The river has calmed down, and the dwarves paddle along in their barrels with their hands. Thorin asks "Anything behind us ?" Balin tells him "Not that I can see." Thyri shouts "I don't see anything." Bofur shouts "I think we've outrun the orcs." Thorin shouts "Not for long. We've lost the current." Dwalin shouts "Bombur is half drown." Thyri shouts "Make for the shore ! Come on, let's go !" The dwarves and Bilbo paddle to the riverbank. They climb out onto a slab of rock jutting out a bit into the river. Dwalin says "Come on !" When Kili is on the rocks, he falls to his knees in pain from the arrow wound in his thigh. It has been bound with cloth, but blood is seeping through. Thyri looks at him concernedly. Kili tells her "I'm fine, it's nothing." She examines his leg. Thorin tells him "On your feet." Fili tells him "Kili's wounded. His leg needs binding." Thorin says "There's an orc pack on our tail. We keep moving." Balin asks "To where ?" Bilbo answers "To the mountain. We're so close." Balin tells him "A lake lies between us and that mountain. We have no way to cross it." Bilbo says "So then we go around." Dwalin replies "The orcs will run us down, as sure as daylight. We have no weapons to defend ourselves." Thorin tells Thyri and Oin "Bind his leg, quickly. You have two minutes." Thyri realized that Thorin changed.
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While they bind Kili's leg, some of the dwarves sit down and Ori kneels by the river to empty his boot of water. Unbeknownst to them, a man sneaks up over the pile of rocks and aims an arrow at Ori. As the dwarves realize a man is there, they jump up, and Dwalin, holding a branch, leaps in front of Ori. He raises the branch and begins to charge the man, but the man shoots his arrow and it embeds itself right in the middle of the branch, between Dwalin's hands. Kili raises a rock to throw, but the man shoots the rock out of his hand too "Do it again, and you're dead." Balin, who is standing near the edge of the group, sees a barge floating in the river behind the man. He talks to the man, approaching him slowly with his hands held in the air "Excuse me, but, uh, you're from Laketown, if I'm not mistaken ? That barge over there, it wouldn't be available for hire, by any chance ?" The man lowers his bow. He climbs aboard his barge as the dwarves approach "What makes you think I will help you ?" Balin tells him "Those boots have seen better days." The man begins loading the dwarves' empty barrels into his barge. Balin continues "As has that coat. No doubt you have some hungry mouths to feed. How many bairns ?" The man answers "A boy and two girls." Balin says "And your wife, I'd imagine she's a beauty." The man replies "Aye. She was." Balin's smile fades "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" He is interrupted by Dwalin whispering loudly "Oh, come on, come on, enough with the niceties." The man asks him "What's your hurry ?" Dwalin asks harshly "What's it to you ?" The man replies "I would like to know who you are and what you are doing in these lands." Balin tells him "We are simple merchants from the Blue Mountains journeying to see our kin in the Iron Hills." The man asks "Simple merchants, you say ?"
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