Our Song Lives On

Frying Pan

The goblins chained their hands behind their backs and linked them all together in a line, and dragged them to the far end of the cavern. The passages there were crossed and tangled in all directions, but the goblins knew their way; and the way went down and down. The goblins were very rough, and pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices.

They began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their flat feet on the stone, and shaking their prisoners as well. It sounded truly terrifying. The walls echoed to the clap, snap! and the crush, smash! The general meaning of the song was only too plain; for the goblins took out whips to whip them with, and set them running as fast as they could in front of them.

There came a glimmer of a red light and they stumbled into a big cavern. It was lit by a great red fire in the middle, and by torches along the walls, and it was full of goblins. They all laughed and stamped and clapped their hands when the dwarves came running in, while the goblin-drivers whooped and cracked their whips behind.

Goblins were cruel, wicked, and bad- hearted. They did not hate dwarves especially, no more than they hated everybody and everything. But they had a special grudge against Thorin's people, because of a significant war in their shared past.

In the shadows on a large flat stone sat a tremendous goblin with a huge head, and armed goblins stood round him carrying their axes and bent swords.

With a wheeze and a cough, the Great Goblin lounged on his throne; far larger and far uglier than any other goblin.

The goblins piled the dwarves' weapons together and the Company themselves huddled closer together, keeping the princes and the girl in the center, the most safe.

The great goblin leapt from his throne, leaning on a skull-topped mace for support.

"Who are these miserable persons?" Croaked he.

"Dwarves, your malevolence."

"Dwarves?!"

"We found them on the Front Porch."

"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?"

The dwarves looked amongst themselves, hesitant to answer. The Goblin king grinned maliciously.

"Very well, if they will not talk, we'll make them squawk! Bring out the mangler! Bring out the bone breaker! Start with the youngest!"

It was hard to miss that his fat, ugly finger pointed to Kili, stirring Thorin's paternal instincts, and he quickly pushed aside the others to step forward.

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

That was true enough.

"Well, well, well, look who it is! Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain." The Great Goblin feigned a mocking bow and the goblin assembly laughed.

"Oh, but I'm forgetting, you don't have a mountain. And you're not a king. Which makes you nobody, really."

The monster grinned as the most delicious thought popped in his mind.

"But I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head. Just the head, nothing attached."

Next to Ellie, the princes twitched at the thought of someone hurting their uncle. But they were ridiculously outnumbered. Ellie grabbed Fili's hand, keeping him still. The blonde prince looked at their joined hands and smiled, then grabbed his brother's hand in the other, extending the gesture.

"Perhaps you know of whom I speak. A vengeful enemy of yours. A pale Orc, astride a white Warg."

Thorin looked as if his nightmare stood in front of him, shocked in disbelief.

"Azog the Defiler was destroyed! He was slain in battle long ago."

"So you think his defiling days are done, do you?" The goblin king smirked at the dwarves's misery.

"Send word to the pale Orc!" He shouted to his legions. "Tell him I have found his prize."

A tiny goblin scribe, sitting in a basket, scribbled down the note and pulled a lever, sailing off into the dark caverns below.

When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. He could hear nothing, see nothing, and he could feel nothing except the stone of the floor. Very slowly he got up and groped about on all fours, till he touched the wall of the tunnel; but neither up nor down it could he find anything.

"Yeees! Yees! Yeees!" He heard a childish voice and hid behind a giant fungus, afraid of anyone that didn't look, or sound, like anyone from the company.

"Gollum! Gollum!" The voice chided.

Bilbo dared to peak above the mushroom, watching as the creature crawled to the goblin.

Gollum, Bilbo named the creature, dragged the goblin by his feet. Suddenly, it sprung to life, grabbing Gollum. In response, Gollum grabbed a nearby rock, crushing and pounding the goblin's head.

The goblin, knocked out, fell backwards and Gollum continued to pull the goblin away.

"Nasty goblinses. Better than old bones, precious."

Bilbo sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home—for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler. He could not think what to do; nor could he think what had happened.

In slapping all his pockets and feeling all round himself for matches, his hand came on the hilt of his little sword that he got from the trolls.  Now he drew it out. It shone pale and dim before his eyes.

"So it is an elvish blade, too," he whispered to himself, "and goblins are not very near, and yet not far enough."

"Go back?" he thought. "No, I don't even know which way back is! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall.

Led by the blue light of the elvish blade, Bilbo kept walking in the dark, until his hobbit feet kicked something was of a different material than the rest of the floor. He directed his blade to the object and saw it... the Ring.

He bent low to examine it, but startled by the moans of the creature, dropped the Ring in his pocket. Against his survival instincts, he followed the sound of Gollum's voice.

The creature was singing an odd song as he sat on his cliff, cutting away at his food, till he was distracted by a blue light.

Bilbo, noticing the song had abruptly stopped, dove behind a boulder to hide, and when he looked up again, the cliff was empty.

Gollum, lurking on a small wooden raft like boat, paddled his hands in the water as he head towards the boulder. Bilbo still hid behind the rock, his breath quick and pained; afraid

He heard a scuffling noise behind, or more correctly above him, and turned to look up to find Gollum climbing the rock above. He jumped down and gave Bilbo a toothy grin as the hobbit drew out his sword.

"Bless us and splash us, precious!"