The sun had set only about an hour ago, as Balgolin left the Prancing Pony through the Hobbit door at the back. He had swung his rucksack casually over his back with only one strap over his left shoulder, and kept a tight grip around it with his left hand. His right was resting on his hip as he stood in front of the door, looking up in the sky and taking a deep breath of the cool and clear morning air.
“The time has come”, he thought.
It had been a few days since he had spoken to Givil and Dwimmer at the Pony. This man had been there too but it mattered not. Balgolin did not care much who joined him on his journey for as long as his two Dwarven friends would come.
He had spent the time between the meeting and now running some last errands. He needed his boots fixed, which had taken a thorn through the sole somewhere between the Ered Luin and the Breelands, and he didn’t want to get a blister too early on the way South – considering how much he disliked ponies, he planned on making the journey on foot and hence was rather certain that blisters would find him eventually.
Plus, he also had to get some rations, get some whetstones for his axe and get a new coat. He also went into the scholarly quarter of the town of men in order to find the most recent map both of the mines themselves, and the lands that lay between him and them. While he found a decent map of the Lonelands and a map that showed him the best way around Rivendell, the city of Elves, he could not find anything that lay beyond.
“So be it”, he thought, “I shall trust my big Dwarven nose.” He chuckled and scratched his conk, which had conveniently started to itch at that moment.
Balgolin stepped down from the stone landing and took the street towards the Western gate of Bree. He would then take the Greenway south towards the village of Arrowhaven, where he would be joined by his company.
And so his journey had finally begun, and as he started walking, a feeling of joy, excitement and anxiety began to fill him, and a huge grin swept over his face. Happy to be back on the road, he began whistling a song of old, before joining in with the words.
“Give me to the road
Across the plains
Towards the gold
Warm my heavy hands
My heavy hands
That left abode
Now the low lakes have frozen
Away from home I'll go
When the first snow has fallen
Away I'll go
Give me to the ground
I followed fires
Toward the sound
Cold upon the mountain
To which I'm bound”
