Daughter of Starlight

Chapter Fifteen: Thieves in the Night

Soon, for whatever reason, Bard left the house and didn't come back. While he was gone, I set to helping Sigrid with the dinner she was preparing for the company. Bain stayed in the main room, looking nervous in the midst of dwarfish warriors.

"Spies," Dwalin grumbled. "I don't believe him. I say we go and get the weapons now."

"And risk capture again?" Balin asked him. "No. We stay here until nightfall, just like the bargeman said. We'll have the cover of dark to hide us."

"You're not thinking of actually going to steal those weapons, are you?" I asked, taking on the tone of a chastising mother.

"What choice do we have?" Bofur asked as the majority of the company faced me. "All our weapons are back in Mirkwood."

"I hope you all remember that you thoroughly rejected what weaponry was offered to you," was my response as I chopped up a pile of vegetable leaves and then gave them to Sigrid to put in the boiling pot of water. With my help, a delicious soup was surely on the way.

"Those were hardly weapons, lass," Gloin retorted.

"They were better than nothing," I countered. I didn't like Bard at all, nor did I trust him, but at least he had followed through with what he had agreed to do. He'd gotten us to Lake-town and gotten us weapons. The lack of gratitude from the dwarves actually surprised me.

More grumbles sounded in the small space, and the dwarves resolved to pointedly avoid looking at and speaking to me. They tended to ignore me when I said something smart and they knew it, and I didn't mind. There was no better way to deal with dwarf men's moods than to let them run their course.

Sigrid and I soon finished adding ingredients to the soup and left it to cool. I rejoined the company, seeing that Bain had long since disappeared, standing on the edge of the group and simply listening to what they were planning. They fully meant to leave the house and sneak into the armory as soon as the sun set, and I couldn't do anything to help them see the unnecessary risk they were about to take.

"Does anyone actually know where the armory is?" I eventually asked, and silence fell.

I smirked.

"Bain," I then called, turning to face the short hallway the boy had materialized from. "Can you tell me something?"

"Of course, Miss," he said almost shakily.

"Where is the city armory located?"

"Near the center of the town," Bain told me. "Not far from here."

I turned back to the company, smiling as if to say, "You're welcome." Then I saw that the sky outside the window had grown dark.

"If we're leaving, we should go now," I said, heading for the door.

"You're coming with us?" Kili asked in surprise. For the first time I noticed his face looked a little clammy, but I ignored that for the moment.

I shrugged. "Why shouldn't I? If you're set on this, who am I to stop you?"

"No," Bain suddenly said, still obviously intimidated by every single one of us, even me and Bilbo. But despite his fear, he stood in front of the door that the dwarves had stepped towards. "You can't go."

"Move out of the way, boy," Dwalin growled. I tensed myself, ready to pull Bain out of the way in case Dwalin discarded the fact that Bain was in fact only a young boy.

"My father told me not to let you leave," Bain insisted. I had to admit, I really admired the boy's courage.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But you must let us go.

After no response from Bain, Dwalin resolved to putting a large hand on the boy's shoulder and pushing him not so gently out of the way.

The company all rushed out the door. I apologized to Bain on the way out, making a mental note to force Dwalin to apologize as well later.

"This must be it," Thorin whispered once we had come upon the center of town, casting his eyes around our surroundings to make sure no one saw us. We had gathered that one of the tallest buildings that must have been absolutely lavish in its time, but was now a filthy mess like the rest of the town, had to be the armory.

Everyone started whispering up a plan to get the weapons out of the building, then Thorin shushed us, pointing out the two guards patrolling a few yards away, on the wooden roads opposite of us. Thorin waited until they passed to speak.

"As soon as we have the weapons, we make straight for the mountain," he said. He then ordered about half the members of the company to make an odd set of stairs beneath a high window that had been left open. The rest of the company lined up a fair distance away.

Nori started the process of sneaking in, then Bilbo, running as fast as he could on his silent hobbit feet, climbed up the dwarf stairs and jumped for the windowsill. After he pulled himself up, I ran for the window, easily launching myself up from the dwarf stairs to grasp the windowsill.

Bilbo assisted me in pulling myself through the window. Once all the dwarves who hadn't doubled as stairs were inside, we looked for the weapons. We eventually found them, and we began grabbing as many as we could carry. Bilbo grabbed for an axe, and the rest of us gathered up blades of every sort. I took care to get a bow with a corresponding quiver of arrows, my preferred weapon of choice.

I headed towards the stairs, only to see Kili struggling under the weight of the many weapons in his arms.

"Are you alright?" Thorin asked him.

"I can manage," Kili replied, but even so, Thorin only placed one more weapon in his arms to send him down the stairs and outside.

"Let's just get out of here," Kili said, taking one step down the stairs. The next thing we knew, his legs had given out from under him and the multiple weapons were falling down the stairs, clanking and banging loudly down the stairway.

We all froze, silent, then I cursed softly in elvish when we heard the sound of shouts, no doubt from the guards.

I looked accusingly at Thorin, telling him with my eyes that I had tried to discourage him from this because of what could happen, and now it was happening.

We had just enough time to drop all but one of the weapons we had collected and point them at the guards that had suddenly flooded the room, but it was no match for the sheer number of them. With their blades pressed to our throats, we all had no choice but to surrender.