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Dwalin’s panicked appeals for help did not fall on deaf ears, for even as the young Dwarf cast about him in a near frenzy, Hænir was already moving about the room examining the bodies of the fallen. His practised eye noted the manner and shape of what little armour the savages wore, and he committed to memory where it was weakest. He stooped time and again to examine their weapons, picking them up and balancing them in his palm, assessing how they would best be used in battle. He saw that most of them had multiple blades hidden in small sheathes and pouches about their body, but that most of them chose to keep their knives in cunningly hidden leather sheathes that they hid in their sleeves. As he looked at corpse after corpse he began to note that for all the differences in their clothing and arms there was a single motif that was repeated again and again. Stamped in the leather of their shirts, engraved on the blades of their weapons and even tattooed into their skin, was the stylized image of a glowing sphere of light, with many shafts of radiance spilling outward from it. He had no idea what it meant, but he carefully filed the image away for further study.
So intensely was he focused upon the search of the dead that he did not notice the ringing silence of the hall until it was broken by the furious ringing of Dwalin’s heels upon the stone. The young Dwarf’s last words echoed through Hænir’s mind, and as Dwalin disappeared into the darkness of the passage down which the Rhûnians had taken Bali, Hænir sprang up from where he was crouching over the dead and rushed across the hall crying, “Why do you all stand there amazed and dumb? Bali has been taken by a cruel and savage folk; we have seen what they do with their prisoners! We cannot, nay we will not let him be taken!”
His grip on his axe tightened as he flew down the passageway behind Dwalin, and from behind he heard the sounds of the others start to follow.
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