The dwarves were formally brought before the Elf King by a whole army of well-organized and well-armed Elf guards.

Perhaps in the eyes of the elven guards, this group of dwarves couldn't help but look terrible. Even under their short and stocky bodies, their spirits and bodies were frighteningly weak due to some strange reasons.

Along the entire journey from the entrance to the Elf Kingdom to the noble royal court belonging to the king, the dwarves seldom made any sound except for necessary exchanges, and there was never any unnecessary struggling.

Faced with such a group of strangely behaving dwarf captives, even the elf guards who claimed to be well-informed couldn't help but become interested in their identities, and some even started discussing them in amazement in front of everyone.

These private arrogances will not be expressed in front of the indescribably noble king of the elves.

When they saw the king's tense eyebrows, all the elf guards lowered their heads. In this dark forest, no elf dared to touch the king's troubles, ever!

Seeing the extremely weak and desolate posture of the dwarves, even the proud king couldn't help but feel a sense of contempt at this moment. He quickly waved his hand to signal the elf guards to loosen their hands on the dwarves: "It doesn't matter, let go. Everyone. How can a few weak dwarves escape from my kingdom?"

In the next half hour, this noble king interrogated each dwarf in detail, asking where the dwarves came from, where they were going on this trip, the true identity of their leader, etc. .

After a round of strenuous questioning, the Elf King naturally found nothing. Faced with such a group of dwarves who were as tight-lipped as a mountain, even as arrogant as he was, he had to give up such a pointless questioning.

The already weak dwarves soon lost their patience under the king's long and unceremonious interrogation, and each realized that they seemed unable to get a few meals or even other help from the elves in front of them.

With their hope of having a full meal in vain, the dwarves suddenly became more and more impatient, and they didn't even bother to do the superficial courtesy.

In other words, the dwarves who had not drank or eaten for several days had undoubtedly reached the limit of their physical strength at this moment, but the Elf King, who knew nothing about it, felt some kind of unspeakable shock because of the rude behavior of everyone. insult.

Soon, the conversation between the elves and the dwarves became tit-for-tat. As for harmony, they had long been thrown away nine days away!

"Damn it, did we do something wrong? Why did we become your prisoners just for walking in the forest?"

As the eldest of all the dwarves in the expedition team here, the old dwarf Balin stood up and spoke on behalf of everyone: "You have been so cruel and indifferent to us since the moment we met. Is it possible that you have been chasing us and biting our butts?" , are the army of evil spiders that vow to take away our lives your captive gatekeeper? If you are with those beasts that don’t understand human language, then we have nothing to say, you can kill them if you want!"

Bahrain's unceremonious questioning obviously greatly dampened the proud king's self-esteem.

Whether it was the pride of being an elf king or being the master of the kingdom that captured the dwarves, the angry king did not intend to treat the dwarves too kindly at this moment. On the contrary, he planned to severely dampen the dwarves' spirit.

"Wandering in the forest without our permission is a crime! This forest is our territory. Here, we are the masters, and you are just a group of bandits who come to disturb the master's life without saying hello.

Vulgar guests of etiquette. Well, I will imprison you until you clear up your stupid brains and prepare to tell me your ulterior dark purpose and whereabouts. At that time, maybe I can still be kind and give you

You are free again!"

After saying these words of rebuke, the Elf King instantly returned to his previous aloof attitude.

Then, before the frightened dwarves could continue to argue, the king waved his hand and asked the surrounding elven guards to take the dwarf captives into prison. From the beginning to the end, the arrogant but thoughtful elves did not allow Thorin to be captured as well.

The news was revealed to the dwarves.

The only thing that was lucky was that the elves gave all the dwarf captives the food they deserved.

With a complicated mood of depression and a bit of filling their stomachs, the dwarves could only eat in their respective prisons one by one, holding their hands in their arms and eating a meal that was not very exquisite.

For a moment, it seemed that even this group of dwarf companions, together with the surrounding elf guards, had forgotten the existence of Bilbo who was wearing the invisibility ring.

.....

Poor Mr. Baggins, he hid in that cave for a long time. He never dared to take off the ring. Even when he was hiding in the deepest and darkest corner, he didn't dare to sleep. In order to pass the time

, he began to poke around in the palace of the Elf King. Magic blocked the door, but if he was fast enough, he could still escape in time.

In order to gather as much information as possible, Bilbo followed the elven patrols in and out of the enchanted door more than once, taking the huge risk of being discovered.

Of course, in order to conceal his existence as an invisible man, Bilbo did not dare to go in or out close to the elves. Even with the invisible magic ring, he would leave a shadow in the sun. Likewise, if he got too close to the elves,

He might accidentally be knocked out of invisibility by the elves at some point...

For his own safety, Bilbo was naturally cautious in everything he did.

In the few times he went out, he found nothing new. He was unwilling to abandon these dwarves. In fact, he didn't know what to do without them.

It was impossible for him to keep up with the hunting elves on foot, so he never found the way out of the forest; whenever he sneaked out of the cave, he could only run around in the forest boredly, worried that he would get lost again, and struggled

Waiting for the chance to go back.

He cannot hunt, so he can only starve outside the cave; when he is inside the cave, he can also make a living by stealing food from warehouses or tables when no one is looking.

"I'm the only one left. How pitiful. I've been just an ordinary hobbit in the past few decades! Now it's up to me, an extremely ordinary little hobbit, to save this group of people who have fallen into trouble many times.

The dwarves who were captured in the cage... This is a joke played by God on me. It would be great if Gandalf were here. Alas..."

He often hoped to find a way to notify the wizard to come and help, but of course, this was completely impossible. He soon discovered that he had to solve all this alone.

Finally, after a week or two of sneaking around, he finally took the risk to find out where all the dwarves were imprisoned through a stupid method - that is, tracking all the elf guards.

Among them, even the location of Thorin, who had been hidden among the elves and imprisoned secretly, was discovered by Bilbo.

So with this unexpected discovery, Bilbo finally found the right opportunity to get in touch with Thorin, the tough and wise leader of the dwarves.

With Bilbo's help, Thorin was able to secretly pass his message to the other dwarves. Bilbo told everyone that Thorin was also imprisoned nearby, and no one could carry out this mission until Thorin gave the order. Tell the king the purpose.

After learning that Thorin, the leader who had been missing for a long time, was also here, the dwarves suddenly regained their confidence.

Let's look at Bilbo again. He is not as confident as the dwarves. He doesn't like the feeling of being relied on by everyone, and he also hopes that the wizard is around to help him. However, he understands that this is useless, Gandalf Maybe they've already reached the other side of Mirkwood.

Knowing that he could never rely on Gandalf, who had been away for a long time, Bilbo could only revive his morale and began to try to use his invisibility ability to run around to rescue the dwarves from prison...

One day, when Bilbo was exploring around, he made a great geographical discovery that was very helpful for him to carry out his escape plan to save the dwarves: the gate was not the only entrance and exit to the Elf Kingdom, the elves also left another one at the bottom of the palace. A river leads to the outside world, and there is a water gate where the underground water flows out of the cave.

The roof of the cave there is very low, almost as high as the water surface, and there is also an iron gate that drops straight down to the river bed. That gate is one of the main transportation routes for everyone.

However, somewhere in the tunnel, directly below the cave, there is a large trap door, which leads directly to the king's wine cellar, which is filled with barrels of wine; the wood elves finally He likes wine, and the king of all people is addicted to wine.

Of course, due to various reasons of climate or geography, the elves cannot grow grapes or make wine here. All the wine at the banquet and many items in the palace were traded with human towns through the underground river. !

Then with the huge advantage of being invisible and convenient for gathering information, Bilbo didn't spend much time discovering the trap door on the underground river.

Naturally, he also figured out the specific trade situation between the elves and human towns.

It sounds like there is a quite prosperous human town there. This floating town is built on an island in the lake. It relies on bridges to communicate with the outside world and avoid enemy attacks. These barrels are transported up from the long lake along the dense forest river. . Sometimes these barrels were tied together to serve as rafts, and sometimes they were loaded on large flat-bottomed boats.

When the barrels are empty, the elves will drop them through the trap door, open the water door, and the barrels will flow along the river to a protruding river bank downstream, near the eastern edge of Mirkwood. People will be there Collect the barrels, tie them together, and float back to the entrance of the jungle river into the long lake, where the human town is located.

Bilbo sat on the ground, pondering everything about the water gate, and wanted to confirm whether he could use this as a way to escape. Finally, in desperation, he finally came up with an escape plan.

The prisoners had just finished their dinner. The guards left along the tunnel, taking the light of the torches with them, plunging the cells into darkness. Bilbo heard the king's steward say good night to the captain of the guard.

"Please come with me," he said, "let's try the wine that was just delivered from the wine cellar today! Speaking of which, it's really cold today. If you don't drink a few drinks to warm yourself up, you'll be sorry for the damn bad weather.

Got it!"

"Okay, okay, that's how it should be!" When he heard that there was wine to drink, the guard captain's face suddenly burst into laughter: "I heard that this batch of wine is going to be presented to the king? Then we have to share the king's worries and try it first.

The quality of this wine is already known, so we can’t just let the king drink some bad wine without trying it beforehand? Haha!”

While the two high-ranking dwarves were drinking and laughing over the wine, Bilbo, who had been wearing an invisibility ring, listened to their conversation.

It has to be said that the information inadvertently revealed during the conversation between the two elves at this moment was of great help to him. Especially when he heard that the elves might need to hold a grand banquet tonight, Huo, who was eager to save the dwarves, was even more worried.

Bitsnitch strengthened his confidence in his escape plan.

He followed the two elves until they walked into a cellar and sat down at a table. There were two large cups on the table. Soon, everyone started chatting and drinking happily.

Bilbo's luck is really good, only very strong wine can make the wood elf drunk; it seems that this barrel of wine is produced from the great winery of Dovinion, not the weak wine usually given to servants and soldiers.

It was a fine wine that was drunk in small cups at the king's celebrations. The butler's method of drinking booze was a complete waste of this wine, but it also gave Bilbo and his party an excellent opportunity to escape.

After a while, the captain of the elf guard who was greedy for alcohol began to drink and passed out. After a short time, he lay on the table and fell asleep.

The king's steward on the other side continued to talk to himself for a while, not paying attention to the other person at all. Soon he began to feel sleepy, and later he fell down next to his friend and started snoring.

Seeing that both elves fell asleep due to greed, the hobbit immediately stepped forward and quietly sneaked beside them. The key on the captain's body immediately changed hands. Bilbo flew towards the cell. The hope of freedom for his dwarf companions was at this moment.

It all depends on the key in his hand!

After arriving at the prison, Bilbo opened Balin's door first. As soon as the dwarf came out, he carefully locked the door. You can imagine how surprised Balin was, but he was still happy to leave the small stone prison and prepared to stop.

Ask questions to find out what Bilbo wants to do and what his next plans are.

"Listen to me, we have to hurry up and escape! If you have any questions, we'll ask them after we get out. Now is not a good time to answer questions!" The hobbit's anxious mood immediately stopped Bahrain's various questions.

Next, Balin cooperated with Bilbo to rescue all the dwarf prisoners.

Finally, twelve people gathered behind the two people—that is, all the members of the expedition team.

Due to long-term imprisonment and the influence of darkness, these guys were all clumsy. Whenever one of them stumbled in the dark, or muttered a complaint, Bilbo felt that his heart was about to beat out of his chest.

"Can't these stupid dwarves be more reliable now that they're here?"

I don't know if they heard Bilbo's complaints, but the dwarves didn't have any big problems like before.

The process of escaping can be said to have been very smooth. No one encountered a single elf guard along the way.
Chapter completed!