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I've only seen The Battle of Five Armies once, in theaters, and can't recall the exact sequence of events during Smaug's attack on Laketown or much of the dialogue, so please forgive any errors in that regard. A warning for semi-graphic descriptions and threats of violence, with some strong sexual undertones. Smaug is a narcissistic psychopath, after all, and a voracious serial killer.

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I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the
warriors of old and their like is not in the world today.
— The Hobbit, Chapter XII, "Inside Information"

· · ·

He was enjoying the sport of town-baiting more than he had enjoyed anything for decades when he saw the man. Tall for one of his kind and dark of hair, the man stood alone atop a bell tower and bent a great black longbow, face grim. So unexpected was the sight that Smaug stopped short of setting ablaze the entire row of buildings—what fools be these miserable tub-trading Lakemen, to build their homes of tinder!—and instead banked high for another pass, marking in the sea of smoke and flame below the bowman's perch.

No arrow or blade could pierce his hide, armored stronger than tenfold shields of iron. Even Girion, Lord of Dale, had failed at the last. His cursed Dwarvish contraption and black arrows proved no match for fire and claw; he'd died choking on blood, flesh charred to a ruin and half his body crushed. This bowman, whoever he was, would fare no better than Girion or any of the others who dared defy Smaug that day at their lord's command, his weapon as useless as theirs. And when his courage withered, hopeless and forsaken by all, Smaug would be ready.

With a roar, Smaug dived again, wings opening to catch a rush of air that smelled of hot, burning things. He lashed a watchtower with a whip of his tail. Wood splintered, the flimsy structure collapsing in his wake to the sound of screams, same as did Dale's walls of stone. This heap of rotting timbers was a bare shadow of Esgaroth of old, however, which had been lesser than Dale.

Let this aspiring hero try his luck! He had thought the Men of this time cowards, every one, scheming with a pack of greedy Dwarves who were themselves too fearful to face him without trickery to rob him in the night, but perhaps there was a warrior of some mettle in this rabble. Oakenshield had been sadly disappointing and a nuisance, no matter how nice the manners of his bought thief were. The years of exile, it seemed, had beaten the boldness of the proud prince who'd charged Smaug, sword in hand, into a caution that would skulk about hidden from his sight and ambush him rather than truly test his strength.

At least this bowman would serve as an entertaining diversion while he destroyed the town. There were acres of woods, fields and pastures to sear into ash later, which he had never relished as much as hunting live prey, yet was necessary if the escaping townsfolk were to be trapped in their boats—easy pickings. It'd been so long since he tasted the tender meat of a maiden, and he missed it.

Smaug swept in arcing flights past the bell tower and over it, flames streaming from his maw. Each time he drew close to the bowman, an arrow would follow, deflecting off his scales and hindering him no more than the bite of a gnat. Do you see now? He lazily stretched his neck and spread his wings, muscles rippling. The golden coins and precious gems encrusted across his belly should flash in the glow of the fires; he hoped his would-be slayer appreciated the rare view, as it was to be the man's last in this world.

Five arrows, ten, fifteen—each hit its mark, trying different spots on his breast, the joints of wing and chest in search of a weakness. Each bounced harmlessly away, for no such weakness existed to be found. Smaug rumbled, amused and, he could admit, growing intrigued. His guess had been that the bowman's nerve and aim would falter long before his quiver emptied, but it was a steady hand still that loosed these arrows to the direction of a sharp eye, futile as the effort was.

To Smaug's surprise, he felt a stirring in his heart that he had not in an age. Not since before the world was broken. The slow, faint pulse that had begun when he was woken from his deep slumber by the curious thief of many titles and secrets throbbed stronger, harder in his veins until it pounded in his very bones, a low drum calling him to battle, and it excited him. How glad he was to have left his lair in the Mountain! Whatever trouble that might cause him, if Oakenshield and his bumbling band of helpers hatched another cowardly plot, it was worth this moment. Ah, Smaug felt young again!

Once he had flown with hundreds of his brothers and sisters at his side, the mass of their bodies blotting out the sky as they descended upon the host of the Lords of the West, Ancalagon, the mightiest of their kind, in the lead. While that day was lost and most slain, their dark Master cast down by His enemies, it had been glorious to see even so great a force retreat in terror before them, shining armor scorched black as their fire cooked the wearers alive. The rock beneath cracked and melted in the heat; the air above thrummed and writhed, fanned by countless wings. His blood had sung. Filled with power and purpose.

He'd been locked in combat with two Eagles when Ancalagon fell. Dismay had stricken his brethren, their foes given renewed strength. Smaug escaped the slaughter that followed—he remembered fondly the crunch of snapping bone between his jaws, sweet blood warm on his tongue and in the gaps of his teeth, as he mauled the wing of one of his attackers to break through the encircling ranks—though not wholly unscathed. The gouges in his flank left by the second Eagle's raking talons were long in the mending. But he went undisturbed, once he fled into the northern wastes. There he brooded for years unnumbered.

A darting star, so bright it burned his eyes to look upon it. Yet a glimpse of it he caught, as it arrowed towards Ancalagon's heart trailing light, silver and gold and stranger hues more marvelous than could be conceived. Within its blinding, coruscating nimbus was a silhouette: the blurred form of a man at the prow of a ship the likes of which he'd never seen then or after.

For centuries, Smaug could not understand the pang of envy that rose in his gullet whenever he thought of that man, crowned with a star. He certainly did not wish to meet with Ancalagon's ill fate. Only in his age did he realize what his younger self had yearned for was a worthy match, and by then it was too late. The last of the great fire-drakes was he, his kind diminished, but so were Elves and Men and Dwarves. Their kingdoms spent, their lines broken, neither their blades nor their wills forged of the steel of old, they could do pitifully little to challenge him.

While gobbling up the occasional company of hapless adventurers with delusions of stealing from his treasure hoard was satisfying, in a fleeting way, nothing could compare to the heady pleasure of standing claw to toe with a true valiant in a contest, to the death, of not just wits but arms. Perhaps, mused Smaug, this bowman merits a closer look. He already tired of watching vermin scrabble around the doomed town. Though their panicked shouts of alarm still brought a smile to his lips as he glided in a wide turn out over the lake to admire his night's work so far, the wind of his passage rocking their boats on waves capped in lurid reds and oranges.

It seemed the man had run out of arrows, for none greeted Smaug as he approached the bell tower. Despite this, the man lingered and had, in fact, been joined by another. No matter. Both would die. With a single, practiced swipe of his hind legs as he flew past, Smaug ripped the top off the tower, the bell dropping from its mount with a heavy clang that set the remaining struts creaking. He landed. Rather gingerly, some distance away, until he was sure the shoddy houses and boardwalks of this miserable town wouldn't buckle entirely under his weight; he had no desire for a swim in the cold waters of the lake, which would quench his fire. Then he waited, for the bowman to show himself. A strange twist of eager anticipation ruffled his wings.

Finally, the bowman climbed warily to his feet from the wreckage. A shock of recognition jolted Smaug, the ridges and spikes that crowned him flaring. The man's poor cloth belied his almost noble mien. Something in the shape of his eyes, the angle of his jaw and slope of his brow was nigglingly familiar, and gripped tight in his hand was... A black arrow!

Smaug's claws twitched, crumpling a chimney and scraping down a roof in a clatter of dislodged shingles he paid no mind to. Could it truly be...? A scion of Girion's house, come to avenge his forefathers! What an unexpected treat!

Oakenshield's doings he had learned of from emissaries of his once Master's chief lieutenant. After he deigned to hear them, that is, bored of eating them, their meat stringy and flavorless, their squealing as he killed them a bother. It had not been difficult to guess that Oakenshield would one day come to reclaim the Mountain, but this...

"Who dares defy me?" asked Smaug, chuckling low in his throat. Girion's heir was younger than Girion had been and not so skilled at masking his thoughts. Etched plain in the lines of his face was his fear as well as the grim resolve that had steadied his aim. He flinched at Smaug's voice and, oh, how pleasing it was to sense his disquiet, a shudder he couldn't hide, even as he fought to hold his composure under Smaug's gaze.

Brave enough to trifle with, Smaug decided, and his lips curled back into a smile he knew to be edged with teeth like swords. The man's breath quickened, until Smaug fancied his heart hammered against the inside of his ribs fit to crack his chest open—tell me your name, so that I might bespeak you properly—but the man kept his silence, instead bending to root frantically through the debris atop the tower. For a bow that had been split in twain.

Ah, that look of despair! Impure as it was, touched by the wild hope of one who would deny his doom. Such expressions Smaug had seen on the faces of other Men, Elves and Dwarves, women, children, some from afar and some from within the cage of his claws, but this man's... He wanted to savor it, drinking in distilled courage and desperation in equal measures, like the fine wines aging in Erebor's cellars that he had no use for. A sudden whim seized him then. I shall take you, he thought of the bowman. Whose soot-streaked features—high, sharp cheekbones he could peel the skin from, slow and careful—contorted at his taunts, his boasts, though these were mostly reflex now that his attention was bent less on his words than on his soon-to-be prize.

He had dallied with living possessions before, if not for many generations of Men and never for very long. Young maidens fair stolen from Dale when its people were yet so foolish as to believe he would suffer their presence in the city and, for a few memorable decades, who were offered as sacrifices by a particularly spineless Master of Laketown to appease his rumored monstrous appetites. Lovers and husbands, fathers and brothers occasionally tried to rescue their womenfolk, always convinced he despoiled his meals before he ate them, and he'd kept those men he caught, too, after he broke them in body and mind.

Well, until they succumbed to their wounds, delirious from pain and thirst, or he grew hungry. He hissed, discontented. It would not do to have this bowman die so early. Even now, the man struggled against his fate, jamming the snapped halves of his bow into the tower's splintered struts and stringing the crude weapon thus made. As if such a thing could do Smaug harm where Dwarven ballistas had failed!

But it was that will to resist him Smaug wanted to test. The man might just prove a greater amusement than the woman who had come to him as a tribute in her sister's stead, over a century ago. She had armed herself from his hoard and lasted weeks in the maze of Erebor's cramped side passages before he caught her, and she'd been naught but a too-poor fisherman's daughter. Not nearly so... interesting as this bowman, the proud blood of kings. His face was calm, eyes bright and piercing, as he pulled the other with him up by the hand.

Smaug regretted gutting that woman, as her body spasmed on the floor at his feet. Men were so fragile it was a mystery to him that their race continued to persist; he meant only to restrain her from fleeing him again. The high, rattling whine of her dying breaths, her hands slipping on the bruise-dark ropes of entrails she tried in vain to press back into place—it had sounded like a laugh to his ears, mocking.

This time, he promised himself, he would watch where he sank his claws. This time, he would corner the man at the end of each chase but gently so, to force his prey to his bed of gold. There he would lay the man down, trapped by his coiling bulk, and lick the salt of abject terror off the man's naked skin. He would bleed his pet until the trembling limbs flush against his scales above and his treasure below left thick smears of red, then maybe take a little nibble here or there. A finger or a toe or two. Choice bits and bites he carved from the man's yielding flesh.

Would the man scream? Cry and wail, begging him for a mercy he didn't have in him, as so many others, less remarkable, had? Smaug thought he'd rather hear this bowman try to stifle his agony—soft, helpless noises wrenched unwilling from deep within him. Mouth watering, Smaug felt the points of his teeth with his tongue.

And when the man's wounds had scabbed over, his shaking stopped, body grown accustomed to the ache, Smaug would feign sleep and allow him an escape, so that the hunt could begin anew. There was no way out of the Mountain for that which did not fly, except... Smaug's mind turned all of a sudden to Oakenshield and his companions, who Smaug had no doubt were cowering deep in some hole, waiting for him to return. Once he sealed the front gate again, they, too, might be shut in the Mountain.

Mayhaps that would make my bowman even sweeter. He had not noticed until now, but the other with the man atop the tower was a mere boy not much taller than Oakenshield's thief. The man was crouched in front of the boy, drawing the boy's gaze away from Smaug with a hand on the boy's teary cheek, the black arrow held low in his other hand. Smaug snorted, slightly miffed. He did not care what false assurances the man offered the boy, only about how the man's focus dared stray from him. Then he smacked his lips. Oakenshield's thief had been ready to die, if it could forestall his vengeance upon the Lakemen.

"Is that your son?" he wondered, idly but for a flexing of his jaw. He was rewarded with a deliciously fierce look from the man, fey and fell as any warrior of ages gone—answer enough! Smaug rumbled, satisfied.

Yes, when he returned to the Mountain with his prize, he would call for Oakenshield's thief and make that curious creature his servant, upon the condition of sparing the man's life. A few threats, a splattering of blood across bare stone, and Oakenshield won't be able to bar his thief from rushing forward straight into Smaug's clutches, weak of heart.

Flattery and a pair of clever hands to staunch blood, bind wounds, play go fetch—keeping his bowman alive. The thief, guilty and fearing that he'd vent his wrath on the man, would refuse to leave, of course, no matter how the man pleaded. And with another's life at risk, the man could never seek the release of death. Countless such scenes he'd witnessed: brothers who put on brave faces for their sobbing sisters, though their smiles were slashes in broiled meat; wives who lied to their dying husbands, telling that he was vanquished when his breath blew hot on their skin. Fathers who clasped their children close to shelter them from the sight of him.

What fools these mortals be! Petty and blind! Why, if Oakenshield truly cared for his lost thief, he might send the rest of his hapless followers to Smaug a few at a time in attempts at rescue that would avail them nothing. It'd been long since he tasted Dwarf, too. His captives' expressions of horror would be a succulent treat, when he finally ripped Oakenshield's head from his shoulders.

Perhaps, Smaug thought, heat building in his belly, he'd let the corpse rot sprawled upon a pile of gold and pin his bowman beside it, impaled squirming on one long, sharp claw, his muzzle streaked red and sticky with gore. All while the thief watched. He arched his neck, more excited than he could remember being in decades. But first... With a mighty beat of his wings, he took to the air again.

The flames bent to him, smoke whipped into eddies by his flight, but Smaug was pleased to note the man did not. He had nocked the black arrow to his makeshift bow. Unflinching, the man tracked Smaug as he wheeled higher into the sky for a swooping attack, though the arrow's shaft rested balanced on the boy's shoulder.

Would the man's control at last crack when Smaug plucked his son away from right before his eyes? The boy, too scrawny a morsel to sate his hunger, as most children were, Smaug would break in two and throw to the fires below to burn with the town. His grief-stricken father shouldn't be hard to overcome then.

Men, Smaug reminded himself, are fragile things, as he turned in his dive to skim the rooftops. While the black arrow he dreaded not—and why ought he, when two, three had hit him, loosed by Girion from a far fitter weapon, to no effect?—the disappointment of killing the man in trying to claim him would be bitter to swallow.

Had Ancalagon felt the same? Hesitated in moving to destroy his foe, rapt? Smaug was surely luckier than he. This bowman had the mettle to face a dragon but not the means to best one so great as Smaug. He may, however, have to spend some time swiping at the man with his tail, until his prize was too battered to fight him, dazed or unconscious. Piqued at the thought of delay, he purposely dipped to score the side of a row of houses with his clawed wingtip as he sped towards the tower.

White light crowned the man's head as behind him the moon rose above the clouds of ash and soot blanketing the town; the length of the black arrow gleamed silver, drawn back and held steady by straining arms. There was a cold glint in the man's eyes. Smaug smiled to see it, suddenly not begrudging the trouble of taking him. A worthy match...

The bowman let fly the black arrow. Straight and true, it traveled, so quick Smaug couldn't react, though he hadn't intended to shy. It was a shock of icy metal spearing into his breast. How?! No arrow could pierce his armor! No blade!

Pain and anger made him clumsy; he clipped the tower, toppling it in a shatter of wood. He did not see where the man or boy fell. Whether the man lived still, for he vowed to make him hurt a hundredfold for this injury! He climbed, gasping for air. Tearing pangs spread from the arrow lodged in his chest with every flap of his wings.

Opening his mouth to roar his vengeance, so that the bowman might know terror, he found that no sound except a high, rattling whine, barely audible to his own ears, came forth. His throat tightened; his limbs stiffened, numb.

And Smaug realized there would be no retribution. Not now nor later. Not ever.

He fell, shot through the heart.

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END