A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Twenty-Seventh Entry - Devastation

"Quickly!" Thorin shouted, waving to the Company. "To the armory!"

I heaved my heavy coat off my shoulders and left it slumped on the ground behind me, arms stretched out after me, as I dove into the mountain after the dwarves. "What are you going to do?"

"We're going to fight them off, protect the mountain," panted Kili as he ran with the others down, and down.

"Yes I know that," I gasped back, heart fragilely rocking in my chest. "How? Don't you need some kind of strategy?"

"We'll work out the details on the way," said Thorin, throwing open the armory doors and beginning diving inside with the others. When I saw how they struggled to do up the buckles of their breastplates themselves I added my quick fingers to the task, doing up a number of them as they helped each other.

"But isn't that-"

"Not now, Mabyn."

"But you'll-"

"Not now, Mabyn!"

"But there must be something I can do to help!" I insisted, standing trembling and resolute at the door as they began to march out with their dusty armor and gleaming weapons, pale hands fisted at my sides.

"There is nothing!" Thorin said harshly back. "You are small, you are a child and you are wounded. You must stay here."

I ran after them as they hastened toward an exit I hadn't known existed. "You can't just leave me up here-!"

As the dwarves began the work of opening the heavy door Thorin spun on me. "I can, and I most absolutely will, if I have to tie you to a pillar to do it. You will stay here, Mabyn."

I tried to step forward and follow them once more but Bifur was last and shoved me back with a hand on my shoulder, and they shut the door before I could get through.

I was alone again.

My breath was ragged as I raced back up to the balcony, my knees trembling, lungs and heart struggling to keep me upright by the time I stumbled to the wall so I could see. The many armies below had wasted no time in turning on or with each other. I watched in frigid horror as the splatter-shaped line of wretchedness on the hill assembled, growled and chattered amongst themselves, then surged forth, driving down into the valley where the dwarves, elves and men awaited them.

Just as Gandalf had predicted, great bats with a wingspan as wide as the height of a man came swooping like a sickened cloud from above the orcs, goblins, wolves and Wargs. They dove among the splintering armies feasting on those they felt needed felling, and often lifting people directly from the ground, carrying them a ways and pitching them down again. I don't imagine many of those who were dropped from such heights survived.

A pale arrow grazed my sleeve and I jumped, adrenalin racing through me with a painful shock. I couldn't see where it might have come from among the froth of darkness below. A second brushed through the hair at my cheek and I jumped back. I saw him then, Legolas, standing on a rise to the west of me and using his bow as just an effective weapon as any other, though I was certain bows weren't meant to be used that way. In a lull between the beasts he was battling he nocked another arrow and aimed it up at me, stance straight and steady among the chaos.

At the last second his aim changed, and in another a hairy, skin-winged mass crumpled into a corner of the balcony-one of the massive bats, having been creeping from above me, with Legolas's arrow buried in one of its wet eyes. Gasping and backing away from the horrid creature I looked back down at Legolas, astonished by his aim, and his consideration.