The final leg of the journey took another two excruciatingly slow nights.
Smaug, perched on the shoulder of the Stone Giant Queen, was forced to endure the agonizing pace. If I ever have to commute like this again, I'll just burn the destination, he thought irritably.
Over those nine days, he had to dole out a fair amount of his gemstone hoard to keep the titans moving, but the investment was about to pay off.
Finally, just before dawn, having carefully bypassed the borders of the Mirkwood, the seven Stone Giants stepped onto the plains of Erebor. They had officially entered the Dragon Kingdom.
Naturally, their arrival did not go unnoticed.
Beorn, who was not currently wearing his bear-skin, had been jolted awake by the rhythmic tremors. He stepped out of his newly built cabin and stared at the approaching mountains. "The legends are true," he muttered, his eyes wide. "Where in the world did he find them?"
Beorn was beginning to realize that "Sovereign Smaug" was a creature of endless, terrifying surprises. He knew what the Stone Giants were.
The humans of Dale, however, did not.
As the tremors rattled their stone houses, people spilled into the streets, hung out of windows, and scrambled onto rooftops. They stared out toward the lake, their faces pale with terror.
"By the Gods... what are those?"
"Mountains! The mountains are walking!"
"What do they want? If they come into the city, we'll be crushed!"
"Someone fetch the dragon!" a voice suddenly yelled out from the crowd.
The suggestion caught on immediately. "Yes! Call Smaug! He'll stop them!"
It was a moment of profound, hilarious irony. Barely a month ago, Smaug was the nightmare that haunted their every waking moment. Now, faced with a new, incomprehensible threat, the people of Dale instinctively looked to the Fire-drake as their protector.
"Do not go to the Mountain!" Bard shouted from the high balcony of the Lord's Manor, his voice cutting through the panic. "Look closely! Smaug is already there! He is sitting on the shoulder of the leading giant!"
In the pre-dawn gloom, the massive forms of the giants dominated the skyline, making it difficult to spot even a creature as large as Smaug. But as Bard pointed, the people squinted into the mist.
"It is! It's Smaug!"
"He's riding it!"
"Oh, thank the heavens. If he brought them here, they aren't here to smash us. We're safe."
A collective, massive sigh of relief washed over the city. The terror evaporated, replaced by the natural human inclination for gawking at a spectacle.
As the first light of dawn began to touch the sky, Smaug and his entourage bypassed the city of Dale and arrived at the gates of Erebor.
"Welcome to my home, everyone," Smaug announced, his voice ringing with genuine satisfaction. "This is the Lonely Mountain. Would you like to eat first, or rest?"
"Rest," the Queen rumbled.
"Very well. Make yourselves comfortable. Treat the place as your own," Smaug replied magnanimously.
The Queen said nothing more. She simply took a few slow, heavy steps toward the eastern flank of the Lonely Mountain, searching for a suitable contour. The other six giants did the same, spreading out in a wide arc around the entrance to the valley.
With a final series of earth-shattering grinds and groans, the seven titans pressed themselves against the mountainside. Within minutes, as the sun fully illuminated the Desolation, they ceased to be giants. They were simply new, craggy foothills surrounding Erebor.
The valley fell silent. For the people of Dale, it felt as though they had all shared a bizarre, collective fever dream.
"Well," a baker muttered, wiping flour from his hands, "you live long enough, you see everything."
"I don't know," his neighbor replied. "Maybe we shouldn't live so long. I think my heart stopped."
"Don't be an idiot. We just got the new recipes. I'm not dying until I've tried that braised lamb!"
The humans, resilient and pragmatic as always, quickly turned the morning's terror into tavern gossip and went about their day.
Bard, however, could not simply brush it off.
He stood on his balcony, his brow furrowed so deeply it looked permanently etched into his skull. First the Skin-changer. Now the Stone Giants. What was next?
More importantly, why? Smaug wasn't collecting these monsters for his amusement. He was fortifying the Mountain.
Bard pondered the question until midday. As he watched a flock of thrushes dart toward the peaks of Erebor, a sudden spark of realization hit him. He remembered the old prophecy of the Men of the Lake:
The Lord of Silver Fountains,
The King of Carven Stone,
The King beneath the Mountain,
Shall come into his own!
And the warning that followed: When the birds of yore return to Erebor, the beast's reign will end.
"The Dwarves," Bard gasped, his heart hammering. "The Dwarven armies are returning. He knows they are coming. He is preparing for a siege!"
Bard had drawn the completely wrong conclusion regarding who Smaug was preparing to fight, but he had correctly deduced that war was on the horizon.
A migration of seven walking mountains cannot be kept secret. The news spread across the North faster than a forest fire.
In the Iron Hills, Dáin Ironfoot had received the scouting reports the day prior. He had been suffering from a blinding headache ever since.
"Seven of them?" Dáin roared, pacing his hall. "Where in Durin's name did that overgrown lizard find seven Stone Giants?!"
His generals stood in grim silence.
"How are we supposed to breach Erebor now?" Dáin yelled, throwing his hands up in despair. "Even if we muster every Dwarf from the Iron Hills to the Blue Mountains, we'd be crushed into paste before we even reached the gates! And that's assuming Thranduil hasn't already sold us out to the worm!"
He rubbed his temples violently. "Blast it all. My head is splitting. Bring me ale! The strong stuff!"
Within the hour, Dáin Ironfoot was blackout drunk, successfully avoiding the reality that the "Reclamation of Erebor" was a tactical impossibility. The other Dwarven Lords, upon receiving the news, reacted in much the same way.
Far to the south, in the shadowy ruins of Dol Guldur.
The Necromancer—the spirit of Sauron—was also suffering from a headache. Or, rather, he would be, if he possessed a physical head.
Curse that arrogant lizard! Sauron's malice flared, shadows writhing around the crumbling stonework of the fortress. Stone Giants? He actually recruited the ancients?
Sauron's intellect was vast, and he immediately saw the geopolitical trap Smaug had laid. The Lonely Mountain was the only viable gateway to the North. If Sauron wanted to march his Orc legions out of the East and crush the Elven realms, he had to secure Erebor.
He couldn't go around it without exposing his flanks to the Dwarves and the men of Dale.
With the dragon refusing to ally with him, and now guarding the pass with a wall of living stone, the strategy was clear. There could be no negotiation. There could be no bypass.
The dragon must die, Sauron resolved, his spirit burning with a cold, hateful fire.
He would have to accelerate his plans. The Orc legions must multiply, and he would need a weapon capable of piercing the defenses of the North.
~~----------------------
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