There was no way I could face telling Oakenshield about the refugees, no more than Fili and Kili dared to. It was to Balin we turned to, finding him sat alone with only the hobbit for company in what must have once, a long time ago, been some clerk's office.

"He'll have to know. We'll have to tell him," he said, once we had finished. He must have caught my expression as he sighed: "I know what happened up in the throne room was-"

"Was what?!" I found myself snapping at him. "He would have thrown Fili off of the edge if we hadn't arrived when we did!"

Fili, ever the diplomat, despite his bloodied and bandaged knuckles, said, "He is not himself." That was putting it lightly.

"I know, lad, I know," Balin said. He sniffed and that was when I realised the older dwarf had been crying, tear stains running like snail tracks down his cheeks. The sight made me uncomfortable in ways I could not describe. If Balin was losing hope in Oakenshield, the prince he had so willingly followed, so lovingly talked about in his story of Azalnulbizar, then what hope was there for the rest of us?

"How many survivors were there?" Disconcerted as he was, Balin was as practical as ever. "How many did survive?" 

I thought then to the people crowding on the beach, the angry townspeople who had lost everything in a night and a blaze of dragon fire. I thought then to the bodies and the debris in the lake - too many to count, too many to put a name to.

"Enough," Kili, the one who had spotted them reaching Dale, answered. "A hundred maybe. Two hundred more likely. They were struggling. Many were injured."

Balin nodded. Sometime in all this the hobbit had left the office and Dwalin had appeared, leaning against the doorframe, watching us and his brother.

"Brother," Balin called, not even having to look to recognise Dwalin's presence. "Inform our king that the survivors from Laketown are coming into Dale. A few hundred of those who lived."

Dwalin let out a low whistle, but did as he was told. Balin leant back in his chair and folded his arms.

"And now we wait," he said, as much to himself as to the rest of us.

"To the gate! To the gate!" The roar of the dwarven king, not too long after, brought us all back to the then and now. I didn't know how long we had stood in that office in silence surrounding Balin, arms folded, each absorbed with our own thoughts. Enough time for Dwalin to have reached Oakenshield and shared the bad news.

Fili and Kili both started at their uncle's voice. As if responding to some natural instinct, they moved towards the door, instinctively following their elder's orders. Before he could slip from my reach, I grabbed Fili's arm, careful to avoid his sore hands.

"Don't go to him," I whispered. "Don't do what he says. Not after what he did." I had kept my eyes low until then, scared to see how he would respond to my concern, but then I took a peek. Perhaps it was anger that I had hoped to see - even if it was anger directed at me for making such a suggestion rather than anger rightfully targeted against his maddened uncle - but what I saw was scarier still. Fili gazed down at me in complete resignation, before pulling himself free from my grip.

"I must," he replied. "He's my uncle."

I should have screamed then - Mahal knew I wanted to - at his stupid obedience. But who was I to stop him? I was nothing to him, whereas Kili and Oakenshield were his family, were his life.

I watched him leave in silence, following his brother, following his uncle. I had forgotten that Balin was still in the room, until a gentle hand settled on my shoulder.

"He's as stubborn as Thorin," he said, "and as loyal as he was too." He did not need to say it, but I could hear the warning in his words: do not try to turn Fili against Oakenshield, no matter how much of a gold-struck fool he had become and no matter how much I wanted to.

"And will he- Will Fili be as... As Oakenshield is? With the gold?" I thought then to our encounter in the treasure room before Oakenshield had spoiled it. The sheer ecstasy we had felt playing in the gold. The emptiness I felt at being apart from it. There was few I could turn to and Balin was no more blind to what Oakenshield had become as the rest of us if his tears were anything to go by.

"Only time will tell, lass. Only time will tell."

Both Balin and I struggled our way through the debris of the entrance hall to where the other dwarves had gathered at the gaping hole in the mountain's front. It seemed the search for the Arkenstone was off the menu for that night. Already armed, already prepared, Oakenshield was marching among the others. If the sky outside the hole was anything to go by, a good deal of the day had passed and it was already afternoon. It seemed we had a long night ahead of us if the task at hand was anything to go by.

I spotted Fili among the debris, not that he was ever hard to miss. The others, those who had missed Oakenshield's little... scene earlier, seemed oblivious to any tension between uncle and nephew. Perhaps I was reading too much into Fili's stand, the guarded way in which he folded his arms across his chest, keeping his bandaged hands tucked away and out of sight. He stood beside his brother and somewhat behind him. Perhaps that was more Kili's doing than his brothers. While Fili seemed to do all he could to avoid his uncle's gaze, Kili was actively encouraging it: chin up, face defiant. If Fili was unwilling to bring his uncle to account, then perhaps I had an ally in the other Durin prince.

"What you staring at?" As ever, it was Nori's charming voice that brought me back to my senses.

"Nothing."

The three-pronged and far-too-groomed fool moved to stand beside me, not even hiding his nosy delight in trying to figure out the direction of my interest. 

"What are you looking at - Ah," he said, finally catching on. If only I could knock that wide grin from his idiot face. "Undressing Kili, I see."

"Undressing? You been drinking the toilet water again, you piece of - you son-of-an-elf-"

"With your eyes like." My insult earned me a shove that I was all too eager to reciprocate. "Isn't he a bit young for you?"

"I wasn't looking at Kili," I hissed, before realising my mistake. Nori, for all his stupidity, was someone who was used to catching a person's bluff. His grin only grew sickeningly wider.

"Fili then? I never knew you had a thing for blondes-"

Whatever he was about to say was silenced by my boot landing with a great deal of force onto his own foot. His boots were weaker than my own and there was an audible crunch. His howl of pain silenced the others, drew their looks into our direction.

"Oh, damn," I said, loudly, throwing my arm over Nori's shoulder. "I'm so clumsy. Sorry, Nori."

I wasn't very believable, but I was not trying to be. 

"Enough!" Oakenshield shouted, from somewhere across the rubble. Nori, cursing and hopping, pushed me away. The others turned back to the task at hand.

"Take this," Oakenshield ordered, gesturing to the debris and rock shards littered across the floor, "and fix that." He gestured to the hole in the wall. I followed his gaze, aghast. Masonry and stonework were skills that were not a part of my repertoire. 

Yet it was certainly easier than searching for the Arkenstone. 

From what scraps we had found in the storeroom: rope, cloth, and the like, we fashioned pulleys and such. Those who had experience of crafts, like Bofur and Bifur, took to the walls, whereas the rest of us set about gathering the debris and hauling it up to them. Kili, having at some point scoured the mine, found a wagon and it was with this that we loaded and transported some of the larger pieces of rock and stone. 

Oakenshield as ever chose not to put his own back into the work, but rather stand on the sidelines and shout at us. Whatever we did, however fast we worked, however many stones we lifted... it was not enough. Nothing could satisfy the dwarf king.

"I want this fortress made safe by sun-up. This mountain was hard won. I will not lose it again," he roared on one occasion.

It was at that point, after hours of work, that Kili lost his temper.

"The people of Laketown have nothing," he spat at his uncle, dumping the wagon he pushed. "They came to us in need. They have lost everything and instead we bar them from our gates and leave them to the cold."

The others paused at that and left their work to watch. From by the wall, I watched a particularly anxious-looking Fili stop dead in his tracks as his little brother turned on their uncle.

"Do not tell me what they have lost," Oakenshield spat back. "I know well enough their hardship. Those who have lived through dragonfire should rejoice. They have much to be grateful for."

Kili could not find any response to that, but rather shot a sour look at his uncle and turned his back to him. I had not realised that I had been holding in my breath throughout the entire scene until that moment. Finally exhaling, sensing the danger having passed, I turned and caught Fili's gaze. My own relief was shared, it seemed.

Night fell, the braziers were lit, and yet we still continued to work. I stopped momentarily, to wipe the sweat from my face with the sleeve of my tunic, only to find Oakenshield's enraged glare on my back when I thought to turn around. I scowled back, only to be shoved to the side by Dwalin.

"Enough of that now, lass, or the wind'll change and your face with it," he growled. "You'd curdle milk with a face like that." That did not improve my mood.

Kili was likewise struggling. With each successive load he wheeled, the quieter and angrier the dwarf prince became. I found myself avoiding Oakenshield, avoiding Dwalin, and falling into line with him.

"We need to think of something," I whispered.

"Think of what?"

"Anything. To stop this getting any more messed up than it is."

"He's our leader."

"And we're following him blindly to our destruction," I hissed. "He would have us barricade ourselves in and starve to death rather than spend a penny."

"He'd turn his back on those who need him. The people of Laketown."

"Them too," I said, impatiently. Although, the more I thought of it, the more reluctant I was to give the people of Laketown our gold. Just the thought of the treasure room brought the low buzzing back to my ears, made a cold sweat form on my back. That gold did not belong to them.

I shook my head, hard until the buzzing stopped and my head began to ache. I left Kili to his wheelbarrow and to his thoughts and moved away, back towards the hole and towards the outside. The air helped me think straight. 

The night dragged on and, by the time the sun rose in the east, we had finished the hole in the wall. With Bombur having been working on the wall all night, there was no breakfast waiting for us and, as there was no one else to guard the wall, we could hardly leave it to go to sleep. We were too tired to set a rota for duty, none of us willing to offer to cover it. 

The view from the ramparts, once reached, was quite something, even through sleep-deprived eyes. It was to the ramparts we had all gone and it was a view we all shared. We could see the ruins of Dale, the mountains to the far east, and, further beyond, the distant ruins of Laketown, smoke still rising over the lake. From Erebor, we could make out distant lights from within the depths of Dale and figures... a lot more figures than we had expected.

"What is that?" I whispered.

"An army," Balin replied, gravely.

"The men of Dale?" Ori said.

"I wish," Balin sighed. The refugees could not have hoped for such armour. "That there is an elven army and it is not one comprising of the elves of Rivendell."

Mirkwood? I stared at them from afar until my eyes went blurry and watered. I thought back to the words of the skin-changer: 'less wise and more dangerous'. I thought again of their prison, deep within the earth and their forest, and of them chasing us down the river. This time we would not be so lucky to leave the encounter alive. We really had followed Oakenshield blindly to our own destruction.

The sight of the elves,  no matter how far away, was enough to set Oakenshield off again. He stormed across the ramparts, barking a rapid succession of orders and swearing a whole host of oaths. Angry though he was, there was a moment of distraction, when he stopped barking. This moment lasted only as long as it took for him to take a lone black bird from Balin's reluctant arm and to release it, towards the east. Where even had he found a bird?

"A rider!" Kili, with the best eyes of us all, was the first to spot the solitary figure, riding up the road towards the mountain. At once, the tiredness was forgotten, and we inched to the rampart's side, expecting what exactly... imminent attack?

"Hail Thorin, son of Thrain!" It was the bargeman, Bard. It was good to see a familiar and a somewhat-friendly face out of the alliance of Mirkwood elves and Laketown refugees. He brought his white horse up to the mountain's entrance as close as he would dare to. "We are glad to find you alive beyond hope," he added.

"Why do you come to the gates of the king under the mountain armed for war?" Oakenshield retorted. 

"Why does the king under the mountain fence himself in? Like a robber in his hole," was the bargeman's response.

"Perhaps it is because I am expecting to be robbed."

"My lord! We have not come to rob you, but to seek fair settlement. Will you not speak with me?" Bard said, and, to our surprise, Oakenshield agreed. He took the bargeman to one side of the ramparts, leaving the rest of us to talk among ourselves.

"Do you think he means to settle peace?" Gloin said.

"Only if such a peace comes without him losing a single coin from his treasure," Balin replied, grimly.

"We cannot just stand about and wait for the elves to attack!" Dori snapped. "We are few and we cannot take on the might of an elven-king and his army alone. We should find a way out of the mountain and make our own peace before we risk our own necks."

That proved to be a divisive statement. None of us seemed willing to fight an entire elf army, but not all of us were willing to abandon the mountain and its king to do so.

"You would betray your own kin?" Dwalin snarled, rounding on Dori. Dori looked set to hold his ground, but Ori was in front of him and pushing the larger dwarf away. "Your king?"

"You cannot deny that he is not himself anymore. He is not the same dwarf who led us here!"

"Everything we fought for. Everything our ancestors and kin died for. You'd exchange it all for your own scrawny neck?"

"Dori's right," Gloin snapped. "My family lived and died in this mountain, but I have another family now and one waiting for me to come home to them in the Blue Mountains. This foolhardiness has gone on long enough."

Dwalin looked set to hit him had Balin not grabbed his arm. 

"Enough!" he cried, but the senior dwarf proved to have little say. We were all tired, all fed up, all terrified, and all willing to be at each other's throats.

"Thorin seeks to turn on his word," Kili shouted, above the din of the others. "He seeks to make us all oathbreakers with him."

"You say that of your own uncle, lad?" Dwalin exclaimed in disgust. 

"Kili, no," Balin said, equally disgusted.

Fili looked between his brother and the older dwarves. Taking a deep breath, he stepped in front of Kili and faced both Dwalin and Balin.

"What Kili says of Thorin is not a betrayal of him," he said, "but you yourself stood in Laketown when Thorin gave his word. Gave our word."

"So you'd choose a group of humans who would sooner have watched you burn with their town and the elf that turned his back on our people?"

"I did not say that!" Fili snapped, his cheeks reddening. 

"You didn't need to."

It was then that whatever civility had held us all apart broke loose. I found myself being shoved forwards by Nori, who seemed willing to keep the mountain's gold at the expense of his brother's suggestion.

"Get off of me!" I yelled, before pushing the older dwarf back, this time into Bifur. I then found myself caught up in a rather bad-mouthed Khuzdul argument.

"Follow your fool king," I spat at Bifur and Nori, after a few choicer phrases were passed, slurring between the Common Tongue and Khuzdul dialect of the Blue Mountains. "You can both kiss my arse and his. I'm not staying around for your funeral-"

"Enough!" It was the hobbit this time and, despite his small size, his voice carried the loudest. That caught my words in my mouth. "We cannot deal with this matter when we are at each other's throats."

His suggestion was fair, especially considering that Dwalin was literally at the throats of two dissenting dwarves, and looked set to knock a third, Gloin, off of the ramparts. Fili was holding Kili back as Bombur held Bofur back. I myself had a handful of Nori's hair and was not letting go.

"Let us see what terms Thorin comes to with Bard. Bard kept us at Laketown and he protected some of us from the dragon. If Thorin has any sense of reason left, he will come to these terms."

The hobbit was far too optimistic. It seemed that barely another minute had passed, but Oakenshield was storming back and the bargeman was riding off back towards Dale in a huff.

"Be gone!" Oakenshield roared after him. "Before our arrows fly and hit your cowardly behind-"

We could only watch, aghast, as this scene played out. My grip loosened and Nori freed himself, rubbing his scalp and scowling at me. Despite our momentary differences, we were watching our last chance at making it out of this mountain alive ride away. Even the hobbit appeared to have lost his patience with Oakenshield, when moments ago he had been so optimistic.

"What are you doing?" he snapped. "You cannot go to war. We will not survive this."

"This does not concern you," Oakenshield replied, coolly, looking set to walk past the hobbit without another look.

"Excuse me?!" the hobbit exclaimed. "But, just in case you haven't noticed, there is an army of elves out there, not to mention several hundred angry fishermen. We are in fact outnumbered."

It was then that Oakenshield surprised us, breaking out into a grin.

"Not for much longer," he said, before looking towards the east.

"What does that mean?" the hobbit said.

"It means, Master Baggins, you should never underestimate dwarves," he said, and then his expression hardened again. He turned to the rest of us and scowled. "We have reclaimed Erebor and now we defend it."

He waved a hand towards the others: the signal. Along with rebuilding the wall, Oakenshield had ordered Gloin and some of the others to work away at one of the giant statues beside the bridge entrance to Erebor. 

Gloin's step was reluctant as were the others who helped him. Pushing at the statue with Kili's wheelbarrow, now loaded with remaining debris found on the ramparts, the statue wobbled and its head, loosened over the space of the night, fell, crashing into the bridge beneath it. 

"With what, Thorin? We defend the mountain with what?" Balin said, his weariness all but dripping from his words. "The bridge gives us time, but not much-"

But the dwarf king was deaf to his concerns and turned instead inside and, no doubt, towards his precious treasure.

The feeling among