A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Thirteenth Entry - The Dwarves' Escape

I woke to shouting. I wrenched upright without remembering the sorrowful state of my ribcage and howled a list of naughty words when I did remember, explosively. There was a stream of guards sprinting efficiently past my cell, setting the back wall to a flickering of shadows, and one of them halted just long enough to inquire after my health.

"I'm fine, go on," I assured him, waving for him to continue on his way, which he did without pause. Thank goodness the elves trusted me not to lie to them when I'd truthfully already lied to them by lying to the dwarves.

After perhaps a minute the stream of elves in their fighting garb stopped, as abruptly as it had started. The last six guards in the flow took up defensive positions outside my cell, weapons sheathed but in hand.

I stood with my hands clasped around the bars and said, "What the hell?" No one answered me, but I assumed they just hadn't understood. "What's going on?" I asked then, to clarify myself.

No one answered me.

"Right then," I muttered, and lowered myself back onto the bench. I started humming to myself to banish the silence but one of the guards said, "Quiet, please."

I was astonished, but he asked so politely I did as requested and let my ribs fall together.

Perhaps an hour later a seventh elf—Cerian—arrived with my breakfast on a tray. His countenance was frustrated and his movements were grave. "Can you tell me what's going on?" I whispered as I knelt to receive the tray he slid under the door, the guards outside making room for him.

"I am afraid I cannot, Mabyn," he murmured back and left. I took the tray to my bench and picked at it, altogether uninterested with anything that happened inside this cell, and altogether more concerned with what had happened outside it.

Perhaps three hours had passed between my jolt from sleep to wakefulness before someone came to dismiss the guards outside my door. Or at least, at first I thought they were dismissed, when as a unit the six of them moved aside. But they were only making room for Legolas and Tauriel to approach my cell. Legolas unlocked the door and when I hesitantly emerged, Tauriel took me by the shoulder as she typically did.

The nine of us proceeded to walk up many flights of stairs, toward the middle levels that housed the majority of this haven's entrances. I had to stop numerous times to clutch my side and breathe as slowly as I could without passing out. The elves encircling me expressed no impatience at these frequent stops, but neither did they relax. They were acting as though they expected an immediate assault.

It took at least twenty minutes to reach the king's platform, which I had unhappily recognized from afar, but it could easily have been longer. Thranduil was glowering down at me from where he lounged in his high throne. I stood before him at first, but was still exhausted by the many climbs so didn't last long before I slid to my knees without prompting.

Thranduil regarded me heatedly for nearly a minute. At last he asked, in a level tone that didn't match his eyes, "Where have they gone?"

I blinked up at him. "I beg your pardon, sir? Where have who gone?"

"Your dwarves," he spat. "They have vanished down the river and left you behind with us. Where have they gone?"

Something steady inside me trembled. "The dwarves are gone? They've left?" I noticed that the eight elves who had accompanied me here had surrounded the raised edges of the platform, leaving no room for me to leap through if I so chose.

"Seemingly they no longer cared for your company." I could tell from the way he said this he had come to the conclusion that the dwarves had brought me along for my climbing skills and not to find a safe place for me to say. I suppose my injuries had changed that desire for my assistance in the king's mind.