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The Dwarves call it rabbit stew, but, honestly, it tastes more like rabbit bathwater. It is a thin, bland, murky brown soup in desperate need of carrots, potatoes or celery. Any vegetable would help and if Bilbo has to eat another bowl of it he might just eat his pony, he is that hungry for some real food.
Chances are, however, that it won’t come to that. At least not today. Bilbo might not be a strong fighter or a successful burglar, but he has one skill. A nose for mushrooms, inherited from the Took side of his family, and oh my, can he smell them today. He thinks they are button or even pig mushrooms there and lots of them. All he needs to do is find them.
“Yes!” He raises a fist in victory when he finally finds the first mushrooms that would be so delicious in a buttery sauce. He kneels down to start picking them for their dinner when another smell makes him pause. There is nothing earthy and appealing about this scent. It is a sickening mixture of wet dog and decay.
Carefully he scans the area. The last thing he wants is to stumble over the remains of a dead deer, because that would be an excellent way to ruin his appetite. So invested is he in his search that he doesn’t hear the twigs napping behind him until it is too late. Alarmed he whirls around only to stare into the gaping gullet of a beast with rows of terrifying, yellow teeth. He shrieks at the sight and his hand flies automatically to his belt only to find that he left his sword at the camp. It is shaking when he withdraws it. Shaking so hard he has difficulties to reach into his pocket for the magic ring he found just a few days ago when he escaped the creature in the goblin tunnels.
He faced off with a warg then, too, but in that situation he had made the decision to fight unlike now where he is caught by surprise and entirely petrified.
His trembling fingers feel the ring in his pocket, but before he manages to get a hold of it the warg moves and his is grabbed by the collar or his coat and lifted off the ground. He is unable to slip out of his jacket quickly enough and the orc rider flips him upside down, grabbing him by the ankle. His face is pressed into the coarse, reeking fur of the warg and he can feel it leap with big, powerful strides.
They don’t make it very far, though. Out of nowhere there is a roar and the orc’s hand tightens around Bilbo’s ankle, almost crushing the bone before his grip relaxes and Bilbo crashes face first into the forest floor.
“Bilbo!”
With a groan he gets up on his hands and knees and waits for the stars in front of his eyes to stop dancing. The orc, he notices, is lying next to him, an arrow protruding from between his shoulder blades. He is twitching still.
Terrified of the orc regaining consciousness Bilbo crawls a few paces.
“Bilbo, come on! We have to get out of here. If we get ourselves killed by orcs, Thorin will slaughter us!”
“Right,” Bilbo replies. “Wait, what?” While the prognosis might be impossible Bilbo has no doubt that there is some truth in it, so he scrambles to his feet and when he finally looks up he sees Kíli and breathes a sigh of relief. Bless the boy and his knack for always turning up where he isn’t supposed to be.
He starts running towards him, barely paying attention to the rough terrain under his feet. All he needs to do is get to safety without passing out and he thinks he can do it.
He’s almost there. Almost there…
“Kíli! Look out!” It isn’t the bang on the head, but the shocking sight that makes his knees weak and his head feel lighter than it should. Out of the thicket just behind Kíli jumps a warg, it’s rider swinging a mace and before the dwarf can even react, the weapon strikes the back of his head, making him go down like a rag doll.
Instinctively Bilbo ducks and rolls and momentarily escapes the same fate when the orc comes for him.
“Kíli!” He crosses the remaining distance between them crawling and shakes the dwarf in a sheer panic when he reaches them. The response is a groan, so at least he isn’t dead, but still out cold and the warg has turned around by now, approaching him slowly, as if aware that Bilbo is merely a sitting duck.
And while he is kneeling on the ground, next to his friend and his breath is coming out in short, panicked wheezes he realizes that he’s had it. Officially. It is the same feeling he’s had when he rushed to Thorin’s aid outside the Goblin tunnels, only this time, he doesn’t have a choice. Or a weapon.
Determined to get them both out of this mess alive, Bilbo grabs Kíli’s bow, half trapped under his body. He struggles to free it and once he does, he is surprised how right it feels in his hand. The size is good and it is lighter and easier to manoeuvre than he expected. It gives him confidence, which is entirely shattered, when the arrow he attempts to shoot right between the orc’s eyes kind of flops and drops to the ground just in front of him.
The orc makes an ugly sound that might have been laughter and he is so close now, Bilbo can smell him. He dismounts his warg and approaches Bilbo who scrambles for the fallen arrow.
He finds it and even though he can see the remainders of the orc’s last meal between his teeth, he raises the bow anyway. The tip of the arrow is almost grazing the orc’s chest. His hands tremble uncontrollably now. So much so that the can hear wooden arrow quiver against the bow as much as he can see it. There is blackness creeping into his vision from the sides, but he fights it. He holds on to his anger and at the same time lets go of the arrow, shooting the orc at point-blank range.
Instead of backing off, the creature lounges at Bilbo, grabs him and releases a roar that is equal parts pain and fury.
“This is it,” Bilbo thinks, squeezing his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see whatever is caked around the orc’s mouth. He certainly doesn’t want it to be the last thing he ever sees.
Surprisingly, though, his neck doesn’t get snapped. Instead the orc binds his hands and feet and pushes him to the ground. He then makes quite a show of removing the arrow from his shoulder before picking Kíli up from the ground. He lifts him easily and moves to tie him to the warg’s saddle.
“Leave him alone!” Bilbo protests. “You killed him, leave him be.”
“Shut your mouth,” the orc growls.
“You killed him, you killed my friend,” Bilbo repeats, adding a little more drama to his voice when he notices that being picked up brings Kíli back. His eyelids flutter, but so far the orc hasn’t noticed and Bilbo can only hope that the dwarf will catch on and play dead for his own safety. “Leave him behind. He won’t be much use unless you like to drag dead weight around.”
“Dead weight?” The orc makes that ugly laughing sound again. “Some parts for snacks.” The orc sniffs the dwarf extensively. “Some parts for Oakenshield. His kin. He will come for him. You,” he gives Bilbo a hungry look, “are all snack.”
“Oh,” Bilbo makes as the pieces slowly fall into place. A trap, of course. “Well… your plan isn’t very smart then, you know that, right?”
The orc seems to be taken aback for a second and pulls a small blade out of his belt with his free hand. He approaches Bilbo.
“What are you talking about?”
What is he talking about, indeed. Bilbo frowns as he tries to come up with anything at all. He nervously eyes the knife pointed at him.
“You really think Thorin would walk into your trap for this loser?” Out of the corner of his eye he can see the expression of utmost rage on Kíli’s face, but prays that the dwarf can remain calm and dead for a little longer. “He’s not even next in line for the crown. I’d say you’d have better luck leaving him here for Thorin to see. He might just be angry enough to get revenge, because dwarves are stubborn like that, but he won’t go searching for him. And I’m the one you want anyway. Were you there when we were attacked? If you were and paid attention you’ll remember that I was the one who came to Thorin’s help first.”
Bilbo can hear the words coming out of his mouth, but he can’t do anything to stop them. He always babbles when he is nervous, he knows that, but constructing a lie like this is something foreign to him. Even more surprising is the fact that he is clearly putting himself into disadvantage to save the life of someone he likes, sure, but wouldn’t consider his best friend in the world. Certainly not a friend worth dying for.
The orc eyes him suspiciously.
“Are you Oakanshield’s kin?”
“You mean am I a stubborn, secretive Dwarf who takes offence at everything and talks about mining for hours on end?” He looks down to his naked feet and he should be insulted that someone mistakes him for a Dwarf. Then again… “Because, yes, I am. I am a Dwarf and Thorin is my brother’s uncle’s best blacksmith.” He pauses when he realises that it made no sense at all, but the orc seems to buy it, probably because he struggles with the common language, not because Bilbo is very convincing. “So I guess you can say we’re pretty close.”
Once again, he seriously questions why he is trying to get taken captive by this orc, but there is just the tiniest bit of pleasure mixed into his fear, when it works. The orc drops Kíli unceremoniously to the ground and picks Bilbo up instead. He tosses him across the back of his warg and before Bilbo has the chance to say anything else to get out of the situation, they speed off.
Riding a warg is nothing like riding a pony and Bilbo is glad when they stop after only a short while. Even if that means getting pushed off the warg and landing on his face once again.
He barely dares to move at all, when he hears the ugly, growling voices of several orcs barking at each other in their hissing, rasping speech.
After talking for a moment and pointing at Bilbo, the three of them seem to target the fourth and smallest one of their group and bully him until he reluctantly mounts another warg and rides away from the group.
Bilbo decides to take advantage of their squabbling and gently edges away from the orcs in the direction of the trees. He isn’t quite sure how he is going to hide from a handful of wargs, who seem to have a pretty decent sense of smell in spite of their own odour, but he has to try at least. There is a horse tied to a tree with it’s rider nowhere to be seen and Bilbo doesn’t want to think about that at all. He only wonders if he could get to the horse and climb into the saddle unnoticed.
Possibly if he could get his hands free to reach into his pocket for his magic ring but for that he has to get rid of the rope, tying his hands.
“Where are you going?”
Bilbo freezes and looks around helplessly before deciding that his best option is to play innocent.
“Who? Me? Nothing. I… I mean nowhere. I, uhm… wanted to give you some privacy. You seem to have a lot of things to discuss.” He struggles only a little bit when the orc shoves him back towards the centre of their little camp. “What’s going on, anyway? I mean, you were talking about me, right, so it is kind of rude not to tell me.”
“When does it shut up?” the second orc asks, eyeing Bilbo ominously while creeping closer.
“We can make it shut up,” the third orc suggests, also turning towards Bilbo with a little more interest and a drooling lick of the area around his mouth where lips should have been.
“Tell him the plan,” the second orc says. “Fear makes the meat taste sweeter.”
“No one touches him. We wait for Azog,” the orc who captured Bilbo roars and the other two back off, sulking.
“Well, I’m a decent cook, you know? If you’re hungry I could cook something for you to tie you over until you get to eat me. And I’m a pretty small bite for three big lads like you anyway. I think I would go really well with a mushroom soup or roasted mushrooms in a lovely buttery sauce. Baked mushrooms with cheese and herbs.” Just thinking about all these dishes makes Bilbo’s mouth water and he can see that his words have a similar effect on the orcs. They seem tempted but unsure how to proceed.
“We don’t eat dwarf-food,” one of them snaps after they discussed it among themselves.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Bilbo replies. He doesn’t know what he is trying to achieve here. The orcs won’t let him go just because he fed them, he is sure of that, but some really nice food might fill their bellies and make them slow and idle. He might even try to slip away while picking mushrooms. “We can get it all cooked and cleaned up before Azog gets here.”
The orcs huddle up once more to discuss, before they reach a decision.
“Fine, you may cook for us.”
It feels a little odd, giving directions to orcs who just kidnapped him, but they actually do as they are told and fetch water for the pot and look for wild herbs.
Even the one who is following Bilbo around gets a little careless on the job, when he discovers a large patch of mushrooms. He almost seems proud of himself when Bilbo applauds him for his excellent nose.
It takes no time at all to fill a small, rancid smelling bag with mushrooms and when they return to the camp the water just started to boil.
Bilbo chucks the mushrooms and the herbs into the pot and stirs with what appears to be the femur of some kind of large animal. A deer, probably. Hopefully a deer and not the rider of the horse.
“You should put some of this on the wound, there,” Bilbo suggests to the orc he wounded with the arrow, and fishes a few of the herbs out of the pot. He noticed that the orc cradles his arm when he thinks no one is watching. “It might help.”
The orc growls and Bilbo fears that he might have offended the creature by implying that the injury may need some attention, but then he grabs the herbs and slaps them onto the scab.
“So when do you think Azog will be here?” The last thing he wants it to do is see the pale orc again.
“Soon.”
Bilbo nods slowly and looks into the pot.
“I think this should be fine now.” He barely has time to step away from the soup before the three orcs are all over it like they haven’t eaten in days. “That’s right. Make sure you finish it, we don’t want any leftovers to arise suspicion.”
Pleased with the way his soup is received, Bilbo sits down with his back against a tree. He could try and make a run for it now, but he has something a little more stylish in mind.
He sits there and waits until he finally notices a change in the orc’s behaviour. It starts when one of them strips over his own feet. It sends one of the others into a laughing fit – at least Bilbo thinks that’s what the sounds are - that has him rolling on the floor. The other one is too occupied staring at his own hand to notice anything.
Casually, Bilbo gets up from his seat and walks over to untie the horse. It takes him a few tries to get up into the saddle, but he does manage eventually.
“Well, boys,” he says, turning towards the orcs. “You should really learn your mushrooms. But don’t worry. They won’t kill you. I wouldn’t want to take the pleasure of doing that away from Azog.”
He gives the orcs that stare at him dumbly a little wave before picking up the reins and making his way back to the Dwarves, hoping that they have a little bit of food left for his growling tummy. Even if it is just rabbit stew.