Smaug the Magnificent
“My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords,
my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”
The Hobbit C12
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Smaug was one of the large fire-drakes, who came out of the North in the second millennium of the Third Age of Middle-earth. Perhaps the last of the great worms of the ancient world. His origins are unknown, but he was surly one of the evil spawn of Morgoth and having escaped the War of Wrath, the dragon hid in the wastelands of the north, until the rumor of gold lured him to the Lonely Mountain.
He came upon the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain at unawares, attacking Dale first and then smashing into the gates of Erebor killing everyone in his path. After taking the Mountain and its treasure as his own, Smaug laid waist to everything within miles of the mountain, and then he crawled slithering into the black hole, that was once the mighty Gate of Erebor. He gathered the dwarven treasure hoard into a vast mountain of gold, upon which he slept. His greed for the gold knew no bounds and he defended it with teeth, claws and fire.
In the year 2941 of the Third Age, a throng of Dwarves gathered in the home of one Bilbo Baggins to plan a quest to retake the Mountain and destroy the dragon. One would never have imagined that such a fools errand, would end with the death of the mighty Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies.
There was a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Smaug.
One day he flew up into the air and came south. The first we hear of it was noise like a hurricane coming from the North, and the pine-trees on the Mountain creaking and cracking in the wind. Some of the dwarves who happened to be outside( I was on luckily ~ a fine adventurous lad in those days, always wandering about, and it saved my life that day.) ~ well from a good way off we saw the dragon settle our mountain in a spout of flame. Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire. By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming. The dwarves rushed out of their great gate; but the dragon was waiting for them. None escaped that way. The river rushed up in steam and a fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them and destroyed most of the warriors ~ the usual unhappy story, it was only too common in those days.
Then he went back and crept in through the Front Gate and routed out all the halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages. After that their were no dwarves left alive and he took ail their wealth for himself. Probably, for that is the dragons’ way, he piled it all up in a great heap far inside, and sleeps on it for a bed.
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘An Unexpected Party‘
In the lamp-lit shadows of Bag End, Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves studied Thrór map of the Lonely Mountain…
On the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.
“This map was mad by Thrór, your grandfather, Thorin,” he said in answer to the dwarves’ excited questions. “It is a plan of the mountain.”
“I don’t see that this will help us much.” said Thorin disappointedly after a glance. “I remember the Mountain well enough, and the lands about it. And I know where Mirkwood is, and the Withered Heath where the Great Dragons bred.”
“There is a dragon marked in red on the Mountain,” said Balin, “but it will be easy enough to find him without that, if ever we arrive there.”
“There is one point you haven’t noticed,” said the wizard, and that is the secret entrance. You see that rune on the West side and the hand pointing to it from the other runes? That marks a hidden passage to the Lower halls.”
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘An Unexpected Party‘
Bilbo feeling small and frightened crept down the long dark of the tunnel from the secret door until he came to it’s ending.
Before him lies the great bottom-most cellar or dungeon-hall of the ancient dwarves right at the Mountain’s root. It is almost dark so that it’s vastness can only be dimly guessed, but rising from the rocky floor there was a great glow. The glow of Smaug!
There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.
Smaug lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly to one side, so that the hobbit could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long laying on his costly bed. Behind him where the walls were nearest could dimly be seen coats of mail, helms and axes, swords and spears hanging; and there in rows stood jars and vessels filled with a wealth that could not be guessed.
… the sleeping dragon lay, a dire menace even in his sleep.
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘Inside information’
As Bilbo made his way down to the Dragons den once more, he discovered the Dragon was waiting…
Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more then a whiff of unseen steam, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid of Smaug’s left eye. He was pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance! Hurriedly Bilbo stepped back and blessed the luck of his ring. Then Smaug spoke.
“Well thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare.”
Bilbo was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. When ever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.
“Now I am old and strong, strong, strong, Thief in the shadows” he gloated. My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘Inside information’
The coming of the Dragon was like a storm…
The horrible sounds of Smaug’s anger were echoing in the stony hollows far above; at any moment he might come blazing down or fly whirling around and find them there… and then danger was upon them.
A whirring noise was heard. A red light touched the points of standing rock. The Dragon came.
They had barely time to fly back to the tunnel, pulling and dragging in their bundles, when Smaug came hurtling from the North, licking the mountain-sides with flame, beating his great wings with a noise like a roaring wind. His hot breath shriveled the grass before the door, and drove in through the crack they had left and scorched them as they hid. Flickering fires leaped up and black rock-shadows danced. Then darkness fell as he passed again.
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘Inside information’
Bilbo felt a terrible fear as the sun began to set and urged the dwarves to enter the tunnel, before it was too late.
They had hardly gone any distance down the tunnel when a blow smote the side of the mountain like the crash of a battering-rams made of forest oaks and swung by giants. The rock boomed, the walls cracked and stones fell from the roof on their heads.
He was breaking rocks to pieces, smashing wall and cliff with the lashings of his huge tail, till their little lofty camping ground, the scorched grass, the thrush’s stone, the snail covered walls, the narrow ledge, and all disappeared in a jumble of smithereens, and an avalanche of splintered stones fell over the cliff into the valley below.
Smaug had left his lair in silent stealth, quietly soared into the air, and then floated heavy and slow in the dark like a monstrous crow, down the wind towards the west of the Mountain, in the hopes if catching unawares something or somebody there.
“They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!”
From The Hobbit in the chapter ‘Inside information’
“There is something about you. Something you carry, something made of gold… but far more PRECIOUS.“
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