The Last of the Guardians Part 1 - A Hobbit Fan Fiction

Chapter 19

***Okay, here's Chapter 19! I hope you all enjoy it! Special thanks to @oakenshield_payne13 because you are just too fabulous for words. Happy reading!***

"Bilbo," Kili hissed, beckoning the hobbit closer. "We need to get out of here."

Bilbo followed the dwarf away from the camp and into the forest where the trees were more dense. Kili carried on walking, creeping through the undergrowth as silently as he could until they were a safe distance away from the warg. He urged the hobbit up a thick tree, then settled himself in its lower branches. "We should be safe here," he muttered. "I would have stayed to fight it but I needed to get you to safety first. Can't have our burglar eaten by a warg before we're even past the Misty Mountains now, can we Mr Boggins?"

"It's Baggins," Bilbo whispered. "How many times to I have to tell you."

"Boggins? That's what I said," Kili frowned.

Bilbo held back a sigh. "Never mind," he hissed. How long do we have to stay up here?"

"I think we should wait until the sun is between those leaves up there," Kili replied, jerking his bow at the gap in the tree's canopy. "That should give the warg time to sniff around and move on."

Bilbo adjusted his position on his branch so he could watch the sun's progress across the sky, thinking about how close he'd come to having his head chewed off by a warg for the second time in the space of a few days.

But it wasn't just the one warg. In fact, a whole pack was now sniffing around the dwarves camp, each of them bearing an orc, and, sitting astride his white warg, was Azog, come to end the line of Durin. But as he had sat upon his warg, hidden by the large boulders that were scattered around the camp, a new plan had begun to form in his mind. He wanted to make the Guardian suffer, and he had realised, after hearing the young dwarf talk about her as though she were his sister, Azog decided that the best way to punish Nemaiza would be to have her believe her friends were dead.

"Yes," Azog whispered to himself, as a malicious smile began to spread across his pale, scarred face. "Yes, and then when we catch them she will be filled with hope, and I will crush that hope by slaughtering the dwarf-scum before her very eyes." For there was no greater pain that could be felt by a Guardian than that which they felt when they witnessed the death of the one they protected. The pain was rumoured to be so great that it drove some Guardians out of their minds.

"A change of plan!" Azog announced suddenly, and the orcs stopped rummaging around in the dwarves packs to listen. "We shall return to our Guardian friend. As far as she is concerned, the dwarf-scum are dead."

The orcs cheered to show they understood. Azog was about to turn and head back when one of the orcs caught his attention. "Yes?" Azog growled.

"Forgive me, O' Pale One, but there is no blood on us. Surely if we had done battle with the dwarf-scum there would be evidence of this on our armour?" The orc bowed low to show that he meant no disrespect.

Azog grinned. "You are quite right." He lifted his hand and pointed a stubby finger at the only warg without a rider. "Bathe in his blood."

The orcs converged on the warg, ripping away its skin and clawing at its flesh. The warg howled in pain and snapped at the orcs, but they overwhelmed it and soon the beast lay dead at their feet. Azog wasted no time in smearing blood over his chest, and soon he was back on his warg and leading his group back to the grasslands.

Bofur looked to his brother, then to his cousin, and found the, to be staring back at him. "I take it that you to heard that warg as well?" Both Bombur and Bifur nodded. "Well come on then!" He cried, pulling his axe from his belt and charging off through the forest.