legolas couldn't remember. He pointed vaguely at Boromir.
'Imminent peril!' Boromir was heard shouting soon after. He was up the tree recently vacated by Legolas.
'Er...' Pippin said. 'Did anyone hear that howl?'
It was at that moment that Merry knocked the saucepan into the fireplace, after reaching too enthusiastically for the mushrooms. The saucepan and some of the area around it caught fire.
It was the moment after that that Gimli tripped Aragorn up with the end of his axe. He swore it was an accident, even though he had been heard to mutter that he didn't know which incarnation of Aragorn he'd like to punch more, the ranger who knew everything or the king-in-waiting who knew everything.
It was the moment immediately following that, almost the same moment really, that Aragorn picked up the flaming saucepan and chased Gimli with it. Vimes had to fight down the impulse to offer to help 'heal' Aragorn's burns.
Next, Boromir fell out of the tree and landed on Frodo.
Frodo, hysterically, started screaming that Boromir had always been out to get him.
Gandalf turned on them all furiously. Horrible oaths and flecks of spittle were issuing from deep within his beard. His wizard's staff was blazing with fire, and the hairs on the back of Vimes' neck stood up at the immense and terrible power that radiated from the old man.
It was then that the wargs attacked.
All the Fellowship had to do, really, was get out of Gandalf's way. Later, Sam told Vimes he'd never been so relieved to see a warg.
'Well, you lot have had your fun,' Gandalf said, scowling at them all over the smoking warg carcasses. 'But now we're climbing Caradhras! None of you will have the energy for this - this nonsense.'
He strode off, cloak billowing. 'When I next see Elrond,' he growled, 'he will be very sorry for landing me with babysitting duty!'