Everyone fell silent again, and then Bilbo had a brilliant idea. "Have the horses been fed? Maybe we could try feeding it to them?"
The group of dwarves immediately exchanged glances, and gradually an expression of "that's a good idea" appeared on their faces. "Great idea! Bilbo, you're a genius!" Bofur exclaimed, slapping his thigh.
"Can horses even eat that?" Dori asked sceptically.
"Why not give it a try? It's better than wasting it." Nori had already stood up and headed toward the cauldron.
So, under Karl's watchful eye, the dwarves poured the cooled paste into a trough and mixed it with hay. The horses approached, sniffed, hesitated for a moment, but eventually lowered their heads and began to eat. Though they ate more slowly than usual, at least they didn't refuse, so the problem was "solved."
As night fell, silence settled over the camp. The dwarves, wrapped in blankets, slept by the fire, their snoring rising and falling. Gandalf sat leaning against a tree trunk, eyes closed, not as close to the fire as the dwarves. Bilbo muttered something in his sleep, probably dreaming of orcs. Karl was on watch duty. He sat by the main fire, occasionally adding wood to keep the flames going.
His thoughts wandered; from what he remembered, a group of orc scouts should have appeared. Thorin and his companions couldn't fully conceal their whereabouts, as the orc chieftain Azog was constantly pursuing the dwarf prince. But so far, an unusual silence surrounded them.
"Strange, have we taken a wrong turn?" Karl wondered. He closed his eyes, slightly enhancing his super senses and covering a radius of several kilometres. Countless sounds rushed through his mind: the chirping of insects, birdsong, the whistling wind rustling through the rocks...
Then he heard a dozen heartbeats, stronger than those of ordinary wild beasts, coming from the southeast, about three kilometres away. This was accompanied by the howling of wild beasts and the cries of ferocious wolves.
"Hmph, found them." Karl raised an eyebrow, a slight smile appearing on his lips. He stood up and, in the blink of an eye, silently crossed dozens of metres to reach the middle of the cliff opposite the camp. Standing on the rocks halfway up the mountain, Karl lifted his foot and pressed down lightly on the ground.
"Thud." The sound was very quiet, but a vibration spread from his feet. The entire cliff trembled slightly, and loose stones and dust fell from the rock face. Such vibrations were almost imperceptible to humans, but they were enough to trigger a chain reaction in structurally unstable rock formations. Karl managed to apply the right pressure to several key support points. It was like carefully removing the bottom block when demolishing a stack of building blocks.
After all this, he mentally returned to the camp, sat down again by the fire, and picked up a log to throw into the flames. The entire process took less than a second, so fast that it seemed as if he had never left. Almost simultaneously, Gandalf, who had been in a drowsy state, frowned slightly and opened his eyes. He looked around in confusion, his gaze sweeping over the sleeping dwarves before finally resting on Karl. Karl was tending the fire, the light playing across his calm face, everything as usual. Gandalf stared into the void for a few seconds, then shook his head, deciding it was just his imagination.
---
More than ten minutes later, in the middle of the opposite cliff, five orcs, riding ferocious wolves, were advancing along a narrow rocky ridge. They were tall and strong, with pale skin, wearing crude leather armour and wielding scimitars and short spears. The wolves they rode were larger than horses, with coal-black fur and eyes gleaming with ferocity.
The orc chieftain was quite large, with a scar running diagonally from his forehead to his chin. He twitched his flat nose, sniffing the air. "Across from me, I smell short, shaggy root-grass, and... the scent of horses and some food," he said hoarsely.
A half-orc behind him licked his lips: "Hehe! Smells better than what we usually eat."
"Shut up! We're here to scout, not to eat!" the chieftain snarled.
The group continued along the rocky ridge for a while, and in the distance, the faint glow of a campfire could be seen. The orc chieftain raised his hand, signalling a halt, and squinted to get a better look at the camp. But the distance was still too great, and they could only vaguely make out more than a dozen humanoid figures lying on the ground around the fire.
"Go and report to the master that we've found traces of those short fellows, about fifteen of them, and their location..." the chieftain said to the half-orc behind him. However, before he could finish speaking, a violent tremor suddenly shook the ground beneath his feet.
It was not just a slight jolt, but a shaking of the entire rock layer. The stones groaned under the strain, and cracks spread across the ground like a spiderweb. "Oh no! This ridge is unstable, get out of here as fast as you can!"
But it was too late. "BOOM!!!" The rocky ridge split in the middle and shattered into pieces. The orcs cried out in terror, trying to make their ferocious wolves leap away. However, the wolves also panicked and began to leap wildly, only hastening the collapse.
"AAAAAHHH!"
"AWOOO!!"
The screams, the howls of the wolves, and the roar of tumbling stones merged into one. Several orcs, along with their wolves and most of the collapsed cliff, plunged to the bottom.
Back at the camp, Karl sat by the fire, a satisfied smile spreading across his face as he used his forcefield to muffle the sounds. After all this, his perception returned to normal levels. Then, as if nothing had happened, he threw another log onto the fire.
---
As dawn approached, Karl woke Kili and Fili and relieved them from watch duty. The two, still half-asleep, crawled out from under their blankets, rubbed their eyes, and yawned. Karl gave a few brief instructions, then headed to his bedroll. Though he didn't need to sleep or eat, he still had to pretend a little, since everyone else did.
Kili and Fili sat by the fire, initially drowsy and nodding off. But as day broke, they gradually came to their senses. Fili stretched, his gaze casually sweeping over the surrounding landscape, and then he froze. "Oh my! Kili, look over there!"
He lowered his voice and elbowed his brother beside him. Kili looked in the direction he was pointing. Opposite the campsite, where there had been a sheer cliff the night before, only a bare rock face remained. The prominent rocky ridge and the platform in the middle had vanished, as if a giant had scooped out a large chunk with a spoon. The ground was littered with gravel and dust, stretching all the way to the edge of the cliff. Clearly, a massive landslide had occurred there.
They stared at each other with wide eyes, shock and confusion mirrored in each other's gazes. "How could it have suddenly collapsed in just one night? It was clearly still there last night..." Fili muttered. Kili rubbed his eyes and looked again. "Maybe we're seeing things? Has that cliff always been like that?"