Chapter 2: The Fortress

Like another skin about him, the orcish jerkin. The smell of it so familiar, like his own scent. A homecoming of sorts. An old, foul home, one he did not want to go to.

Sméagol tugged at the belt. He had shortened it as he was accustomed to doing with orcish belts- he didn’t remember doing it. His fingers and his teeth had moved without him telling them to, from habit. Long, long habit. Orcs had not changed the basic design of their cheap, nasty, easily-made clothes in quite a long time. Sméagol’s fingers knew where all the buttons and hooks were and it seemed he had been accustomed to biting an extra hole into the belt to tighten it around his poor shriveled waist; but habit had made it too tight. He was a different creature now- one that was getting fat and idle. In fact, he didn’t really do this sort of thing anymore. He had never been an expert at it, either. He was not a career burglar, he was no Baggins! He had stolen what was easy. He didn’t break into fortresses and pry out books.

Gimli had been quite shocked to find that Sméagol could read. The absurd Dwarf had given him a contract that apparently he had not expected Sméagol to actually read, nor sign his name to instead of marking an X. There had been a clause about funeral expenses. Funeral expenses! As if they would trouble to retrieve Sméagol’s body from an enemy fortress in order to bury it. Sméagol had laughed at the notion but Gimli had not.

Master’s friend, he was Master’s friend and Sméagol would be polite to him. Very polite.

The fortress was in view now. The Dwarves thought very little of it but to Sméagol it looked sturdy enough. He worried at his lower lip for a moment, said gollum in his throat, and slunk forward.

Gimli had done well enough at finding an entry point. There was a window with broken shutters. Sméagol would have liked to ooze silently through the gap but found that his shoulders were too broad. He had to break away more of the shutters, which meant several loud snapping sounds that echoed off of the rocks.

One could get away with making more noise while breaking into a building than one might expect. Especially in a case like this where the entry point was neglected and abandoned. But it was no good assuming! Sméagol ducked out of sight and waited. No one came.

Gimli had had the temerity to suggest Sméagol attempt to walk up to the front gates and introduce himself. It had not been his first plan, to be fair. Only after the Dwarves had found and killed the goblin-rider on the road- one that really had been riding for the Dourhands, with a message for them- Gimli had gotten some funny ideas. Sméagol didn’t mind wearing the goblin’s clothing- it was good for hiding in shadows- but he would not play-act! He did not look quite enough like a goblin for that, not up close. His accent was wrong for a goblin, too. He would have been found out at once and had his throat cut.

Sméagol slipped through the window and found himself in a dusty room. It was a bedroom, with a crib in the corner. Everything was abandoned and cobwebby even though there were lots of possessions still in the room- clothes, trinkets, hairbrushes and combs, and things of that sort. Déagol’s mother had left his room set up in just the same way after he died- after he was killed. After Sméagol killed him. He shook himself and left the room as quickly as possible. Large, flat ducks-feet footprints and splayed hand-marks trailed behind him in the dust, plain as a Dwarf’s beard. There was nothing for it, he was not about to sweep the floor.

He found a long stone hallway outside. His slapping footsteps and wheezing breaths echoed in it slightly and he shuddered. He could not make himself breathe more quietly- he was allergic to dust! It made his chest tight and his breath raspy. However had he managed before? Had he only been allergic since breathing all of the nasty hot air on Mt. Doom?

“Break us and boil us,” he said under his breath and held a finger pressed tightly under his nose. No ridiculous passel of Dwarves was going to pay his funeral expenses because he had sneezed! Even Sam, stupid enough to set a cook-fire where orcs and fellbeasts and whatever else could see it, had managed not to sneeze!

Sméagol’s eyes watered but he did not sneeze. A good thing too. There were two Dwarves up ahead. They were different from the ones who had brought him here, rangier and paler, and with shorter beards. They smelled different. Sméagol had not expected to be able to tell them apart. That was interesting.

He stayed close to the wall. The Dourhands had not seen him. Sméagol wondered if he could kill the Dourhands if pressed to it. Likely not. Their necks were thick and protected by a collar of iron on their mail-shirts, a different make from those Gimli’s friends wore and different from the ones in Gondor too. They looked much closer to orc-mail.

They were grumbling to each other in low voices and not looking behind them. No one ever looked behind them when they really needed to. Sméagol turned into a room off of the corridor, and found it a dead end- those two at the end of the hall seemed to be blocking his progress and they were in no hurry to leave. He settled in for a wait.

It was a long, dreary stretch inside the Dourhand fortress, which was quiet and dull, and not very clean. It was rather plain, too, without the ornamental carvings Sméagol would have expected from Dwarves. It was not as pretty as the buildings in Minas Tirith and not as lively as Lake-town, or even Goblin-town.

As hours became a day, and a night, he was forced to steal sips of water from washbasins. He caught mice and large beetles, until he found a storeroom with meat and managed to lift a few mouthfuls without being noticed. Still, a pervasive hunger and thirst settled in, and deprivation was such a familiar feeling- like the orcish clothing- Sméagol hardly paid it any mind after a while. Hardly any mind at all- yes, hardly any!

He found- and began following- the chieftain, a bristly, gray Dourhand who walked about pounding his fist on things to punctuate his words. His words were about his thieving underlings and some voracious rat that was raiding his storeroom. And a lingering smell of damp and filth that seemed to follow him about. Finally he went into his library and Sméagol followed him there.

The chieftain took out a book full of crude illustrations and began peering and muttering over it as if it were a lost tome of lore. Sméagol disappeared into the shelves, where he found Gimli’s book.

It was bigger than Sméagol and looked as if it would fall apart if it was moved. Sméagol cursed aloud. The chieftain heard him and came running but of course before his stumpy little legs could bring him over Sméagol was on the other side of the room in a secluded shadowy corner. 

Sméagol footled about in that accursed library for days on end, wracking his addled old brains for some way to get that awful book out of there. He tried to lift it and failed. Part of the cover fell away, but it was only a sort of flaking dust-jacket. Underneath it was stone. The Dwarf-book had a granite cover. Granite. 

Sméagol wept aloud.

The chieftain began to complain of a ghost in his halls, one that stole things and left phantom footprints and hand-marks everywhere. And sobbed in the night. And smelled. Sméagol resented this last bit because he would smell a great deal better if he had any opportunity to bathe.

Hunger undid him in the end. Sméagol was trying to catch a bat, which meant a foolhardy leap to a chandelier where it was clinging. He missed the leap and while he was picking himself up out of the dust a Dourhand walked right in.

Sméagol froze. Sometimes, when he froze, he went unseen even in the middle of a room, being in the shadows.

“Blitznakh!” the Dourhand said. “What’s been keeping you?” His voice was friendly, if harshly so. “We expected your message weeks ago. Look at you! Like something left over at the bottom of an ale-barrel!” He walked right up and tried to clap Sméagol on the back- Sméagol cringed away, too baffled to run, and the Dourhand laughed. “You always were a cold fish.”

Sméagol could not afford to get distracted by the welcome idea of cold fish. He had been taken for an orc, even a very particular orc, this Dourhand’s friend. The Dourhand was looking full in his face, and showed not even a hint of noticing his mistake-

“It is you, isn’t it, Blitznakh?” the Dourhand asked cheerfully.

Sméagol jumped. “Yes,” he said. “Yes it is. Yes!”

“Well don’t get angry! You blasted cave-goblins all look alike in your cloaks. Thought it was you- only you’d stalk around like you owned the place.”

All looked alike, eh? Sméagol looked down at himself. He was rather shapeless under the jerkin, and if there was much difference between himself and an orc to begin with it didn’t show in this getup.

It seemed Gimli had been right, and was a bit less thick in the head than Sméagol had uncharitably suspected he was. Now what?

“Well?” the Dourhand demanded. “What news?”

What message had the real orc- Blitznakh- what had he been carrying? The Dwarves had taken it and read it, and given it to Sméagol in case he wanted to show it, to prove he was a real orc- which had seemed to silly to him at the time.

Ah yes- some sort of invitation to join in on raiding a nearby settlement of Men. Sméagol had known distantly that the good thing was to care about that, but it was hard for him to do because they were far from Gondor, and Men not from Gondor were nothing to do with him and as likely as not to be cruel and kick one into corners. Gimli had cared, though- he’d sent a group of Dwarves to warn the settlement and kill any orcs trying to attack it.

Sméagol still had the message in his pocket but he didn’t reach for it. He sized up the Dourhand and the exits from the room. “Message?” he said gruffly.

“Yes, you dumb lout, a message, that’s what they send you here for! It’s not for your good looks!”

“I- dropped it,” he mumbled, “here-“ and he ducked into the shadows and was gone.

He retreated to the library, and found the chieftain yelling and kicking up a fuss in front of Gimli’s book. Sméagol had left visible handprints on the cover. “The ghost!” he cried. “The ghost again!”

Sméagol waited until the insufferable dwarf finally toddled off somewhere else before approaching the book. He had pocketed a bit of charcoal in the kitchens and now used it to scrawl on the book’s cover: GHOST LIVES HERE NOW AND FILTHY DWARVES CANT DO NOTHING

He shook his head and put the charcoal away. He couldn’t live in this wretched fortress sneaking about in the shadows much longer. “We’re wasting away, my precious, and we’ve started talking to ourselfs again.” Imagine writing that a ghost 'lived' anywhere, how stupid! He tried to rub away the charcoal but it only smudged.

He was so thirsty, and the Dourhand who was friends with Blitznakh was sitting all alone, drinking dwarf ale. Sméagol approached him, wringing his hands. He felt as if he really were a ghost. Likely he was wearing the real Blitznakh’s clothing. The Dourhand’s real friend had been reduced to burnt bits of skeleton somewhere, chopped up by ax-wielding long-bearded Dwarves and disposed of on a hasty pyre after being looted. 

“There you are,” said the Dourhand. “Found your message?”

“Maybe.”

“What maybe? I haven’t got any coin.”

Sméagol glanced around the room, which soothed his paranoia and made him fit the part of an orc asking for a bribe both. He hoped it did, anyhow. Sméagol usually didn’t do this sort of thing and he wished he was back in Gondor. “If you haven’t got any coins,” he said, slowly, careful not to use what his friends affectionately called ‘Sméagol-talk’ and others had less affectionately called by other terms, “I am- hungry. For meats.”

“Ha! I’ll bet you are. I’m not about to do anything about it.” He went back to drinking. He did not offer Sméagol any ale. What Sméagol really wanted was water, of course, but no orc would ask for water when ale was present. Even this rather stupid Dourhand would find it odd if Sméagol asked for water.

The Dourhand must not really care much about the message if he didn’t even stir himself to offer any ale in exchange for it when the mug and barrel were both sitting a few inches away. What had he been so excited to see Blitznakh for, then?

Sméagol ought to slip away before the deception was discovered, particularly since there seemed to be something odd about the relationship between this orc and this dwarf; but he had become soft in Gondor- very soft- and he was feeling the lack not only of food and water, but of company. Not only that, but he felt as if this mistaken identity ought to be useful, and that making use of it shouldn’t be very difficult, and he was making a mess of things by not figuring it out. He was inferior to Bilbo Baggins, who had stolen the Precious by accident. And gotten quite away with it!

Sméagol sat down heavily on the floor.

“Oh don’t sulk, you can sit in a chair if you like.”

Sméagol was more used to the floor, but he did as he was told, taking a chair.

“Chief’s looking for you,” said the Dourhand. “He’s got a package he wants taken to those pigheaded Longbeards, and he says it’s a job for an orc. I think he expects you to get killed.”

“What job is it?”

“Those Longbeards came and asked us for some moldy old book a few weeks back. We laughed them off, of course. Shame your crew wasn’t visiting to teach ‘em a lesson. But now the book’s haunted. Ghosts writing messages on it and what not. Chief says he’s going to send them their book and let them be cursed. That’s what he says, anyways. I think he’s losing his mind. Are you still in on helping me kill him?”

“Of course,” whispered Sméagol, nearly giddy. “We will do the job first so he doesn’t suspect, and then we’ll get our friends from the hive!”

He would do no such thing! But now it made sense why this Dwarf had been so excited to see Blitznakh. Sméagol ought to have known it was plain old treachery. He felt quite silly.

“Now give us a bit to drink,” Sméagol wheedled. His mouth was dry enough that he was willing to attempt the foul-smelling ale if that was all that was on offer.

“After you kill the chief,” the Dourhand laughed, and swigged his drink.

Sméagol bit back a retort- he was getting far too comfortable, he had been about to twit the Dourhand for talking so loudly and openly about treason, without even whispering- which even Sméagol, who did usually his own killing all on his lonesome without any conspiring, knew to be foolish. But that was none of his business. He just rolled his eyes.

“And,” said the Dourhand, “mind you don’t get killed yourself!”

Sméagol shuddered.

The Dourhands gave him a cart to load the book into. He had to pull it himself, of course, and it was hard work and his back ached, but he was so glad to have accidentally succeeded in his task that he almost didn’t mind the toil. Yes, almost.

Seeing the Dourhand fortress disappear behind him recalled to mind the last glimpse he had had of the walls of Mordor, how glad he had been to see that place dip out of view- a remembrance that made him whimper and sob in his throat.

He had to meet Gimli at the rendezvous point they had chosen and it was uphill from here. The cart was so heavy. Sméagol sat down in the dust to take a little break. He had not had enough food, drink or rest in some time now and he was filthy and he was dressed in stolen orcish rags, and he was once more the ragged wanderer who had been permitted at the whim of Sauron to narrowly escape the land of the Shadow, he was the killer roaming Mirkwood. The past had returned to reclaim his body and was on the point of shoving him back out of it. His vision was going gray. He had been sitting longer than he meant to, and would go on sitting…

What was that sound? “Horseses?” he muttered. “Feets?” He blinked himself awake. The sound continued. Sméagol stood up as tall as he was able for a better look, supporting himself on the side of the cart. He saw glinting lights in the distance. “Ach!”

He covered his eyes a moment, then more carefully looked again. It was Dwarves. Gimli and his friends marching towards him in a stampede. There were no horses, their booted feet just sounded that way.

Sméagol put back his hood, first, and then that seemed like it may not be enough to keep them from taking him for an orc- he took off the short ragged cloak portion of the outfit entirely and dropped it on the ground in front of him. He tried to look towards the Dwarves and not shut his eyes against the glinting of their mail. Sméagol’s most recognizable feature was his bright pale eyes (they were not an orcish color, either); he wanted them to be seen.

Was that a taller figure amongst the Dwarves? Yes! It was Legolas! Elvish eyes would certainly see Sméagol properly, and he could relax a bit.

The Dwarves found him slumped against the cart, mostly upright, with his hands in his pockets.

“Come to fetch us, I suppose, taking too long,” said Sméagol. He did a little mental figuring, and realized he had been in the Dourhand fortress more than a fortnight. He really was taking too long. The Longbeards had a great deal of patience if they were only just now coming to batter down the door.

“You truly are a hobbit,” said Gimli, staring at him. “I thought I was leading my company to recover your body, and here you are- without a care in the world!”

“Body? What was he going to do with it?”

“I had intended to bury it!”

“It’s a bit soon for that,” said Sméagol, blinking. “A bit soon.”

“So I see! I presumed the Dourhands had killed you and I was coming to begin open war, and retrieve the remains. After all I pledged to see to your funeral, and you quite rightly pointed out that I would need a body to do it properly. And here you are, living still, after your fashion! I am grateful you do not have the temerity to be eating a roast chicken and smoking a pipe!”

“No, no chicken. No nothing in days, poor hungry Sméagol, but Dwarf must want his book first.” Sméagol nodded in the direction of the cart. “Here is the book. It is heavy, so we brought it in a cart.” Also, Sméagol didn’t smoke. Pipe-smoke made him thoroughly sick. He doubted Gimli was interested in that. “Sméagol checked in the cart, and it is only the book, no one hiding, no nasty surprises.”

The Dwarves swarmed the cart and began to marvel over the book. Sméagol waited, biting his lip, to hear them remark on the damage that had been done by someone pawing at the cover, and the foolish message writted on it, but the Dwarves did not comment, they were so enthralled with the book itself. In fact hey forgot all about Sméagol; it was Legolas who remembered him.

“I am glad my friends have recovered their dwarf-craft but it is not of much use to me until they convert it into a more tangible form,” he said with a smile. “Come here, Sméagol, let me take you to camp! I see your deeds have left you weary.”

“I could not even read their book,” Sméagol said, hobbling after him. “It was written in Dwarf-writing and I had to tell Gimli that I, I can read- I read the whole contract out loud to him- and now I cannot read his book!”

“Worry not, I am sure they do not want you reading the book, it contains secrets of how to work metal and stone, and that is why they chose lettering few others know. In fact I am leaving in part so that Gimli’s friends can have no claim that I tried spying on them. I am still in a precarious spot with some of them. As are you, Sméagol Bright-Eyes.”

Sméagol nodded. It had been a long weary trip with the Dwarves, who still knew him mainly as the monster from Bilbo’s story, which Sméagol could not even refute because it was all true. He had been as quiet and pleasant as possible, which had seemed to help a bit, and the Dwarves were not cruel, but it had been plain they did not trust him.

Legolas continued: “I came so that my arrows would protect Gimli from any machination of the Dourhands. He is safe, and my concern in the affair is ended. Ah! Here is the camp. Hullo!”

A dwarven guard was up ahead. Sméagol shuddered, and hung close to Legolas’ long Elven legs.

“I have brought back the burglar,” said Legolas. “He has burgled well! Your kinsmen are inspecting the spoils.”

The guard was in a hurry to see this book for himself, and apparently did not distrust Legolas enough to keep him from staying alone in camp with Sméagol.

The camp was by a wide creek. Sméagol waded into it, ridding himself of the orcish clothing- he did not exactly rush ahead without waiting for an invitation, but he chose to take Legolas looking in the direction of the water as an invitation, and did not wait for him to speak.

The creek was a wonderful restorative. By the time he had finished enjoying it- and wrapped himself in a blanket Legolas gave him, because the Dwarves had thought he was dead and had put his clothes away somewhere and the Elf did not know where- Gimli and his company had returned.

“I regret that I have not the kind of food you prefer,” Gimli said.

“Don’t trouble, don’t trouble,” said Sméagol, drawing the blanket a little closer around his shoulders. He was sitting turned from the fire so it did not hurt his eyes but might still warm his back. “We’ve supped, water looks after Sméagol.” He had assumed being led to the creek meant he was intended to feed himself.

“So I see, and smell,” said Gimli. It was hard to completely remove the odor of a really juicy fish from one’s face and hands. “You are a resourceful creature, aren’t you?” He was stroking his beard consideringly.

Sméagol did not wait for any more prompting, he knew what was wanted at a time like this was a report, and he told Gimli as full an account as he could manage of what he had seen, heard, and done within the Dourhands’ fortress.

When he spoke of being taken for an orc named Blitznakh, Gimli leaned back and thumped himself on the knee. “Incredible! I confess that I became uncertain of my ruse- when I saw you draped in orcish garb, it seemed to me that I suddenly saw all that remains hobbitish in your face, and I believed you could not pass muster! I am happy to be wrong. I suspect the Dourhands have never seen a hobbit and that is in your favor.”

“Yes,” said Sméagol, who did not like to be interrupted when he was telling a story, especially when he was tired. He had a terrible time trying to recall where he had left off.

“Did you discover the name of this Dourhand who believed you to be his goblin-friend?” Gimli asked.

“No,” said Sméagol. “No, never did- couldn’t ask. I could have said, ‘I forgot his name, and I would like to know it’, very politely. Sméagol would do it, if he had forgotten a name. But most peoples do not. They feel too silly. And orcses do not care enough. I could not ask.”

“That is sensible enough and I suppose it does not matter. What did this Dourhand want of Blitznakh?”

“His message, of course…” From there Sméagol was able to pick up where he had left off, and he finished out his tale without any more interruptions. Gimli was smiling by the end of it.

“It is better than I hoped! The Dourhands in shambles, dreading a ghost that does not walk! Their craven hearts left them easy prey to a burglar. You have done well, Sméagol! You have done the job and humiliated the cowards without sowing a single seed of war!”

“Yes, Sméagol did very well, bringing his book in its own cart as a gift, and all, but I did not mean to do it. It all… came about. Sméagol does not know about burglaring.”

“Aha! That is your genius. That is how hobbits work! Do not forget your origins. Bilbo Baggins would stand before me and hang his woolly head, and say he never knew how half of his adventures worked out so well as they did.” He grew grave and pensive then, and looked carefully at Sméagol, who said gollum in his throat and found he could no longer meet Gimli in the eye. “Do not avert your gaze in shame,” Gimli declared. “You have acquitted yourself, and have as much right to look me in the eye as anyone.”

“I can’t,” said Sméagol. “I am not used to it. Later perhaps.”

“Perhaps. In your tale, you took no plunder from the Dourhands.”

“No, they do not have very much I would want. Sméagol does not need anything, he is a pet of the King, and has nice things and as much to eat as he likes, and he need not steal. They are poor and grubby, the Dourhands.”

“No doubt! Yet, you fulfilled your contract and I meant for you to have a reward. I intended you to burgle it from the Dourhands but if they had nothing worth your while I feel I must make recompense in another way.”

“No, my lord, I do not want anything,” said Sméagol. “I only want to go home- to my own home.” He wondered if that might sound unfriendly. He tried to explain. “Has he ever had a home- that he didn’t see any longer, ever again? And then…” He faltered.

Gimli ruminatively stroked the braids in his beard, which had pretty little eye-catchers woven into them- there were more shiny bits of metal in the hair on his head. Sméagol might have been tempted to ask for one of them, but his own thin hair would not have held one. (He would have looked foolish trying to wear it, too, but he looked foolish anyway.)

“The Dwarves have had and lost many fine homes, and been pressed to take up new ones, and some of us love those new homes fiercely. Your adopted home is in Gondor. The fair city of Minas Tirith is not such a poor place to end up. Indeed it has claimed many hearts.”

“Yes- it has endured much, it is old, and it stands still and turns to the East and says: I live yet.”

“Then I take it the reward you seek is to go home at once! And that too is hobbitish. Would you take rest before you are sent home or would you rather I send you now, at once? I might bundle you into a cart and have my stoutest Dwarves convey you hence at speed!”

This was too alarming to be tempting. “O no! Sméagol will wait, patient Sméagol, he’ll sleep. But it’s very kind of him, yes it is.”

The return home was uneventful, and once he had returned to his own pleasant home and cozy bed, and had a chance to rest, Sméagol requested (demanded) that someone give him a chair for Dwarves.

“Whyever do you want it?” the bemused messenger had asked him.

“In case a Dwarf comes to visit,” Sméagol had said, with a mighty effort not to show his temper. People asked him imbecilic questions.