Azog!
Smaug's furious roar rolled through the halls of the Lonely Mountain. For the first time in over a century, the dragon stepped out of his lair.
Azog had foreseen that if human intruders escaped the hoard, he would be the first to face the dragon's wrath. He left a handful of pitiful Orc slaves in the great hall as offerings and concealed his armies in the palace's recesses.
Smaug did not spare those trembling Orcs a glance. Dragonfire washed over them, and the stone floor became a sheet of charred corpses.
You cannot escape, humans. I smell Dwarf-stench on you.
Roaring, he surged for the gate of the Lonely Mountain.
When Smaug burst from the mountain, the entire peak shuddered.
His wings unfurled with a thunderous bellow. Pillars snapped in half. Granite bases shattered like eggshells.
Half of the great gate blew out into the air and shredded to gravel under the cyclone from his wings.
The carved reliefs of Dwarven kings on the cliff face were raked by five gouges more than ten meters deep. Stone rained down. Thrain's statue, father of Thorin, smashed to powder where it fell.
From within the mountain came a rolling rumble without end. The vault above the treasury collapsed like a storm and punched through the piled gold beneath. Hoarded treasure sloughed and slid. Coins and gems became a molten torrent pouring from the mountain's heart. Golden blood spilled from the gate in a glittering flood.
Smaug streaked across the sky. Thick cloud split into tatters, as if torn by a talon.
Dwarves in Dale saw him leave the Mountain. As the dragon-cry boomed nearer, old terror returned. Spears and axes shook in their hands.
Ori's shield slipped from his grasp and crashed to the ground. Dori and Nori looked his way. In its reflection, a dragon's shadow stooped.
Even Balin's heart seized. Smaug's dive toward Dale was the same as when he fell upon the Mountain. Nothing had changed.
Burned armor. Carbonized beards. Screams frozen in fire. All returned as cold sweat down Balin's back.
Smaug skimmed low over Dale's ruins, dragon eyes savoring the fear below. He roared again.
Thorin's ears rang. He heard Dwarven voices, not the living at his side, but the cries of kin who died in dragonfire 171 years ago.
He clamped his hands over his ears. Blood trickled from them. The phantom screams overlapped Smaug's roar and sent ice down his spine.
"Smaug!"
Thorin bellowed and heaved himself up. The Icerind Hatchet steamed in his grip.
Smaug climbed. His next dive did not pick Dwarves. He found more interesting prey.
A banner. The same red lion embroidered there as on the armor of the insolent men who had offended him.
Radahn's war-standard snapped from a tower of Dale.
Smaug hovered with terrible agility. His neck arched. A magma glow pulsed beneath his scales.
Thorin knew that posture too well. This was how his kin were burned to ash.
"No!"
He lunged to run toward the Redmane Legion, to raise a fog of ice with his axe and blunt the fire. He did not care if the breath boiled him away, or if Azog watched and laughed.
A blood-debt of 171 years boiled in his veins. Now Smaug was striking at his friend's army. He would charge into the beam of flame and bury Tarnes' gift, this axe, into Smaug's eye.
Dain hooked him by the waist plate with his hammer and barked, "Are you mad, Thorin! That is Smaug."
Fili and Kili, shaken by the dragon's sight, recovered and wrapped their arms around their uncle.
As Thorin turned, all Dwarves saw the tear tracks on his face. Tears melted by rage.
"Precisely because it is Smaug," he rasped, "it must end at Durin's hand."
Smaug's breath fell.
An orange-red pillar blasted toward the Redmane Legion. At the last instant a purple gravity field warped the flame and diffused it skyward.
In Smaug's widening eyes, a giant of a man in golden lion armor rose swiftly from the earth.
The uproar from the Mountain was visible even from Lake-town.
Tarnes had already received Radahn's message. Azog had begun his plan. He spurred hard with Gandalf and Bilbo toward Dale.
Thorin had left earlier for Dale after Tarnes wrote to Thranduil about his son in Lake-town.
Gandalf watched the dragon's arrogant silhouette with a grave face. Fingers tightened on the staff beneath the grey cloak.
"Smaug's commotion outdoes drumbeats at a Dwarf feast. Tarnes, are you sure Radahn can withstand him?"
Riding Torrent, Tarnes did not look back. "If you have breath for comparisons now, you already know the answer."
Gandalf cleared his throat. "I want a little certainty."
Tarnes sighed. "I had it, until you brought Bilbo. This is war between Dwarves and Smaug, and Orcs. Lake-town has suffered the dragon too. I have sworn to Thorin. But Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, has no reason to be dragged into this."
Gandalf glanced at the hobbit perched before him on the saddle. "He insisted on Dale, not on staying in Lake-town."
Bilbo, only just recovered from seeing a dragon with his own eyes, answered at once. "I do have reason. I signed Thorin's contract, remember. I have a feeling Thorin and the company may need me."
Gandalf gave Tarnes a there you have it look.
Tarnes opened his mouth, but Bilbo shouted, "Thorin is in trouble. Smaug punched a hole in the Mountain, and those black specks pouring out are not stones."
The hobbit stood on tiptoe in the saddle. Gandalf yelped and steadied him.
Bilbo did not heed it. His pupils mirrored a black flood surging from the mountain's foot. "Orcs and trolls. Azog is striking Thorin. And bats, a whole host of them. We must warn Thorin and Tarnes' troops in Dale."
Gandalf forced the hobbit back into the saddle. "Calmly, Mr. Baggins. Smaug's wrath is deadlier than Orcs. We are too conspicuous."
Bilbo breathed deep. "I know. But Thorin is at the front. Azog has a bat army from who knows where."
Tarnes said, "Just bats in the sky. Then do not worry. With Radahn there, nothing flies without his leave."
Even so, he pressed Torrent faster.
Elsewhere, Smaug eyed the man rising to meet him. He had never seen a human fly, let alone one so enormous.
Curiosity pricked him. He prepared to speak, intending to catch the human mid-word and melt him with flame.
He was curious, not foolish. From the first glance, he sensed danger wreathing the man.
At a hundred meters, a stone's throw for Smaug, he opened his jaws. "Interesting, little hu…"
And then his wings were seized by gravity and bound. The human stared at him like a dull beetle.
Radahn raised both hands. Smaug's titanic body stopped dead in the air. His wings thrashed and could not break the purple bonds. He plummeted toward the waste near Lake-town.
Smaug roared earth-shaking terror. Golden pupils burned with disbelief.
Boom.
His bulk slammed the ground and shook it to its roots.
Radahn's brow knit as he hovered. As expected, gravity behaves oddly in this world. By weight alone, that fall should have killed him.
Below, Smaug writhed and cried out. His wings were warped and broken at grotesque angles, but his head and limbs were sound.
Flightless, yet on the ground, still a dragon.
Impossible.
For the first time, shock tinged his roar. His eyes fixed on Radahn's hovering silhouette.
He tried to launch again. Wing-ache crushed the attempt. The weight of the air grew stranger. Even lifting his head demanded effort. Panic crept in.
Radahn descended and hovered near the lowered head. He slowly drew the Starscourge greatsword.
"Welcome to the ground, lizard," he said, without feeling.
Smaug's panic vanished. His head snapped up, and a long-banked furnace poured straight at Radahn.
Heat snapped Radahn's cloak. He crossed the greatsword. Purple gravity waves ripped out from him.
Smaug's right side, claw, and rib sank three meters as if an invisible giant hand pressed him into the earth. The flame sheet hissed past Radahn instead of through him.
Smaug used the very pressure pinning him. His tail, a steel whip, lashed left toward Radahn. Golden eyes locked on the man who shamed him.
Radahn snorted, drew down, and cleaved. Sword met tail with a crash like thunder.
The force hurled Radahn back dozens of meters, but Starscourge bit deep and left a bone-revealing gash along the tail.
Smaug did not scream. He lunged on all fours, jaws gaping for the man who had not yet steadied from the blow.
Gravity hammered his skull again. His bite slewed aside. Fangs scraped Radahn's breastplate and threw sparks.
Die.
Smaug's dragon-tongue clawed at Radahn's mind. The blood-dripping tail swept again with suffocating force.
It met a boulder-sized orb that had not existed a heartbeat before, a rock clutched into being by gravity and hurled back into the blow.
Shards of stone around them rose into a swarm and, under Radahn's control, rained like meteors upon the dragon.
Smaug answered with fire. Breath met stone in midair and burst them into a cloud of blazing suns.
On Dale's wall, Millicent, who had not returned to Lake-town with Tarnes, watched with a set face.
When Radahn and Smaug reached their fiercest exchange, she could stand it no longer and moved to vault the battlements.
A hand caught her—it was Freyja's.
Millicent stared at Radahn's knight. "Why stop me?"
From beneath the lion-helm came a muffled reply. "Because the General needs no pity. He said he would face a dragon himself."