A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Second Entry - The Eagles

Bilbo cried out, “Oh, what shall we do, what shall we do! Escaping goblins to be caught up by wolves!”

“Up the trees quick!” Gandalf called.

“Come along,” said Dori, who was closest to me, and put his hands together to boost me into the tree. I didn’t need any of that though and didn’t want to slow him down, so I said a quick ‘no thank you’ and launched myself up into the lowest branch on the nearest tree. My hands wrapped around it and I used my momentum to twist myself up over the rough, crackling branch, and from there jumped up to the next. Dori watched me for a moment of shock, before recovering himself and climbing up after me. After we all clambered into our trees like overlarge, overstrange birds, I was the one who was highest among them, being the lightest. It did not make me feel any safer though.

“You’ve left the burglar behind again!” Nori shouted at Dori, looking down, to where Bilbo was scurrying back and forth, unable to reach any of the branches.

“I can’t always be carrying burglars on my back,” fretted Dori, “down tunnels and up trees! What do you think I am? A porter?”

“He’ll be eaten if we don’t do something,” Thorin said over the encroaching howls. “Dori! Be quick, and give Mr. Baggins a hand up!”

Despite his grumbling I knew Dori was in truth a very fine fellow, merely scared out of his wits and frustrated. He clambered down to the very lowest branch but still Bilbo could not reach it, despite being my same height, or an inch or two taller. He wasn’t accustomed to this sort of thing, as I was. Dori had to climb out of the tree, let Bilbo scramble up by way of his back, and climb back up himself—and only just in time! As the first wolf exploded onto the clearing and slammed shut his jaws on the last scrap of Dori’s cloak. In seconds every tree was surrounded by wolves. I later learned that this sort of wolf—unnaturally large and terrible—were called Wargs.

It felt like hours that we clung to our creaking perches. More and more Wargs arrived by each quarter-hour, but the clearing never seemed to overfill. I later learned, too, that the Wargs were speaking to each other. The largest and grayest of them stood in the center of the clearing, snarling to different groups of them, passing commands, waiting for one of us to fall out of our tree.

Gandalf, listening to them and understanding their rumbling speech, was becoming very afraid. The Wargs had planned on meeting the goblins in this place tonight, as the Wargs and goblins on occasion assisted one another with their various nefarious deeds. Thinking swiftly, he snatched down a large pinecone from his tree and, muttering into his beard, set it into sparkling blue flames, and threw it down at the leading Warg.

“Here!” he shouted, and half-lit one in red, tossing it to another tree, where Fili and Kili used it to alight several more before adding them to the spreading blue flame in the leaves on the ground. Gandalf passed a green-flaming pinecone to the tree in which Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin and myself were hiding, and we did the same. The dwarves didn’t reach up to hand me any pinecones though, and it was just as well: my aim had never been sure, and there were too many branches between me and the Wargs as it was. Handing them to me would have been a wretched waste of Gandalf’s efforts.

“Nice throw!” I complimented Oin, and he grinned briefly up at me. The leaves strewn upon the ground had turned to tinder in the late summer’s heat, and alit as though they had been waiting for an excuse to do so. The wolves, some of whom had caught fire in their long fur, began to flee. I grinned, and the dwarves cheered.

But then the goblins appeared. We hadn’t heard their excited shrieking until the howling of the scorched Wargs began to diminish. Our grins dropped as the goblins stamped through the scattered fires we had created, saw us lurking up in the high boughs of the trees, and began to sneer. With horror we watched as the goblins, who were not so fearful of fire as Wargs, stamped out the most widespread of the fires, and kicked up needles and leaves against the bases of the trees we had taken shelter in, then guided the fires in to feast.