Chapter Text
The night air chilled the river as Thorin furiously propelled the log back to where he heard his nephews. The closer the makeshift vessel came to the bank, the louder the sound of battle became. Echoing off the mountainside and nearby cliffs.
The burglar, Baggins, shivered as another roar rent the air, but continued paddling.
The dwarf could barely make out grey shapes in the mists of the coastline. It felt like they had been moving to the other bank for an eternity, and yet it looked no closer than when they started. He put all the last dredges of force he could muster into his strokes.
"Thorin….Thorin…Thorin! Stop!" Bilbo yelped, "We're going to-!"
The log bashed into the pebbled beach, throwing off its passengers with a lurch.
The dark dwarf pushed himself back up with a groan.
A boulder sailed through the air and crashed a few feet from them. The dwarf, for it was a dwarf and not a boulder, lumbered back up and brushed himself off, revealing himself to be ever proper Dori.
Ever proper Dori's hair had lost a braid, and he was looking rather haggard.
"Thorin!" The polite dwarf exclaimed when he saw the exiled king, "You're alright. Thank Mahal. Quick, we have engaged the giant brutes that were chasing you."
Thorin blinked, "Who?"
The mithril-haired dwarf was too busy picking up the oaken log to answer. Shouldering it like a battering ram, he charged back into the mist with a war cry.
Thorin had heard that Dori was quite strong, but this level of strength was, in his humble opinion, ridiculous.
The dwarven king hurried to hop back into his boots, unsheathed his dagger, and followed suit, "Come, burglar!"
"B-burglar!? It's Baggins," The hobbit sputtered indignantly, clutching some smooth stones, "I've never burgl-!"
The rest of Bilbo's sentence was interrupted by a guttural roar and a quieter cry of pain.
As dwarf and hobbit broke through the walls of mist, the grey shapes solidified into three angry mountain trolls battling the rest of Thorin's company. Black blood spurted from cuts while their pale skin was mottled with dark bruises. The dwarves utilized their smaller size to hack and slash at exposed tendons in the legs or take an opportunistic swipe at any giant, gnarled hand that came near.
Thorin saw Dori launch his log into a troll that had snatched up Ori. Sending the aggressor stumbling back, releasing its prisoner. Ori was promptly picked up by his older brother like a sack of flour and spirited to a different part of the battlefield.
In the kicked up dust and clanging of weapons, he could also see a lanky white giant swinging a makeshift club, scattering Killi, Filli, Dwalin, and Bifur. A quiver's worth of arrows stuck out from the monster's bald head and areas not covered by its patchwork overalls.
"Stay still, ya little buggahs!" The fiend demanded.
No one had died yet from what the exiled king could see. Still, it was only a matter of time until one of these aggressors was able to snatch someone and swallow them whole or trample a poor fool under their feet.
Thorin glanced down at his dagger.
To be stopped here before they had truly begun their quest burned his soul.
"My company! To me!" Thorin bellowed, raising his weapon in the air.
"Thorin!"
"He's ok!"
"Uncle Thorin!"
The dwarves broke away from the trolls and flocked to their king.
"What's the plan, Thorin?" Dwalin huffed, his knuckledusters coated in black blood. A great gash on his forehead wept.
"We delay them," Thorin replied softly before raising his voice, "Follow me! All those with long-range weaponry - keep these trolls' attention on us."
The dark dwarf turned and charged back through the mists, flanked by his company. Killi took shots with the arrows he had left while Ori and a few others, one of whom was an extremely pale burglar, slung stones with a crack! that could break a man's bones.
Sadly, they were dealing with trolls, not men or even orcs.
"Argh, our food's gettin' away and I'm starvin'!" One of the brutes yelled, breaking arrows off its skin.
"Say, ain't that the gnome from earlier?" A second troll asked.
"TEAR THEM APART!" The biggest of the lot ordered, clutching at his eye.
"O-oh! Yep, yep! Just curious," the second troll rushed to placate.
For every ten strides the company took, the trolls took one. Each landfall of their great dirty feet shook the ground.
Thorin never wavered in his direction, even as boulders and trees crashed down around them. That relentless confidence spurred the others to keep pace.
"Where is it? Where is it?" The dwarven leader asked himself, his ice blue eyes scouring the vague shapes trapped in the mist. "There!"
Emerging from the gloom was a small water mill perched on the river that the dwarf had idly noted a couple of days before. Its wheel turned with the tide. Moss clung to the wooden planks and covered the roof. On the side were cords of wood tied together by rope. Ready to be floated down the stream or hauled out by teams of ponies.
There was no light on in the window. No activity to suggest someone was on watch. Based on the brief time Thorin had spent in the Shire, it would not surprise him if the door to the mill was unlocked. The implicit trust of a small, sleepy community.
A trust they were going to shatter.
"Cut the ropes! Toss the logs in the river! Five or less to a log!" Thorin barked, sawing through a knot.
"Hey now, can't say I've seen you around," Bofur cheerfully greeted the burglar who was fumbling and failing to undo a knot.
"Oh, uhm, y-yes, terribly sorry. I'm Bilbo Baggins of Bag End, glad to make your acquaintance," the little hobbit stuck out a trembling hand.
"M'name's Bofur! At yer service," the miner shook the proffered hand hard enough to nearly dislodge the whole arm.
"Bofur!" Dwalin yelled, before giving Bilbo an odd look.
"Oop! Sorry," Bofur swung his mattock down, breaking up and mixing the soil into mud to make it easier to move the logs.
The company made quick work with the trappings, hastened by the drum of trollish footfalls.
"Launch!" The dwarven king roared.
The company surged from the bank, an improvised armada of fir, oak, maple, and mountain ash. Thorin's log took point, with him, Dwalin, Bofur, and Bilbo occupying it. The exiled king's voice grew hoarse with each order he barked. Directing the company further into the body of the river and to keep assailing their assailants.
"Rawrgh! No fair!" The lankiest of the trolls whinged when they caught up, slamming a fist through the mill's wheel, splintering the wood to pieces.
"I'm tired o' this, Bill. Let's eat more o' 'em gnomes instead," a different troll hissed, swatting at one of Killi's arrows.
"Argh, it kills me to say this, but yer right. No morsel is worth this much trouble," Bill spat black blood that splashed across the rocks.
"No, no," Bilbo whispered, shaking his head with wide eyes, "They can't."
Thorin opened his mouth to order an increase in fire from the few, pitiful, artillery forces they had (which was really just Killi and Ori). Although he doubted that would be enough to keep the troll's ire focused on them and not on the easier prey in the Shire.
Suddenly, the hobbit stood up on the log and shouted to retreating pale backs, "Hey, you! Bill! Your cooking is the worst thing I have ever seen!"
"What nonsense are you spewing, burglar?" Thorin demanded.
"Do trolls even know how to cook?" Dwalin muttered.
"Hey! Who are you?" Filli called two logs over.
Bilbo ignored them and cupped his hands around his mouth, "Your mother would be ashamed."
That stopped the biggest troll dead in his tracks.
The pale giant whipped around and launched one of the logs like a javelin, "Don't chu talk 'bout my mother!"
The impact of the log on the water, concerningly close to the drifting impromptu armada, caused a watery upheaval that nearly threw the poor hobbit off.
"What are ya doin', lad?! Yer gonna get us killed," Gloin cried, scrambling to keep a hold of his log.
Bilbo steadied himself and threw out another taunt, "I'll talk about your mother if I want to, y-y-you cooking HACK!"
These taunts were rather weak. Bilbo was a proper Baggins who shied away from insulting others straight to their face. He preferred something full of wit, high-context, and needing a minute for the victim to puzzle out. But he didn't have time to think, and the artistry of a good insult would be lost on these monsters anyway.
Thankfully, the simple taunts were enough to reignite the flames of hatred within the troll.
"Is that all you've got, Tom?! It's better than your stew, granted," Bilbo screeched, holding on to the log for dear life as it was tossed around on steep waves. He had lost track of what name belonged to which troll.
"I'm going to end you for this, hobbit!" Nori yelled as boulders and logs rained down like heaven's fury around them.
"Follow the burglar's lead: we're tirin' 'em out!" Dwalin sharply rebuked after a nudge from Thorin.
The dark dwarf had momentarily lost his voice from issuing so many commands in a short amount of time.
"We have a burglar now?"
"When did he get here?"
"Guess that means yer off the hook, Nori."
"I'm not hearing any insults," Dwalin pressed.
A litany of insults was thrown back at him about his appearance, ancestry, and certain proclivities.
"Not about me: the trolls!"
"OH~, gather 'round and hear a tale o' Bill's mother," Bofur hurried to sing, "Y'see, for every mister the missus knew / there came a brother new - Ah! By Durin's beard, abandon log! Abandon log!"
The occupants of Thorin's log flung themselves off in time to miss a boulder cracking the oak in two. The other dwarves of Thorin's company fought against the strong current to fish out their friends before they lost sight of them in the mist and darkness. Thorin coughed violently as he was heaved out of the murky river's depths.
"One brother was as dumb as dirt / A troll named Burt," Killi added on, plastered to a log like a drowned rat. Despite his miserable appearance, a determined glint was in his eye.
Another dwarf added his own verse, and on and on it went for hours into the night. Those with bows and slings continued to pelt the trolls until they ran out of ammo, while the rest steered and propelled their respective logs. Boulders, trees, anything the trolls could get a hold of, fell down on them like Mahal's hammer.
It was a long night.
Thorin thanked the seven stars with wet eyes and blue lips when dawn peaked over the horizon. Something about seeing a bright, warm ray of light after such a long and terrible night lightened his heart, although he could barely lift his arms from fatigue.
Curiously, but not unexpectedly, the light frightened the nighttime monsters. The trolls screamed as the blessed day spilled over the canyon's walls. They threw their crude, makeshift weapons to the side and made a mad scramble for the valley's retreating shadows.
"No," Bilbo croaked beside Thorin, voice ragged from choking on water and shouting taunts all evening, "Not again. The Shire. Have to stop them from getting to…the Shire." He slumped over, breathing hard.
For all that was good about dwarven loyalty, especially when called on short notice for a being they had just met, none of Thorin's company could muster the strength to call back the monsters. Their limbs were as heavy as stone, and sleep teased their minds.
A loud Pop! and a Bang! swiftly chased sleep from their minds. The questing party stared incredulously as showers of multicolored sparks filled the air with smoke and spectacle. Exploding at the feet and faces of the white giants. Buffering them from every which way, halting their retreat.
"Ahh! It burns! It burns!" One of the trolls yelled, swatting at the rockets.
"Keep movin', or we'll be burnin' in daylight!" Their leader swore, soot smudged across his face.
"I blame this all on you, Bill!" The third one yelled before an odd cracking sound drowned him out.
When the last rocket fired, and the smoke finally cleared, Thorin's company was astonished to see three great statues in perfect, terrible likeness of the mountain trolls in the morning light. And there, walking amongst these odd statues, was a man in grey robes, tapping the flesh-made-stone with his walking stick.
There were ecstatic cries of "Tharkun!", “Gandalf!”, "You @#$%!" from the dwarves and one hobbit.
"My friends!" Gandalf called across the water, "Whatever are you doing out there? The danger has passed."
Slowly, the company pushed themselves across the river and back to shore. Stumbling back onto solid ground with shaky legs and numb digits, but glad hearts.
"Gandalf!" Bilbo cried, delighted, "I knew it was you the moment I saw your fireworks."
"Will I ever be remembered for something that isn't fireworks?" Gandalf muttered to himself, then, with a rare smile, "It's good to see you too, Bilbo. I was quite worried."
The wizard turned to the rest, "Come now, hurry, let's get you all warmed up before you die of cold."
The grey pilgrim shepherded them into a clearing where he broke off small, dry branches and, with a whisper, breathed a fire to life.
Thorin sat by his nephews' side around the fire. A watchful, if very broody, guardian deity.
"W-where were you-ou-u, Gandalf, when we were being f-flung about like detritus?" Dori huffed into his clammy hands.
Ori, who had been forced to sit beside his eldest brother, was glumly ringing out water from his knitted gloves. Nori, who had been spared this fate, flopped down as close as he could to the fire with a groan. A puddle slowly formed around him.
"I was getting the fireworks, of course," Gandalf answered, building up the fire with bigger pieces of dry wood, "And it seemed to me you were holding your own very well."
"Where were the fireworks?" Killi asked, stripping off his water-logged outer layers.
"Where I left them."
"Where did you leave them?" Filli asked.
"Where I needed them."
"Huh? Where did you feed them?" Oin asked, cupping his ear while tapping water out of his hearing horn.
"Into the faces of trolls, confound it! Any other foolish questions?"
Bofur opened his mouth to pile on before wisely closing it.
"Good," Gandalf puffed on his pipe, adding another piece of wood, "Because I have questions of my own. Namely for a certain Bilbo Baggins of Bag End."
"Me?" Bilbo squeaked.
The hobbit had taken after Nori's example and thrown himself to the ground as well. His ripped vest was haphazardly shrugged off.
"Yes, but not here, not yet," The wizard replied mysteriously, eying the shadows that still remained, "We will need to- Bilbo?"
Bilbo didn't answer. He has drifted off to sleep in the middle of Gandalf's sentence.
Thorin soon followed.