The Free Peoples (VI)

Hobbits, one and all, were just completely nuts.

A conclusion that was enforced just half an hour later. For upon the company dismounting and storing their ponies at the last South Farthing waystation, Bilbo Baggins popped in on them one last time and proceeded to hone in on Master Balin and give him a long hug.

And to put the final nail in the coffin of a truly exhausting afternoon, Dwalin came out of the stables just in time to see Balin's predicament, rolled his eyes, tromped over to his confounded brother and, seeing as Master Balin himself seemed completely incapable of reciprocating what Bilbo Baggins was doing to him, seized him by the arms. "You put your right arm round the wee hobbit's shoulders like this," the half-bald dwarf demonstrated as if to a concussed simpleton. "Then seeing as he's got you round the waist, you wrap the other one round his back like this." That done, he pat his older brother on the arms and grinned ruthlessly. "Now hug him like you mean it, nadad."

Balin did as he was told, if only because he seemed unable to use his mind for anything so minor as, say, personal initiative.

Ori desperately buried his face in Dori's cloak. He would not laugh at the Master he was apprenticed under. He would not.

When Bilbo finally deigned to release the dwarf – the ludicrousness of the idea that someone so small and slight would be able to physically force a dwarf to do anything notwithstanding – Balin looked like he didn't know if he should blush or pale, a sight made no better by the squashed, skewed shape that the sudden hug had made of his beard. "Master Baggins… I… This… that is…"

"You tend to look outwards and therefore never looked inwards enough to notice yourself become a prejudiced, sectarian, self-absorbed person." The hobbit nodded sagely as the dwarf finally figured out the proper color to turn into, which was incandescently red-faced. "I forgive you."

Dwalin choked, snorted, vibrated in place as if holding himself off from committing to some terrible course of action, then lost his battle with himself and bent over in uproarious laughter.

Laughter which the Ur brothers, as well as Fili and Kili, joined in a moment after.

"How unseemly," Dori grumbled with a glare in their direction, even as he put an arm around Ori's shoulders. It only made the latter snicker even harder. Clearly, Thorin Oakenshield was not the only dwarf in their company with a double standard.

"Oh…" After not quite straightening with a chortle, Dwalin staggered forward to lay his hands on the hobbit's shoulders. "Oh you are adorable."

Bilbo beamed.

Oh Mahal. Mahal, those eyes. So big. Big and round. Big and shiny and round.

Gah!

"(He never calls us adorable)" Kili groused from aside.

"(Yeah)" Fili agreed despondently. "(I mean it's obvious why he'd never call you that, but it's just outrageous that he'd tar me with the same brush-)"

"(I'll show you tar, you chalk-haired weed eater-!)"

Ori had been unfortunate enough to be looking right at the princes when they broke into fistcuffs and rolled away in a tangle of limbs.

He determinedly looked away from the sight, which incidentally made him behold Dwalin again. Dwalin, whose amusement had drained from him like pus from a boil upon witnessing the princes' display, leaving his mien craggy and stone-like once more. "Useless," he put his face in his hands. "Utterly useless."

"Yet you love them anyway," Bilbo said blithely, patting him on the shoulder.

"Don't remind me."

"I'll be off to coordinate the arrival then. Do try not to tarry though. A good party waits for no one!"

Bilbo Baggins' departure was timed just as Thorin emerged from the stables himself. Exactly in time for Balin's war with his battered emotions to finally fizzle like a wet firestarter kit and make him decide to just drop with a thump on the bench behind him. Bench which hadn't been there until Adalgrim Took and Rorimac Brandybuck noiselessly scurried over to deposit for his convenience mere moments before his legs failed him. Only to disappear back from whence they came before he even realized they were there, let alone get around to remembering that there wasn't supposed to be any seating nearby to begin with.

Ori and the two thirds of their company on his side of the recently ended spectacle stared blankly in their wake.

Right.

Alright.

Hobbit hospitality with hobbit kindness and hobbit propriety.

Right.

Right then.

"How do they coordinate?" Gloin whispered nearby.

"Hand signs," Nori answered, startling them after not having been anywhere nearby for some time, and quiet for even longer. "Mostly one-handed and a lot of the time disguised as them being animated or emotional about whatever they're talking about, or just random finger drumming. Our escorts and 'guides' and even our own Master Baggins have been using them on and off practically all the time."

"Duplicitous creatures," Thorin growled irritably from nearby, and Ori had to almost bite his tongue to stop himself from yelping. Mahal, but was his situational awareness terrible. "If not for the scale of this whole… undertaking I would think they mean to lead us on merely to place us in a precarious situation just to amuse themselves."

"No chances of that," Balin said tiredly from where he sat and stared at the horizon. Which was only about twenty meters away considering the location of yonder hilltop. "Not with the Thain, Master of Buckland and Mayor here. Too great an investment of resources and potential disruption to Shire governance, not to mention the costs incurred by all the businesses who donated goods and services to make all this happen so suddenly." Ori supposed it made sense for Master Balin to be taking refuge from his recent ordeal by distracting himself with economics and politics. "And it is doubtful in the extreme that the rangers would be involved in so massive an undertaking just to be petty. Particularly since it is completely lacking in planning aforethought."

"Imagine that," Dwalin said from Thorin's side in what had to be the first and only witticism Ori had ever witnessed from him to date that was aimed at his lord and king. "It's almost like our hobbit set things up just to give us another shot at making a proper first impression."

Thorin tossed him a glare over his shoulder, but ultimately ended any further discussion by setting off towards the bridge where the mass of hobbits and their various carts were clustered.

Not that they lingered there for long.

Later, Ori would decide that it really should have been obvious that Bilbo would, in the end, turn the final approach into a musical performance, but as it was he was still surprised when it happened. As much as by how it started as well as by when and where.

The stone bridge still bore over half of the mass of hobbits as well as eight of the dozen coaches and carts, but most of the goods wagons had already crossed entire and come to a halt in the open area just ahead, hobbits already scurrying about under the wide, astonished eyes of twenty-some Dunedain rangers. Already they were unloading tables, chairs, ovens and sacks of wheat while others were climbing up to decorate the large willow looming over the fork in the road just beyond. When the music began just as the last of the tables was set up, it seemed as though the lute cords started being plucked at the worst possible time, but hobbits proved, as they had in everything else, to be completely unconcerned with such paltry things as logic or common sense.

It wasn't even a slow medley this time, but a high-paced melody set off when Bilbo Baggins began to pluck Adalgrim Took's lute as he passed him by. Lower-pitched sounds came from everywhere then, and a flute played by Drogo Baggins set the tone in earnest.

The crowd went frantic with energy, hobbits charging every which way, pulling, lifting, joining, stacking or unstacking things together, chairs and tables and pans, all without missing a beat of the tune as more and more instruments joined the first out of nowhere and everywhere. No step was missed in the rhythm and no person failed to add to the concert, a word which gained an entirely new meaning and then surpassed it when the women rushed to the newly assembled longtables, loaded their flour sifters and started their beat.

Then the ditty really swelled into the most eclectic and sweeping number as Bilbo Baggins and Fortinbras Took hopped up on the bridge's guard walls and started to advance in concord while drawing their bows across fiddle strings faster than Ori had ever heard anyone, even as the sifters beat and beat and beat.

They beat, taking over the composition without taking it over at all, and Ori could only gape at finally understanding what the sifter shaking of the past days had all been on about. Gape as the sifters beat the music and left mounds of clean flower behind, flour which disappeared almost as soon as it piled, swept by hobbits passing by into pans and mixed with water, salt, oil, sugar and yeast to be quickly and neatly kneaded into doughs of one, two and half again a dozen kinds. All the while, wagons were carted, carts were emptied, goods were carried and food formed as if by magic. Mouth-watering smells started wafting on the wind from the lit ovens and massive stew pot that had been set up in the center of the crowd and already being filled with water, meats, vegetables and spices of a variety almost as dizzying as the decorations that had at some point sprung up to fill every free space on the willow branches. Through it all, no one could be said to have danced, but they didn't need to. They weren't meant to. This wasn't a concert meant for pomp, this was the food fights of Ered Luin without the food and the fights.

Not the food.

Not yet.

It was all mad.

Utterly mad.

Mad, dizzying and absolutely phenomenal.

Enough that Kili, who'd come to a strangely attentive halt next to Ori at some point since the song's start, abruptly decided that tapping his foot in rhythm with the song like the rest of the company was not nearly enough.

The prince of the line of Durin shucked off his fur cloak, dumped it in Ori's arms, did the same with his sword, and then joined in the hustle. And to Ori's everlasting astonishment, Kili knocked into precisely no one and missed not a single step, seamlessly melding with the organized chaos as if he'd practiced his role in this random performance for a year and a day.

One sack of corn, two chopped hams, three swapped tarts and a dozen willow decorations later, Kili finally passed in front of them again, incidentally giving Fili a chance to launch at him, not that he gave any clear indication of what exactly he hoped to accomplish by it.

"Killi, what are playing aaah-!?"

Kili grabbed Fili's wrist without looking, pulled him in line, stuffed a seedcake into his mouth and dragged him all the way to a basket several yards away, never failing to walk in step with the beat. He then reached into the basket and proceeded to lift out a massive carp. A still living, violently thrashing, live carp.

He casually handed it to a passerby who tipped his hat at him and trotted on his way.

"Mahal's balls-"

"Rejoice, Heir of Durin and Prince of Longbeard Folk!" Kili proclaimed grandly as he hauled out another one of the massive fish that had to have been fished no longer than two hours prior, never missing a beat even then. "You are living the dream!"

With which he dumped the slimy, thrashing, large carp right into Fili's arms.

"Gah! Euwww! Eugh!"

"Live the dream, brother! Live the dream!"

"What dream!?" Fili whimpered as he tried to escape and instead wound up matching Kili's trip to the nearest grill step for step, somehow.

But even in his music-induced haze Ori could see that the protests were at best half-hearted and that the older Durin had been swept off every bit as much as his sibling, even if the latter had to act as buffer if that made any sense.

Which didn't, but it wasn't like the unfolding events made any sense to begin with, with their rapidly growing spread of food driven onwards by music sung from fiddles and lutes and pots and ladles, jingling spoons and ringing teapots, and the sifters...

Always, always the sifters, like the far-off echoes of drums, gravel, whispering sands and tambourines all at once.

Never had cooking rung so wonderful.

The song ended abruptly but not unexpectedly, leaving behind stirring cauldrons, steaming pots, roasting spits and a myriad of different cakes, pies and leavened breads well on their way to baking already. All managed by two or more hobbits that moved surely, if not as quickly anymore. All were overseen from the near-most bridge posts by two hobbits breathing heavily, flushed from the sheer speed with which they'd made their bows fly across the fiddle strings near the end of the impromptu medley. The pace had quickened gradually throughout the performance and felt fit to fly ahead of all wind and thought the closer the finish came. Ori expected to hum it and dream about it for days after this.

His attention snapped back to itself, somewhat, at the sound of clapping.

It came from a group of riders. Mannish riders. More rangers, by their get, their clothing grey and dark green with cloaks held by place by clasps shaped like 6-pointed stars. There were twenty of them, a number that seemed to be but a small share of the astonishingly large group coming down the eastern road. Ori had actually seen a couple of them come to Thorin's hall on some business or other, but these people seemed somehow entirely different without their grim and taciturn bearings. Instead their faces were split by smiles and everything from bemusement to humor or wonder, and in the case of the one in the lead, mirth that would not be contained.

The man was tall, almost seven feet if Ori was any judge, and his long, black hair fell in tresses around his shoulders, but his grey eyes were alive with joy and his mood as light as the song that had just ended.

"Hail, good folk of the Shire," the man's voice was strong but not stern, his tone doing nothing to hide what could only be astonishment and sheer delight. "I would ask what mean you to achieve with this extraordinary cavalcade." The hobbits preened, one and all. "But I would like to think even I am not as hapless a fool as all that." The man's mirthful grin turned almost impish as his gaze lifted from the self-satisfied crowd to the one hobbit still standing on top of the bridge parapet. "Though at least one among you would be tempted to disagree on that point, isn't that right Small Brother?"

Small brother?

"That depends, Tall Brother!" Bilbo Baggins answered, hopping down from his perch and handing off his instrument to Fortinbras Took who, as always, attended to him in all matters, before striding purposely forward as the crowd parted before him as it always did. "Are you planning to end up wandering alone and delirious through the wilderness again this year?"

Nearby, Nori started so violently that Ori thought he might pass out from shock. What had struck him so badly?

The lead Ranger – captain? – laughed while he dismounted, then he surprised them all by sinking to his knees and embracing Bilbo Baggins when the latter finally came within reach. All throughout, his brother's eyes were aimed unerringly at a small bird perched on the ranger's shoulder.

"So that's where the bird went…" his second oldest brother breathed. "It's true… Mahal's balls, it's all true."

What was? Maker, was it so much to ask that his brothers actually share things with him? At least from time to time?

The embracing duo broke off after a while but the man did not rise, instead holding the hobbit at arm's length to give him a look much less stern than he likely intended. "You, Small Brother, are completely mad."

"Well I'd have to be, wouldn't I?" Bilbo Baggins said dryly. "I have a reputation to uphold."

The man laughed again and rose, turned back to his men to give some orders in a different language – Adûnaic, if Ori was any judge – before turning back to face his hobbit friend and the rest of the hobbit leadership that was now approaching.

Ori could do little but wonder about the whole exchange and his brother's reaction to it while Gandalf herded him and the rest of the company over to where the two and the hobbit leadership were clustering.