Hobbit AU - Ghelekabad Books, Chapter Three

[icarus_chained]

This one is somewhat hurried, and escaped from me a little bit. Apologies in advance. Follows on from Ghelekabad Books, Chapter Two.

Title: Ghelekabad Books (Part III)
Chapter Title: Fighting Words
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Hobbit (movieverse)
Characters/Pairings: Bilbo, Ori, Bifur, Dori, Dwalin, Bofur, Nori, dwarf OCs. Bilbo & Bifur & Ori, Dori & Nori & Ori, Bifur & Bofur, Bilbo & everybody, Dwalin & Balin
Summary: In an Erebor recovered under Thrain and in the process of rebuilding under his son Thorin, a wandering bookseller named Bilbo Baggins falls in with a bad, or at least rather suspect, crowd, and somewhat accidentally starts an industrial revolution with the help of a young scribe and a brain-damaged toymaker
Chapter Summary: In which Bilbo, Ori, Bifur and Dori do get in a fight, Dwalin (sort of) comes to the rescue, and the bookstall faces opposition from Erebor
Wordcount: 4988
Warnings/Notes: Racial/cultural tensions and violence in this chapter
Disclaimer: Not mine

Ghelekabad Books: Fighting Words

In one way, depending on how you looked at it, Bifur's presence did, in fact, lead them into a fight. But in another, Bilbo supposed, it truly wasn't Bifur's fault, and probably would have happened eventually anyway, with or without him. His presence simply hastened matters to their natural conclusion.

They should have expected it, Ori and he. They really ought to have known. But they hadn't, until a toymaker set his stall up alongside theirs, and brought the undercurrents up into the light.

For the first week or so of their partnership, though, none of them, not one of the three, had given one thought to future trouble. For the first week, after that morning when Bofur and a cheerfully rotund dwarf by the name of Bombur had helped their cousin set up shop in the lower market, with a cheerful flash of Bilbo's fingers and a shy smile from Ori to greet them, they had been focusing on something else entirely.

They had, Bilbo thought a little ruefully, been focused entirely on tea, and toys, and books, and hesitant conversations, and the delight of a new language (for while Ori had been raised with Iglishmêk, the same as any dwarf, he'd been raised with the Ereborean variant, and the differences in dialect cheerfully fascinated him as much as Bilbo, who couldn't help but compare what he was learning back to Ranger Sign). They had been focusing on exchanging stories, the routes they had taken to Erebor, the families they came from, the jobs they'd had and the lives they'd lived before the immigration to the Lonely Mountain.

And they had, or Bilbo had at least, also been focusing on the children. Because for all Bifur's shamed talk of fights, scaring people away because of his injury and his rages against the taunting of men, it seemed a significant portion of the children of Dale and Erebor were too enchanted by his toys, or perhaps too ghoulishly delighted by the challenge, to really allow themselves to be denied. They crept up to the stall, slowly at first, in defiance perhaps of parents, and then more boldly, as the week went on, dragging mothers and fathers or older children along with them, oohing and giggling at the clever little things Bifur showed them, carved in wood and lead and painted bright colours, clever and simple by turns. Because axe or not, able to speak or not, Bifur's craft spoke for itself, and he had a love of children that showed clear in every carved line of wood.

And Bilbo, who had been so long away from the Shire, so long away from the mad dash of cousins and second cousins and whatever random fauntling decided to run past his door and steal jam tarts off his kitchen window just for the fun of it ... Bilbo, he admitted softly to himself, had been utterly lost. Enchanted, and pained, and more than a touch homesick, and just generally ridiculously distracted by the whole thing. Which wasn't an excuse, as such, just ... an explanation. Just a reason, he thought, for why he might have been so blind.

Ori saved him, a little. And Bifur too. The both of them, once they recognised the melancholy under his delight, once they recognised the cause of his distraction. They didn't ask him for an explanation (which was fortunate, because Bilbo wasn't sure he could explain the loss to anyone save Gandalf, who had, in part, already known). Perhaps they didn't really need one, having left behind distant homes themselves to build new lives in Erebor. But they understood the crookedness of his smile as he listened to children laughing, and took pains to draw him away from it. With books and business, with customers and requests for help, with tea and Iglishmêk, with talks of stories they could write as well as translate. With, when all else failed, just a touch on the arm and a shy, sympathetic smile (Ori), or a soft rumble in a language Bilbo didn't understand, and didn't really need to (Bifur).

All of which were riches beyond measure, to a hobbit, offerings greater than all the gold in Erebor and all the gems in the dwarven king's treasury. All of which meant more to Bilbo than almost any other treasure you might care to name.

Which was why, perhaps, he should have expected they'd come with a price, in this distant land where the stone was hard beneath bare feet, and hobbits were rare and strange to those around them.

It wasn't with men, you see. The fight that Bifur's presence started. It wasn't with the cruel taunts that Bifur, shoulder to shoulder with friends and bolstered by the delight of children, now found that little easier to bear. It wasn't the men of Dale, fearing a violent dwarf in their midst.

It was the dwarves of Erebor. Fearing, perhaps, someone much, much smaller, and a loss much, much greater.

A hobbit bookseller was one thing. A hobbit bookseller with a dwarven translator, dealing now in dwarvish texts, that was slightly more alarming, but still perfectly fine.

But then add a dwarf who could only speak Khuzdul. Then add a dwarf who was seen speaking to said hobbit almost exclusively in that language. Then add a dwarf who, with the help of the previous dwarven translator, had been teaching said hobbit at least one dwarven language, in the form of Iglishmêk.

And then go back. Add in some other facts. Such as the fact that the first dwarf, the translator, was the brother of a thief. That he was rumoured to be a thief himself. That he came from a family of criminals, and perhaps did not, therefore, have the respect for dwarven law and culture that he should have.

Add in that the bookseller had been struggling, until he started dealing in Khuzdul. Add in that the books he was selling, now, were still the books of men, the books of elves, second-hand stories wrapped in a stolen tongue to make gold from dwarves.

Add in theft, and secret tongues, and freshly rebuilt kingdoms. Add in years of exile, add in pain and secrecy and poverty, only recently fought back. Add in learning the tongues of men to do business, because a home in which to speak Khuzdul had been stolen from them. Add in birthrights denied and won back, add in fear and loss and letters written in exile.

Add in all of that. And then stand in a marketplace, and watch a hobbit steal it all away, with a soft smile and a sly tongue, and the help of two dwarves who should have known better.

Yes, oh yes. They should have expected trouble. Bilbo realised that later, knew that, with a sick, queasy feeling in his stomach that he hadn't felt since he stood at the gate of Bag End, and realised that his home was no longer his. Seeing Ori's face as they picked up the pieces of a shattered sign. Bifur's, as he tried to help them. Dori's, as he stood with bruised knuckles in an empty circle, all the pained knowledge in the world in his eyes.

It started, as these things always do, with a word. With a taunt, with a curse, with an invective flung bitterly home. As every fight Bilbo had ever fought and finished had started, this one started with a word.

It also started in Khuzdul, which was why it had taken him a few minutes to figure it out.

The dwarves were miners, mostly, and warriors. Ereborean, to a dwarf, the children of the returning generation. Scholars, some of them, from the great libraries that were being rebuilt deep inside Erebor itself. A cluster that had ebbed and flowed, over the course of the past few days, a fragment of which had always been watching them, though none of them except Nori had realised it.

Nori hadn't been there the day it started. Bilbo wasn't sure yet if that was a good thing or not. On the one hand, Nori might have seen it coming sooner. On the other, Nori, of all of them, really couldn't have afforded the fallout. Neither could Bifur, really, but his conflict was with men, whereas Ori and Bilbo had a history with dwarves that made the market of Dale more inclined to blame them than him, this once.

The first Bilbo had noticed of it was the moment Ori, who had been staring absently across the street, nibbling on the end of his quill while he pondered word choices, stiffened abruptly on his stool. Bilbo had glanced up, noted the group across from them, but hadn't seen anything particularly alarming, so he'd gone back to haggling cheerfully with one of their best customers over how many days per size of book he could have. He could hear catcalls across the street, but they didn't actually mean anything to him, so he ignored them.

But then Ori didn't unbend. The scribe hunched over on his stool, shoulders stiff and tight, and his hands curling into fists around his quill. Bilbo glanced over at him repeatedly, looking back over at the six dwarves across the way more closely now.

Which was why he saw the shortest of them, an angry looking fellow with a beard like a flow of red gold, turned his leer away from Ori and over to Bilbo himself, and called something very loud and presumably very unflattering across at him. He didn't recognise the word itself, just the tone, hard and angry and derisive, enough to know that whatever he'd just been called, he wouldn't enjoy a translation.

The quill snapped quietly in Ori's hand. One stall over, Bifur paused in his carving, the knife going still in his hand.

And behind Bilbo, with exquisite care, Dori put the teapot down.

"... Ori?" Bilbo asked, very carefully. Nudging his friend's shoulder gently. "Is everything alright?"

Ori ducked his head into his chest. In fury, not embarrassment, and Bilbo felt a quick flush of worry. Ori didn't generally do anger. He was one of the most even-tempered dwarves -one of the most even-tempered anything - that Bilbo'd ever met. To make Ori angry, they must have said something rather impressive indeed.

Said, and kept saying, Bilbo noted absently. A couple of other voices had taken up the call, and though the tone remained sneering, there was an ugly undercurrent of genuine hate in there. Bilbo had traveled a fair bit since leaving Bag End. He'd heard that tone before. Usually in the towns of men, the elves had favoured him well enough for his friendship with Gandalf. He hadn't yet heard it among dwarves.

Until now, it seemed. Even if, just then, he hadn't quite known the reason yet.

"Ignore it," he said softly, reaching down to gently pull the broken shards of quill out of Ori's hand. "Ori. Whatever it is, it's fine. Just ignore it unless they start threatening something more solid, alright?"

Ori didn't answer, just hunched a little bit further in his seat. It was Dori, behind them, who spoke up. Calm and careful, but with something humming angrily beneath it.

"Ordinarily, I would agree with you, Bilbo," the elder dwarf said softly, moving absently to the side of the stall and the gate out. "However, in this one instance ... I think Ori might have a point."

He paused, hand resting gently on the end of the stall, staring directly across at their challengers. His expression was still placid and calm, but the way he was standing, the silent warning of it, couldn't be read as anything but a challenge.

And it seemed the other dwarves were in just the right mood to answer it.

It all happened rather quickly, after that. Just a rush of still moments, it seemed to Bilbo. Bifur stood up from his stall beside them. Ori gathered one of the heavier, wood-bound tomes into his hands. Dori raised his chin, glaring challenge. Bilbo silently put his hands on the blade beneath the boards.

The first dwarf, the red-gold challenger, looked right at him, curled his lip, and spat something that actually snapped Ori back in shock, a blank, quivering confusion.

Dori, with perfect calm, stepped out from the stall and walked across the street to stand before six dwarves. He said something, in soft, perfectly polite Khuzdul. Possibly an admonishment, possibly something stronger, Bilbo couldn't tell when the tone was that icily calm.

In response, three of the six muscled in close around Dori. And one of them, his anger twisting his features into something ugly, spat right in Dori's face.

And then Dori ... moved. Like a dam breaking, Bilbo thought, a breathless moment of potential, of gravity waiting to happen, and then his fist plunged into the dwarf's chest with enough force to knock him and two more behind him four feet backwards into a heap on the ground.

Things got ... rather confusing, after that. Although Bilbo did remember wincing badly at the crack of a spine as Ori bludgeoned someone about the head with his book. For Eru's sake, lad, wood-bound books need more care than that. And he was almost positive he'd bitten someone, although he wasn't quite sure who, or exactly where (there was fur in his teeth, afterwards, but half of them were wearing fur over approximately half their bodies, that wasn't exactly enlightening). And he wasn't sure, but he thought he'd seen someone take a swing at Dori's unprotected back, and been met by a long pole, a stall upright, he thought, in the hands of a thoroughly angry Bifur. Who was, as Dwalin had hinted, rather terrifying in a temper, let him tell you.

Bilbo's own weapon was still hidden under the counter where he'd left it, some instinct telling him to forego it, nine angry dwarves or no. A few minutes later, when the guards showed up, that turned out to be rather fortunate.

And they did show up. Either almost immediately or an hour later, it was sort of hard to tell. The fight couldn't possibly have been more than a few minutes long, but it felt, as most fights do, like hours. But it ended, right enough, when Dwalin son of Fundin waded into the mix, picked the red-gold dwarf up bodily, caught Dori's hand on the downswing (with a wince, mind), and bellowed loud enough for a halt that Bilbo briefly wondered if the mountain were falling on them.

Not the mountain, no. Though with another six dwarves, these ones all armed and armoured for duty, possibly it amounted to much the same.

"What in the name of Mahal is going on here!?!"

---

It was one of the most surreal moments of Nori's life, Bilbo thought later. Walking into a jail, on purpose, of his own free will, to get someone else out. To get Dori out. Legitimately. Nori hadn't looked all that alarmed at the time, with that fixed, casual smile on his face and that swagger in his step, but there were a couple of moments where he and Dwalin looked at each other, and it was difficult to say who was more wrong-footed about the whole situation.

At any other time, in any other situation, possibly that might have been funny.

Bofur, on the other hand, came to collect Bifur with all the weariness of long practice. Bilbo winced a little at the sight of him, of his crumpled, pained expression. It wasn't Bifur's fault, after all. This time, it wasn't Bifur's fault.

It was Bilbo's. He wasn't completely sure how, yet, didn't know the details of the dwarves' grudge, but he knew it had been pointed primarily at him, not his companions.

Though, to be perfectly fair, the six (now rather battered) aggressors seemed perfectly happy to fill people in. Well, to fill other dwarves in, anyway, clustered in with Bilbo and his friends in the guard barracks under the Ereborean gate, yelling loudly and vociferously in Khuzdul and pointing angry fingers at Dori, at Ori, at Dwalin, and, most especially, at Bilbo.

It wasn't very enlightening for Bilbo personally, but he gathered Dwalin was getting an education. And, from the looks of things, a headache.

"They called Bilbo a thief!" Ori's voice climbed out of the mix, in Westron, thank Eru, cresting in such uncharacteristic fury that the guards, at least, fell silent. "Dwalin, he called him a ..." Ori cut off, glanced at Bilbo. Crumpled, a little, expression tightening, and stumbled more hesitantly through the next word. "A ... a carrion-eater."

That wasn't quite the word, Bilbo thought, from the furrow of confusion on Dwalin's face. But the sign Bifur flashed, the unconscious Iglishmêk echo, said orc, and that carried enough of the implication forward to be explicable.

And sickening, Bilbo thought, with a lurch of bewildered horror. Also that.

Dwalin, having caught the sign too, lowered his brows thunderously. "What?" he growled, turning a downright vicious look on the ringleader. More quietly, unobtrusively, Nori straightened behind him, that blank expression flickering back over his features. Dori just ground his heels into the floor, as though settling for another fight.

The red-bearded dwarf snarled back at them, gesturing emphatically as he spat a low stream of Khuzdul. It was a good language to rant in, Bilbo thought absently. Lots of guttural sounds, climbing from low, rumbling venom to roaring hate and down again. The substance of the rant was still obscure, but the sentiment, at least, was perfectly clear.

Dori launched back first, a quiet, clipped snarl of words, low and savage. Bofur waded in, bewildered and upset, his back to his cousin as though protecting him. Some of the ire was being pointed at Bifur, Bilbo saw. Ori, Bifur. Him. He ought to have figured it out then, really, but he was still slightly dizzy from the fight, and slightly deaf from all the shouting, and honestly, he couldn't be held accountable, he really couldn't.

"Oh, for Mahal's sake," Ori spat, his voice climbing out of the stew once again. The lad mightn't be able to lie worth a damn, and was as shy as you please, but apparently call his friend a vulture and he got over that right quick. "He doesn't speak Khuzdul!"

Silence fell, sudden and startled. Whether at the vehemence, the sudden reemergence of Westron, or just the fact that it was Ori doing the shouting, Bilbo wasn't sure, but it was sudden and thick enough that his own voice, small and startled, sounded much too loud inside it.

"Oh," he said, blankly. "Is that what this is about?"

The Ereboreans glared at him, angry and vicious. "Do not tell me that you didn't know," Red-Beard snapped, taking a step towards him. Stopping, very quickly, when Dori shifted smoothly into his path. He remembered Dori, Bilbo thought. He probably still had a dent in his chest armour to remind him.

Bilbo, for his part, just stared up at him. "No," he said, very slowly. "How would I know? Nobody's said anything to me in a language I actually understand yet." Temper, he thought distantly. For some reason, violence tended to do that to him. For a while, anyway. But he'd already made a note to collapse shaking later.

"Don't lie," the dwarf spat, sidestepping Dori, or trying to. "The Broadbeam has been teaching it to you for the past week!"

Bilbo stared at him, eyebrows creasing in confusion, until Bofur popped his head over Dori's shoulder. "That'll be Bifur, lad," the miner noted gently, with a genial nod in the red-beard's direction. Oddly, it caused the Ereborean to twitch more nervously than Dori had. "Blue Mountain dialect, remember?"

Bilbo blinked, but nodded. "Right," he said, smiling crookedly at the dwarf. "Sorry, I'm not all there at the moment." He paused, slanting a look back at Red-Beard. "Wait. You think Bifur is teaching me Khuzdul? Why would he do that?"

"Aye," Bofur added, slow and thoughtful. "I'm wondering that myself. It's an interesting accusation to make of a dwarf, right enough."

The Ereborean shuffled worriedly. "That's not ..." he started, glancing around at his compatriots for help. "I mean. Not on purpose, as such. Just ... he's always speaking it around the halfling. Nothing else. And we've seen him teaching the creature Iglishmêk ..."

Bofur smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. At all.

"Aye, well, he would be," the miner said, slow and cheerful, and Dori started cautiously edging back out of the direct line between them. "Seeing as how my cousin can't speak Westron anymore. Or, in fact, much of anything besides Khuzdul, and to be honest maybe not as much of that as he used to either." He grinned, tight and cold. "An orc axe to the head will do that to you, you know."

Dwalin shifted uneasily. Belatedly, Bilbo thought to wonder if any of those fights Bifur had gotten into had ever involved Dwalin himself. And how that had gone between them.

"He's been teaching me Iglishmêk because I can't speak Khuzdul," he cut in, because this probably wasn't going to go anywhere good unless someone toned things down rather quickly. "So that I can handle men for him if Ori isn't there, or is busy." And just for the pleasure of it, and to make the homesickness fade a little for them both, but he wasn't giving this dwarf that. He didn't deserve that. "Menfolk take it amiss if a dwarf can't speak to them in their own tongue, so myself and Ori cover for him." His voice hardened, a little, on a question he'd been wanting to ask for some time. "I'm not sure why no dwarves up at his end of the market were able to help him, but it didn't seem too much trouble for us. We've been happy to help, Ori and I."

Bofur's expression had darkened again, something tired and pained and angry, so the Ereboreans shifted tack, turning back towards Dori, with Ori beside him. Nori, still behind Dwalin, went carefully still once more.

"Ori and you," the dwarf growled, though with a more desperate note now. "And are we to believe that he hasn't been teaching you things he shouldn't? He's a ..." He cut off, shying away from Dori. "He's been translating Westron for you for weeks now. Are we supposed to believe he hasn't ..."

"Yes," Bilbo cut in, because he was annoyed now. Not even angry, really, not the violent anger that'd had him running out to barrel into the dwarf attacking Ori. Just ... just temper, and aggravation, and bone-deep weariness. "Yes, you're supposed to believe that. Iglishmêk isn't forbidden. Khuzdul is. I've been in Dale for months now, exactly how stupid do you think I must be to miss that?"

He growled angrily, because his head hurt, and his feet hurt, and he had fur in his teeth, and there wasn't a single one of his friends they hadn't insulted or attacked by this stage, and he'd had enough. He stepped out around Dori, glaring up at the dwarf, with no consideration at all for their relative sizes or proficiencies with weapons.

"I haven't stolen from you," he hissed, one finger stabbing upwards into the dwarf's chest (and finding, yes, a dent roughly the size of Dori's fist). "In fact, you could argue that I've stolen more from men and elves for you, you ... you ..." He spat Sindarin for a moment, words he'd learned from Erestor and, that once, from Elrond. "I've taken books from them, their stories, and I've helped Ori translate them into words that dwarves, and only dwarves, can read, and you're going to accuse me of stealing words from you!?"

Red-beard glared desperately down at him, but the mood had turned. He could feel it. The anger was still radiating silently and amiably from Bofur, Bifur glowering beside him. Dori and Ori had already made their feelings violently plain. Now Dwalin too was glaring at them, his arms crossed and metal shining dully on his fists, with the guards mostly following his lead. And Nori, standing silently in the background, had been a silent, almost invisible threat since he'd walked into the room. Even Red-beard's own erstwhile allies were shuffling nervously, caught in too small a room with too many angry (and armed) opponents. And now their leader was been taken to task by the tiny little carrion-eater they'd wanted to take the brunt of their ire, and there were far too many not-so-harmless people in the room to take issue with it.

But he tried. Red-beard. Even still, he tried.

"And what will your brother think of this?" he asked quietly, looking at Dwalin. "Dwalin son of Fundin. Your brother and your king. What will they think, when they see what the halfling is doing?"

It was ... a good hit, Bilbo thought, through a sudden rush of terror. As Dori blanched, and Ori flinched, and Bofur suddenly looked uncertain. Bilbo had no idea who Dwalin's brother was, or why he could apparently be spoken of in the same sentence as the Ereborean king, but he was guessing that whoever he was, he had something to do with Khuzdul, and enough power to make life very difficult for people.

Bilbo cringed a little, Dori and Ori and Bifur and Bofur along with him, and for a brief moment Red-beard looked like he'd clawed back his triumph.

Then Dwalin curled his lip in a long, slow smile, his armour creaking as he lowered his arms to rock gently on his heels. Nori, behind him, had bizarrely relaxed, a faint smirk playing over his lips.

"Don't rightly know," the guard grinned, tapping his knuckles thoughtfully. "Might ask him, next time he has cause to come down to Dale. Balin hasn't gotten out of the palace in a while." He nodded to himself, his smile decidedly dangerous. "Might mention to him that the hobbit has elvish stuff. He's been grumbling for two months that they haven't been able to get any since Thranduil's last messenger left in such a snit."

He smiled, black and dangerous, and stalked forward to stand nose-to-nose with the suddenly pale Ereborean. His fist coming up to rap, very gently, against Dori's dent.

"Be careful, lad," Dwalin murmured softly. "Next time. Be very, very careful, threatening to call down friends in high places when you don't have them." He gripped the dwarf's collar, almost gently, walking him backwards away from Bilbo. "My brother and I, we sort out our own problems, yes? You make a report of your suspicions, and we'll see if they're worth the spit they're written in, and then, at the end of all that, we'll do something about 'em. But." He smiled, slow and vicious. "One thing clear, laddie? If you ever start a Mahal-cursed fight in my damn streets again, I'll be finishing it. Do we understand each other?"

Yes, Bilbo thought wildly. Not even on their part, but on his own. Yes, thank you, that was entirely clear. Dwalin's expression wasn't even angry, closer to happy, teeth and smiles and anticipation, and quite suddenly, Bilbo's estimation of both Nori's courage and his insanity went up a few notches. Honestly. What sane person would willfully pick a fight with this dwarf?

Not Red-beard, anyway. Or any of his compatriots, who were suddenly very law-abiding and happy to go their way indeed. And Dwalin looked for a moment like he wasn't going to let them, like he'd happily have arrested the lot of them and put them somewhere dark and quiet for the night, but then he glanced at Bilbo, at Dori and Ori and the rest of them, and appeared to change his mind.

"Everybody out," Dwalin growled, closing his eyes and pressing steel-clad knuckles to his temple for a second. "The lot of you. Get out of my barracks right now, and I'll forget the whole bloody thing. But if any of you blasted people are still in my sight when I open my eyes, you'll not see daylight for the next week."

There was a short pause, as various people glanced warily at each other and tried to decide if he was serious. And then, as Dwalin let out another growl, there was an instantaneous, utterly unanimous decision that elsewhere sounded very nice, right around now. (Nori was, naturally enough, the last to saunter out. And Bilbo wasn't sure, but he thought the thief murmured something to Dwalin on the way, and if Dwalin didn't seem particularly happy about it, the guard also didn't open his eyes until Nori had had time to clear the barracks too).

For his part, though, Bilbo was too busy being plucked into the air between Dori and Bifur, who had apparently reached for him at precisely the same moment and then just decided to share, and hustled down the incline towards Dale in a tight, hurried cluster of dwarves. Ori was tight on his brother's heels, glancing warily at Bilbo, and Bofur was hurrying along behind them with his hat in his hands, muttering worriedly to himself.

It wasn't until they were back in the now-empty marketplace, the stalls and shops closed for evening, that Dori gently let Bilbo down with Bifur's help, Nori caught up, and the six of them simply stood there, clustered together, glancing worriedly at each other in the silence.

And then Bilbo looked up at them, five worried, apologetic faces clustered around him, seeing bumps and bruises and five people who'd apparently take a promise of service to him very seriously indeed. Five ... five friends.

"Well," he said, with an odd, giddy bubble of cheer. "That went well, don't you think?"

What had he scheduled for this part of the evening, again? Ah, yes. The collapsing-in-a-shaking-heap part.

Not to worry. He'd get to that right away.