Chapter Text
“Exterminator!” exclaimed the halfling—no, the hobbit, Thorin corrected himself. “Oh no, goodness, no. Wherever did you get such an idea?”
“Gandalf,” said Thorin. “He promised to find someone who could take care of our dragon problem. Naturally, we expected an exterminator. Where is the old wizard, anyway?”
“Well, he brought me from the Shire to Beorn’s house, and a very good companion he was indeed, what with all the goblins! He let off some fireworks in the Misty Mountains that were more exciting than any of his displays from when I was a lad. Then he had business elsewhere, so Beorn—”
“Who is that?” inquired Balin, who sat to one side taking notes. “I’ve never heard the name.”
“Oh, Beorn is a—a skin-changer, Gandalf calls him, though I find that term a bit unnerving. He’s a man, a great big one, except sometimes he’s a bear. Terribly vicious to wargs and goblins, but tender as can be with all animals, even bees. What he’d have to say about ‘exterminator’ I don’t like to think!” The hobbit shuddered. “Anyway, Beorn brought me safely to King Thranduil’s hall, and from there I traveled on my own to the mountain, where this little fellow came out to greet me, didn’t he?”
The hobbit—Bilbo Baggins, as he’d introduced himself—gazed fondly at a small red head poking out of his waistcoat pocket. Then he actually lifted the dragon and cradled it in his hands, petting its scaly ridges.
This was a deliberate insult; it had to be.
Erebor was overrun with the dangerous pests, an infestation more pernicious than any that even Thorin’s grandfather could remember. Gold, silver, jewels—all were disappearing at an alarming rate. The loss of prized possessions and treasured heirlooms was bad enough, but how could the dwarves deliver their trade to the men of Dale and the elves of Greenwood when any necklace or goblet or dagger might be whisked from the worktable in a moment of inattention?
Not to mention the scorch marks, which were spreading all over the mountain from the dragons’ quarrels with one other and with the dwarves who tried to chase them away. Every week brought more small fires, each with the potential to become a deadly blaze if people didn’t catch it in time. And the dragons were growing bolder as they became more numerous. The healers could barely keep up with salves for burns and bandages for bites and scratches.
King Thrór had delegated the problem to his grandson, and after failing at one approach after another, Thorin had been reduced to begging for help from a wizard. When Gandalf admitted that his magic could do no good against the little beasts, but promised to send help from the West, Thorin had imagined many things—a fireproof giant who would stomp the dragons flat, a cunning Ranger who would lay traps and poison—but never a plump, beardless hobbit with crinkly eyes and a wagging tongue.
“Exterminator, well I never,” the Baggins was still babbling. “I mean, really! Look at me! Look at them!” He held the dragon recklessly near his face and cooed at it.
Thorin looked. The hobbit was dressed in cheerful greens and yellows, somewhat muddied and tattered from his journey, and all the hair that ought to be on his face seemed to have fallen down to his unshod feet in a mass of brown curls. His eyes were so sparkly, and his smile so disarming, that Thorin could only assume he was pulling some kind of con.
At the same time, Thorin was stunned by the courage, no, the stupidity with which the hobbit held the dragon. The thieving creature was two feet of danger from snout to tail-tip, its teeth and claws sharper than whetted steel and its breath an incendiary menace.
But Bilbo Baggins smiled at the dragon as if it were a kitten, and when it began to open its jaws, he pinched them firmly shut and said, “None of that, if you please.” Then he scratched under its chin, and its eyes clouded over with pleasure.
“I have been looking,” said Thorin grimly. “And I’m not seeing any reason to believe you can handle our problem, Master Baggins. Is this the wizard’s idea of a joke?”
“Of course it is,” snapped Dwalin, who had been looming behind Thorin and could contain himself no longer. “Either it’s a joke, or he’s a thief in league with the dragons, planning to slip away in the night after they line his pockets with our gold.”
“And who might you be?” inquired the hobbit, seeming unaffected by Dwalin’s ferocious scowl. “Perhaps you train Prince Thorin in tact? That would explain his utter lack of it.”
A coughing fit that sounds suspiciously like laughter erupted from Balin.
“I’m Erebor’s chief of security,” said Dwalin, with a sideways glare at his brother. “And I’ll be keeping on eye on you as long as you’re in the mountain, Baggins, so don’t go thinking you can make off with any treasure.”
The hobbit reached back into his pocket and pulled out a golden cup, just small enough to fit in the pest’s toothy maw. “However are the dragons managing it, then?”