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VIII. Lake-town

Athena had not expected to be stuffed into a barrel again anytime soon, but here she was inside one of the barrels on Bard's barge doing everything she could to keep her head down. Her neck was aching and her back felt like it was about to snap in half.

"Shh, what's he doing?" Dwalin asked Bilbo, who was able to watch Bard at the docks through a hole in his barrel.

"He's talking to someone. And he's... pointing right at us. Now they're shaking hands," he informed them all of what he could see and it didn't look promising for the company.

"What?" Thorin seethed through his words.

"That villain! He's selling us out," added Dwalin, the same anger in his voice at the thought that Bard had betrayed them.

Athena closed her eyes and held her breath as she heard footsteps steadily approaching them, waiting for them to be found and thrown overboard or worse — taken to the Master himself. Instead she was forced to cover her head when feeling dead fish being dumped over her head, flinching each time their slimy scales came into contact with any section of her skin. She cupped her mouth with her hands to leave a section free where she would be able to breathe, swallowing down the bile that rose in her throat at the stench encasing her.

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It had only been a few minutes but it was a few minutes too long for her, each second she was trapped in the barrel with the fish was another second that she felt closer to throwing up what little remnants of food lay in her stomach. She heard a muffled complaint from one of the barrels, unable to tell who exactly it was from the fish impairing her hearing, a subdued thump resounding over the barge moments later.

"Quiet! We're approaching the toll gate," Bard reprimanded them, everyone falling silent at his order.

"Halt! Goods inspection. Papers please," the gatekeeper called out before making his way down to Bard and his fish-filled barrels, "oh it's you Bard."

"Morning, Percy."

"Anything to declare?"

"Nothing, but that I am cold and tired and ready for home."

"You and me both."

Athena impatiently waited inside the barrel for Percy to inspect the papers, sighing in relief when he told Bard it was all in order. Her sigh turned into a groan of frustration when the approval was interrupted by somebody else, his voice alone was enough for her to dislike him. He sounded more like a weasel than a man.

"Not so fast. Consignment of empty barrels from the Woodland Realm. Only, they're not empty, are they Bard?" He stepped slowly towards the barrels that were being used to conceal the anxious company, "if I recall correctly, you're licensed as a bargeman not... a fisherman."

"That's none of your business."

"Wrong. It is the Master's business, which makes it my business."

"Oh come on Alfrid, have a heart. People need to eat!"

"These fish are illegal," he threw the fish he had taken earlier from Bombur's barrel into the water, "empty the barrels over the side."

Panic rose in Athena as she heard the guards making their way towards them, picking up two of the barrels and beginning to throw the fish back into the lake from where they had come from. It was only a matter of time before one of them would be discovered and at that point their journey could come to an abrupt end, to think of that happening when they were so close to their destination broke her heart. She was not listening to the conversation between Bard and Alfrid, instead she was too focused on the multitude of splashes that reached her ears as the fish from the barrels were poured overboard and went crashing into the cold waters below.