A/N: Hello, dearest readers, I'm so very sorry for the delay, and thank you so much for the patience and bearing with this story. You mean so much to me, every review and follow helps me to go on despite the struggles.
Celebrisilweth, thankfully, Bilbo's more lucky that the regular hobbit!
Mizz Alec Volturi, love is the most powerful weapon of all, that's my belief, be it is fiction or in real life.
Mustard Lady, I don't know and I hope I'll never have the chance to know! To know it is really, really bad is information enough… Thranduil is coming after his son like the Ice Age squirrel after his nut!
=^.^= =^.^= =^.^=
Crash
Bilbo's fall felt, to him, like if it were in slow motion. He could see the ground coming closer to his face, his hands outstretched to prevent the collision with the pavement, the magic ring loose around his middle finger, meaning disgrace if he were to be seen by the orcs and whatever it was that was around him.
Said whatever it was, wasn't little, to his eyes: unlike the usual scrapping motley crew of orcs and goblins that infested the Misty Mountains, most of the specimens he observed were haughtier and, according to his guts, more fatal. More like Azog the Defiler than the usual hungry slag.
Not that the usual hungry slag didn't mean something awful to him. It was the likes of that bunch that crossed the borders of the Shire during the Fell Winter, bringing slaughter and marauding to his people, to his neighbours, to his family. It wasn't something easy to forget.
And, like Thorin Oakenshield regarding the lack of help from the elven king of the forest, what orcs did to him and his people was something… never to forget. And never to forgive.
If, by any chance, he were several miles away from said orc specimens, his guts might have told him something else, but it was not the case. It was palpable that those brutes were prone to kill, and to kill little ones he cared very, very much for. Mountains for, if mountains were an unit of measurement.
All this ran through his head in the little time it took from his stumble to his effective contact with the ground. The ring hula hooped around Bilbo's middle finger, circling it with disconcerting precision. He could be mesmerised by its movement. He could forget the reason he was in that palace, or ignore the pain of his nail breaking under the pressure of his finger aiming to the floor at his will, to make his own movement faster that gravity and preventing the ring from escaping from his hand.
He was not much more than a heap of hobbit shrunken on the floor, waiting for a catastrophe to happen.
Like so many times in his life, he counted. One. Two. Three. Four. One more heartbeat, and it surely would be disaster.
Yet, it didn't.
His fingernail was broken, paining him enough to bite his lips, but the ring didn't leave his finger. He hadn't been seen.
An orc stumbled on his prone invisible form, cursed, and plummeted to the ground. The other orcs laughed their hideous laughter at the misshaped one, allowing Bilbo time to recompose and move somewhere the brutes wouldn't stumble on him, barely.
That's when he saw them.
Squinting his eyes wasn't enough to make the vision go away, and Bilbo cursed himself for it.
The orcs laughed exaggeratedly at their fallen companion (did they even have the concept of companionship?) and ignored what was happening in the surroundings. Which was very interesting to our hobbit, and, he deemed, could be very interesting to his dwarves.
The fallen orc had been carrying one extremity of an iron pole, to which a woman was bound. Bilbo could see her grimace when she collided to the ground, quickly replaced by a stare of surprise when she saw, and immediately grabbed, something on the ground, close enough that her shackled hands were able to reach.
Bilbo made his best to understand what and also who was happening, but things were happening too fast for him to register, even in the apparent slow-motion the magic ring bestowed.
Following the misshaped pair of orc carriers there was more of the same, but now the hobbit knew, to his horror, who was being carried like slaughtered cattle.
First one, just after the human lady, sure as a yell follows the wrong hit of a hammer, was Kíli, the reckless youngster he saw turn into the responsible ruler of the dwarrow settlement in the Blue Mountains. Dís would never allow her son to be so undressed, damaged skin showing all under thin strips of cloth. If she were to have a say, any of her sons (and brothers; and brothers-in-law; and cousins; and second-cousins; and…) would never allow the sun to touch more than their face and hands. If, and only if, life couldn't be carried on without such misery.
One day, if he survived this new mess bred of Thorin's stupidity, he would teach Dís what the heat of the sun could mean to one's health…
But, right now, it was better to postpone those lascivious thoughts from his magic-ring addled brain, and focus on the prisoners on display.
The next cattle-like carried prisoner was an elf, one Bilbo knew, oh how precisely he knew, the son of the forest king. Many a time the hobbit followed the gracious footed prince up and down the twisted corridors of Thranduil's castle until he learned the paths and turns of the place on his own.
Anyway, it was clear now that not only (reputed) kidnapped Tilda and her (reputed) rescuer Kíli were captives, but also Legolas, to top the trouble. At least, so he hoped, Bilbo wouldn't have to convince those three races that fighting against each other was far worse than fighting against orcs and wargs and bats and whatever. The Big People used to be stupid (in his personal opinion), but not stupid enough to let their own die when a good (in their own opinion) fight could establish solution to a conflict.
So, he watched from his stone niche as the procession of orcs and prisoners dragged on, intent of hearing where they should be carried to, and to what purpose.
Bilbo wasn't fluent in orckish (or whatever their twisted language was called).
He didn't know the meanderings and architectonics of the place.
And neither did he have any knowledge in necromancy. That he were aware of, of course.
Yet…
The giant spiders of Mirkwood didn't speak Westron, as far as Bilbo knew, but he understood everything those beasts meant underneath the chitter-chatter of their chelicerae, back then when he freed his dwarves from those terrible tasting webs.
Consciously, no word (if word was the proper verbalism to what he experienced) could be identified, but the purpose, the underlying meaning was there. Like when he walked through the Hobbiton fair and fragments of what people around him spoke entered his ears without filter or context, and when he realized it was there, the information that the best place to buy potatoes today was at the south end of the market, close to the tinker.
Now Bilbo felt the same kind of understanding of what the orcs and whatever said and intended, as if the speech of evil creatures were something his precious ring could translate directly to his mind without the use of words. Which made him wonder why he couldn't read Lobelia's mind when he used to the ring to feign he wasn't home at tea time, for instance.
The intentions of the spiders were bad enough, but it was simply creatures looking for food. Reasonable, even if disgusting from the point of view of the potential meal.
What the hobbit apprehended from the orcs was not such banality. It was oppressive, sadistic, and…
The understanding of what was supposed to happen crunched his entrails and made Bilbo want to throw up.
=^.^=
"Your Halfling is taking his time."
Bard was anxious and displayed it as anger against whoever delayed the resolution of his anguish.
Thorin didn't take it too lightly.
"Bilbo is half of nothing. He'll come back when he has something useful to report."
"Night is falling. That place feels bad enough under the sun."
"What do you want?" Thorin crossed his arms and faced Bard, with his cat-like ability to be a foot shorter that any interlocutor and yet face them top down. "Run blindly into an orc den ignoring what is happening, where to go, what to expect? Congratulations, you devised the most stupid battle plan of the Third Age."
"It is my daughter that's in there."
"And my sister-son, who happened to be at hand when your daughter needed rescue."
"Tilda was kidnapped, not exploring the wild like a reckless brat with the ridiculous excuse of a Track the Tracker Tournament."
"First time in history that someone was kidnapped with full camping paraphernalia and horse equipment."
"Are you sure you want to imply what you're suggesting?"
"By my beard, are you sure you chose to ignore what is plain to see?"
"Shazara!" The hushed shout (whatever it sounds like) was uttered by a very angry princess of the line of Durin, battle axe in hand and a finger toggling from king's nose to king's nose. "Willing to waste the surprise element Bilbo is buying us, really?"
"M´lady your highness, I'…"
Bard tried to stutter and answer, altogether obliterated by Thorin.
"This is not what…"
"Of course it is!" She admonished her brother and turned to Bard. "And ye nothing!"
When Dís managed both majesties to pay attention, they were humble like teenagers caught with improper literature in hands, downcast eyes and dancing on the balls of their heels.
"Now that I have yer attention, listen! If any of our children is in there, suffering whatever it is in the hands of filthy orcs, it is because ye both decided stuff on their lives as if you were Powers. Surprise, ye're not! Surprise surpassed, yer feet back on the ground and focus on granting them safe rescue. Ye may settle any disagreement on whatever pleases ye after the younglings are back home, or over my bloody corpse!"
Having their ears washed by Dís wasn't their priority right then, so Thorin and Bard pretended to be smart and tried to offer olive branches to each other and mostly to the dwarrowdam. Thorin, especially, knew how much she was pissed off just by how much her accent showed. It was never a good sign.
To top it with gold, Dunwine chose exactly that moment to draw nearer, a grumpy Dwalin at his heels.
"The horses are nervous. This place is evil, and they can sense it. They won't abide here for much longer."
Bard's son-in-law was all business in regard to the beasts, as expected from a horse lord of Rohan.
Dwalin couldn't be less impressed.
"And the obvious solution is to tie them, like anyone with the brain of a mouse would agree."
"These are not ordinary horses, as anyone with brains instead of muscles would agree."
"I'll show ye how muscles are used in a jiffy!"
Bard and Thorin were speechless at the pointless argument, and more so when Dís tugged at their sleeves and pointed to the remaining of the camp.
It was chaos.
Bofur and Nori were quarrelling about Mahal only knew.
Several riders of Rohan were performing a shouting match with most of the guards of Dale.
Others were waiting in line, not very civilly, to kick a dry tree to its fall. Nori was waging bets on who would put it down first, only to have Bain arguing on who should and should not be allowed to take part in the endeavour.
Bifur signalled in Iglishmêk at a black squirrel.
Balin, of all dwarves, held a shouting match with a guard of Dale.
"Durin's beard…"
"What bit them…?"
Thorin was the first to figure it out.
"It is the forest. We dealt with this when crossing the elven path, ten years ago. I was led to believe that blonde fairy had uplifted his filthy sorcery, but it seems his honour is far from…"
A slap in the face, despite stunning the dwarf king a little, was also useful to bring him back to his senses.
The dealer of said slap grabbed Thorin's collar and brought him down to his level.
"Thorin son of Thrain, look into my eyes." Thorin obliged, as he swore to do whenever his dedicated burglar asked him to. "It wasn't Thranduil's doing then, as it isn't now. The source of all this evil is right there, beyond that bridge. As is your sister-son."
Dís covered her mouth to suppress a cry of anguish. Bard was ready to run into the fortress with nothing but his bare hands, but the hobbit grabbed the hem of his shirt in time.
"And your daughter, Bard. But it won't do to run in there this way! Listen!"
His last word was surprisingly loud for someone of his size. Enough to silence most of the quarrelers. Bifur shrugged and resumed his chat with the squirrel, but it was not unexpected.
"We must invade the fortress, make to the topmost terrace and rescue the three of them. The orcs…"
"Three? What three?" Dís was confused, but unlike the others didn't lose the ability to speak.
"Prince Kíli, princess Tilda and prince Legolas."
"Ahá!" Thorin was sure of his triumph. "I knew Thrand…"
Another slap in the face was enough to bring him back to his senses. Again.
"Legolas is as prisoner as Kíli, Thorin, don't play the stupid because I know you are not!" The hobbit turned to the assembled cohort of warriors of assorted origins and skills. "We must make it silently, and quickly, and accomplishing, because there will not be another chance. We must unite! We must make it tonight, before midnight, or it will be too late! Can they count on you?"
A loud cheer of yeah's and aye's and whatever's greeted him, fire to fight already in their veins.
Dís felt a shiver down her spine as she made out the possible meaning of Bilbo's words.
"Why would it be too late, Bilbo? Disregarding the fact that any minute is one minute too many to be in the hands of orcs…?"
Bilbo swallowed hard and lowered his voice enough to reach only the small circle close to him.
"Because they will be bled to their deaths."
If someone thought it was no reason enough, Bilbo made even more clear.
"By the Necromancer."