A Place to Belong

Chapter 14: Goblin Town

Down, down, deeper and down. The goblins pushed them further into the heart of their underground kingdom. With every step they took the smell got worse, the smell of rotting flesh and faeces. Braerka tried to cover her mouth and nose to keep the stench at bay, but it was hopeless it penetrated every molecule of her being and there was no escape. The dwarves had become quiet after a fair round of resistance and failed escapes; they now marched forward, too exhausted to care and too lost to know where to run.

The goblins had taken a keen interest in their catch. They clawed and nabbed them as they walked, every now and then the dwarves would lash out and send a few flying to their deaths, down into the dank chasms below. The Goblins would study them with awe; their angered outbursts only seemed to encourage their prodding.

The best part of an hour had passed; they passed goblins perched on high rafters, they screeched and squealed in amusement as they passed. The company walked in silence, with the odd dwarven curse being mumbled here and there.

Their path was treacherous; the half-finished, half-rotted rope bridges were less than safe and all too unstable. The flaming torches that marked the paths were the only beacons to break the blackness, without them it would be pitch black.

Daring to looking behind, Braerka did a lightning fast head count, it wasn't that hard really, she just numbered the heads with hair, and in Dwalin's case tattoos.

'13! That's not right, who's missing?' She thought, swinging round to check again, her curiosity won her brutal beating from a serious looking goblin, its ear was half chewed and its teeth were rotted. It spat at her and hit her again when she glared back at its deformed figure. She resisted the urge to break the creature's neck, the last thing they needed was the goblins attacking them full force with them unarmed.

The beating, however, had been worth it, she had deduced that Bilbo was the one missing, though she could have sworn he fell in with them, where on earth was he? Little did she know he was experiencing his own problems and difficulties deep below them the farthest depths of this 'Goblin Town'.

Bilbo awoke surrounded by strange looking over-grown toadstools, his head was spinning, the last thing he remembered was...

'Oh goodness what's going on?!' He asked himself recalling what had happened; the last thing he remembered was talking to Shepherd, discovering that wasn't really her name. Next he recalled falling and then eluding the mass of goblins that greeted them. He faintly recollected hitting his head of something and then falling again. It was mostly a blur, the constant throbbing in his head was probably the cause of his amnesia.

He moved to get up but found himself stopped when a raspy hissing noise approached were he lay. He heard a voice, no two voices, no wait maybe just one, he couldn't be sure, they both sounded the same, but yet very different.

He peeked through a small gap in the padded field of mushrooms in which he'd landed, he saw a goblin, half conscious lying on the hard rocky floor it blood stained its land zone, it breathes were short and rough, the creature was losing its battle with death.

Bilbo froze when two green lanterns appeared at the end of the tunnel, only they weren't lanterns at all, every few seconds they disappeared then reappeared. The creature that owned crept forward on all fours, the lanterns were its eyes, they glowed bright from long exposure to the black.

It crawled forwards and looked over the dying goblin, "Yes! Yes!" It screeched in its raspy voice. It began to drag the seemingly dead body back down the tunnel it came, when the goblin lashed out determined not to be taken.

The creature wrestled with and then bashed half its skull in with a nearby rock. Satisfied the goblin was either dead or unconscious again it continued to pull away its prize, "Better than old bones precious, better than nothing!" It said receding back down the dark tunnel.