Chapter 4: Over Hill and Under Hill

There were many paths that led up into the mountains, and many passes over them. The dwarves and Dawn, helped by the wise advice of Elrond and the knowledge and memory of Gandalf, took the right road to the right pass.

Dawn spent her days on the road with a divided mind. One part of it made sure that she followed the dwarves and Gandalf. The other went over the implications that Elrond was her father. Then there was the fact that Elrond had said she had not shown her true heritage. What had he meant by that, she wondered.

One night Dawn watched as down in the valley, what the dwarves and Gandalf had called stone giants, hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang. All the while she was shivering from the cold. Luckily they had found an overhanging rock for shelter. But at times the wind came from the right direction and it blew in on them.

"This won't do at all!" said Thorin. "If we don't get blown off, or drowned, or struck by lightning, we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football."

"Well, if you know of anywhere better, take us there!" said Gandalf, who was feeling very grumpy, and was far from happy about the giants himself.

The end of their argument was that they sent Fili and Kili to look for a better shelter. Soon Fili and Kili came crawling back, holding on to the rocks in the wind. "We have found a dry cave," they said, "not far round the next corner; and ponies and all could get inside."

"Have you thoroughly explored it?" said Gandalf.

"Yes, yes!" they said, though everybody knew they could not have been long about it; they had come back too quick. "It isn't all that big, and it does not go far back."

So they moved to the cave. It seemed quite a fair size, but not too large and mysterious. It had a dry floor and some comfortable nooks. At one end there was room for the ponies

It must have been all the nights that Dawn had waited for Buffy to come home, before and after their mother had died, that had made her into a light sleeper. She had started awake when she had heard the sound of stone against stone. She opened her eyes and saw that a wide passage had been opened at the back of the cave and the ponies disappearing into them. She gave a loud yell to wake the dwarves.

Out jumped several goblins, they were outnumbered at least six to one. They were grabbed and led through the crack in the wall. But not Gandalf. Dawn's yell had done that much good. It had wakened him up wide in a splintered second, and when goblins came to grab him, there was a terrific flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead.

The crack closed with a snap, and Dawn and the dwarves were on the wrong side of it! The goblins hurried them along down what seemed to Dawn as endless tunnels.

Soon there was a glimmer of a red light before them. The goblins began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their flat feet on the stone, and shaking their prisoners as well as they led them into a large cavern.

It was lit by a great red fire in the middle, and by torches along the walls, and it was full of goblins. There in the shadows on a large flat stone sat a tremendous goblin with a huge head. "Who are these miserable persons?" said the Great Goblin.

"Dwarves, and this human!" said one of the goblins, pulling at Dawn's chain so that she fell forward onto her knees. "We found them sheltering in our Front Porch."

"What do you mean by it?" said the Great Goblin turning to Thorin. "Up to no good, I'll warrant! Spying on the private business of my people, I guess! Thieves, I shouldn't be surprised to learn! Murderers and friends of Elves, not unlikely! Come! What have you got to say?"

"Thorin the dwarf at your service!" he replied. "Of the things which you suspect and imagine we had no idea at all. We sheltered from a storm in what seemed a convenient cave and unused; nothing was further from our thoughts than inconveniencing goblins in any way whatever."

"Um!" said the Great Goblin. "So you say! Might I ask what you were doing up in the mountains at all, and where you were coming from, and where you were going to? In fact I should like to know all about you. Not that it will do you much good, Thorin Oakenshield, I know too much about your folk already; but let's have the truth, or I will prepare something particularly uncomfortable for you!"

"We were on a journey to visit our relatives, our nephews and nieces, and first, second, and third cousins, and the other descendants of our grandfathers, who live on the East side of these truly hospitable mountains," said Thorin.

"He is a liar, O truly tremendous one!" said one of the drivers. "Several of our people were struck by lightning in the cave, when we invited these creatures to come below; and they are as dead as stones. Also he has not explained this!" He held out the sword which Thorin had worn, the sword which came from the Trolls' lair.

The Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he looked at it, and all his soldiers gnashed their teeth, clashed their shields, and stamped. They knew the sword at once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They hated it and hated worse any one that carried it.

"Murderers and elf-friends!" the Great Goblin shouted. "Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Take them away to dark holes full of snakes, and never let them see the light again!" He was in such a rage that he jumped off his seat and himself rushed at Thorin with his mouth open.

Just at that moment all the lights in the cavern went out, and the great fire went off poof! into a tower of blue glowing smoke, right up to the roof, that scattered piercing white sparks all among the goblins.

The goblins were frightened beyond description. Suddenly a sword flashed in its own light. It went right through the Great Goblin and he fell dead. The goblin soldiers fled before the sword shrieking into the darkness.

The sword went back into its sheath. "Follow me quick!" said a voice fierce and quiet; and before Dawn understood what had happened she was trotting along again at the end of the line, down more dark passages with the yells of the goblin-hall growing fainter behind her. A pale light was leading them on.

"Quicker, quicker!" said the voice. "The torches will soon be relit."

Then Gandalf lit up his wand. Of course it was Gandalf; but just then they were too busy to ask how he got there.

"Are we all here?" said Gandalf, handing Thorin and Dawn's swords back to them. "Let me see: one—that's Thorin; two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven; where are Fili and Kili? Here they are! twelve, thirteen and of course Miss Dawn makes fourteen!" None of the dwarves knew of Dawn's elvish parentage. She had asked Gandalf and Elrond not to tell them as she wanted that task herself. "Well, well! It might be worse, and then again it might be a good deal better. No ponies, and no food, and no knowing quite where we are, and hordes of angry goblins just behind! On we go!"

On they went. They began to hear goblin noises and horrible cries far behind in the passages they had come through. Soon they could hear even the flap of the goblin feet, many many feet which seemed only just round the last corner. The blink of red torches could be seen behind them in the tunnel they were following; and they were getting deadly tired.

At this point Gandalf fell behind, and Thorin and Dawn with him. They turned a sharp corner. "About turn!" he shouted. "Draw your swords, Dawn! Thorin!"

There was nothing else to be done; and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying round the corner in full cry, and found the three elvish blades cold and bright right in their astonished eyes. The ones in front dropped their torches and gave one yell before they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back knocking over those that were running after them.

With that the dwarves, Gandalf and Dawn turned and ran on through the tunnels yet again.

Soon the goblins overcame their fear and came at them again, this time much more silently than they had done the first time.

Dawn was quite suddenly grabbed from behind in the dark. She shouted and fell and rolled into the blackness, bumped her head on hard rock, and remembered nothing more.