Day One
When Dain gave Thorin his solemn word to "take care of Bilbo Baggins", Dwalin was right there by Thorin's side, pressing down on the wound on Thorin's thigh with his bare hands, trying in vain to keep all that blood in Thorin. Even though Dwalin heard the short exchange between the two cousins from word to word, he didn't suspect anything to be amiss.
Which was one of the three reasons why he reacted the way he did when Balin eventually managed to pry him away from Thorin's side and out of the royal tent only to inform him in a hushed voice that, due to a misunderstanding, Dain had almost beheaded their hobbit. The second reason why Dwalin, after hearing Balin's words, marched straight to Dain and shoved the unsuspecting lord quite violently down onto the hard ground was the fact that Dain wasn't the only person that Thorin had asked to take care of Bilbo.
The third reason why Dwalin did what he did... well, Thorin certainly wasn't the only one that had grown to care about the hobbit. Bilbo Baggins had many friends and Dwalin considered himself to be one of them.
"I have every right to take his life," Dwalin argued while Balin clung to his axe, refusing to let him strike Dain, the coward who, a misunderstanding or not, had tried to harm someone under Thorin's protection – that in itself was an insult worse than any slander ever could have been. "According to the Guardian Laws," Dwalin insisted, "I – as Thorin's Most Trusted Warrior – am entitled to present Thorin with Dain's head on a plate for the way he-"
"Do not q-quote the laws to me, b-brother," Balin interrupted, his teeth chattering audibly as Dwalin tried to shook him off the axe. "If one of us is f-familiar with the legislation, it's me and we both k-know it. We both also know that now, of all times, is not the t-time for us to c-create any kind of political inconvenience. I am certainly not defending Lord D-Dain's less than u-unpleasant actions but we are now acting on Thorin's behalf. We c-cannot begin his rule b-by killing his cousin, the honoured Lord of the Iron Hills! Think of what you are d-doing, Dwalin! At this point, violence simply is not an o-option."
"Listen to your brother, son of Fundin," wheezed Dain from where he was laying on his stomach, pinned firmly on the ground by Dwalin's conveniently placed foot. "I admit that I made a mis- a horrible mistake, but if you kill me, my followers will turn against Thorin and that would be very inconvenient to everyone, most of all to Thorin."
Under Balin's serious gaze and faced with the truth of Balin and Dain's words, Dwalin had to reluctantly relent and refrain from beheading the unreliable bastard. Noting the change in Dwalin's manner, Balin immediately snatched the axe from his hand and put it behind his back, taking a few cautious, shaky steps backwards, breathing heavily from the exertion.
"When justice becomes an option once more, brother dear," Dwalin said gruffly, removing his foot to release Dain, "be sure to let me know. An insult has been offered, consequences must be faced."
"I will put things right," Dain declared, scrambling up to his feet. "I meant no offense to anyone, least of all to my honoured cousin. And to my defence, I had, in fact, planned on the halfling's execution to be quick."
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Dwalin asked in a low, threatening voice, stepping closer to loom over Dain. "Because of you, Ironfoot, Baggins now thinks falsely of my king, of his friend. Of his friends, plural. He thinks that we are after him. He is under the impression that we want to see him harmed."
"Now, now, Master Dwalin," Dain said, smoothing down his clothes with slightly trembling hands. "Once we find the hobbit, everything shall be explained to him. No lasting damage has been done, as you will soon surely see yourself."
"No lasting damage, my arse. Have you ever tried to locate a hiding hobbit, Lord of the Iron Hills? Because I have, in three separate occasions, and I know for a fact that it cannot be done. If Baggins doesn't want to be found, he won't be found."
Dain snorted, shaking his head in a disbelieving manner, while Balin placed himself carefully between the two dwarves.
"I find it difficult to believe that a mere halfling could avoid an entire army of dwarves," Dain said with mild amusement. "But not everyone can be good at tracking, I suppose, so do not feel ashamed of your lack of skill, Master Dwalin. I am certain that you are worthy in... some other area."
"Dwalin is excellent at tracking," said Balin, ignoring the sneer on his brother's face. "If he says that Master Baggins can be difficult to find, then Master Baggins is nearly impossible to find. In any case, I believe that we all agree that the need to locate Bilbo Baggins is one matter that should not be mentioned to Prince Thorin, at least not quite yet. There is enough on his mind as it is, with the young princes so gravely injured... Prince Thorin needs to lay still and heal, not run around as he would do, if he found out about this... situation. We certainly don't want him to try to get up."
On that, Dwalin and Dain agreed, eagerly in Dain's case, hesitantly in Dwalin's.
"If something happens to Baggins because of this, Thorin will never forgive any of us for not telling him."
With that, Dwalin turned away from Balin and Dain, focusing his mind on gathering the rest of the Company so that they could begin to look for their missing hobbit. Balin would, with no doubt, be too focused on politics and rebuilding arrangements to be able to help Bilbo, which meant that Dwalin was to be in charge of Bilbo's search. Dwalin had promised Thorin to take care of the hobbit and he was determined to keep his promise – there was little else he could currently do for Thorin.
"I've had enough of you, Dain Ironfoot," Dwalin was careful to spit over his shoulder, like any honourable warrior would have. "Stay out of my way, if you know what is good for you."
Dain raised his eyebrows.
"Under any other circumstances, Dwalin, younger son of Fundin, I would have your tongue for speaking to me like that."
They all knew that he would have, too, just as they all knew that it would have costed Dain both of his ears and at least one eye.
Ori had been mildly wounded, Dwalin knew, as he had been the one to carry the scribe to the healing tents with Dori who hadn't left his little brother's side since, and Oin spent all his time with the wounded. Despite of six members of the Company staying in the healing tents, Dwalin could still see several of his friends gathered close together at the edge of the silent battlefield. Bofur was sitting on a dead orc, holding his unlit pipe between his lips with a faraway look upon his face, while Nori, Gloin and Bombur were standing beside him, apparently arguing whether it was disrespectful to bet money on which one of the Durins would get back to their feet first. Bifur was busy collecting cords from the clothing of the dead orcs, tying the pieces together and winding them into a tight ball, but upon noticing Dwalin, he abandoned the task and hurried to sit next to Bofur on the fallen orc.
It was anything but pleasant to explain to the five battle-weary dwarves what Dain had almost done to their hobbit. As Dwalin told them of the events that had taken place not an hour ago, Bifur and Bofur sprung up to their feet and all five dwarves huddled around Dwalin, bristling with anger, letting out curses in Khuzdul and Westron, signing several more curse words in Iglishmêk, and just generally making their displeasure known.
"He tried to what?" cried Gloin even though he had listened to Dwalin's words very closely and thus now well knew what Dain had tried to do. "Ironfoot tried to do what to Bilbo?"
"You call that a 'misunderstanding'?" demanded a seething Bofur from no-one in particular. "That is no 'misunderstanding'! That's an attempted murder! Misunderstanding my gtsuk-a-lêghar!"
"Gtsuk-a-lêghar indeed," agreed Bombur, but Bofur wasn't done yet. "To think that such a precious life, Bilbo's life, could have been wasted like... like... Simply unforgivable! I, for one, will be demanding satisfaction on Bilbo's behalf!"
Dwalin grumbled and folded his arms, causing his biceps to bulge out.
"If anyone will be fighting Ironfoot for this," he grumbled, "it will be me. I reserve the right to retaliate – if Thorin is not yet able to do it himself, that is."
Nori muttered his agreement.
"If Dain is going around executing defenceless, injured, confused beings without even bothering to have the execution orders in writing," he said in a low voice, " we might as well make Dain defenceless and follow his cowardly example by-"
"Please don't finish that sentence, Nori," Bombur said, wringing his hands. Nori spit on the ground, a discontent look grazing his worn features. "We are all very angry over what has happened, but now is not the time to seek revenge, nor justice. The line of Durin is gravely injured, while their kingdom is waiting to be rebuild. An army of dwarves has to be fed... Oh, there is so much to be done, so many things to be arranged. We cannot cause any trouble, not right now! All we can now do, lads, is to focus all our attention on finding Bilbo before anything even more awful happens to him."
"Easier said than done," snorted Nori, beginning to pace around the five other dwarves. "Eru, if Bilbo doesn't want to be found, he cannot be found. Have we not learnt that by now? We cannot find him! We will not find him."
"In any case," said Bofur, leveling Dwalin with a suspicious, narrow-eyed look, "before I even begin to help anyone to find my friend, I want some guarantee that he won't be harmed. How can I be certain that this isn't some plot of Thorin's? The last time I saw Bilbo and him talking, it wasn't in friendly terms at all, to put it mildly."
There were murmurs and quiet grunts of speculation. Dwalin resisted the urge to defend Thorin's honour and gritted his teeth instead.
"I swear by my beard," he declared, which was an oath enough to make the other dwarves fall silent and a pacing Nori to come to a halt. "I swear by my beard and by Thorin's beard that Thorin doesn't want any harm to come to Bilbo. The dragon sickness left him the moment he heard of the wounds of his sister-sons, and since then, he has been quite regretful of his actions."
The six dwarves studied each other for a long while, all of them trying to assess where the other five stood with the situation. Eventually Bifur began to sign that he, at least, believed that Dwalin was speaking the truth. This prompted Gloin and Bombur to mutter their agreement as well and even Bofur gave a hesitant nod.
"Yes, fine," Nori was the last one to say. "I believe you. But that doesn't remove our original problem: when Bilbo doesn't want to be found, he cannot be found."
"Perhaps he can..." mused Bofur and five sharp gazes were immediately focused on him. "Come on, lads, we're friends with him now! Looking for him now won't be like it was when we looked for him the last time, or the two times before that. By now, we know him. Bilbo might not exactly want to be found by us, but we can use our knowledge of him to find him. We now know that he's a clever fellow. We know how he thinks. If we take all that we know about him into consideration, we just might be able to find him."
"Aye!" Gloin agreed, brightening up a bit. "We shall think like Bilbo Baggins and thus we shall find him!"
"He could be hiding anywhere," Nori pointed out in his characteristically dry manner. "Or have you forgotten all about his magic ring already? He could be standing literally right next to us and we wouldn't notice him."
All six dwarves looked around. Dwalin reached out with his hand and made a few grasping motions, just in case Bilbo might have been close enough to be touched. Unsurprisingly, he didn't catch Bilbo like this. Had the hobbit even been there, he hadn't been standing by Dwalin, at least.
"We shouldn't be wasting our time in this manner," Dwalin said impatiently, letting his arm fall to his side, clenching his fists with barely-contained frustration. "We should be searching for Baggins already!"
Bombur nodded, all of his chins giving a jolt due to the sudden movement.
"Out of the six of us, you are closest with Bilbo," he said, addressing his words to Bofur. "Tell us, how, exactly, are we supposed to think like him?"
"That's easy enough," mused Bofur. "We'll just imagine we're hobbits."
Without further ado, he knelt down onto the blackened ground to make himself shorter. After exchanging quick looks, the other dwarves all followed Bofur's example and crouched down as one, tilting their heads a bit as they studied their surroundings. None of them questioned Bofur's advice, as the toymaker was closest with Bilbo and thus knew more about hobbits than any of the other five did.
Still, they all knew Bilbo well enough to understand that if they wanted to find the hobbit, more than a little stealth and intelligence was needed. Bilbo was clever, very smart, and they had to be even more so, if they wanted to locate their missing friend. It was as good of a tactic as any to begin the search by trying to think like a hobbit – it was better, at least, than just running around without any kind of a plan, hoping to collide with an invisible halfling just by chance.
Dwalin frowned in concentration. He touched his bald head, trying to imagine what it would feel like if the bareness was covered with curly, soft-looking locks of hair, if there was smoothness on his chin instead of the familiar, long beard. He focused his mind on wriggling his toes in his boots to get a better understanding on what it was like to be a hobbit with wriggling toes. He even went as far as to imagine that he had a lace handkerchief in his pocket, but then a violent shiver ran down his back and he had to abandon that particular line of thought, imagining, instead, that he liked gardening, even though he didn't actually know any other flower but grass by name.
"Now," Bofur continued once they all had had a moment to think of themselves as hobbits, "if you were a hobbit hunted down by dwarves, where would you hide? Where would you go if you were Bilbo?"
Dwalin scowled, as he looked around the battlefield from his crouched position.
"To the elves," he said reluctantly. "Baggins is too naive and trusting for his own good. He might seek for Thranduil's aid in a situation such as this."
All six dwarves winced at the truth in Dwalin's words.
"Those pretentious tree-shaggers!" Gloin growled, sneering. "If Bilbo is going to elves, a fate worse than an execution is waiting for him. Unlike him, we certainly know what elves are capable of – we must save our hobbit!"
"I could sneak into the elven camp," Nori suggested bravely, chewing his nails in a contemplative manner. "Although I don't actually think that Bilbo has managed to get that far. According to Balin, Bilbo has a head injury and you don't walk far with those. Bilbo would have fallen unconscious long before reaching the elves and I believe him to be clever enough not to try to risk something like that. He must be somewhere reasonably close. He's probably resting and trying to treat his wounds somewhere nearby, wearing that ring of his."
"This is all Dain's fault," Bofur said with frustration, making an angry gesture with his pipe. "If something happens to Bilbo because of him..."
"-then I shall kill Ironfoot," Dwalin finished. "No matter how politically inconvenient."
"None of us will let this slide," Nori agreed.
"Enough of this useless blabbering," Gloin said, rising to his feet. "The longer we talk, the further away Bilbo can get. We need to find him as soon as possible. His head injury might be serious and it's certainly not getting any better with him running around."
"Someone should guard the water barrels," Bombur said with a frown, as Gloin and Dwalin prized him up to his feet. "At some point, Bilbo will need to get some water. If we keep a subtle eye out for the barrels and suddenly notice one of them unplugging for seemingly no reason at all, we might be able to find him, even if he is invisible. Another place Bilbo might want to visit is Fili and Kili's tent, so someone should observe the tent flaps as well. It's not currently that windy, so if the flaps move without anyone touching them, it's probably safe to assume that it's Bilbo causing them to move."
"Bilbo is smarter than that," Bofur said with conviction. "If we want to find him, we will need to look into places in which no-one would ever come to think he would be hiding."
"And what could those places be?" Dwalin inquired, although his eyes had narrowed and he was already observing one of the manure-covered disposal pits that had been dug in the ground in order to have a place for all the waste an army of dwarves would produce. Could Bilbo be hiding in one of the disposal pits? No-one would think to look for him in there, at least.
"Generally, I mean places in which a scared hobbit would never go," Bofur explained. "I don't know what, exactly, those places could be, but I think that that's where Bilbo would be a situation like this. He would never think anyone would choose to hide in an uncomfortable or a scary place, so that's where he would go, thinking that no-one would come looking for him in there either."
"So we just need to think about places that Bilbo wouldn't want to go in in a situation like this?" Nori summed up with a curt nod. "Sounds easy enough. Thorin's tent, for one, must be a scary place for Bilbo at the moment. Besides, Gandalf is in there, so it's all the more reason for Bilbo to try to enter."
"Yes, definitely," Bofur agreed. "Someone needs to keep an eye for Thorin's tent, as well as Fili and Kili's tent and the water barrels. Any other places Bilbo might hide?"
Bifur had, it seemed, come to think of many places where Bilbo could be, but he had no patience to share his thoughts with the others and so he simply stood up and walked away, apparently determined to begin the search on his own.
Dwalin wriggled his toes and stroked his bald head, imagining it was covered with soft locks.
"Baggins might be hiding among the deceased," he eventually mused, doing his best to think like Bilbo. "If that is the case, he would most likely be laying somewhere among orcs or wargs, as that is where no-one would be looking for their deceased kin."
"The water barrels, Fili and Kili's tent, Thorin's tent and the battle field, especially the areas with orcs and wargs," Bofur listed. "We'll start with those. Nori, you can keep an eye for the water barrels and Fili and Kili's tent. Dwalin, you should go to Thorin's tent. The rest of us can search the battlefield. Try to look friendly and as approachable as possible, so that if Bilbo happens to see you, he might be encouraged enough to say something to you."
"We shall do our best," they all said, and thus began the search for the hiding hobbit.
Dwalin was swift with his steps when he walked back towards Thorin's tent. The whole situation and his own helplessness frustrated him to no end. He could do nothing for Fili and Kili and all he could do for Thorin was to try to find the hobbit that wasn't supposed to be missing in the first place.
If only Dwalin could have released some of his frustration by attacking Dain, by simply killing that unreliable bastard! Shouldn't have been too hard, considering the way the guilty lord had sent most of his guards to look for Bilbo. Dwalin didn't really care how desperately Dain was trying to mend the situation, as nothing could change his opinion of the Lord of the Iron Hills. What a coward, trying to behead defenceless hobbits like that!
And what a fool, trying to behead their fierce little hobbit.
Dwalin never realized he had just brushed by their hiding, fierce little hobbit, terrifying the poor thing into almost passing out with his vengeful mutterings.
A/N: Poor Bilbo, I've left him hiding in that pile of wargs for such a long time. Next chapter, there should be Thorin.
