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Gandalf immediately whipped around to face the source of the sound, slowly moving toward Pippin, his dread growing with each echoing crash. Finally, the noises ended, and the silence prevailed for a few moments more as everyone waited. A collective sigh escaped the company when no sounds of their enemy seemed forthcoming. Snapping the book shut with a thud, Gandalf turned on the young hobbit responsible for the noise. "Fool of a Took!" he spat, putting down the book. "Throw yourself in next time, and rid us of your stupidity!" He snatched back his effects and turned around, meaning to quickly lead the company out of the chamber before their luck ran out.

Doom.

Gandalf froze, then slowly turned back around.

Doom.

Drums...drums in the deep... The haunting words Gandalf had just read echoed through Barbossa's mind. His hand instinctively drifted to the hilt of his sword.

Doom DOOM.

The drumbeats began increasing in volume and frequency as chilling cries rose up from the depths. Aragorn turned toward the open door, half-expecting to find that the orcs were already upon them. The sense of foreboding he had had the entire journey was now increased tenfold, and it was growing difficult to ignore nagging suspicion that they would not all escape these mines alive.

As the drums rolled beneath them Sam whirled in time to see Sting glowing blue as Frodo drew it from its sheath. "Frodo!" he exclaimed involuntarily, groping for his own weapon. Faint scrabbling noises - he couldn't decide whether in his imagination or no - seemed to fill the spaces between drumbeats. Doom. Doom. It seemed to be predicting their destiny. Sam shuddered.

Merry whipped around in alarm, drawing his small weapon with an ease somewhat surpassing Sam's. He sprang forward until Legolas caught him - "Stay back!" the elf warned, and was gone, leaving a much more alarmed hobbit. Stay back from what? He moved back, crouching slightly, readying himself to use his weapon.

The sounds increased and Legolas darted towards the open doors, narrowly escaping falling into his native tongue in his alarm. "Orcs!" he shouted - involuntarily answering Merry's unspoken question - hands flying to his quiver of arrows faster than sight could follow, as Boromir ran to barricade the doors. He jerked back as an arrow missed his face by inches - a barbed, black-fletched goblin arrow. Behind him Legolas was already shooting, his first arrow bringing a gurgling scream from the darkness beyond the door.

Boromir glanced once over his shoulder, attempting to shove the heavy doors closed. He and Aragorn managed it just as a monolithic figure came into view and deep bellows like rock rending apart could be heard resonating through the chamber. Bracing the doors with whatever came readily to hand Boromir whirled with a terse, "They have a cave troll."

Legolas was already tossing spears and axes to the pair to aid them in further blockading the doors, firing split-second arrows in between as orcish weapons broke through the aged wood.

"A cave troll?" yelled Elizabeth through the noise. Whatever it was, it did not sound good, judging from the frantic reaction of the Fellowship. "What's a cave troll?!"

She sprang to catch one of the weapons Legolas was tossing to his comrades, and he let her have it with little more than a fractional raise of his eyebrows. Too much going on to ask about women fighting.

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"Get back!" Aragorn shouted to the Halflings. This would have been directed at Elizabeth as well, but she had already exhibited a determination to fight, and he had not the time to argue. "Stay close to Gandalf!"

As Gandalf quickly ushered the Hobbits into a far corner, Aragorn cast down the torch he had been carrying and rushed to aid Boromir in blocking the door.

"A cave troll," Gandalf explained to Elizabeth, once he had successfully organized the Hobbits behind him, "is a mountain-dwelling creature with a hide not unlike the stones amid which it lives. What it lacks in intelligence, it makes up for in size and brute strength, making it a very dangerous foe when provoked. Orcs have been known to enslave trolls and torture them, then release the brutes to wreak havoc upon their opponents. You would do well to avoid it at all costs."

Having fortified the doors as best they could manage, Aragorn and the others fell back to stand by the tomb. Both he and Legolas had their bows drawn, prepared to open fire the moment an orc made it through the door.

"Hector-"

"Barbossa!"

"-it would be prudent if those who could not die fought at the front of the battle," Aragorn admonished.

At this, Barbossa merely cast a dark glare in Aragorn's direction and stopped where he was. Truth be told, he had just been in the process moving to the front himself, but he had no intention of doing so now. Petty? Maybe. He'd been called worse things in his years. "I prefer my current position, thank you."

Aragorn was on the verge of a retort when Gandalf cut in. "Silence! There will be orcs enough for all of us soon enough, and likely more than we would wish. Position will mean little after they have filled the chamber."

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The drums pounded in the deep, curiously synchronized to the blood pounding in Gimli's ears. Orcs in Moria? He'll show these filthy scum the true meaning of vengeance! With a bellicose roar he leaped onto his cousin's tomb and twirled his axe in both hands. "Let them come! There is one dwarf yet in Moria that still draws breath!"

Boom. One strike on the fortified door. Wood splinters sprayed across the chamber. Gimli bent his knees in preparation to spring. He glanced sidelong at his comrades, Aragorn and Gandalf with weapons braced, Legolas with bow nocked. Even the tallish woman with the name he couldn't pronounce looked ready to fight. She had mettle, that lass. Perhaps she wasn't so bad after all.

Boom. Again. And again.

The door burst asunder. Howling and brandishing stout weapons, Orcs flooded in like a black tide. And lumbering behind them, a juggernaut of destruction, more ominous than the Orcs by far... Gimli bellowed a war cry and hurled his throwing axe. The blade spun over its handle, lodging in the cave troll's kneecap. The behemoth hardly slowed. Roaring in fury, it swung its mace into the stone floor with force enough to make the chamber quake.

"Come taste m'blades, ye stinkin' laddies!" Battle axe hefted, Gimli plunged right into the fray.

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Legolas was still positioned squarely on top of the tomb, hands moving in a blur from quiver to bow and back again. Arrows were effective against orcs in general but they seemed to bother the troll no more than an insect might, and he leapt back after loosing only a few.

Mayhem ensued in the enclosed space, hobbits scattering in every direction as the troll thundered forward. The hobbits were not the only ones scattering. One instance of crumbling stone as the troll's mace hit home was enough to make all in attendance very anxious to avoid the same happening to them.

Sam had managed to stay close to Frodo - or acceptably so under the circumstances - and he was feeling good about himself in a harried sort of way. The feeling evaporated entirely the moment he turned to find a mace seconds from splitting him open. Before even Sam knew what he was doing he'd darted between the troll's legs, amazed that he hadn't stumbled and been gutted, and for lack of a weapon groped frantically and smacked an oncoming orc between the eyes with a skillet. "I think I'm getting the hang of this!"

Boromir slashed left and right with his broadsword, round shield blocking the onslaught of several orcs, and whirled in time to snatch Merry by the collar and haul him bodily out of the path of the troll's mace. Man and hobbit tumbled aside, missing decapitation by a hairsbreadth.

Elizabeth could hardly believe her eyes. Of course, there was very little time to believe or disbelieve them, especially when every moment threatened sudden and painful death. The spear Legolas had tossed her proved handy in ways she hadn't anticipated - such as alerting her of oncoming orcs when she whirled and the handle struck something solid and alive. This had happened several times now, and she was sure that her heart was never going to stop hammering frantically.

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Barbossa didn't have time to reply to Jack's comment, as at that very moment the doors burst open. Making a mental note to accidentally stab the younger pirate at some point during the fight, he quickly drew his own sword and plunged into the battle.

Aragorn fired a few arrows into the horde of orcs swarming into the chamber before discarding his bow and taking up his sword instead. With a cry, he met their opponents head-on, quickly dispatching two orcs with his first stroke. He spun around to find himself faced with another leering orc and neatly removed it of its head. Three down, several hundred -at least- to go.

Gandalf's focus remained, as before, chiefly on defending the Hobbits, though that didn't stop him from taking down his own fair share of orcs as they surged around him. He wielded his staff and Glamdring in a deadly combination, continuously alternating between which was used for defence and which was used to attack and thus serving to further confuse his foes.

Barbossa looked up suddenly from slaying yet another orc as a creature easily twice his own height charged into the chamber with a deafening roar-- presumably the 'cave troll' to which Boromir had been referring. It certainly looked deadly enough, though at least it currently seemed to be just as intent on destroying orcs as it was on destroying the Fellowship. As long as they stayed out of its way, the beast might almost prove helpful.

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((Frodo, just a note: Elizabeth already had received a weapon from Legolas ))

Legolas leapt up onto what had once been a narrow balcony-like ledge around the chamber, whirling so that his knife sank into the belly of the nearest orc. He spun twice more, knives gleaming, and had the briefest pause in which to notch two arrows and fire them at the bellowing cave troll. Steps led up and he ascended in one leap, knife spinning in on hand and bow still grasped firmly in the other. One - two more orcs fell to that knife and then the troll was upon him, flailing with a length of chain that sent fragments of stone pillar flying. The elf sank into a crouch to avoid it, watching that chain hurtle through the air -

Aye, he'd been right. It spun around a pillar, locking into place, and Legolas paused only momentarily to test the taut chain before running lightly across it to perch on the troll's shoulders, deftly notching an arrow and firing down into its thick skull. The behemoth lurched dangerously, bellowing, and he jumped groundwards to avoid its flailing limbs.

Elizabeth threw herself out of the way of the descending elf and whipped around to slam the butt of her spear into the midsection of an approaching orc. She felt something ruffle her hair as it flew over her head and whirled to see it had been Legolas - shooting at what -

She realized a moment later when that huge mace thundered down a hairsbreadth from crushing her. A hand caught her wrist and Legolas jerked sharply, sending her stumbling past him as the troll lumbered forward. He remained there until it was almost on top of him, firing faster than sight until flinging himself out of the way.

Having picked themselves up, Merry and Boromir went separate directions into oncoming hordes of orcs. To his own complete surprise Merry sank his blade to its hilt into two of them before Sam came hurtling in with a saucepan in one hand and his blade in the other. The two of them collaborated briefly on the next three goblins.

Boromir hefted his shield, goblin weapons clanging against it, and chopped sideways with his blade to send an orc's head rolling. There seemed no end to the tide, though the troll was flailing enough to send its own allies flying into the stone walls. Deftly he leapt into sight of it - taunted, moved backwards - and flung himself aside as it swung, sweeping a band of six orcs off their feet and crushing two or three.

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Unfortunately, to the troll's rock-like hide, a pointed spear had little more effectiveness than, say, a splinter, serving only to irritate the beast and send it into an enraged search for the one responsible. The creature whipped around furiously, its club catching an otherwise-occupied Barbossa in the process and sending him flying into one of the stone walls. A brief assessment -he'd become quite familiar with his own skeletal structure in the past few years- told of one, maybe two cracked ribs on his left side and a small gash -scarcely even bleeding- over his eye where a sharp rock had grazed him. All in all, not too bad. Casting it aside mentally, he was immediately back on his feet and plunged back into the battle with increased fervor, if favoring his left side a bit more than before.

Aragorn, meanwhile, was occupied with narrowly avoiding two orcish blades as their respective wielders worked together (at least, to the degree that orcs were capable of doing such) in a determined attempt to decapitate him. Ducking under one of the crude blades, he drove his own sword into one of the orcs, then borrowed the dead orc's scimitar to quickly dispatch the second one as well. As he was pulling his sword back out of the first orc's torso, he spotted an orc sneaking up behind Boromir -who was indisputably holding his own, but nonetheless seemed a bit preoccupied with things other than the orc that was about to literally stab him in the back- and hurled his borrowed weapon across the room. The scimitar spun through the air and lodged itself deeply in the advancing orc's throat. Nodding briefly in Boromir's direction, Aragorn quickly freed his own blade and moved on to his next opponent.