Loyalty, Honor, and a Willing Heart

Chapter 14 - Underhill

Ellen was slumbering in her uneasy thoughts, one hand on her long sword’s hilt, as she used to do when in watch, and the other caressing Kili’s hair, as she used to do whenever possible, when she more sensed than heard Bilbo light steps on the sand floor. The darkness of the cave plus her downwards cloak hood made it uttermost unperceivable that she was awake and aware, and so she kept to herself. But Bofur, close to the cave’s entrance, didn’t.

“Where are you going?” Bofur whispered to the hobbit.

Bilbo stopped in his steps and looked back to Bofur

“I am going back to Rivendell.” Bilbo stated, desolated.

“What? But why?”

“Bofur, I am really sorry, but I don’t belong to all of this, this...” He was fighting to find the right words. “... this treasure-seeking, this grandiloquent things; I just want to be back home at the Shire, to live my normal life...”

Bofur shook his head disapprovingly.

“You are just homesick. It happens to all of us.”

“No, it doesn’t!” Bilbo was on his clueless mode. “You see, I’m really not used to live this way, wandering, each day at one place, homeless, and...”

Then he perceived Bofur’s hurt gaze at him, and looked at the other dwarves. If he could bury his head on the ground right then, he would. He shook his head, not having words to mend what he’d already said. But Bofur had.

“I wish you luck. And that you will be happy anywhere you go to. I really wish.”

Bofur was about to embrace Bilbo when they heard her.

“But I don’t!”

A hushed and angry soprano voice called behind him. Bilbo put his hands on his head and closed his eyes hard when he heard Iris. “You are abandoning us! Abandoning me! What do you think you are doing, your selfish brat?”

Bilbo was completely distressed by Iris’s quiet outburst. She was about to hit his chest again with her closed fists, with all her hobbit-size might, albeit not disturbing anyone of the sleeping company. But then Bofur noticed a slight blue gleam around Bilbo’s scabbard edge.

“What is this?”

“What is what?”

“Wake up!” Thorin’s voice boomed in the cave as the sand glissaded through a crack in the floor. He wasn’t asleep either when the hobbit sneaked his way and perceived the danger as soon as it appeared. In no time at all they all were falling through a tunnel, then down on a scaffold like thing and surrounded by pale ugly and not properly dressed creatures that pushed them along a narrow path, none of them too gently. Soon they were in front of a big round-bellied mass of fat with seemingly a bone thing in his head for a crown and the worst case of goiters one could think of. The Company had been stripped of their weapons, which were lain in a heap between them and the bariatric surgery applicant.

“What have you brought to me, hmm?” His voice was as loud as he was fat.

“Dwarves, your Malevolence, plus an accursed elf,” The goblin spat the word in disgust. “and this.” He shoved Iris closer to the Great Goblin.

“Hmm, and what is this, I wonder? An elf puppy?” He laughed out loud from his own bad joke. “Strange days there are when dwarves and elves walk in the same company. And what was this lot doing at my porch? Spying? With all this weaponry on you, menacing my people? Speak!”