Clarity of Vision, Chapter 3
Title: Clarity of Vision, Chapter 3
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Fíli, Kíli, Thorin
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 2800
Story Summary: In a Middle-Earth where Erebor never fell, a shadow remains in the heart of the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins finds himself drawn reluctantly into a quest that will lead him across the continent--from Bree to Lake Evendim to the icy North and beyond--with a party of five dwarves searching for an artifact that will cure the ailing King Thrór.
Chapter Summary: Bilbo learns more about Thorin's history and encounters dangers on the road north to Fornost.
"...Uncle Thorin's story starts with King Thrór," said Fíli.
"They mentioned him," said Bilbo, remembering the dwarves' toast at the Prancing Pony.
Fíli nodded. "Thrór, son of Dain, son of Nain, King under the Mountain. Ruler of Erebor, under whose reign the Lonely Mountain grew ever greater in wealth and power." The words sounded formal, almost ritualistic.
"But the King became ill," broke in Kíli. "With a sickness of the mind. And a shadow fell across the kingdom."
"This was long before we were born," said Fíli, lapsing back into casual language. "When Uncle Thorin was just a young dwarf. But he decided even then that he was going to find a way to heal the King. So he spent years and years searching the libraries and chronicles of Erebor, teaching himself all sorts of obscure languages so he could read the scrolls and books there."
"Remember how we used to tag along?" Kíli smiled. "He'd spend all day going through some musty books, and he'd say we were driving him mad with our chatter, and he'd give us riddles and lore to search for and keep ourselves busy."
"And then we'd bring him dinner and we'd all sit and eat together." The brothers looked at each other and grinned.
"Not to be rude, but he didn't look like much of a scholar," Bilbo said. "He seemed a little more likely to bash my head in than read me poetry."
Kíli looked offended. "Uncle Thorin was good enough to do both," he huffed. "He was one of the greatest fighters of Erebor, but his passion in life was to restore King Thrór to health."
"And that was where things began to go wrong," Fíli said, his face clouding over. "Because his father--"
"--That's our grandfather," said Kíli helpfully.
Fíli nodded. "Our grandfather thought he was wasting his time, 'hiding among books like an'--" he paused and grimaced before finishing the quote, "--'like an elf.'" The brothers sighed in unison. "The closer Uncle Thorin felt he was getting to finding something, the angrier Grandfather became with him. And Uncle Thorin, well--"
"--He, uh...he didn't take the criticism well," said Kíli.
"I'm shocked to hear it," said Bilbo dryly.
"And eventually things got so bad..." Fíli swallowed as if remembering scenes he would rather forget. "Well. In the end, Uncle Thorin was told to leave home and never come back." He sighed, looking into the fire. "Mister Balin and Mister Dwalin, they stood by him and left with him."
"That was ten years ago," said Kíli.
"You haven't seen your uncle for ten years?"
"We've been planning and planning how to get away and go join him," Fíli said. "But this has been our first chance, really."
Bilbo frowned at the flickering flames. "So...your uncle has been looking for something to help the King for ten years?" It was hard to imagine Thorin as a loyal and humble servant of a King, but apparently dwarves valued different things in their retainers. Obviously.
Fíli nodded. "See, just before he left, Uncle Thorin finally found what he had been looking for. In an old book filled with elvish writing, he found reference to a poem that told of a powerful magical artifact that could heal the King. It was just one line, and a note saying that the whole poem was written down elsewhere. So he's been looking for the poem that will lead him to the item and save King Thrór." He bit his lip. "He hasn't found it yet, though."
"How do you know?"
Fíli looked confused. "If he had found it, he'd be back in Erebor by now, wouldn't he?" he said reasonably. "Nothing in all the world could keep him from helping the King."
There was a sudden long, wavering sound in the distance, and Bilbo jumped to his feet, realizing that it had grown dark while the brothers talked. "What was that?" he said.
Fíli and Kíli looked at each other. "Wolf, probably," said Fíli. His voice was unconcerned, but he put a hand on the hilt of his knife, and Fíli quietly picked up his bow. The ponies were snorting and stamping.
"Wolf?"
"You know--like a big dog, but with a slavering maw and fangs as large as--"
"--I know what a wolf is, thank you very much. It's just--right here? So close?"
"Don't you have wolves in the Shire?"
"What?" Bilbo stared at him. "No, of course not! The Shire is safe--I suppose there was the Fell Winter, but that was so long ago, and--"
Another howl, this one much nearer, and Bilbo swallowed an icy lump in his throat. Kíli put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Mr. Baggins, I'm sure that--"
Green eyes glowed just outside the ring of the campfire, and a rattling growl shook the night.
All three of them jumped to their feet, but unlike Bilbo, who was frozen to the spot in terror, Kíli and Fíli swiveled to put Bilbo in between them, their backs to the hobbit and weapons bristling in their hands. Kíli yelled something Bilbo couldn't understand, and there was a twang of a bowstring into the darkness.
The growl sharpened to a cruel bark and the wolf lunged out of the shadows at them.
"Kíli!" yelled Fíli, but his brother already had a second arrow nocked and the wolf staggered, a feathered arrow sprouting from its throat. With a last vicious lurch it landed at Bilbo's feet, close enough that he could feel its dying breath hot on his toes.
Bilbo Baggins stared at the green eyes glazing over with death and felt nausea rising in his throat.
Kíli was looking at him, concern on his face, his hand on his shoulder. Bilbo's knees were shaking and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to stay standing. He swallowed hard. "I'm--I think I'm--"
The brush erupted and a second wolf--this one silent as the night--came straight at Kíli.
"No!" Fíli was between them somehow, his knives out, and the wolf crashed into him. There was a short, sharp struggle--snapping jaws and gasping breath--and finally the wolf went limp in a spreading pool of blood.
"Fíli!" Kíli was at his side now. "Brother, are you all right?"
Fíli gave him a weak smile. "Better than the wolf," he said, and started to stand, then clutched at his shoulder, wincing.
Bilbo took an involuntary step toward him, then realized what a mistake he had made. The night swam around him in a buzzing welter of sound, and he sank down into it.
: : :
"Mr. Baggins?" He opened his eyes to find Kíli bending over him, his face worried.
"Fíli..."
"He's all right," Kíli reassured him. "Bit of a graze on his shoulder, nothing to worry overmuch about." A fleeting smile. "Are you feeling better?"
Bilbo sat up gingerly, rubbing at his face. The wolf carcasses were gone, with only a scattering of scarlet smudges on the grass to show that they'd ever been there. Fíli was sitting on his bedroll, sharpening one of his knives with slow, steady strokes, favoring his left arm very slightly. "That shouldn't have happened," Fíli said.
"I should think not," Bilbo said shakily.
"I mean, wolves don't generally attack unprovoked like that," Fíli said. "It's not natural."
Kíli grimaced. "Fornost isn't that natural a place, from what I've heard. Strange influences, echoes of the ancient past."
"You were both so fast," said Bilbo. So brave. "I couldn't...even move."
Fíli looked up from his knife. "Well, we said we'd been trained, right? We know how to handle our weapons. We've hunted the hills of Erebor, faced down wolves and wild boars."
"We even took down a mountain cat one time," Kíli said.
"So we know how to handle ourselves pretty well," said Fíli. "It's just a matter of training."
"We could train you, if you like," Kíli said. "Teach you how to defend yourself a little bit."
Bilbo felt again the wolf's baleful breath on his skin. He shuddered. "That's...a very kind offer," he said. "But I'll be going home soon. I have to get back for my party next week. I don't--I don't belong out here." You know nothing of adversity, nothing of suffering, and nothing of heroism. "I don't belong out here," he repeated miserably.
Fíli and Kíli exchanged glances that Bilbo assumed were pitying. "Don't feel bad," Fíli said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You know, the first time Kíli hunted a rogue boar, he fainted? Keeled right over."
"What?" Kíli's voice was outraged. "I did no such thing, and--" He caught Fíli's warning look and broke off. "What I meant was, I wouldn't call it fainting, but it's perfectly normal to lose consciousness in high-stress situations, yes. Of course."
"Thank you both," Bilbo said, his voice small. "I...I believe I'm going to just lie down and try to get some sleep now." He lay down on his bedroll, curled up away from the brothers, and closed his eyes.
But sleep did not come for him that night.
: : :
In the gray of morning, they packed up their camp and extinguished the fire. The brothers seemed subdued, and Bilbo did not feel like breaking the silence. He put his pots and pans back in the pack, eyeing the little package of lemon drops with longing. If only he were home, safe under the hill, with nothing more to worry about than paying the grocer!
"Look." Fíli squatted on the ground in front of him, looking him in the eye. "Kíli and I appreciate you getting us this far, Mr. Baggins. But if you wish to turn around and go back to Bree, we understand."
"No," said Bilbo. "I've come this far, I'll see you the rest of the way." He tried to put conviction in his voice, as if he were doing it for brave reasons, but the fact of the matter was that he wasn't sure he felt able to travel alone right now. Little sounds in the underbrush made him twitch and start his heart pounding, and he found he didn't want to be far from Fíli's knives or Kíli's arrows.
"Once we find Uncle Thorin, I'm sure we'll be able to escort you back to the Shire," Fíli said.
Bilbo nodded, picking up the box of spun sugar animals and tying it to the top of his pack. He attached his daisy-patterned umbrella to the side, leaving it dangling. It was unwieldy, but he felt better keeping everything close, like talismans against darkness and wolves and cowardice.
Soon they were on the road again, traveling north deeper into the lands of the long-abandoned kingdom of Arnor.
By late morning the landscape had started to change, the gentle hills of the Breelands widening into barrens dotted with pine trees. At noon they came across a ruined farmhouse, its roof fallen in and weeds choking its doorway. In the overgrown garden Bilbo found some potato plants, and soon he was showing Fíli and Kíli how to roast potatoes in a cooking fire with a bit of sage. Their ecstatic appreciation lifted his mood somewhat, but overall the land seemed oppressively quiet, brooding over some history ancient beyond Bilbo's imagining.
"I think we should find a place to camp for the night," Fíli said a few hours later, looking around. The sky had grown cloudy, and a mist was starting to gather on the ground, stirred by their ponies' hooves.
"The top of that hill." Kíli pointed to a hill that rose up against the sky, topped with a set of broken pillars like jagged teeth.
The hill appeared to be some old Arnorian watchtower; a mosaic of ruined stone covered the top. Bilbo looked out across the northern landscape and couldn't suppress a gasp. "Impressive," Fíli said at his side, his voice low.
To the north stretched a wide field dotted with blackened stumps and stone cairns. Through the gathering mists, Bilbo could make out great stone walls in the distance, fallen into ruins, and a hint of a gate flanked with two massive statues.
"Is that Fornost? Is that where Uncle Thorin was going?" Kíli sounded unsure. "It doesn't look like a very pleasant place at all."
"It's a battlefield," Bilbo said. "They're not known for being pleasant places." He hugged himself, shivering. "A great kingdom fell here." He had read about it in his history books, but seeing it in the gathering gloom, thick with memories of pain and hate...
"Well, from here maybe we can see their party," Kíli said pragmatically, shrugging off the ominous mood. He started to set up camp, whistling, but the cheerful little sound seemed tinny and false in the sorrowful dusk, and he soon fell silent once more.
"It's going to be hard to see anything at all, with this fog," Fíli said. Indeed, the mists had thickened as twilight fell, and the hill they were camped on had become an island above a sea of swirling white that caressed the ruined pillars like ghostly fingers.
Bilbo peeked into his pack, wondering if maybe this was the time to break into his viola tea. It would taste like home, he thought longingly: like safety and comfort and good quiet small things. He sighed, imagining his warm hearth and soft armchair, his history books and quaint maps. How much better to be reading about ancient battlefields than sitting in the middle of them!
"What's that?" Fíli's voice was sharp. Bilbo looked up to see a light flickering down on the northern plains, almost smothered by the mist.
"It looks like a fire," Kíli whispered. They looked at each other in wild surmise. "Do you think it could be--?"
They scrambled to their feet. "Uncle Thorin!" Fíli called through his cupped hands. "Is that you?"
"Mister Balin! Mister Dwalin!" Kíli called after.
"That...doesn't look like a campfire to me," Bilbo said dubiously, but the brothers weren't listening to him.
"This is our chance!" Whooping with anticipation, the brothers ran down the hill and into the mist, calling Thorin's name.
The fog swallowed them up and Bilbo found himself alone on the hill.
"Oh dear," he said, looking around. "Oh. Oh dear." The brothers' voices were growing fainter. Bilbo heard himself make a small squeaking sound of mingled exasperation and fear. His heart pounding, he grabbed his pack and hurried after them onto the downs.
The swirling fog closed around him like a curtain. The dwarves' voices seemed to come from everywhere at once, so Bilbo fixed his eyes on the flickering light (it was greenish-white, not a healthy yellow at all) and kept moving toward that.
Suddenly the brothers' voices rose into sounds of alarm, cries in that unknown language. Bilbo heard a clash of metal nearby, and then silence.
His knees trembling, his breath short, he ran toward the sounds before he could think better of it.
Something turned under his bare foot, and he looked down to see a bleached skull grinning up at him. With a yelp of horror he staggered away from the grisly sight--and nearly tripped over a body.
Looking down, he saw Fíli lying on the blighted grass, his face pale and his eyes closed. Next to him lay Kíli, collapsed onto the ground. "Fi--Ki--" Bilbo's voice faltered into the dreadful fog.
He looked up once more to see a being that seemed made from the fog itself standing there, its eyes like baleful stars and a translucent diadem on its brow. From the fog behind it came a rattling noise, and Bilbo gaped in horror as skeletons walked from the mists, clad in tatters and scraps of armor, reaching out with pale bony hands.
"Get--get away from them!" Bilbo yelled, his voice high and panicked as he stood between the dwarves' bodies, trying to shield them. His mind reeling, he groped wildly behind him for something--anything!--he could use as a weapon.
His hand came back with his mother's daisy-print umbrella in it.
"Don't you dare touch them!" he cried, brandishing the umbrella at the skeletal soldiers like a saber. "Stay back!"
The skeletons tilted their ivory heads to the side. They seemed less than impressed. The spectral figure gestured, and they stepped forward in unison, armor chiming and bones clacking, and Bilbo prepared himself to be ripped to pieces by skeletons.
And then the mists behind them parted and Thorin emerged from the fog.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Fíli, Kíli, Thorin
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 2800
Story Summary: In a Middle-Earth where Erebor never fell, a shadow remains in the heart of the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins finds himself drawn reluctantly into a quest that will lead him across the continent--from Bree to Lake Evendim to the icy North and beyond--with a party of five dwarves searching for an artifact that will cure the ailing King Thrór.
Chapter Summary: Bilbo learns more about Thorin's history and encounters dangers on the road north to Fornost.
"...Uncle Thorin's story starts with King Thrór," said Fíli.
"They mentioned him," said Bilbo, remembering the dwarves' toast at the Prancing Pony.
Fíli nodded. "Thrór, son of Dain, son of Nain, King under the Mountain. Ruler of Erebor, under whose reign the Lonely Mountain grew ever greater in wealth and power." The words sounded formal, almost ritualistic.
"But the King became ill," broke in Kíli. "With a sickness of the mind. And a shadow fell across the kingdom."
"This was long before we were born," said Fíli, lapsing back into casual language. "When Uncle Thorin was just a young dwarf. But he decided even then that he was going to find a way to heal the King. So he spent years and years searching the libraries and chronicles of Erebor, teaching himself all sorts of obscure languages so he could read the scrolls and books there."
"Remember how we used to tag along?" Kíli smiled. "He'd spend all day going through some musty books, and he'd say we were driving him mad with our chatter, and he'd give us riddles and lore to search for and keep ourselves busy."
"And then we'd bring him dinner and we'd all sit and eat together." The brothers looked at each other and grinned.
"Not to be rude, but he didn't look like much of a scholar," Bilbo said. "He seemed a little more likely to bash my head in than read me poetry."
Kíli looked offended. "Uncle Thorin was good enough to do both," he huffed. "He was one of the greatest fighters of Erebor, but his passion in life was to restore King Thrór to health."
"And that was where things began to go wrong," Fíli said, his face clouding over. "Because his father--"
"--That's our grandfather," said Kíli helpfully.
Fíli nodded. "Our grandfather thought he was wasting his time, 'hiding among books like an'--" he paused and grimaced before finishing the quote, "--'like an elf.'" The brothers sighed in unison. "The closer Uncle Thorin felt he was getting to finding something, the angrier Grandfather became with him. And Uncle Thorin, well--"
"--He, uh...he didn't take the criticism well," said Kíli.
"I'm shocked to hear it," said Bilbo dryly.
"And eventually things got so bad..." Fíli swallowed as if remembering scenes he would rather forget. "Well. In the end, Uncle Thorin was told to leave home and never come back." He sighed, looking into the fire. "Mister Balin and Mister Dwalin, they stood by him and left with him."
"That was ten years ago," said Kíli.
"You haven't seen your uncle for ten years?"
"We've been planning and planning how to get away and go join him," Fíli said. "But this has been our first chance, really."
Bilbo frowned at the flickering flames. "So...your uncle has been looking for something to help the King for ten years?" It was hard to imagine Thorin as a loyal and humble servant of a King, but apparently dwarves valued different things in their retainers. Obviously.
Fíli nodded. "See, just before he left, Uncle Thorin finally found what he had been looking for. In an old book filled with elvish writing, he found reference to a poem that told of a powerful magical artifact that could heal the King. It was just one line, and a note saying that the whole poem was written down elsewhere. So he's been looking for the poem that will lead him to the item and save King Thrór." He bit his lip. "He hasn't found it yet, though."
"How do you know?"
Fíli looked confused. "If he had found it, he'd be back in Erebor by now, wouldn't he?" he said reasonably. "Nothing in all the world could keep him from helping the King."
There was a sudden long, wavering sound in the distance, and Bilbo jumped to his feet, realizing that it had grown dark while the brothers talked. "What was that?" he said.
Fíli and Kíli looked at each other. "Wolf, probably," said Fíli. His voice was unconcerned, but he put a hand on the hilt of his knife, and Fíli quietly picked up his bow. The ponies were snorting and stamping.
"Wolf?"
"You know--like a big dog, but with a slavering maw and fangs as large as--"
"--I know what a wolf is, thank you very much. It's just--right here? So close?"
"Don't you have wolves in the Shire?"
"What?" Bilbo stared at him. "No, of course not! The Shire is safe--I suppose there was the Fell Winter, but that was so long ago, and--"
Another howl, this one much nearer, and Bilbo swallowed an icy lump in his throat. Kíli put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Mr. Baggins, I'm sure that--"
Green eyes glowed just outside the ring of the campfire, and a rattling growl shook the night.
All three of them jumped to their feet, but unlike Bilbo, who was frozen to the spot in terror, Kíli and Fíli swiveled to put Bilbo in between them, their backs to the hobbit and weapons bristling in their hands. Kíli yelled something Bilbo couldn't understand, and there was a twang of a bowstring into the darkness.
The growl sharpened to a cruel bark and the wolf lunged out of the shadows at them.
"Kíli!" yelled Fíli, but his brother already had a second arrow nocked and the wolf staggered, a feathered arrow sprouting from its throat. With a last vicious lurch it landed at Bilbo's feet, close enough that he could feel its dying breath hot on his toes.
Bilbo Baggins stared at the green eyes glazing over with death and felt nausea rising in his throat.
Kíli was looking at him, concern on his face, his hand on his shoulder. Bilbo's knees were shaking and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to stay standing. He swallowed hard. "I'm--I think I'm--"
The brush erupted and a second wolf--this one silent as the night--came straight at Kíli.
"No!" Fíli was between them somehow, his knives out, and the wolf crashed into him. There was a short, sharp struggle--snapping jaws and gasping breath--and finally the wolf went limp in a spreading pool of blood.
"Fíli!" Kíli was at his side now. "Brother, are you all right?"
Fíli gave him a weak smile. "Better than the wolf," he said, and started to stand, then clutched at his shoulder, wincing.
Bilbo took an involuntary step toward him, then realized what a mistake he had made. The night swam around him in a buzzing welter of sound, and he sank down into it.
: : :
"Mr. Baggins?" He opened his eyes to find Kíli bending over him, his face worried.
"Fíli..."
"He's all right," Kíli reassured him. "Bit of a graze on his shoulder, nothing to worry overmuch about." A fleeting smile. "Are you feeling better?"
Bilbo sat up gingerly, rubbing at his face. The wolf carcasses were gone, with only a scattering of scarlet smudges on the grass to show that they'd ever been there. Fíli was sitting on his bedroll, sharpening one of his knives with slow, steady strokes, favoring his left arm very slightly. "That shouldn't have happened," Fíli said.
"I should think not," Bilbo said shakily.
"I mean, wolves don't generally attack unprovoked like that," Fíli said. "It's not natural."
Kíli grimaced. "Fornost isn't that natural a place, from what I've heard. Strange influences, echoes of the ancient past."
"You were both so fast," said Bilbo. So brave. "I couldn't...even move."
Fíli looked up from his knife. "Well, we said we'd been trained, right? We know how to handle our weapons. We've hunted the hills of Erebor, faced down wolves and wild boars."
"We even took down a mountain cat one time," Kíli said.
"So we know how to handle ourselves pretty well," said Fíli. "It's just a matter of training."
"We could train you, if you like," Kíli said. "Teach you how to defend yourself a little bit."
Bilbo felt again the wolf's baleful breath on his skin. He shuddered. "That's...a very kind offer," he said. "But I'll be going home soon. I have to get back for my party next week. I don't--I don't belong out here." You know nothing of adversity, nothing of suffering, and nothing of heroism. "I don't belong out here," he repeated miserably.
Fíli and Kíli exchanged glances that Bilbo assumed were pitying. "Don't feel bad," Fíli said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You know, the first time Kíli hunted a rogue boar, he fainted? Keeled right over."
"What?" Kíli's voice was outraged. "I did no such thing, and--" He caught Fíli's warning look and broke off. "What I meant was, I wouldn't call it fainting, but it's perfectly normal to lose consciousness in high-stress situations, yes. Of course."
"Thank you both," Bilbo said, his voice small. "I...I believe I'm going to just lie down and try to get some sleep now." He lay down on his bedroll, curled up away from the brothers, and closed his eyes.
But sleep did not come for him that night.
: : :
In the gray of morning, they packed up their camp and extinguished the fire. The brothers seemed subdued, and Bilbo did not feel like breaking the silence. He put his pots and pans back in the pack, eyeing the little package of lemon drops with longing. If only he were home, safe under the hill, with nothing more to worry about than paying the grocer!
"Look." Fíli squatted on the ground in front of him, looking him in the eye. "Kíli and I appreciate you getting us this far, Mr. Baggins. But if you wish to turn around and go back to Bree, we understand."
"No," said Bilbo. "I've come this far, I'll see you the rest of the way." He tried to put conviction in his voice, as if he were doing it for brave reasons, but the fact of the matter was that he wasn't sure he felt able to travel alone right now. Little sounds in the underbrush made him twitch and start his heart pounding, and he found he didn't want to be far from Fíli's knives or Kíli's arrows.
"Once we find Uncle Thorin, I'm sure we'll be able to escort you back to the Shire," Fíli said.
Bilbo nodded, picking up the box of spun sugar animals and tying it to the top of his pack. He attached his daisy-patterned umbrella to the side, leaving it dangling. It was unwieldy, but he felt better keeping everything close, like talismans against darkness and wolves and cowardice.
Soon they were on the road again, traveling north deeper into the lands of the long-abandoned kingdom of Arnor.
By late morning the landscape had started to change, the gentle hills of the Breelands widening into barrens dotted with pine trees. At noon they came across a ruined farmhouse, its roof fallen in and weeds choking its doorway. In the overgrown garden Bilbo found some potato plants, and soon he was showing Fíli and Kíli how to roast potatoes in a cooking fire with a bit of sage. Their ecstatic appreciation lifted his mood somewhat, but overall the land seemed oppressively quiet, brooding over some history ancient beyond Bilbo's imagining.
"I think we should find a place to camp for the night," Fíli said a few hours later, looking around. The sky had grown cloudy, and a mist was starting to gather on the ground, stirred by their ponies' hooves.
"The top of that hill." Kíli pointed to a hill that rose up against the sky, topped with a set of broken pillars like jagged teeth.
The hill appeared to be some old Arnorian watchtower; a mosaic of ruined stone covered the top. Bilbo looked out across the northern landscape and couldn't suppress a gasp. "Impressive," Fíli said at his side, his voice low.
To the north stretched a wide field dotted with blackened stumps and stone cairns. Through the gathering mists, Bilbo could make out great stone walls in the distance, fallen into ruins, and a hint of a gate flanked with two massive statues.
"Is that Fornost? Is that where Uncle Thorin was going?" Kíli sounded unsure. "It doesn't look like a very pleasant place at all."
"It's a battlefield," Bilbo said. "They're not known for being pleasant places." He hugged himself, shivering. "A great kingdom fell here." He had read about it in his history books, but seeing it in the gathering gloom, thick with memories of pain and hate...
"Well, from here maybe we can see their party," Kíli said pragmatically, shrugging off the ominous mood. He started to set up camp, whistling, but the cheerful little sound seemed tinny and false in the sorrowful dusk, and he soon fell silent once more.
"It's going to be hard to see anything at all, with this fog," Fíli said. Indeed, the mists had thickened as twilight fell, and the hill they were camped on had become an island above a sea of swirling white that caressed the ruined pillars like ghostly fingers.
Bilbo peeked into his pack, wondering if maybe this was the time to break into his viola tea. It would taste like home, he thought longingly: like safety and comfort and good quiet small things. He sighed, imagining his warm hearth and soft armchair, his history books and quaint maps. How much better to be reading about ancient battlefields than sitting in the middle of them!
"What's that?" Fíli's voice was sharp. Bilbo looked up to see a light flickering down on the northern plains, almost smothered by the mist.
"It looks like a fire," Kíli whispered. They looked at each other in wild surmise. "Do you think it could be--?"
They scrambled to their feet. "Uncle Thorin!" Fíli called through his cupped hands. "Is that you?"
"Mister Balin! Mister Dwalin!" Kíli called after.
"That...doesn't look like a campfire to me," Bilbo said dubiously, but the brothers weren't listening to him.
"This is our chance!" Whooping with anticipation, the brothers ran down the hill and into the mist, calling Thorin's name.
The fog swallowed them up and Bilbo found himself alone on the hill.
"Oh dear," he said, looking around. "Oh. Oh dear." The brothers' voices were growing fainter. Bilbo heard himself make a small squeaking sound of mingled exasperation and fear. His heart pounding, he grabbed his pack and hurried after them onto the downs.
The swirling fog closed around him like a curtain. The dwarves' voices seemed to come from everywhere at once, so Bilbo fixed his eyes on the flickering light (it was greenish-white, not a healthy yellow at all) and kept moving toward that.
Suddenly the brothers' voices rose into sounds of alarm, cries in that unknown language. Bilbo heard a clash of metal nearby, and then silence.
His knees trembling, his breath short, he ran toward the sounds before he could think better of it.
Something turned under his bare foot, and he looked down to see a bleached skull grinning up at him. With a yelp of horror he staggered away from the grisly sight--and nearly tripped over a body.
Looking down, he saw Fíli lying on the blighted grass, his face pale and his eyes closed. Next to him lay Kíli, collapsed onto the ground. "Fi--Ki--" Bilbo's voice faltered into the dreadful fog.
He looked up once more to see a being that seemed made from the fog itself standing there, its eyes like baleful stars and a translucent diadem on its brow. From the fog behind it came a rattling noise, and Bilbo gaped in horror as skeletons walked from the mists, clad in tatters and scraps of armor, reaching out with pale bony hands.
"Get--get away from them!" Bilbo yelled, his voice high and panicked as he stood between the dwarves' bodies, trying to shield them. His mind reeling, he groped wildly behind him for something--anything!--he could use as a weapon.
His hand came back with his mother's daisy-print umbrella in it.
"Don't you dare touch them!" he cried, brandishing the umbrella at the skeletal soldiers like a saber. "Stay back!"
The skeletons tilted their ivory heads to the side. They seemed less than impressed. The spectral figure gestured, and they stepped forward in unison, armor chiming and bones clacking, and Bilbo prepared himself to be ripped to pieces by skeletons.
And then the mists behind them parted and Thorin emerged from the fog.