Cardolan – 1: The Free Peoples
"-. .-"
One does not simply walk into a hole in the ground.
Not if they're not a hobbit and expect to come out with any sort of decorum, as Nori, son of Bori, got to learn first-hand on the late eve of 27 April, year 2941 of the Third Age under the Sun.
Yes, Nori the dwarf could rightly claim to have become the most experienced of his peers in matters such as this. The half-dozen mini-hobbits made for an only mildly-bemusing sight as they scurried out of the Great Smials of Tookland through one of the many exits, never mind that it was the middle of the night or that most of them could more rightly be said to have torn, trotted, tumbled, trampled, tripped or tussled as they ran like Bauglir himself was on their heels. But the same could not be said about a dwarf tearing out the round door after them and trying to lunge for small, round and scraggly-haired only to stub his toe on the threshold, lose his footing when the welcome mat slipped from under his feet, stagger sideways with a muffled curse, trip on the porch lantern while swearing in Khuzdul, trip
again on the knee-high fence just to the right of the porch and fall beard-arseways in the flower garden, ending his ill-fated dash from the bowels of the Great Smials by most ingloriously faceplanting into a forsythia bush.
Forsythia. A yellow-blossomed shrub meaning anticipation.
He had drunk entirely too much.
As he groaned and rolled to his back onto the footpath bordering the various flowerbeds, Nori had to take a moment to mentally gawk at the fact that he could actually recognize the plant by sight, and apply meaning to it to boot. He supposed that's what he got for letting himself be roped into having a (very) late supper with the Shire ruling family. As if he didn't already feel terribly out of place as the only dwarf among over a dozen hobbits (and those were only the ones in the room with him), this just
had to turn out to be one of those dinners where people (specifically Bilbo Baggins and Isumbras Took) had a conversation within another conversation, making him feel even more out of place than normal, even as he tried to puzzle out whatever pieces would be useful to Thorin (and Ori) later. Hobbits sure were a garrulous bunch. And then, Mahal curse him, he just
had to try and find something to distract himself with from the passive-aggressive conversation regarding some Hobbit prince-related "matter" between Bilbo Baggins and his ki-er,
Thain-uncle (and, maybe, prevent him from trying to filch something of significance without noticing). That only let him open to being figuratively pounced on by the Thain's wife who proceeded to "make it all better for him, you'll see, never you worry dear," once Nori made the mistake of telling her he didn't know anything about agriculture, gardening and the meaning of flowers.
A discussion that somehow segued into talking about hobbit genealogies. Mahal, did they like their genealogies. Almost as much as they liked their pipeweed, although considering that they'd spent hundreds of years refining their various strains, they at least were entitled to that particular taste. Nori felt like he could recite half the Took family tree from memory, and even point out the more important parts, like how the forsythia bush he'd faceplanted in had been, well, planted by Mirabella took, sister of the current Thain and youngest daughter of Gerontius "The Old" (here the conversation wandered into details about the Old Took's 12 children and their various fathers, mothers, spouses and siblings-in-law) from seeds sent over from the Grey Havens by Isengar Took, the Old Took's youngest child who'd run off west at Gandalf's prompting some time ago and never returned. Last they'd heard of him, a long, long time ago, he was, apparently, too busy trying (and failing in most embarrassing fashion, seemed like) to catch up on the several thousand years' worth of shipbuilding knowledge possessed by
Círdan the Shipwright, and even working on designing some ships himself, if it could even be called that. "He was complaining about how hard it was to find wood that doesn't float, my brother-in-law, can you imagine?" Dilwen Took nee Proudfoot (the Thain-esse, or whatever the term was?) had told Nori as she handed him his fourth scone while fanning herself absently. "Sometimes I wonder if everything worthwhile in that head of his was blown out through his ears. Wood that doesn't float indeed! What use is a ship that doesn't stay afloat? Tooks! They can't manage without traveling so far from the Shire that they lose all their good hobbit sense! Dreadfully sad business and no mistake."
"(Hey, you think he's dead?)"
"(Course not! He's a dwarf! Dwarf heads're hard! Everyone says so!)"
"(Yeah!)"
"(But what if he
is?)"
"(He ain't!)"
"(But what if he
is!?)"
"(Quiet! You wan'im ter hear us?)"
"(Won't hear nothin' if he's
dead-)"
"He's NOT dea-AAAAYYE!"
The little nugget squealed in shock as Nori jumped him – served the little bugger right for wandering so close! – but that little fright was not enough to soothe the thief's pride.
"NOOOOO!" Adelard Took wailed dramatically. "Help! HELP! He's got me! Kidnapper! Hobbit-snatcher! I've been caught by a big, bad, hairy,
ugly-"
"Who're you calling ugly, you little sockpuppet!" Nori roared and rolled over the mini-hobbit and poked him in the ribs.
"Gya!" The confirmation received that hobbits were as ticklish as any dwarf, Nori proceeded to tickle him with as much leniency as he'd been shown by the scamp and his co-conspirators when they made off with his left boot. Which was to say, none at all. "Nnngi-hihihihi!" Thus did Tiny Hobbit the Little, First of His Name, break into giggles precisely as helpless as the dwarf had expected.
"U-un-unhand him, b-beastie!" Cried Paladin Took the Even Littler. "F-Fie!" The little tyke – less than 10 summers old if Nori was any judge – started whacking him with a little, frail stick. "F-Fie! Fie! Fie!"
"Ow! Aye, aye aye!" Nori yelled, because why not? The brats were asking for it! "Oh woe! I've been sniffed out by a bunch of wet-nosed pups!"
"Who's'e calling wet-nosed!?"
"Fie! Foes! Fire!"
"Fie! Foes! Fire! Awake!"
"Oy! Lay off with that!"
"Don't shout that, are you nuts?"
"You want everyone to think the Horn of Buckland's been called? What are you, stupid?"
"I'll show you stupid!" An impromptu wrestling match ensued.
Just as planned of course. Now if only the rest of these little buggers-
"Casualties of treachery!" Short and pudgy yelled, whacking at him with yet another stick. "Get the evildoer! Get'im! Hit'im again!"
"Oh for… You're both dumb as a doornail!" Cried out plump and sleepy at the two that had rolled over each other and crushed the nearby row of narcissus in their ongoing wrestling bout. "And we ain't dogs!" Pause. "Are we?"
"Some hunters have dogs…I guess?" Scraggly-hair wondered dubiously.
"What hunters? I though' we was playing knights'n'beasties?"
"We '
were playing'-"
"'
Was' playin,' 'cos we're s'posed t'be from old days when people didn't know how ter talk proppa."
"Knights
did know how to talk proppa, you-"
Seeing the general state of distraction in his foes, Nori decided it was a perfect time to escape.
…
Nah.
He tickled his prisoner even harder
"Nu-huhuhuhhihi-stop-s-stop hiiii-hihihihim!"
"Egad! We forgot about the fearsome were-worm!"
Were-worm?
"Ack! It's gone berserk it has!"
"Gasp!" Floppy-cheeks 'gasped.'
"Get'im!" Whack.
"Down with the beast!" Crash.
"For the Shire!" Five hobbits dogpiled him at once.
Nori groaned and 'collapsed' on top of little Adelard.
"Awk!" the 'prisoner' groaned. "Stop! 'E's crushin' me!"
"Yes, I'm crushing him," Nori rattled tragically from where he was 'trapped' by the valorous knights of old. "At it's all your fault! Seriously, what is
wrong with you people?"
"Don' listen to'im! Bring'im down before it's too late!"
"WHAT!?" Adelard squeaked, gaping up at Nori in disbelief.
"But'e's
already down!" Some sanity, finally.
"They're
both down."
"They've
been down
all this time, geez!"
"Men! Honestly!"
"Frogbaskets! What'll we do? What'll we DO!?" Finally the right question. Why, Adelard might even survive long enough to-
"We dig a hole!"
What.
"We dig a hole!"
"Not just a hole! We dig a
tunnel!
"A tunnel that goes right under the begonias!"
"A tunnel that goes
all the way to the pantry!"
"A tunnel that goes all the way to the pantry so we can
eat and build up our strength for the
epic final battle!"
"Only we'll have to build it
from the other end to take'im by surprise!"
"Then we
build another one!"
"We can build a whole new
smial! Then when we rescue the distressed prince, we can hide'im too!"
"Brilliant!
"Capital idea!"
What in Mahal's ever-flaming beard?
"Start digging!"
"Yeah!"
"Dig!"
"Yeah!"
"Onwards!"
"Where!?"
"To dig, duh!"
"With what?"
"A trowel!
"A spade!"
"A shovel!"
"A
pick!"
"A pickaxe!"
"No!" A hobbit lad held up Nori's boot triumphantly. "We use this!"
Stunned silence descended upon the garden and the gang, for a moment.
But
only a moment.
"Genius!"
"We use the beast's own weapon against it!"
"We'll dig!"
"We'll drill!"
"Dredge!"
"Gouge!"
"Scoop!"
"Search!"
"Shovel!"
"Sift!
"BURROW!" The mass of fauntlings all together howled, and the poor night owl roosting on top of the lamp post flew away in fright, hooting off into the night.
The night fell still and silent after that, as the youngsters gave a deep, satisfied sigh under the moonlight.
Then…
"TO THE PANTRY!"
With that last, unified warcry, the mini-hobbits promptly disappeared back into the hole from whence they came.
And from their place on the ground, Nori and Adelard Took stared after the disappearing throng, aghast.
What.
What?
"What in Mahal's forge just happened?"
"Um-"
Nori's heart almost stopped and he spun his head to the right.
Paladin Took stood there, hunched on himself and clutching his stick for dear life. "Can… can I be the distressed prince next time?"
The thought came and went that the far,
far too quiet Paladin Took owed his life to the fact that Nori's hands were already full with another hobbit, but then the Dwarf saw those large, shiny doe eyes and felt rather like he should be having a flashback of a totally different type.
Then he all but collapsed next to Adelard Took as his deep-bellied, uncontrollable laughter took him.
Days of trudging amidst beady stares and wrinkled noses. Days of not realizing there were always at least twice as many eyes about. Days under scrutiny by those big, wide, child-like eyes. A feast fit for kings he didn't remember with a hobbit he will never be able to
not remember. An attempt to spy that he remembered even less, and what may as well have been a one-night stand with one or however many pigs before being dragged across the neighborhood and tucked into bed like an addled child, only to wake up and feel half-way between trapped and addled after that. Six parts unruffled and half a dozen parts uneasy, for hours upon hours upon hours. Hours upon hours of gawking, sneaking, walking, following, watching and listening to the subtle sounds of life inside an underground grove of light. Hours upon hours of gawking, sneaking, walking, following, watching and listening to hobbits talking without talking while talking without talking, making him feel as if there were several conversations going on at once while neither was taking place at all. Because the one who'd dragged him half-way across the Shire couldn't be bothered to go through whatever social motions were obviously expected and instead dryly chided
the king of the Shire over the latter's pigheadedness involving some capital-M
Matter Nori still had no idea about. Hours upon hours of following, gawking, watching and listening and trying, trying,
trying and
failing to figure out what the hell he was supposed to make of these hobbits.
And it took getting unintentionally embroiled in a children's game to make him realize that there wasn't any point to trying to make anything of hobbits at all.
Nori, son of Bori, laughed himself sick and collapsed to the side, tired and drained even as his laughter came unceasing, and he snatched Paladin Took and hugged him before the lad's quivering lip had the chance to boil the rest of the way into the Runaway Ori Special. All the while, he laughed. Even as Paladin half-heartedly squirmed in his hug, even as Adelard tackled him and nearly brained himself on his elbow, the dwarf just laughed.
"There lad!" He gasped some time later. "You're the distressed prince and you're in my grasp." The dwarf rolled onto his back and held the giggling tyke up, silhouetted against the moon. "Now how would you like to commit treason?"
"Yeah!" Two high-pitched voices crowed with glee in the night.
Then Nori couldn't help it and just broke down again and laughed. Laughed and laughed.
And
laughed
Little wonder he couldn't figure out what to make of these earthnuts.
Hobbits one and all were just plain
, completely
nuts!
"-. .-"
"I don't suppose you'll say where you're taking me now?" Nori asked later, after having left the fearsome fivesome tied to the pantry door by their own suspenders and under guard by the valorous Knight of Flowers Adelard Took, and his squire Paladin the Damselsome.
"I am hardly taking you anywhere. Where you go is entirely your own decision." Thus answered, the hobbit abruptly veered off the path leading away from the Great Smials, jumped over the fence onto the pasture of someone or other and all but ran up the hill.
As he hastened to follow, Nori almost brought up how the hobbit came to personally tell him he'd be leaving soon, but he stopped himself when he realized that Bilbo Baggins really hadn't phrased it like he was supposed to come along, no matter what it could and did sound like. He switched tracks then. "I guess this is an attitude you instill in your children too, then?" Which was another way of asking:
Is that why you let the little ones stay up so late into the night and roughhouse unsupervised?
Or
apparently unsupervised, which didn't necessarily mean much given recent events, Nori supposed.
"No matter the race, children are infamous for being prone towards the things they are least allowed." The hobbit didn't seem to leave any trail in the high grass, somehow.
"That doesn't exactly explain why those little ones were up at this hour," Nori huffed after him, keeping pace easily.
"You mean besides it being pre-adventure day? It's a phase. Children don't do well with what they're told, so we wean them off bad habits through experience instead, mainly by having them do chores at specific hours regardless of how tired they are. Farming requires a very specific routine you know, and you're soon cured of the want to stay up late once you've been forced to get up with the dawn for a week or two straight. As for safety, there's always a tween or adult keeping an eye on things. Some of us are night owls you know, and with how large families are, it's not hard to have someone always on the lookout, and the Tooks are the line for whom that's something especially true. Incidentally, it's those very people who generally instill the appreciation of proper bedtimes in faunts. They're the ones who end up cranky and tired enough to ignore the doe-eyed or alternatively grating whining of the children while they herd them through their chores and whatnot later on."
Nori snorted.
Incidentally his rump. "And the noise they make doesn't ruin sleep for everyone else?" The mini-hobbits had been loud enough to shake the rafters.
Bilbo snorted and jumped forward, sliding down the slope on his back all the way to the base of the hill. Nori decided to tromp down in a more reasonable manner, but to his surprise the hobbit then continued the conversation as if it hadn't been put on hold at all. "Aunt Dilwen
snores louder than that – ask my Uncle if you don't believe me – and parents inevitably learn not to let most noises bother them after a while. Fear, panic and crying sound differently enough that we can react differently if it comes down to it, but as I said, the older tweens or other members of a family always make sure one of them is up and about, so it usually doesn't come down to it. Most hurts in the end are caused by bullies, and that's a recurring problem we haven't found a perfect solution for."
You and everyone else on Arda, but that wasn't the point. "Sounds a tad bothersome and unbelievable if you ask me."
"If we can sleep through thunderstorms, we can suffer merriment from our own."
Nice sentiment, but did thunder even carry that well underground?
"So where
are we going in such a hurry?" Norri puffed as Bilbo led him into a thicket.
"Dragoncreek," the hobbit answered as he sprung up the forested slope.
Dragoncreek, it turned out, was a clean, clear, merry, but ultimately very shallow little forest creek indeed. Also, Bilbo Baggins turned out not to be heading to the creek itself, instead veering north the moment it came into view and sprinting upstream. Nori was panting by the time they reached what turned out to be a small pond, having had to put all the speed he could to cope with varied unexpected obstacles and keep the hobbit in sight, then rush through and over some gnarly moss-covered roots and even hop over a fallen oak before the water lily pond came into view.
It was just moments after Bilbo Baggins slid to a halt on the grassy soil that the pond's surface was disturbed, the water splashing up and out due to the sudden emergence of a bird that was quick, tiny and oh so familiar.
"Haha!" Bilbo Baggins crowed victoriously. "I got here first!"
The bird alighted on his nose and puffed its chest so much that Nori half-feared it would burst. Then it engaged Bilbo Baggins in a conversation that was a lot less one-sided than it should have been.
Nori could only stand awkwardly and stare at the odd spectacle.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry for ignoring you!" The hobbit eventually turned to Nori and gestured between him and the bird that flew to perch on his index finger. "Nori, son of Bori, be known to Záyn."
Za-een? What kind of name was that? Nori squinted at the small bird. For that matter… "I don't recognize this type of bird. I know hummingbirds and even they're not this small, and they're not bright scarlet either."
Bilbo Baggins looked wistful and ponderous for a moment, like some weighty mood had come over him suddenly. "He's a kirinki." Then he blinked and the illusion was gone. "You wouldn't have seen his type anywhere else."
"If you say so…" Nori frowned and the bird seemed to puff its feathers even more, indignant at having its uniqueness contested so.
"Now don't you start!" the hobbit scolded… Záyn. "He's my guest, I'll have you know! And he's certainly spent more time with me the past day than you have in the last month so I'll thank you to behave!"
The bird chirped something at him, or it must have but it didn't sound like any bird speech he'd ever heard.
"Ignore him," the hobbit said dryly as he set off into the night again. "He's just being vain."
"Right," Nori said dubiously as he matched the hobbit's step while eyeing the tiny, fluffy ball of pique.
The bird chirped, offended, then jumped to Bilbo's shoulder and turned its head snootily away.
"See what I have to work with?" Bilbo complained.
"I'm not sure what I'm seeing," Nori admitted, having by now decided that it was pointless to treat this particular hobbit like a normal, sane person. "Though I've definitely seen less biddable pets."
The outraged squawk that engendered did
not have its place coming out of something so small and dainty.
"Well I never!" Bilbo balked, affronted. "Záyn, a mere pet!"
The dwarf blinked, wide-eyed. "Well what is he then?"
"He's my most faithful traveling companion I'll have you know!" The bird puffed its chest proudly, it did that a lot, Nori was starting to realize. "Well…" Bilbo faltered and huffed.
The bird suddenly deflated and hid its head under a wing.
Okay, Nori's hunch was telling him this was way too interesting to leave unasked, even if this was just another one of Bilbo Baggins' 'performances.' "Dare I ask?"
"Oh, you're probably better off not asking." But as was so very often the case with these things, Bilbo Baggins proceeded to explain why Nori was better off not knowing about his woes by telling him all about his woes. "The truth is that Zayn was
supposed to be my faithful traveling companion, but that never ended up happening! Instead, he's my traveling companion only on those few,
preposterously rare days when he is not too busy averting the otherwise certain demise of the singular bane to almost
every one of my adventures to date!"
"Er…"
"I had the first time all planned out! Go off on an adventure, have everyone think I've gone mad – I'm the Baggins of Bag End you know, going off on an adventure was a terribly unrespectable thing to do, never mind that I ensured all my rents and businesses were seen to! – and then come back months later with great gifts and even greater ways to farm. I'd have been the darling of all Four Farthings, mark my words! The Shire had only just finished recovering from the Fell Winter you know. Even the most private of hobbits would have been open to anything that could help avoid the starvation that happened then." Fell Winter? That was over twenty years ago! "The walking holiday through the Shire went without a hitch, and I even spent a fair bit of time in the forest house of my foster father. Almost no one else ever visits him, can you imagine? It's unconscionable! Then I just had to set off for where I knew lived some people I thought might have ideas for improving the quality of the earth round these parts, tall order as it might have been considering how lush the Shire already was. It was the
perfect plan, but no! Not a day after I left the forest, I get co-opted by the most infuriatingly unlucky individual alive! And he didn't even have the courtesy of doing it in person! I instead had to hear about it second-hand!" Bilbo rounded on the dwarf then, scandalized. "I just wanted a sack of dirt! Was that so much to ask!?"
Nori reared back, wide-eyed, and he heard about
what now?
But Bilbo Baggins whirled back around and continued to stomp along in that bizarrely noiseless way of his, the bird on his shoulder falling with a yap and flitting over to perch on Nori's head where it was safe. "Instead, I leave my foster Father's home and don't even get a day's peace before Záyn comes upon a man wandering the forest delirious with some pestilence or other. I figured alright, I'm nearby and I do know some healing, surely I couldn't just ignore such a plight. Ha! Before I know it I'm racing all the way to the foot of the Misty Mountains desperately trying to locate Imladris! Because apparently the Dark Plague was not bad enough the first time around!"
The
Dark Plague!?
That's…
Oh. He was making this up, wasn't he?
"On my second trip I decided to try my luck in the opposite direction. So after going on my walking holiday and visiting with my foster father, I went south and planned to eventually turn west until I reached the Blue Mountains. I had some steel minutiae I needed crafted so I figured I'd go to the experts in such things, and who better than the dwarves?" That, at least, made perfect sense for once, and wasn't completely implausible like the previous story. "Instead, I barely make it out of my father's woods when Záyn flutters over to inform me that a band of miscreants were setting up an ambush for an intrepid long-legged trio. And who else would be accompanying the twin brothers who came to help me with my long-delayed soil project? Why, the same hapless man of two years before of course! Being the bleeding heart that I am, I just couldn't let that stand! Long story short, the band of ugly miscreants got their ambush but Záyn managed to
convince the man's horse to rear back at the right time. Amazing what you can accomplish with a well-timed beak to the eye, I must say. A masterstroke is what it was in my all too humble opinion. Unfortunately, that meant that the arrow that would have taken the man in
his eye wound up going through his left lung instead."
Nori stood corrected. This wasn't all that much more plausible than the previous story, and the clearly deliberate lack of specifics was a dead giveaway on top of all else.
"In the aftermath, the twins proved to be even better at healing than they were at gardening, but that only meant that the man got to repeat his earlier feat of wandering deliriously through the wilderness. The only differences were that I wasn't the only one leading him around this time, and one of the twins took it upon himself to ride to their father's house instead of me having to do it again." Who
were these people? "Not that it made much of a difference to me otherwise. I still ended up scrapping my itinerary and traveling for days and days in the opposite direction from where I was supposed to be going!"
Nori reconsidered. Bilbo Baggins wasn't making this up. It was too detailed despite the suspicious lack of names and the like. That could only mean he must have made it up at some prior point and put time into refining the story for times like this.
"Third time around I decide to go to my foster Father's for a while again but then take a more circuitous route around the Shire before actually starting on my destination in the Blue Mountains, just in case something came up again. It really seemed like nothing would go wrong, but just as I decided to finally head off and passed Sarn Ford, I learned the reason why I hadn't heard or seen anything of that ill-starred man. It was also at that point I decided to leave Záyn on permanent watch over him, seeing as he clearly needed a minder. Apparently, his two-year-old son was on death's door due to a terrible fever and his wife wasn't much better, so he'd left to get help from his uncle many-times removed who was a healer of no small skill. I wound up spending a week tending and singing to the boy and his mother while waiting for him to return with help. Then I had to travel with them – the lad had a strong and insistent toddler grip – to the uncle's home and stayed there for months on end helping, learning, and teaching the residents how to build a proper smial when all was said and done. Because apparently they wanted me to have as many reasons as possible to return and spend time playing my instruments there." Bilbo sighed heavily, and the bird flew to chirp next to his ear, drawing a small, exasperated smile from the hobbit. "I know, I don't really begrudge any of them, don't you worry." Seeming reassured, the bird flew back to perch on Nori's head again.
As Bilbo visibly forced the gloom to leave his mood, Nori wondered if maybe it wasn't too soon to dismiss everything as tall tales.
Then Bilbo opened his mouth again and Nori swung right back into skepticism.
"Fourth time around I was meaning to maybe,
finally reach the Blue Mountains, but I didn't even make it out the door of my foster Father's home before Záyn showed up to tell me that hopeless man was in a right pickle again, because
of course he was. Somehow he'd once
again managed to end up wandering alone through the wilderness, despite the people he had with him that were there to prevent exactly that. The bigger and uglier friends of the prior years' raskals – and their mangy mutts – scattered them to the four winds, apparently. If I didn't know about Men being born without destiny I'd almost believe Fate had a personal grudge against him for not dying back during the first time we met! I swear, that man has to be the unluckiest sod that ever walked Middle Earth. Only Túrin Turambar suffered worse, and it took a personal curse by
Morgoth to make that happen!"
Nori, son of Bori, was hard-pressed not to gape at the sheer audacity of what he was hearing. What was it that Ori said, about when things like this happened? Something about disbelief breaking its suspenders?
"So instead of going to Ered Luin as I was supposed to, I end up spending two miserable weeks skulking alongside the man through the Weather Hills and beyond, dodging miscreants. All the while we were sending warning after warning and plea after plea for help to practically everyone he knew between the Brandwywine and Loudwater. The whole jumble ended with a truly uncivilized free-for-all south of the Trollshaws, incidentally hundreds of leagues precisely opposite from where I'd originally meant to go, naturally." The hobbit's put-upon sigh was among the most expressive Nori had ever witnessed, he'd give him that much. "Well, I have to say at that point I was quite done with all that nonsense, thank you very much! The moment I was no longer needed, I chose a direction at random and made myself scarce! Things happened and I wound up a bit further south than I ever intended before I finally decided to try one last time to reach Ered Luin – which I did manage, finally, if only after weeks on horseback – but not before I came upon and spent a while teaching some folk how to tend wounds, herbal lore, agriculture and the glories of basic hygiene. Oh and letters, can't forget those." Bilbo turned to Nori then, exasperated. "None of them could even
read before I got there, can you imagine?"
As Bilbo turned ahead again, Nori stared at him blankly, wondering why the hobbit was so surprised. Literacy wasn't close to universally widespread among
civilized men, let alone whatever wild folk he'd met, assuming this wasn't all just tall tales like he thought. Actually, last Nori heard, literacy wasn't universal among hobbits either. Hell, there were plenty of
dwarves who never picked up their letters and numbers, especially among the miners.
"Well I learned my lesson!" Bilbo proclaimed loftily. "Before I even left Bag End the fifth time, I corresponded with the man's many times removed uncle to see if he'd house him and his family during the time I intended to travel. He agreed, meaning that at long, wonderful last, I could go on my holiday without interruptions! It was glorious!" The hobbit sighed in bliss. "Well, the way
there was glorious. I traveled precisely as far as I wanted and visited some really interested places, even got to connect with the folk my mother helped on her own adventure so long ago! I deliberately steered clear of the haunted wood though, at least on the way there. I'd had too many derailed adventures to invite trouble on my own, no thank you!" Haunted wood? Did he mean the Old Forest? It was supposed to be inhabited by evil spirits, if there was any stock to be placed in Breelanders' tales. That suggested he didn't travel far at all, though, didn't it? "There were some close brushes with ruffians and some truly unpleasant and ugly brutes – and their surly mutts, it's always surly mutts with those types – but Záyn was with me for once and provided all the scouting and distraction I needed. Long story short, I visited new places, met interesting people, and eventually reached the final point in my journey successfully. Taras Fána[1], the grandest mannish settlement I've ever seen." Tarasfana? Was the hobbit deliberately trying to make him disbelieve everything he was saying? There was no mannish settlement called Tarasfana that Nori had ever heard of. Especially not one that would serve as an endpoint in a pre-planned journey, or it would at least have been on a map. He may not be as learned as Ori but he knew that much at least. "Spent some of the most interesting days of my life there, the people low and high were quite appreciative of far off news and proper music. They were even more than willing to share their own! If only that had held out on the way back." This time the sigh was entirely despondent.
"And what happened on the way back?" Because the hobbit was obviously waiting for it.
"Oh, some man who fancied himself worthier than the rest for being highborn was thinking to enrich himself off a forest that didn't belong to him, is what. He was spreading rumors about the real owner being a thief, child snatcher and cannibal. The very idea! Ghân-buri-Ghân was a perfectly pleasant individual, thank you very much, with an exquisitely traditional taste in clothing and an even more exquisite taste in food, and I have the Shire's newest and meatiest species of mushrooms to prove it!"
Nori blinked owlishly at the aggravation that was pouring out from the little creature alongside him.
"By the time I helped sort out that little misunderstanding – the public outcry was quite large for something that ultimately resulted from a small idea of an even smaller mind – It was clear that events were still conspiring to toss aggravating situations my way. Being completely out of patience with mannish ridiculousness, however, I decided – rashly in hindsight – on a detour through the haunted forest I'd avoided before. I figured that if I tried to avoid it again, I'd inevitably get dragged into it for some reason or other regardless of whether I wanted it or not. And at least that way it would just be animals and birds I'd have to watch out for, or so I thought. In the end it wasn't nearly so simple, but things eventually turned out alright. I only had to put my foot down once – I am perfectly fine with my current height, thank you, have a lovely day – before I emerged from what turned out to be a most lovely forest, if a bit close together in places. One of these days I might even figure out how to gentle the huorns east of Buckland, assuming I don't die somewhere or other before I figure out how."
Mahal wept! The stories were getting confusing and beyond unbelievable, and what did huorns have to do with anything? They didn't exist. How could that escape a self-proclaimed adventurer? Whatever caused the legends of angry, living trees were actually acts of elves. Everyone knew that!
"Well…" Nori cleared his throat, desperately looking for something to say. "Sounds like a right mess."
"Oh it was!" Bilbo agreed wholeheartedly. "Why, it was a miracle that I finally got to go on an adventure at all! If something had still managed to derail all my travel plans, I would have given the whole idea of pre-planned routes up as a bad job. I instead would have stayed at home until word of some impending disaster or other pulled me out the door. Then, at least, there would be no routes aforethought and itineraries going to waste." Bilbo then gave him a long, pensive look. "Of course, I suppose now I'm suffering for it, since the world seems to be taking its revenge, no offense."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well I would think it quite obvious," Bilbo said with raised eyebrows. "Rather than get word of some crisis or other, I got a Matter of Great Importance shoved right through my front door, didn't I?"
Nori had nothing to say to that.
It was around half an hour later, right about the time when Nori figured dawn was about to break, that they emerged from the forest on top of what seemed to be the biggest of Hobbiton's hills, Bag End notwithstanding. Or was it Under the Hill? The wind picked up but the night wasn't chilly despite that, and the Shire stretched out before them. What surprised Nori was not that they'd made such good time, but the fact that many of the hobbit-holes already had light coming out through their windows.
He asked about that while turning back to Bilbo Baggins, only to stiffen and only barely hold back a yelp at the sight of a second hobbit standing next to his host.
"Thank you, cousin," Bilbo told his kinsman while accepting the fiddle he was being handed. "And to answer your question Master Nori, hobbits wake with the dawn so as to have enough time for first breakfast before going out to tend to the animals and other early chores."
The dwarf barely registered the answer, focused as he was on controlling his heartbeat and looking around to see if any more hobbits would be coming out of… wherever they were coming out of.
The answer to that, as it happened, was yes. They emerged from all over as Bilbo Baggins whistled a long, lingering note. They emerged from the tall grass, behind trees and, in one case, through a grass-concealed hole in the top of the hill just a dozen feet away from them. Were they standing on top of a home? All throughout, Bilbo Baggins whistled a second tune, then a third, then another until he sounded a full set of seven.
Then he tucked the fiddle beneath his chin and, rather than strum the string with his bow from the get go, instead began a slow, meandering song by plucking at the cords.
Three minutes later the dwarf imagined that the breeze might carry him off, so light the world felt around him, and the blend of plucked cords and soft arias carried with him like it would be burned in his mind for the rest of his life, even as the echoes of musical notes felt comfortably cool on his skin and in the air of his lungs, almost rapturous somehow.
Soon after, despite how absurd it sounded even in the privacy of his mind, the notion struck Nori that everything that had happened that night – the trip he was invited on, the meeting, the children's game, even the trip back to Hobbiton and Bag End – had all been steps building up to this. To Nori being given to experience what he'd missed the night before. What had left the company and his brothers in particular more at ease and actually content, in better humor than they'd been in years.
The next short while was quick and almost rushed in comparison, the hobbits exchanging quick words and updates and plans, and Nori found himself being handed over – handed over like some stray dwarfling – into Adalgrim Took's keeping because Bilbo Baggins wouldn't be traveling with the rest of the dwarves and Hobbiton hobbits and
wait just a damned minute!
"Yes, Master Nori?"
Apparently, he'd blurted that last part out loud.
On demanding an explanation, he was summarily informed by Adalgrim Took that Bilbo Baggins had decided to go ahead and detour west through Michel Delving, then southwest through Sackville to make sure everyone that needed to come knew the what, where and how, before reuniting with the rest of the party goers in Starfield. "I'll help guide you lot to where you need to go in the meanwhile." The hobbit said cheerfully. And it
had to be Adalgrim Took explaining all of that to him because Bilbo Baggins had already left. "If nothing else, it'll let me learn about the dwarf that managed to charm my little Paladin!"
"Wait… wait just a mo!" Nori hollered, his realization that he was talking to Paladin Took's
father being left to hang off the edge of his mind in his charge after Bilbo.
"Well now!" Adalgrim Took griped in his wake. "Never in all my years-!"
"Stop already!" Nori shouted, finally causing Bilbo to turn back and face him with a look that was actually surprised enough as to maybe be genuine. Maybe. A little bit.
"Yes, master Nori?" The hobbit said pleasantly enough. "What is it?"
It was only then that the dwarf realized he had no idea why he'd called for him to stop.
"Because I'm sure Adalgrim knows everything needed to assist with whatever you-"
"Why?"
"Eh?" Bilbo blinked, shifting his weight and peering up at him. "Why what?"
And maybe he did know why he'd called for him to stop. "Why all this?" Nori gestured at… everything. "The wake-up, the lecture, the trip… You showed me… You brought me to speak with your Ki- your Thain even! I didn't even sign any contracts!" The dwarf gestured more aggressively with each word, unknown misgivings making themselves obvious at last despite his inability to speak them properly. "Why did you bring me with you for this? Why show me all this?"
"Why not?"
"Just answer my question! Why all this?" But Bilbo Baggins just peered up at him with in oddly expectant way, as if he didn't think any of those questions made any sense and Nori should go ahead and figure out what he really wanted to know. The hobbit just stood there, waiting until… "Why me?"
"Why not you?"
"Don't give me that!" Nori snapped, his patience fully spent after everything. "Not after everything that happened yesterday." The dwarf scowled, trying to impress on the small creature why he should stop being deliberately obtuse. Trying and failing, until Nori just... just sagged with a defeated sigh. "I suppose I shouldn't have thought to demand a straight answer. Not when I'm the one out of us lot that gave you the biggest insult."
And against all rhyme and reason, Bilbo Baggins snorted, then burst into the freest, loudest, most helpless belly laugh Nori had only ever seen in Glon's precocious son that one time. Then he just kept laughing and laughing, reminding Nori of the bout of hysterics he himself had suffered mere hours before.
"Ahahaha!" Finally, Bilbo Baggins managed to right himself, wipe his tears and exhaust himself enough to speak to him. The little creature grinned up at the dwarf, still overcome by some hilarity only he could understand. "Oh Master Nori. That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard from you and yours since you came! I knew you were the most prejudiced against me and hobbits in general, even if you don't have the bluntness and status-inspired arrogance to show it openly, unlike
some dwarrow, but really!" Excuse me!? "You didn't feel entirely comfortable anywhere in my home. I thought that the way you enjoyed yourself back there with the faunts meant you were finally loosening up, but I see that is not the case. The one who provided the greatest insult indeed! Ha!" Without further word, the hobbit turned away and walked off.
And Nori, bewildered and not a little peeved, let him.
It was just as he was about to respond to Adalgrim's Took calls to be off that Bilbo Baggins addressed him one last time, though he did not turn around again. "You overthink things, Master Nori, entirely too much!" The hobbit raised a hand in farewell as he disappeared down the path. "And for your information, the one in your company that inflicted upon me the greatest insult was Balin."
Say
what!?
"-. .-"
Each day after the first,
Bilbo Baggins' music would be heard across the Shire, rousing them from sleep at dawn and coaxing them ever southward on and off as they traveled.
Then there was everything else that happened.
The day after the unexpected spectacle at the market, the company of Thorin Oakenshield found itself going south instead of east, set on being part of whatever celebration Bilbo Baggins had spontaneously decided would happen in the Ranger outpost at Sarn Ford. Ori had seen from afar the heated discussions between King Thorin, Master Balin and Tharkûn, but the Wizard unsurprisingly got his way as he always did. Ori had drawn a sketch of the scene with what he thought was most likely to have been said that ended the debate: "
If I say that the company of Thorin Oakenshield will be attending Bilbo Baggins' pre-adventure party, then Bilbo Baggins' pre-adventure party they shall attend!" Little wonder that it barely even mollified Thorin when Gandalf tried to assure him that Bilbo or the rangers would know how to help them shave the extra days off their journey, later.
Much later.
Maybe.
For Ori himself, the days were actually quite enjoyable. The hobbits they were traveling with (there was a whole caravan of them and it constantly grew with every town and village they passed through) were more than willing to answer his questions. Ori didn't even mind their tendency to go on tangents, which were mainly about genealogies and suspiciously detailed and consistent "gossip." It made for a great cultural study actually! Already he could see some vast but very meaningful cultural differences between them and dwarrow. The notion of schools for instance, as unlike dwarves who had few children by nature, there where large groups of hobbit children that needed to be taught letters or other things, while also giving their parents some free time during the day to do whatever work they needed. Yet despite that, hobbits still had a primarily oral tradition. Their areas of focus – family lines and histories – received about as much attention and care as dwarves afforded the teaching of Khuzdul, if Ori dared say so. The trip through the Shire also revealed what trades and talents hobbits nurtured. Hobbits favored weaving but also operated tanneries, even had smithies of their own, if focused on farming, building and cooking tools instead of weapons or mining anything else of the sort. They also had at least three carefully isolated quarries from which they got the stone for their buildings, marble for their fireplaces, and the lime they needed for tanning leather.
From the changes in attitudes that the other dwarves showed, it hadn't dawned on them until then just what it meant for a society to be truly self-contained. It was only when they saw the Gamwich quarry in the distance that they realized it, that it was certainly no easy thing, no
commodity for hobbits to be able to keep entirely to themselves. Especially not while also being able to lead lives of comfort and plenty.
When asked, Fortinbras Took admitted that the only reason there was exterior trade in Longbottom leaf was because Gandalf had bribed the Old Took with foreign stories, party fireworks and wardrobe accessories until he agreed. It turned out that the silver cufflinks his father Isumbras had put on for the current party-to-be was the gift that finally convinced the Thain to cajole the hobbits into setting up the export business. And even then their personal dealings were restricted to Bree and the rangers themselves. Everyone else had to go through them.
Hobbits were also quite inventive when they needed to make life easier for themselves, which translated into a desire for comfort as often as it did into a desire for efficiency. The latter was the reason for the contraption known as the clock: as Hobbits lacked the dwarves' innate ability to know time, they'd had to come with an alternative way to do it. This resulted in the aforementioned, impressively intricate mechanical contraption based on a mixture of cogs and sprockets moved by a wind-up spring. The best master toymakers among dwarves could probably do a lot with the design, which spoke quite a bit in favor of hobbit creativity. According to Fortinbras Took, it was even possible to miniaturize the design, but that only Bilbo possessed something like that so far. The small, round item he'd looked in when Thorin arrived perhaps? It was called a "pocket watch" apparently. According to the prince ("
Not a prince!"), Master Baggins had managed to put one together after having the components made by Blue Mountain dwarves!
Hearing that snapped Nori out of the quiet mood he'd been in since he'd returned from Tookborough, save for a very short and terse exchange with Balin (which left the latter visibly aggravated and disbelieving about something). Nori asked Fortinbras Took if Bilbo Baggins had really been to the Blue Mountains and looked borderline
bewildered for hours afterwards, and he almost didn't hear Ori talking to him on more than one occasion during that time. Ori eventually gave it up as a bad job and instead watched and listened to Fortinbras Took as he planned something or other with the other hobbits every evening when making camp. Something about some singing and dancing routines, and how he knew they didn't have any tambourines but they could time the flour sifting
just so and fill in for those if they sift the flour by this beat right here, pay attention. Various hobbits, and not all of them female, were seen shaking the sifters in a specific beat at various times after that, sometimes with others trying to string a tune or beat nearby. It never failed to leave him and the other dwarves completely confounded. Ori decided to focus on other things, such as gathering more background information. He would have to ask the others when he could if they'd ever heard about something like clock parts being ordered anywhere in Ered Luin, or about hobbits visiting any settlements there. Perhaps in Kheledul? It had the biggest traffic of foreigners among all settlements in the Blue Mountains, so at least there it wouldn't be unbelievable that even a hobbit would go unremarked. If not there, perhaps Duillond.
Then there was the architecture. The bounders had quickly sussed out the various occupations of the company, and one of them offered Ori indoor housing the night they stopped in Gamwich, to help him with the cultural study he'd spontaneously started. Dori hadn't wanted to leave him out of his sight, but Nori surprised both of them by arguing in favor of it. So Ori got to see what a normal, average hobbit-hole was like, and while it wasn't as elegantly appointed as Bag End had been, it was still warm and comfortable, with good air circulation, excellent draw in every hearth and fireplace, and a generally good, delightful atmosphere. And that was just at night. Daylight revealed the qualities of smials that the dark of night concealed. While smials lacked the sort of timeless endurance or right angles of dwarven masonry and metalwork, the load-bearing walls and stonework were carved, built and finished with obvious love and dedication. Floors were made of surprisingly fancy brickwork in some rooms, and laid planks in others. The walls were done with paneling and wainscoting, with woodwork that was both precise and able to keep warmth in, even as it was designed to be possible to remove and replace entire. Plaster work, too, was marvelously finished, and the walls warmly painted and the woodwork polished. All in all, it was a most comfortable place, and while Ori still preferred good, solid stone and high ceilings, he suspected that hobbits were at least as good as dwarves at designing ventilation systems, seeing as even the furthest and smallest rooms felt airy. Hobbit-holes did need to have their shutters replaced every other year, and the paint jobs on their window frames and doors redone yearly, but that was more a matter of aesthetics than need. And Ori hadn't found any craftsmen even among the oldest and best of dwarrow who could design hinges that didn't need to be oiled every once in a while. In all, hobbit homes were a testament to the way hobbits lived: dedicated to the comforts of home and whatever daily routine allowed them to get the most enjoyment and self-satisfaction from the least outward effort.
Another benefit Ori enjoyed came from being under guide by Fortinbras and Adalgrim Took. They were taking turns it seemed, for some reason, with the other always unseen somewhere or other every other day. Bounder matters no doubt. The two knew all relevant facts about the administration and legalities of the Shire, as well as the general custom and institutions. The postal service sounded much more reliable and useful than having to put hopes in randomly conscripted messengers. Moreover, the system of double-entry bookkeeping could probably spare dwarven coin counters and tradesmen a lot of grief, though Ori wasn't entirely sure about the rule to file everything in triplicate.
Then, six days after leaving Hobbiton, their cart train (already long all on its own) met up with not just the one coming from the West Farthing that Bilbo led, but also one coming from the east and which had the Master of Buckland himself at the helm. Gorbadoc Brandybuck was his name, apparently, and it wasn't long before he was boisterously talking with the much quieter and imperturbable Thain Isumbras Took, Fourth of His Name. He'd apparently been in the main passenger of the lone, canvassed passenger wagon in their convoy the whole time. Ori had been absolutely embarrassed for not having made the necessary inquiries as to what dignitaries were accompanying them, though he wagered Balin felt even more mortified than he did considering how quickly he seemed to alternate between red and white at the revelation. Which wasn't improved at all when it was revealed that Robin Whitfoot, the Mayor of Michel Delving, had also arrived, with Bilbo's group of relatives and acquaintances. Gandalf had found much entertainment in the situation even if he tried to pretend to be attempting to hide it, and Ori thought it was all rather callous and self-absorbed of him, but it wasn't his place to judge a Wizard.
After that, hobbits met, talked, planned and, by the next day, the unified convoy – closer to the size of a trade caravan than a party trip by that point – was ready for the final stretch and expected to reach Sarn Ford by late afternoon. The perfect time to set things up according to those hobbits who felt their opinion should be heard on the matter, which was almost all of them. The only worry on the part of the hobbits in authority was whether or not the Rangers had been properly informed and prepared for their coming, but Master Baggins assured them there were no worries on that front and to just be ready to make a good entrance, which Fortinbras would have handled the planning for, there we go, let me show you where and who to talk to.
Ori watched in something akin to horrified fascination as Bilbo Baggins
herded the king Hobbit and his apparent peers around and got them to do what they were told on the simple grounds of no one knowing more about parties than he did. Only the Thain seemed to show any resistance to Bilbo's good-natured cajoling, halfhearted as it was, but later comments by Fortinbras implied there was some other matter that he, Bilbo and Isumbras were in disagreement over, one Ori wasn't given any details on.
It was about two hours from their final destination when Balin's slowly simmering mood of the past few days finally reached a tipping point, causing the elderly dwarf – who was actually younger than Thorin, not that he looked it – to spur his pony further up the line where Bilbo had deigned to fall behind and, in his words, reconnect with his guests, finally. The topic Balin raised made Ori's neck hairs stand on end and explained why Balin hadn't made a move before: this was the first time when the majority of hobbits, and more importantly the Thain, Master and Mayor, were not within hearing distance. "Master Baggins, there is something I would like to ask."
"Of course!" The hobbit turned in the saddle of the pony he'd borrowed from an acquaintance or relative somewhere or other. "What can I do for you?"
"May I know what it is that I did to cause you offense?" Balin's well-controlled voice still sounded tight, for all that Ori didn't believe he should be able to tell.
"Nori talked to you, didn't he?" the hobbit guessed, eyes sharp as his grip firmed on the bowl of his pipe.
"He did at that," Balin said mildly in the silence that easily indicated that all others in the company were already completely invested in the exchange to the exclusion of all else. "He went as far as to claim I was of all of us in the company, in your words, the one who committed the gravest insult against you." Ori could almost
feel the way the attention of everyone within earshot – and not all of them dwarves – focused on the exchange with the intensity of a lens. "I find I cannot shake the need to confirm and perhaps comprehend why such words would be said, I hope you understand."
Ori couldn't comprehend either, considering that it had been obvious that the greatest conflict in Bag End had been between Bilbo Baggins and Thorin.
Then Bilbo Baggins answered, and Ori suddenly didn't understand anything.
"A recap first then, to
provide context," the hobbit grinned lopsidedly and looked dangerous all of a sudden. "'
The Company shall retain any and all Recovered Goods until such a time as a full and final reckoning can be made, from which the Total Profits can then be established. Then, and only then, will the Burglar's fourteenth share be calculated and decided,'" Bilbo's voice was equally as mild as Balin's was while reciting the words of the contract. Word for word. From memory. "The contract you wanted me to sign also states that while I remain with you, all goods '
shall Remain the Property of the Company at all times, and in all respects, without limitation'. In other words, during your quest I have the right to claim
nothing and, since you'll be the ones deciding my share, this means that by the end of the venture I may still get nothing. No!" The hobbit raised his pipe to prevent interruptions. "You raised the issue and now you shall gain the insight you wanted by listening to all I have to say. Or you can forget about me ever believing in the possibility of you speaking to me in good faith."
Ori saw Balin
dearly wish to intercede somehow, but that last challenge managed to keep him silent.
Bilbo looked away from him back to the road ahead. "'
Transport of any remains, in whole or in part, back to the country of Burglar's origin is not included.' I suppose it's good to know that if I die, my family and friends will not even be notified or entitled to my body or belongings. If I didn't mean for you to merely listen now that you've decided to have this can of worms opened, I would ask if, say, Fili, Kili or Ori's contracts contain this oh so convenient clause. As it is, I won't."
And he didn't need to, Ori thought in dismay. Most of the other company looked like their stomach had just turned upside down.
Just like his.
"And even if I survive, '
Return Journey is deemed outside the Terms of Reference'. All this after stating I would be hired as a Burglar to fetch that Arkenstone of yours. And yet the contract
also stated, explicitly, that I am to also perform '
In role as Burglar for Thorin and Company, or in any other role they see fit, at their sole discretion from time to time.' I suppose that means I should just trust in your character – of which I was expected to know precisely nothing at the time of signing – that you would not suddenly ask me one day to play bait for wild beasts. Or perhaps something even more unfortunate such as to drop my breeches and play paramour."
Dori was unfortunate enough to be swallowing a bite of apple when this was said, which meant that Gloin was unlucky enough to have it spat in his face when the former choked and turned aside to cough it out. Gandalf's own choking fit went unremarked in the horrified silence that ensued right after. What did
not go unremarked was that whatever hobbits were within hearing distance at the start of the conversation had quickly and efficiently been chivvied away in the short time since. Ori's surprise was in no way small upon beholding the last of the youngsters being led onwards and loaded into the cart ahead by Adalgrim Took, leaving the dwarves, the Wizard and Bilbo Baggins to lag behind the convoy itself and without an eavesdropping audience.
Not a visible one at any rate.
It was no doubt the only reason why the rest of the company did not react explosively to the mention of secret matters that came next.
"You also played fast and loose with the definition of Burglar. I would say it means to enter into some form of abode in order to carry out larceny. Yet you described my role, among other things, as to '
devise means and methods to circumvent any difficulties arising from any illegal or illicit occupation or guardianship of Company's rightful home and property.' You may as well have said that you'd expect me to slay your dragon, because that's just a roundabout way of saying my job is to dispose of the dragon guarding your hoard." The hobbit eyed Bofur aside. "Furnace with wings, was it?" And his good humor was at odds with the sharp glint in his eyes, and that did not change even after he faced ahead once more, puffing his pipe. "'
Present Company is not obliged to assist Burglar in this so-called 'pest control' phase of the Adventure.' Which is another way of saying that of all us fourteen, I would be the only one obligated to risk my life for a home that isn't even mine. Well, I can say that, by this point, just by signing the contract I'd be showing more bravery and commitment than all the rest of you combined."
Thorin, who was riding ahead of the group, suddenly turned to glare with something on the tip of his tongue, only for his pony to unexpectedly trip and throw him in the saddle hard enough to almost make him fall off.
"We'll set aside the provision for me not being allowed to pen or otherwise communicate anything during or of my journey, despite you apparently not having such restrictions on what you experience in the Shire. We'll also set aside that business on handling disputes in dwarvish, since I also touched on that before," Bilbo said lowly, meeting the frosty backward glare of the recovered but now quiet King of Durin's Folk. "I am sure you all understand why I would laugh at such a statement, given its implications about your stance on impartial and fair trials in your culture. Or lack thereof. But of course things do not stop there. '
Pipeweed and other such luxury items shall be provided by Burglar; indeed, and not only for himself, but for the other Members of the Company if such can be obtained along the way by means pertinent to his profession.'" Ori rode and watched in something like aghast dismay as the Hobbit just kept reciting words he couldn't have read more than once. "So you would have me steal items that you might otherwise purchase instead. This is actually one of the most confusing stipulations to me personally, as the implications are not so much about my willingness to steal things for the company's use. Indeed, your bizarre expectation of me being a Burglar would quite justify that, insulting as it is. No, what perplexes me is that you wrote that as if it's expected that all luxuries for use by you and yours be acquired illicitly. I don't know about you, but that rather unfortunately implies you all to be honourless and above such things as doing fair trade."
This time it was Gloin's pony that 'tripped' in order to keep him from doing more than balk in outrage, and unlike the first time, Ori was entirely sure it was Gandalf's doing.
"'
Breaches of any provision or provisions of this Contract by either party shall be heard, pleaded, debated, defended, answered and judged in a country of the Company's choosing and at a time and date of the Company's choosing. Burglar's failure to appear constitutes acquiescence with Company's ruling on the matter.' So I would get absolutely
no say in where I should be judged or even the time or date, no matter what nonsense I am accused of or by whom. And then the contract truly goes into the
meat of things, if I do say so myself. '
Meals provided [or not] at the sole discretion of the Director.' Meaning that you're not responsible for my sustenance unless you all feel like it. I suppose my health means nothing to you."
Ori felt an almost overwhelming urge to look down and hide, and when he tried to force that impulse down by looking between the other members of the company, it was to see Fili and Kili completely dejected and looking desperately between Balin and Thorin, faces raw with the plea that someone tell them this was all just an elaborate joke.
"'
Eviction or elimination of any undesirable guardian of Company's property, goods or premises or holdings shall take priority over the recovery,'" Bilbo went on flatly. "'
Elimination shall take priority over eviction in any and all cases.' This means, gentlemen, that though I was supposedly being hired to rob for you, if that dragon
is alive down there, then my priority would be to get rid of it, preferably by killing it. Should I go ahead and ask if your contracts have similar provisions in them?" Dead silence, save for the trotting of the ponies on the road. It only made Bilbo grind out the next section doubly slowly. "'
Unequal relative stature of Burglar and any discovered hostile guardian, occupier or squatter shall not constitute or be considered as grounds for refusal nor excuse against undertaking the forceful removal of said undesirable guest.' Truly, you must think me a great, mighty hero from olden days to expect me to achieve such a feat, considering how many different ways and passages you wrote down in an attempt to ensure I would be bound to do exactly that. So that none of the rest of you would have to face the dragon that crushed your whole kingdom.
Two kingdoms, all in the space of one afternoon. And now, the final, loveliest of stipulations in your oh so thorough and in-depth piece of parchment."
Bilbo Baggins suddenly pulled his pony to a stop and turned it so he faced Balin head-on, bringing their whole company to a halt even as the hobbit convoy went on without them. "'
The Company may terminate this Contract for any reason or for no reason by giving one day's notice to the Burglar.'" Bilbo did not glare at the older dwarf, but to Ori it certainly seemed like he should be. "So not only would you feel well within your rights to abandon me if I suffer from sickness or a wound. You could, in fact, be well within your rights to do so at any point and for no reason whatsoever. And '
Such termination will take effect upon the expiry of the notice period,' that I may have no more than a day to collect myself and be off from your presence if your company, for no reason at all, determines I am no longer useful."
And then, just as Ori thought that maybe this whole ordeal was finally ending, Bilbo Baggins finally, actually
looked at Balin, son of Fundin, somehow still not sneering or growling the last of his misgivings even then. "'
Burglar is 'at the Service' of Thorin and Company until released therefrom.'" For all that the hobbit was still talking calmly, somehow, it was clear to all of them that he felt that line should have been strangled to death the moment it was first thought up. "Not released once my task is finished or the quest complete, but
until you say so. You could legally bind me to you as an indentured servant for as long as it suits you."
Ori felt like his stomach had twisted itself in knots.
The hobbit sat back in his saddle and looked at Balin for a long moment. "Is this what everyone in the company was asked to sign?" Silence. "No?" The hobbit shook his head, extinguished his pipe and returned it to his pocket when emptied. "Master Balin."
Still none would speak, and Ori could not believe it but Fili and Kili were actually tossing glances Balin's way that were furtive and
disbelieving.
"Master Balin," Bilbo repeated more firmly.
"Yes, Master Baggins," Baling croaked, barely meeting his eyes.
"Now I don't usually recall everything perfectly from just one reading, but I tend to make exceptions for things that would make good songs. And this would
definitely make a good song, albeit not a very nice one." Their erstwhile host seemed very much unamused and, unlike even during his spat with Thorin of two days prior, completely merciless in his honesty. "The reason I did not go into such depth the other day was because, as much as he aggravated me, I could not be sure that it was Thorin Oakenshield who wrote this contract. And I made sure in the time since to find out
who wrote this contract." The hobbit leaned ever so slightly forward, narrowing his eyes. "
You wrote this contract, Master Balin. Didn't you."
"… Aye."
Bilbo Baggins straightened in his saddle, looking neither angry nor appeased. He just… gazed evenly, for a time.
And none of the others seemed brave enough to speak up anymore, as if they felt forbidden to or felt out of place, though that may have just been Gandalf's irritation showing its worth. Ori was gratified to see even King Thorin looking at Balin in some surprise, however faint it was behind the wrath he bore the hobbit still. But since that only meant the King hadn't bothered reading the contract properly himself, Ori wasn't sure who his surprise spoke well of, if anyone.
In the end, it was little shock that Bilbo Baggins himself would be the one to break the disquiet. "In my life I have been sickened, frostbitten, starved, poisoned, chased, hounded, ambushed, assaulted, and otherwise attacked with knives, swords, arrows, sticks and stones and what have you." Ori reeled from the suddenness and unexpectedness of that exposition. "In one memorable occasion I was even tied up and held at knife-point by orcs while they explained in excruciating detail how they planned to cut me up, cook and then eat me." The scribe gaped along with most everyone else as the Hobbit spurred his pony as close to Balin's as it could get, leaning close to end their 'discussion' on the closest, most personal note that could be mustered. "But
none of that comes even
close to the sort of abuse that your contract would have opened me to at your hands." That final word said, the hobbit prompted his pony to resume its walk, looking one last time between all the dwarves, all but one of whom failed to meet his eyes as they had, indeed, not been asked to sign such a shameful and debasing document. All but one looking down or away from the hobbit as their own mounts fell again in step with the rest. All but one.
All but Dwalin.
It was by all indications the only reason the hobbit did not make good on his obvious impulse to push ahead in the line and leave them behind.
The gruff, taciturn warrior that so intimidated Ori without even facing in his direction looked the hobbit straight in the eyes. "On behalf of the house of Fundin, I humbly apologize for this insult to your intelligence, tradecraft, family and good character."
Thorin
sputtered in shock at hearing and seeing that, even as Balin put his face in his hands and looked for all the world like he would never show it to anyone ever again. All the others were varying shades of disbelief, Nori's a cut above the rest, so wide his eyes had gotten.
Only Bilbo Baggins was exempt, watching the earnest, large warrior pensively. "I wonder about the fairness of the world sometimes," he pondered aloud, eyes never leaving Dwalin's. "Such as when I am offered an apology by the only person among many who did
not cause me any sort of offense." The large dwarf broke eye contact and shifted uncomfortably, and Ori wondered what
he'd done to upset their host if Dwalin was the only innocent among them. "You didn't even look at your contract, did you?" The hobbit's face lightened with sudden realization. "You didn't read a word of it because you don't
care…" The hobbit positively marveled at the half-bald soldier. "You don't care about anything in it. You don't even care at all about the
gold, do you?"
"I'm here for Thorin and the boys," Dwalin said gruffly, looking straight ahead and not at the hobbit and definitely not any of the royal members of the line of Durin, two of whom had started in their saddles and were staring at the back of the dwarf's head, wide-eyed. "Nothing else."
"No," Bilbo mused, not looking away from his visual inspection of Dwalin. And how utterly strange it was to see the least personable of their company become the sole recipient of such earnest, appreciative warmth. "Nothing else." The hobbit's look softened as he watched the old warrior. But he didn't elaborate anymore and no asked him to.
Alas, it proved to be a mixed curse at the very
best when the hobbit ended up staying to ride with them at the back of the convoy instead of going ahead like he'd been planning to do before Dwalin's unexpected and unashamed apology. No one seemed willing to say anything after the dressing down Bilbo had oh so casually inflicted upon the lot of them, even if just by proxy. Balin was, predictably enough, the worst of the lot, riding his pony with his face downcast and burning with shame and mortification.
At least until Dwalin snorted, nudged his pony closer to his brother's and, making full use of the training he'd gotten from herding the younger royals in the house of Durin for the past 70 years, gave his older brother a good, clean smack on the back of the head.
"Doh!" Balin
squawked, shocked. "B-Brother!" He stuttered, stunned. "What's gotten into you?"
"What's gotten into
you, you mean," Dwalin snapped. "Whoop-dee-fracking-doo, you've finally realized you've turned into one of those dirty politicians you so despise." The dwarf shrugged. "
I could've told you that."
Balin stared at Dwalin in absolute shock.
And he
hadn't told Balin that, which begged the question of why.
"Which begs the question of why you didn't," Bilbo echoed Ori's thoughts out loud, much to everyone's consternation other than that of Dwalin himself, by the looks of it. "Unless you thought so little of Master Balin that you didn't feel it worth your time to waste on him your counsel." Gloin and even Thorin seemed about to finally explode, but then Bilbo spoke his true thought, and suddenly none of them had words to contribute at all. "Or you knew Master Balin thought so little of
you, Master Dwalin, that you expected nothing other than for you words to be summarily dismissed, along with any idea that you might actually have valuable counsel to offer."
"TREES!" Kili squeaked desperately, waving erratically at the orchard two hills away, or whatever it was. "Trees on the… hill." He finished with an admirable but ultimately failed attempt at a straight face, mostly because his voice still sounded like a strangled cat that had just been stepped on.
"Yes lad," Bilbo humored him. "Those are, indeed, mulberry trees."
"Are they though!?" Oin cut in loudly, and Ori somehow knew it wasn't just the fact he was half-deaf that had him talking so loudly. "They don't smell like they ought, mark me words!"
"Consider them marked," Bilbo said, playing along for the sake of their battered egos, Mahal bless him. "But I fear I must stress that they are, in fact, mulberry trees."
"Cauldron!" Fili croaked frantically. Then he paused, as if surprised by himself, or rather what he was gesticulating at. "A
giant cauldron," the prince's eyes climbed upwards. "Or is it a bucket?"
"A bucket," Balin echoed tiredly, only to clamp his mouth shut when he realized there really was, in fact, a bucket.
"A bucket," Bofur repeated.
"A
giant bucket," Kili marveled.
"A very
wide giant bucket," Dori agreed, as desperate as all the others to wrench the subject away from the disaster of a conversation that had only just concluded, even though it was, in fact, not a bucket at all.
"It's a giant pan actually," Bombur helpfully corrected the lot of them.
"I'm not sure what they're cooking though..." Kili wondered, growing more comfortable now that his attempt at changing the subject seemed to have worked. "Or what they could possibly need spinning wheels for."
"Spinning wheels?" Fili leaned back to look past his brother, blinking. "Huh."
"They aren't cooking," Bilbo said, sounding rather amused at the turn the discussion had taken. "They're making silk."
"Huh?" The princes eloquently asked even as Dori's mouth formed a small 'o' of understanding. At least that made one of them, seeing as the others seemed to be suffering from a lack of context, and who knew
what King Thorin was thinking under his eternal glower, not that Ori was one to judge.
Bilbo looked at Kili and Fili with something resembling consternation. "You two have no idea what silk is, do you? Let alone how it's made."
"The education afforded to the main line of Durin does not give itself towards teaching thread spinning, no," Thorin growled, which must have been the first time he addressed Bilbo Baggins directly since that awful first night in Bag End.
"And we actually do know what silk is, thank you very much!" Fili groused, obviously trying to imitate Master Baggins' own manner of speech.
"We even know what it's used in," Kili added just as snootily. "You're wearing some of it right now," he gestured at the velvet coat the hobbit was wearing.
Bilbo tugged on his reins until his pony lingered back enough to leave him alongside the two princes, then he pondered them while completely ignoring the evil eye Thorin was sending him. "Silk thread is made from the cocoons that silkworms spin for themselves in order to pupate from larva to butterfly-"
"Wait, what-"
"Silk is made from
insects-?"
"-which means that the worm inside must be killed before it can hatch, otherwise the thread is ripped to shreds and rendered worthless." Bilbo calmly explained to the rapidly paling princes. "Which is why farmers make sure to gather the cocoons up as soon as possible and boil them with the worms still inside."
"…"
"…"
"The silk strands of the cocoons are then gathered up with a coarse brush and put on a winding bobbin, after which the silk from one five or more cocoons is spun together to make one silk thread," the hobbit helpfully finished summarizing to his thoroughly appalled audience. "The thread can then be woven into cloth or, as you so expertly noted, in the making of more complex fabrics such as velvet."
For an uncomfortably long time, Kili and Fili just stared at their erstwhile host, agog.
"B-b-b-babies…" Kili finally stuttered, sounding faint. "You… Y-you m-make silk by mass murdering
babies."
"Butterfly babies…" Fili wheezed, shocked.
"
Unborn butterfly babies," Kili looked and sounded as if he would pass out from horror.
"And three parts of what you both are wearing are processed pieces of dead carcass," Bilbo said dryly before Thorin could act on his obvious impulse to snap, though whether at Bilbo or his nephews Ori didn't have the foggiest. "How utterly terrible of you to be tromping about in such fancy furs and teeth necklaces."
"But but…" Kili fumbled. "But
babies!"
"And lamb means baby sheep."
"Gluh!" Fili and Kili yelped in their saddles and nearly fell off their ponies, scared half-way out of their skins. Not that Ori himself or Dori or half of the others were any better off. Where had that hobbit come from? When had he time to sneak up on them from behind?
"And eggs are unborn chickens, chickens are infant hens, turkey meat tastes best the younger it is, and what do you think happens to most calves before they're grown? Veal means little fattened baby cows you know." Fortinbras Took frowned up at the deathly horrified duo from where he was striding down the road right next to them, having come upon them from behind unseen and unnoticed at some point during the past few minutes. "Welcome to civilization. The stage of a people's development and organization which is considered most advanced. It's is a pretty word, lads, but in many ways the only difference from olden days is that we grow the things we kill, rather than having to go hunt them in the woods. Do make note of the complete lack of anything to do with 'morality' in the definition."
"Take care how you speak, halfling!" Thorin barked. "It is not given to you to lecture those of our kith, nor do we suffer insults gladly, veiled or not!"
"Of course, we are none of us sinless, so far be it from me to question your double standard," the Thain's son said blandly, then quickened his pace to leave behind the king – now coloring enough to be verging on apoplexy – to catch up with Bilbo Baggins.
"We're almost there, I know," Bilbo pre-empted his cousin. "I'll move ahead soon enough, or was there something else you needed my help with?"
"Not unless you've seen that cousin of yours with more cheek than brains-" the hobbit suddenly threw his head back, barely dodging a thrown stone that had flown around and between Dwaln and Balin's horses and almost brushed the nose of Bofur's pony on its way to-
"Aaah!"
Their entire procession froze at that distinctly feminine scream of pain. The scream of pain that came from the field of grass. The field of high grass.
The field of high grass well beyond the fence lining both the side of the road, from which now rose Primula Brandybuck, daughter of Gorbadoc, Master of Buckland. Her hair was like spun chestnuts, her travel wear an earthy brown, and her left hand covered the side of her face leaving only her right eye exposed, looking murderous.
"… Oh dear," Bilbo gave words to their shared thoughts.
"Drogo Baggins."
"(… oh crap)."
Almost as one, the company of Thorin Oakenshield – and guests – all turned to look at the grassy field precisely opposite the one from which had spawned a hobbit lass. Even the two princes, despite they grey and sepulchral disposition.
"Drogo. Baggins."
From somewhere came a "P-primula, my flower-"
"DROGO BAGGINS!"
"Gyah!" The hidden bounder suddenly bolted from behind a camouflaged mound, crashed into one of his fellows, jumped over a second, ran a dozen paces before tripping over a third, then hightailed it like the wargs of Gundabad were after him. "Every hobbit for himself!"
"Come back here Drogo Baggins!" The lass shouted in outrage, her voice like the sound of dew drops on bellflowers as she charged through the grass, hopped over the fence, barely seemed to touch the ground as she ran past Dori's pony and ducked
under Thorin's startled mount and Gandalf's horse, after which she jumped over the other fence and seemed to almost fly across the field in her rage. "You'd better hope I don't catch you, wastrel spawn of a snail darter! The moment I get my hands on you and I'll have your guts for my mother's garters!"
The company of Thorin Oakenshield and their plus two stared in shock as the two hobbits disappeared into the distance.
It was a minute later that the groans of the victims of the pair's rampage shook Fortinbras Took back to action.
For a given definition of 'action.'
The Prince of the Shire pinched his nosebridge and shut his eyes in pain. "I'm surrounded by idiots."
And he walked off.
Sighing, Bilbo Baggins let them know that he would be hurrying on ahead as well because they were only a couple of miles away from their destination so he ought to go and see to it that things proceeded apace. Especially seeing as nothing else of what he'd planned to do actually panned out as intended once the Bywater folks spread the word about how thoroughly they'd ruined his purchase plans.
The dwarven scribe watched and listened in befuddlement as the hobbit trotted away, muttering to himself all the while about troublesome neighbors, exasperating relatives, and the general mass conspiracy that had caught the Shire in its spiteful grip and whose single purpose was to stop him and only him from finally making something useful of his revenues and being a properly productive member of the Shire society, and what was everyone
thinking spurning all his attempts to buy things by pitching in just to spite him, did they think he was a spendthrift or something, wasn't it enough that he had
Lobelia for an in-law, that this mass insanity was only putting him in the very position coveted by her and her equally greedy and larcenous Bracegirdle relatives, did they not
care what that meant for his reputation, did they give no thought at all to what they
did to him, what was
wrong with these people!?
The dwarf's jaw hung slack and his charcoal stick hovered over his travel journal for a whole five minutes while his mind tried and failed to come up with a way to record the most recent events in a manner that wouldn't later read like he'd been exposed to mind-addling elf grass and sucked on by brain leeches.
In the end, he failed.
Ori, son of Bori, clamped his mouth shut, very carefully returned his charcoal to his pouch, thwapped his journal closed and put the last five minutes out of his mind with all the deliberation of someone who'd spent the last week doing his best not to think hobbits were completely insane creatures, only to finally be forced to admit surrender and face the facts.
Hobbits, one and all, were just completely nuts.
A conclusion that was enforced just half an hour later. For upon the company dismounting and storing their ponies at the last South Farthing waystation, Bilbo Baggins popped in on them one last time and proceeded to hone in on Master Balin and give him a long hug.
And to put the final nail in the coffin of a truly exhausting afternoon, Dwalin came out of the stables just in time to see Balin's predicament, rolled his eyes, tromped over to his confounded brother and, seeing as Master Balin himself seemed completely incapable of reciprocating what Bilbo Baggins was doing to him, seized him by the arms. "You put your right arm round the wee hobbit's shoulders like this," the half-bald dwarf demonstrated as if to a concussed simpleton. "Then seeing as he's got you round the waist, you wrap the other one round his back like this." That done, he pat his older brother on the arms and grinned ruthlessly. "Now hug him like you mean it, nadad."
Balin did as he was told, if only because he seemed unable to use his mind for anything so minor as, say, personal initiative.
Ori desperately buried his face in Dori's cloak. He would
not laugh at the Master he was apprenticed under. He would
not.
When Bilbo finally deigned to release the dwarf – the ludicrousness of the idea that someone so small and slight would be able to physically force a dwarf to do anything notwithstanding – Balin looked like he didn't know if he should blush or pale, a sight made no better by the squashed, skewed shape that the sudden hug had made of his beard. "Master Baggins… I… This… that is…"
"You tend to look outwards and therefore never looked inwards enough to notice yourself become a prejudiced, sectarian, self-absorbed person." The hobbit nodded sagely as the dwarf finally figured out the proper color to turn into, which was incandescently red-faced. "I forgive you."
Dwalin choked, snorted,
vibrated in place as if holding himself off from committing to some terrible course of action, then lost his battle with himself and bent over in uproarious laughter.
Laughter which the Ur brothers, as well as Fili and Kili, joined in a moment after.
"How unseemly," Dori grumbled with a glare in their direction, even as he put an arm around Ori's shoulders. It only made the latter snicker even harder. Clearly, Thorin Oakenshield was not the only dwarf in their company with a double standard.
"Oh…" After not quite straightening with a chortle, Dwalin staggered forward to lay his hands on the hobbit's shoulders. "Oh you are
adorable."
Bilbo beamed.
Oh Mahal. Mahal, those eyes. So big. Big and round. Big and shiny and round.
Gah!
"(He never calls
us adorable)" Kili groused from aside.
"(Yeah)" Fili agreed despondently. "(I mean it's obvious why he'd never call
you that, but it's just outrageous that he'd tar me with the same brush-)"
"(I'll show you tar, you chalk-haired weed eater-!)"
Ori had been unfortunate enough to be looking right at the princes when they broke into fistcuffs and rolled away in a tangle of limbs.
He determinedly looked away from the sight, which incidentally made him behold Dwalin again. Dwalin, whose amusement had drained from him like pus from a boil upon witnessing the princes' display, leaving his mien craggy and stone-like once more. "Useless," he put his face in his hands. "Utterly useless."
"Yet you love them anyway," Bilbo said blithely, patting him on the shoulder.
"Don't remind me."
"I'll be off to coordinate the arrival then. Do try not to tarry though. A good party waits for no one!"
Bilbo Baggins' departure was timed just as Thorin emerged from the stables himself. Exactly in time for Balin's war with his battered emotions to finally fizzle like a wet firestarter kit and make him decide to just drop with a thump on the bench behind him. Bench which hadn't been there until Adalgrim Took and Rorimac Brandybuck noiselessly scurried over to deposit for his convenience mere moments before his legs failed him. Only to disappear back from whence they came before he even realized they were there, let alone get around to remembering that there wasn't supposed to be any seating nearby to begin with.
Ori and the two thirds of their company on his side of the recently ended spectacle stared blankly in their wake.
Right.
Alright.
Hobbit hospitality with hobbit kindness and hobbit propriety.
Right.
Right then.
"How do they
coordinate?" Gloin whispered nearby.
"Hand signs," Nori answered, startling them after not having been anywhere nearby for some time, and quiet for even longer. "Mostly one-handed and a lot of the time disguised as them being animated or emotional about whatever they're talking about, or just random finger drumming. Our escorts and 'guides' and even our own Master Baggins have been using them on and off practically all the time."
"Duplicitous creatures," Thorin growled irritably from nearby, and Ori had to almost bite his tongue to stop himself from yelping. Mahal, but was his situational awareness terrible. "If not for the scale of this whole… undertaking I would think they mean to lead us on merely to place us in a precarious situation just to amuse themselves."
"No chances of that," Balin said tiredly from where he sat and stared at the horizon. Which was only about twenty meters away considering the location of yonder hilltop. "Not with the Thain, Master of Buckland and Mayor here. Too great an investment of resources and potential disruption to Shire governance, not to mention the costs incurred by all the businesses who donated goods and services to make all this happen so suddenly." Ori supposed it made sense for Master Balin to be taking refuge from his recent ordeal by distracting himself with economics and politics. "And it is doubtful in the extreme that the rangers would be involved in so massive an undertaking just to be petty. Particularly since it is completely lacking in planning aforethought."
"Imagine that," Dwalin said from Thorin's side in what had to be the first and only witticism Ori had ever witnessed from him to date that was aimed at his lord and king. "It's almost like our hobbit set things up just to give us another shot at making a proper first impression."
Thorin tossed him a glare over his shoulder, but ultimately ended any further discussion by setting off towards the bridge where the mass of hobbits and their various carts were clustered.
Not that they lingered there for long.
Later, Ori would decide that it really should have been obvious that Bilbo would, in the end, turn the final approach into a musical performance, but as it was he was still surprised when it happened. As much as by how it started as well as by when and where.
The stone bridge still bore over half of the mass of hobbits as well as eight of the dozen coaches and carts, but most of the goods wagons had already crossed entire and come to a halt in the open area just ahead, hobbits already scurrying about under the wide, astonished eyes of twenty-some Dunedain rangers. Already they were unloading tables, chairs, ovens and sacks of wheat while others were climbing up to decorate the large willow looming over the fork in the road just beyond. When the music began just as the last of the tables was set up, it seemed as though the lute cords started being plucked at the worst possible time, but hobbits proved, as they had in everything else, to be completely unconcerned with such paltry things as logic or common sense.
It wasn't even a slow medley this time, but a high-paced melody set off when Bilbo Baggins began to
pluck Adalgrim Took's lute as he passed him by. Lower-pitched sounds came from everywhere then, and a flute played by Drogo Baggins set the tone in earnest.
The crowd went
frantic with energy, hobbits charging every which way, pulling, lifting, joining, stacking or unstacking things together, chairs and tables and pans, all without missing a beat of the tune as more and more instruments joined the first out of nowhere and everywhere. No step was missed in the rhythm and no person failed to add to the concert, a word which gained an entirely new meaning and then surpassed it when the women rushed to the newly assembled longtables, loaded their flour sifters and started their
beat.
Then the ditty
really swelled into the most eclectic and sweeping number as Bilbo Baggins and Fortinbras Took hopped up on the bridge's guard walls and started to advance in concord while drawing their bows across fiddle strings faster than Ori had ever heard anyone, even as the sifters beat and beat and beat.
They beat, taking over the composition without taking it over at all, and Ori could only gape at finally understanding what the sifter shaking of the past days had all been on about. Gape as the sifters beat the music and left mounds of clean flower behind, flour which disappeared almost as soon as it piled, swept by hobbits passing by into pans and mixed with water, salt, oil, sugar and yeast to be quickly and neatly kneaded into doughs of one, two and half again a dozen kinds. All the while, wagons were carted, carts were emptied, goods were carried and food formed as if by magic. Mouth-watering smells started wafting on the wind from the lit ovens and massive stew pot that had been set up in the center of the crowd and already being filled with water, meats, vegetables and spices of a variety almost as dizzying as the decorations that had at some point sprung up to fill every free space on the willow branches. Through it all, no one could be said to have danced, but they didn't need to. They weren't meant to. This wasn't a concert meant for pomp, this was the food fights of Ered Luin without the food and the fights.
Not the food.
Not yet.
It was all mad.
Utterly mad.
Mad, dizzying and absolutely phenomenal.
Enough that Kili, who'd come to a strangely attentive halt next to Ori at some point since the song's start, abruptly decided that tapping his foot in rhythm with the song like the rest of the company was not nearly enough.
The prince of the line of Durin shucked off his fur cloak, dumped it in Ori's arms, did the same with his sword, and then joined in the hustle. And to Ori's everlasting astonishment, Kili knocked into precisely no one and missed not a single step, seamlessly melding with the organized chaos as if he'd practiced his role in this random performance for a year and a day.
One sack of corn, two chopped hams, three swapped tarts and a dozen willow decorations later, Kili finally passed in front of them again, incidentally giving Fili a chance to launch at him, not that he gave any clear indication of what exactly he hoped to accomplish by it.
"Killi, what are playing aaah-!?"
Kili grabbed Fili's wrist without looking, pulled him in line, stuffed a seedcake into his mouth and dragged him all the way to a basket several yards away, never failing to walk in step with the beat. He then reached into the basket and proceeded to lift out a massive carp. A still living, violently thrashing, live carp.
He casually handed it to a passerby who tipped his hat at him and trotted on his way.
"Mahal's balls-"
"Rejoice, Heir of Durin and Prince of Longbeard Folk!" Kili proclaimed grandly as he hauled out another one of the massive fish that had to have been fished no longer than two hours prior, never missing a beat even then. "You are living the dream!"
With which he dumped the slimy, thrashing, large carp right into Fili's arms.
"Gah! Euwww! Eugh!"
"Live the dream, brother! Live the dream!"
"What dream!?" Fili whimpered as he tried to escape and instead wound up matching Kili's trip to the nearest grill step for step, somehow.
But even in his music-induced haze Ori could see that the protests were at best half-hearted and that the older Durin had been swept off every bit as much as his sibling, even if the latter had to act as buffer if that made any sense.
Which didn't, but it wasn't like the unfolding events made any sense to begin with, with their rapidly growing spread of food driven onwards by music sung from fiddles and lutes and pots and ladles, jingling spoons and ringing teapots, and the
sifters...
Always,
always the sifters, like the far-off echoes of drums, gravel, whispering sands and tambourines all at once.
Never had cooking rung so wonderful.
The song ended abruptly but not unexpectedly, leaving behind stirring cauldrons, steaming pots, roasting spits and a myriad of different cakes, pies and leavened breads well on their way to baking already. All managed by two or more hobbits that moved surely, if not as quickly anymore. All were overseen from the near-most bridge posts by two hobbits breathing heavily, flushed from the sheer speed with which they'd made their bows fly across the fiddle strings near the end of the impromptu medley. The pace had quickened gradually throughout the performance and felt fit to fly ahead of all wind and thought the closer the finish came. Ori expected to hum it and dream about it for days after this.
His attention snapped back to itself, somewhat, at the sound of clapping.
It came from a group of riders. Mannish riders. More rangers, by their get, their clothing grey and dark green with cloaks held by place by clasps shaped like 6-pointed stars. There were twenty of them, a number that seemed to be but a small share of the astonishingly large group coming down the eastern road. Ori had actually seen a couple of them come to Thorin's hall on some business or other, but these people seemed somehow entirely different without their grim and taciturn bearings. Instead their faces were split by smiles and everything from bemusement to humor or wonder, and in the case of the one in the lead, mirth that would not be contained.
The man was tall, almost seven feet if Ori was any judge, and his long, black hair fell in tresses around his shoulders, but his grey eyes were alive with joy and his mood as light as the song that had just ended.
"Hail, good folk of the Shire," the man's voice was strong but not stern, his tone doing nothing to hide what could only be astonishment and sheer delight. "I would ask what mean you to achieve with this extraordinary cavalcade." The hobbits preened, one and all. "But I would like to think even I am not as hapless a fool as all that." The man's mirthful grin turned almost impish as his gaze lifted from the self-satisfied crowd to the one hobbit still standing on top of the bridge parapet. "Though at least one among you would be tempted to disagree on that point, isn't that right Small Brother?"
Small brother?
"That depends, Tall Brother!" Bilbo Baggins answered, hopping down from his perch and handing off his instrument to Fortinbras Took who, as always, attended to him in all matters, before striding purposely forward as the crowd parted before him as it always did. "Are you planning to end up wandering alone and delirious through the wilderness again this year?"
Nearby, Nori started so violently that Ori thought he might pass out from shock. What had struck him so badly?
The lead Ranger – captain? – laughed while he dismounted, then he surprised them all by sinking to his knees and embracing Bilbo Baggins when the latter finally came within reach. All throughout, his brother's eyes were aimed unerringly at a small bird perched on the ranger's shoulder.
"So that's where the bird went…" his second oldest brother breathed. "It's true… Mahal's balls, it's all true."
What was? Maker, was it so much to ask that his brothers actually share things with him? At least from time to time?
The embracing duo broke off after a while but the man did not rise, instead holding the hobbit at arm's length to give him a look much less stern than he likely intended. "You, Small Brother, are
completely mad."
"Well I'd have to be, wouldn't I?" Bilbo Baggins said dryly. "I have a reputation to uphold."
The man laughed again and rose, turned back to his men to give some orders in a different language – Adûnaic, if Ori was any judge – before turning back to face his hobbit friend and the rest of the hobbit leadership that was now approaching.
Ori could do little but wonder about the whole exchange and his brother's reaction to it while Gandalf herded him and the rest of the company over to where the two and the hobbit leadership were clustering.
The Ranger captain studied them as they approached before addressing Bilbo Baggins once more. "I must admit I am… stunned at the reality and sheer scale of this endeavor. If it were anyone else that sent me that message, or any other choice of messenger, I would never have taken it seriously. But here you are, and in quite august company if I am not mistaken." The man met the eyes of the ones in front of him, then did the same with Thorin who'd finally taken his spot alongside the others, his solemn, grim manner not quite masking how rattled and discombobulated he'd been left by the song of mere minutes past.
"A round of who's who, then!" Bilbo clapped his hands, gesturing at everyone as he played host, as he seemed prone and ever so delighted to. "Arathorn, son of Arador, Chieftain of the Dunedain Rangers of the North." Ori suddenly felt rather faint. "Allow me to introduce Robin Whitfoot, the Mayor of Michel Delving, my uncle Isumbras Took, Thain of the Shire, and Gorbadoc Brandybuck, Master of Buckland. And here we have Thorin Oakeshield, Son of Thrain, son of Thror, king of Durin's Folk."
"At your service," the last Arhedain king's descendent offered with all the courtesy that Thror would have been shown by other visiting monarchs when he still ruled under the mountain.
The
last king's descendent.
Because it bore repeating.
"At yours and your family's," the three hobbits answered, followed by Thorin only half a moment later. Thorin, who was looking between Bilbo Baggins and Arathorn, son of Arador, as if he had never seen living creatures of their species before.
"Peace, King Thorin," Arathorn said warmly. "You need fear no traps or enemies here. It was in no way intimated to me that you or any dwarves would even be coming. In fact, if it will ease your fears, let us be not foreign dignitaries but instead as friends and fellow warriors against the forces of Darkness. It is rare indeed that chance conspires to bring friends together from so far away, let alone for their reunion to be crowned with so bounteous a feast as what is being made here. Besides," he looked to Bilbo again, then. "We are all at the service of someone tonight, isn't that right Small Brother?"
"If you say so, Tall Brother. You
are the one in charge here after all."
"Am I though? Me and mine seem to be rather neatly outnumbered. But I suppose I shall humbly accept this fiction of me having any sort of control on current happenings and introduce you to the rest of the relevant parties."
That, for the first time ever in Ori's experience, saw Bilbo Baggins taken by complete surprise.
"Alright," Bilbo said warily. "What happened this time?"
"Nothing of
concern, I don't think," Arathorn replied, sounding far too amused for anyone's good. "However, your decision to go on your trip weeks earlier than you originally indicated
does mean that certain people who planned to surprise you there did not make it all the way yet. In fact, by complete chance they happened to be sharing our fires the night our mutual friend notified me of your sudden change in plans. Naturally, they chose to linger, largely due to the tireless entreaties of someone you might not know, but surely know
of very well."
"Is this it then?" A new voice cut through the descending twilight from among the last of the riders that had finally arrived. "Well don't just stay there! I will not have you loitering in the background when you made a vow to meet my nephew."
"Nephew?" Bilbo mouthed in bewilderment.
Bewilderment that instantly turned to shock when it wasn't a man that emerged from among the riders that everyone had ignored until then. It was a hobbit.
Bilbo's intake of breath surprised all of them, but that reaction was nothing compared to that of Isumbras Took.
"I-Isengar?" The hobbit gasped, and it suddenly struck Ori that, more than anything else, the Thain was
old.
"Well now, who else could it be?" the new arrival asked loftily. "Why, I can't imagine what-"
His words died in his throat.
From one moment to the next, Isumbras Took made as if to take a staggered step only to sway dangerously with a weak, rattling sound of distress as he held one hand out to the stranger and the other over where his heart was in his chest.
Fortinbras was at his side before anyone else, Bilbo not a step behind him unstoppering a hip flask which he held up to the Thain's mouth while rubbing his throat to coax him into swallowing. Then even Arathorn was kneeling over them, barking for a dish of hot water to be brought to him and murmuring over his hands while he crushed a handful of flowers. They went into the water the moment it was delivered, releasing a strong fragrance along with the vapors. The Ranger Chief then all but tore open the Thain's waistcoat and undershirt to rub the hastily prepared lotion over his lungs and heart. All the while Gandalf loomed over the four and looked like he would have gotten to some work himself if there had been any room left.
After a lengthy, weighty silence, Isumbras Took shuddered and started swallowing small mouthfuls of whatever Bilbo Baggins was feeding him without assistance, blinking dazedly up at the others and looking confused as to the change in height while his son practically held him in his lap.
"Oh dear," the newly revealed Isengar fretted to the side. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear."
"Peace, uncle," Bilbo sighed. "He won't be leaving us yet."
"I-I thought y-you'd d-died," Isumbras croaked weakly, hands shaking around the flask. "I thought you'd
died."
"What's this poppycock then? Me, dead? Why, the very idea! And after I had Gandalf-"
"Like I'd ever trust anything that Wizard says!" The Thain roared, shaking from head to toe as he all but forced Fortinbras to lift him up.
Gandalf did not rear back as if struck, but he did not seem surprised or dismissive either.
"He t-took you f-from us!" Isumbras swayed dangerously as he turned, but turn he did to glare all but
hatefully up at Tharkûn. "You t-took him from us! You filled his h-head with nonsense of seas and boats and
adventures," he spat. "
You made him go off on a… a… Made him leave like you made Belladonna leave and she almost
died herself before she… She never would've felt responsible later during that
damned winter if not… she'd never have gotten…" The old Took's tirade broke with a sob and the man almost broke down entirely. "I can't
look at you, Wizard." He instead stumbled away from the grim grey man, held up only by his son and nephew as tears broke down his face. "I thought you'd
died…" He wept, weakly reaching out.
"Brother, I… I…" Isengar Took didn't know what to say though, so he just rushed over to give Isumbras the embrace he so desperately pled for.
"You selfish,
self-absorbed loose," Isumbras sobbed. "I thought you'd
died… You sent a bunch of flower seeds then washed your hands of our whole family and
I thought you'd died!" The Thain kept weeping and repeating that line, over and over and over. "
I thought you'd died."
"Well this is some pickle, ain't it," Gorbadoc Brandybuck quietly muttered to Thorin from where he'd backed off and now stood next to their company. "Came all this way only to have a heart attack."
"Been sayin' for years that Wizards are bad news," Robin Whitfoot muttered into his pipe, scowling at Tharkûn and confirming beyond doubt that Tharkûn was not, in fact, universally loved in the Shire. "Don't see why Bilbo's so willing to put up with his nonsense myself."
"'Put up' is a strong term," the hobbit in question said as he approached them with a grave expression. "I suppose I should apologize for this upset of the situation," he told Thorin. "I know it was not an entirely popular decision to let yourselves be so diverted from your own course. I hoped that a proper sendoff and cultural experience might make up for the inconvenience of having had the existence of your expected fourteenth companion disproven. Subjecting you to private family drama, and putting you in the situation where you could not avoid being exposed to such strong emotions, was never my goal."
Thorin watched the hobbit silently for several weighty moments.
But then he looked away from him and back to the emotional pair, now on both their knees as the Thain cried unashamedly. "It seems we have both misjudged each other, Master Baggins," he said lowly before meeting their host's gaze straight on, for once not at all confrontational. "I would never begrudge you or them this. Not when it is something I have myself yearned after for decades upon years." The king turned back to the two and the crowd that was rapidly congregating around the two emotional brothers, both of them now sat in what had to be a loveseat, of all things.
No one laughed.
"… They are blessed," Thorin finally murmured, seemingly to himself, before abruptly facing Bilbo Baggins once more, face once again closed. "I expect they will join freely in the planned celebrations once they have suitably composed themselves. It is, after all, only to be expected of such as they."
It made Bilbo behold Thorin with something that could almost be called a shade of the respect he held for Dwalin. "I will convey your best wishes to them."
"And so will I," Arathorn added, having finally joined them once more. "And I will add my apology to Bilbo's, belated as it is." The man turned to the hobbit himself then. "And I apologize to you also. In hindsight, a forewarning would have served everyone. But I fear I was certain that the most shock would come not from your uncle, but from those he was traveling with."
"At this point I think I can guess who they are," Bilbo sighed, then turned away from them all and faced the group of travelers that, now that Ori thought about it, not only held themselves apart from the Dunedain but were dressed differently besides.
It was then that the tallest and foremost of them stepped out from among them, and Ori could not even think to keep himself from gaping at the sight of him. An elf he was, ancient beyond imagining, clad in vestments the color of the sea. Aquamarine blue and sea green blended seamlessly into each other and glimmered in twilight as he strode towards them, the weight of years like a cloak around his shoulders and silver hair flowing in the north wind.
Yet his eyes were keen as stars and his face bore the burden of years in a way that left the dwarf completely awestruck and unable to muster even the thought that he could speak.
It was at that point that Bilbo Baggins, after a frankly impolite bout of staring, turned on his heel to glare at Arathorn, and more precisely the small bird perched on his left shoulder. "You knew about this."
The bird chirped.
The hobbit's glare intensified.
That was when, out of nowhere, Gandalf cleared his throat.
"Confounding Eru!" Bilbo groaned up at the universe. "Bebother and cofusticate Wizards and their need to be the center of attention!
"Yes," the ancient elf murmured before Gandalf could cut in, voice layered with good humor and compassion for newly reunited siblings, both seemingly carried forward by the echoes of waves upon the shore. "I suppose they can indeed be quite vexing."
Bilbo Baggins snickered and hung his head in defeat, though what it could have been for Ori hadn't the foggiest clue. "Well!" Finally the hobbit straightened all at once, shucking off all vestiges of discomfort. "Being the nominal host in all this mess, I suppose I may as well do this properly, then."
And just what was
that supposed to mean?
His answer, of course, was as immediate as he'd come to expect from their fastidious host.
Bilbo Baggins faced the ancient Elf and bowed to him and his near retinue. "Mae g'ovannen." The elvish flowed from his tongue as easily as every other word he ever spoke. A flow that did not change once he straightened and looked the ancient elf in the eyes as a king would a visiting peer. "Na vedui, Nowë! Ciryatan! Well met and be welcomed, Círdan, Lord of the Grey Havens of Mithlond which lie on the fringes of the world."
"My thanks for your reception. And may good fortunes meet and follow, as indeed they already must for all of the free peoples in Middle Earth to come together under so auspicious of chances."
Yet even in the expectant silence that followed, none of the dwarves of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield could muster words to return his greet. Ori most of all. For the keen-eyed ancient Elf lord bore the burden of years in a way that left the dwarf completely awestruck and unable to muster even the thought that he could speak.
Which, for better or worse, was not true of the line of Durin.
"Fili."
"Yes, Kili."
"That...."
"Yes."
"That… that is..."
"Yes. Yes it is."
Quiet like the maw of the world in which all hopes and dreams went to die, for the Elf's face bore the weight of years to a length that not even the grandest and largest of dwarves would ever be tall enough to grow.
"That… is a
beard!"
Despite the thick skin he'd developed over the past few days and in spite of the emotionally-charged moment of moments before, Ori, son of Bori, suddenly found himself feeling vaguely cheated.
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[1] Quenya for White City: taras (city, fort, fortress, tower) + Fána (white).
