"Fighting in this kind of terrain works against us. Our numbers are too thin, the ground's all wrong. Got any spell that can solve this?"
Thorin tossed the question right back at her.
Before she'd gotten her hands on the Ring of Fire, Bella's go-to play would have been to charge in and hammer everything flat. Whether you called it bloodlust or killing intent, she had to vent the negative pressure piling up inside her, and on a subconscious level the answer was always the same—fight. Cold, brutal combat was the path that fit her best.
Take the Paris massacre, for example. She'd had cleaner ways to handle it. She'd still chosen to cut everyone down. Like the Ancient One always said, every spell has its price.
The Ring of Fire had been slowly warming her from the inside. She didn't need to draft battle plans through a haze of murder anymore.
While Thorin was studying the terrain, an idea had already come to her.
"I can summon my Gryphons over to help. They can fly us across…the Warg-riders on your side don't have any flying capability, do they?"
Bella turned the question on Kíli. The handsomest dwarf in the company stared at her, jaw hanging open. The deadlock he'd been wracking his brain over could be cracked this easily by a mage?
He stuttered out a reply. "No, I haven't seen those Wargs do any flying. At least not in the eighty-odd years I've been alive…"
"Right. Then we go by air. Destination—" Thorin clearly wasn't thrilled about it. Bella met his eyes head-on. He let out a snort and ground out through clenched teeth, "We head for Rivendell. Let someone see the elves' true ugly faces with their own eyes."
Bella opened a portal and summoned five of the Gryphons who had survived the battle in Narnia.
Gryphons were proud creatures. They objected to any sentient being riding on their backs.
Bella, as the recognized Queen of Narnia, was an exception in their eyes—no problem there. Thorin at least had the title of Dwarf King, a legitimate dwarven leader and a born monarch, which was enough to grudgingly earn him a seat on a second Gryphon.
The other dwarves and the hobbit didn't get that courtesy. They had to be carried in the Gryphons' talons. That was exactly why Bella wasn't planning to fly them all the way to Erebor in one shot. Short hops were tolerable. Push the distance too far, and the passengers riding economy in those claws wouldn't survive the trip.
Gryphons didn't allow riders, much less cargo. So all the dead weight got dumped, and the horses were left behind too.
The fat dwarf's pots and pans, everyone's blankets, whetstones, and clothes, Bilbo Baggins's pipe, pipe-weed, handkerchiefs, and water cup—all of it tossed.
The hobbit was heartbroken. His mouth twitched into a genuinely bitter smile. All these things had come with him from the Shire! After one last round of triage, he was left with a single backpack on his shoulders, an M16 slung across them, and a short blade at his belt.
Bella and Thorin each took a Gryphon mount. The other twelve dwarves and the hobbit were carried like luggage in the birds' talons, wings beating hard as they shot eastward.
Less than half a day after they'd left, swarms of Warg-riders converged on the campsite from three directions. They came up empty. Apart from biting a few horses to death, they got nothing.
A handful of Orcs circled the site on Wargs more than ten times, completely baffled. Where was Thorin Oakenshield?
Wargs had a keen sense of smell. But no matter how good their tracking was, they couldn't follow a trail into the sky. The lead Wargs were even more confused than their riders. The scent? There was no scent left at all!
The Gryphons flew fast. Distance vanished underneath them. Bella kept checking the map old Círdan had given her. Eventually they came down outside a particular valley.
She didn't sense any anti-flying ward, but riding a Gryphon across someone else's rooftop felt rude.
"Anna, you've done well. But I'll need you to wait here a little longer with your kin." Bella patted the female Gryphon's neck.
The Gryphon tossed her head, indignant. "Stop giving me names!"
The valley entrance to Rivendell was startlingly narrow as it came into view—winding and tight, not even wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Only one person could get through at a time.
The elves obviously wouldn't take this route. But Bella couldn't immediately spot the main gate either.
She stepped out of the low stone passage, and the view opened up in front of her.
Rivendell was a city the elves had built into the contours of a river valley. People liked words like grand and majestic for cities. None of them fit Rivendell.
She was quiet, beautiful—like a graceful woman holding a painting. The hillsides full of yellow leaves were her adornment. The fragments of light filtering through the canopy were her ornaments.
The Loudwater River, which the elves called the Bruinen, had its source in Rivendell. The cheerful waterfalls were like playful children, filling the whole city with vitality.
Inside, the city was built like terraces—garden tiers stacked one on top of another. Wind rolled through, and the scent of trees and flowers filled the air. Rivendell wasn't a tightly packed grid of buildings the way Kamar-Taj was. The houses sat in what looked at first like loose disorder, but a closer look revealed a beauty entirely separate from rigid order.
Bella had felt the sorrow of Grey Havens. She could just as easily feel the peace of Rivendell. The dwarves were good at killing and burning. Art? They only loved their anvils and their hammers.
Right on cue, Thorin asked her something that broke the mood.
"Let me ask one more time. You still set on this? We can go around. It won't cost us much time."
Bella didn't answer the question directly. "…Wait here. I'll go say hello. We're just passing through, it shouldn't be a problem. Lord Elrond is supposed to be a wise and far-seeing leader, by all accounts."
"If something goes wrong, signal us. We'll come get you out!" Thorin still bore his grudge against the elves and made no comment on Bella's read of Elrond.
Bella took the goodwill for what it was. The divination she'd run beforehand had come back neither favorable nor disastrous—which made her keep her own guard up another notch.
"Got it. You stay sharp. If trouble starts, get on the Gryphons. Anna and I have already worked it out."
…
"Halt!"
Bella followed the path toward the entrance to the mountain city. About a hundred meters out from the gate, an arrow lanced down from somewhere above her at an angle and buried itself in the ground a meter in front of her feet.
Ten elves with bows stood in a row, every one of them aiming at her.
I have an Elven Ring too. I'm here to see your lord? Bella didn't say any of that out loud. The Three Rings did have a special resonance with each other, but if the other side wasn't interested in meeting her, she wasn't about to grovel her way in.
Worst case, this could turn into a cheap webnovel scene—how dare you steal our people's sacred treasure, your life is forfeit—and what then? Cut a path out with the dwarves, only to get chased down by Orcs and elves working together? That would be a mess.
Bella took a step back and gestured toward the trail. "My dwarven friends and I are being chased by Orcs. We'd like to pass through Rivendell. We're crossing the Misty Mountains."