Loyalty, Honor, and a Willing Heart

Chapter 15 - From the frying pan into the fire

They found the way out and kept running for a while, just to be out of the immediate reach of any bolder goblin who might find courage to dare daylight to avenge their king. As they reached a more level ground, Gandalf, who was in the lead, stopped and started to count the passing ones numbering them on his fingers.

“Dwalin, Balin, Ellen, Ori, Dori, Nori, Óin, Glóin, Iris, Kili, Fili, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Lily, Thorin...” He looked around, searching. “Where is Bilbo? Where is our hobbit?”

“I saw him drop down and be missed by the goblins when we were pushed along the path.” Nori said.

“Have you lost him?”

Gandalf was beside himself out of anger. Thorin, to no one’s surprise, begun to argue with him.

Iris sat sadly on the ground, leaning onto a tree, covering her face with her hands, crying.

“He is gone! He is lost! That horrible goblins got him, I’ll never see Bilbo again; I was so angry at him, I hit him, and now he will never know how I’m sorry for it!”

Fili crouched in front of Iris, and took one of her hands in his, trying to comfort her.

“Don’t cry, Little Sister, don’t cry! I am sure Bilbo is fine, believe in me!” He looked up past her, with a big grin. “Actually, I bet my beard he is sound alive, do you hear me?”

The hobbit-lass looked up at him, felling a hand caressing lightly her hair.

“Thank you so much, my brother, but you should not, I am sure he is lost.”

“No, he isn’t!”

Iris spun around to the voice of the one who was actually caressing her red locks.  She stood up and hit him with her fists, shouting.

“Bilbo! I will kill you!”

“Bilbo Baggins! I’ve never been so glad to see someone in my life!” Gandalf’s voice faltered.

“Bilbo! We had given you up!” Kili was glad to see him, as was Fili.

“How did you get past the goblins?”

“How, indeed?” Voiced darkly the always suspicious Dwalin.

Bilbo held Iris’ wrists in his hands, laughingly. Gandalf perceived something strange, that would have to be cleared out later, but right then he just tried to settle things.

“Well, what does it matter? He is back!”

“It matters!” Gloomy Thorin intervened. “I want to know. What are you doing here? Why did you come back?”

Ellen hushed her own laughter at Thorin’s old and customary phrase. Bilbo held his ground, looking self assured for the first time since she got to know him.

“I know you doubt me. I know, you always have. You are right, I often think of Bag End. I miss my books, my own armchair, my garden. There is where I belong. That’s home. That is why I came back, because... you don’t have one. A home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back, if I can.”

Thorin lowered his eyes, thinking for a moment, and then turned back to the hobbit. He was about to say something when a horrendous howl cut the air. Gandalf was getting tired of yelling the same word.

“Run!”

And run they did, as fast as they could, hearing the orcs’ shrill cries and the wargs’ growls and howls. They had no packs, only their weapons, what made their load lighter, but even so they were on foot, and the orcs were on wargs, some of the mightiest predators in Middle- Earth. The women had had only a slight glimpse of them before they found, or were found by, the dwarves, and no actual fight with them yet. Albeit not sending out a single word about it, in the goblin den flight there was their first real kill, to all of them, and that jelly demons looked far easier to deal with than the bodybuilding orcs that were chasing them right now.