Hiccup Haddock the third was in an exceptionally bad mood. Berk's gold was lost, Dragon's edge was still partly in ruins from the battle with the hunters, Astrid had smiled at this Throk guy when they had said farewell to the defenders of the wing and, to top it all of, the twins' `repair-work' had pulverized their supply of Hiccups favorite pickled Yak meat.

Annoyed, Hiccup tossed a flat stone at the lake he was sitting at. It plummeted down like the stone it was without skipping even once.

„Argh! Thor!" Hiccup yelled „why does that keep happening?" Dejectedly he dropped back to the ground, suddenly feeling beyond exhausted. Hiccup stared dumbly at the shimmering surface of the lake, where the late afternoon sun created golden and purple reflections of distant clouds. It sure was a beautiful view. Hiccup's voice was barely audible when he spoke: „I don't know what to do anymore. I need help. How are we supposed to beat Viggo with only me to out think him? He beats me at every turn." Hiccup burrowed his head in his arms, „I'm not smart enough for this. I can't do it alone. Please, someone help me."

„Well, that's a chipper prayer" Thor frowned at the image of Hiccup slumped at the shore of the lake. „Do you suppose I should do something about that?" He asked his brother Loki.

„Meh. These mortals are always whining. They don't know how good they have it and they typically do everything to sabotage themselves at every turn. Help him now and in a few weeks he'll be back lamenting his boredom because he lacks an opponent or the prudery of his new girlfriend or whatever."

„Now you are mixing him up with this Viggo character. Sabotaging himself and bemoaning his lack of worthy adversaries really is his forte"

Loki looked up, suddenly interested. „ Oh, really? Then maybe you should do something about this. Or just leave it to me. This Viggo Grimborn is pretty annoying. Did you ever listen to him talk? He is constantly preening about his superior intellect, comes up with admittedly clever schemes and then botches it up somehow because he forgot some detail. Such a waste."

„I suppose if you want to take this one I could leave it to you. I wanted to go for a fly around Midgard anyway, there seems to be someone infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. You won't do anything to drastic though, brother?

„Do not worry, brother." Loki said as he got up „I will merely give Viggo a gentle push in the right direction. Give him something to think about."

Viggo Grimborn threw an angry glance at the entrance to his tent. He had enough to worry about without having to deal with the petty quibbles of his hunters and right now the raised voices outside carried loudly enough to disturb his calm. He could even make out his brother's deep baritone among them. A second later, the entrance to his tent was pushed open and a trader strode in, followed on his heel by Ryker and two more hunters.

"I told you to wait until I spoke to my brother!" Ryker snarled. He tried to grab the trader, but was evaded easily, which was astonishing in its own. Normally, Ryker could manage to get a hold of pretty much anything he wanted, human or dragon shaped. And keep it.

"Yes, yes, you will forgive me if I prefer to make my own introductions. I fear, that even with your no doubt impeccable grasp of the situation you will fail to adequately present my persona. " The trader said. He looked around the tent curiously and then turned to face Viggo.

"Viggo Grimborn. It is a pleasure to meet you."

"I fear I can not return this compliment." Viggo said coldly and shoved his papers to the side, effectively hiding them from the trader's view. "I clearly remember saying that I do not wish to be disturbed. What is this then?" He asked his brother.

Ryker glowered at the trader. "I'm sorry, brother. But, this trader, he, … " Ryker broke of and threw a dark look at the other hunters. He jerked his head to them and said:

"They shouldn't hear this."

Viggo raised his eyebrows and eyed the trader with newfound interest. The trader had made himself comfortable in the chair opposite his desk and was watching the scene with amusement, looking decidedly too smug for Viggo's taste. Still, if Ryker had brought him in …

"Leave us" Viggo said, without leaving the traders gaze. The two hunters appeared confused for a moment, but Ryker's growl was enough to startle them into action and they hurriedly left the tent.

Viggo leaned back and fixated the trader through half closed eyelids. The trader merely smirked at him, unimpressed.

"Now, then. Obviously, you have an intriguing deal to offer or my brother would not have let you come this far. Let's hear it and I hope for your sake it is indeed good." Viggo said.

The trader laughed.

"Oh, no, I do not have any deals for you. Merely a bit of advice. I could not help but notice you desperately need it, seeing how you lead your business right now."

Viggo stared at the trader incredulously.

"Excuse me? Not that this is any of your concern but my business is flourishing. I certainly do not need advice." In his surprise Viggo was even too startled to be angry. He was sure the anger would come later, though.

The trader nodded and said: "Yes it is, isn't it? Astonishing, really, how one can manage such a successful business and do so little with it."

Now, the anger was there. Viggo turned to his brother: "Is this your idea of a joke? Come now, big brother, even you have more wit that this. Do I need to outline exactly what 'Do not disturb me unless in case of an emergency' means next time?"

Ryker opened his mouth but before he could speak the trader cut in:

"Oh, do not blame your brother. He did nothing wrong. And, honestly, I would think that you were a bit more concerned about the safety of your gold than to dismiss a well-informed source out of hand. Or do you not care if someone were to dismantle some of the certainly ancient boulders on your islands?

Viggo froze.

"He says he knows were all our gold is hidden!" Ryker shouted.

"Yes, I gathered as much." Viggo said absentmindedly, staring at the trader fixedly.

"Who are you? And how do you know that?" he asked.

The trader waved his questions away and said: "That is not of importance for you. And I think we have wasted enough time already. Let us talk about your financial situation"

Viggo barely kept a hold of his temper now, but managed to reply coldly.

"I am perfectly able to handle my finances on my own, thank you very much. How about you tell me where you obtained this information and who else knows about it. I'd wager Hiccup is not informed yet or there already would be dragon riders swarming the island. The boy is not exactly patient after all. Now, I am sure the two of us can come to an understanding that does not involve you betraying my secrets to the riders. And me not throwing you in an Screaming Death hole."

The trader shook his head sadly and sighed.

"You have a bit of one-track mind, don't you? Not everything is about this ridiculous conflict between you and the dragon riders. No, no, don't argue that point." He said, when he saw Viggo open his mouth furiously. "How about this: You let me explain your finances to you and afterwards, if you are still interested, I will answer your questions about my extensive knowledge regarding your private matters, financial or otherwise." The trader smirked. "There is after all more to you than gold that other people might find interesting" A faint blush crept up Viggo's cheeks while Ryker stared at them uncomprehendingly. "We all agree then? Perfect."

Although Viggo had in fact not given any sign of agreement and was fast recovering his angry stance, the trader continued blithely indifferent.

"Let's do the math. You have four boulders about the size of a men, one arch and one boulder around 3 meters high, plus some smaller ones. Of course we have to subtract the stone covering the gold, let's say this layer is about 5 cm thick."

By this point Viggo had started to almost hyperventilate from rage, the only thing keeping him from launching himself at the trader was some vague feeling that a direct confrontation might not end well for him.

"This leaves us roughly with 5.34 m³ … and that amounts to, phew, about 276 kg and 5 g of gold. Boy, you ARE rich. That's even more than I first imagined. "

"Your point being?" snarled Viggo.

"I am not done with my calculations. Be patient and do not interrupt, then you might even manage to guess my point before I finish. Or maybe you want to venture I guess right now? No? I will go on then. So you succeeded to gather a vast amount of gold over your living years, which are, what 31, 32 years?" Loki looked Viggo up appraisingly "I always find it difficult to guess the age of you morta -ah, ...ehm, mortifying vikings, so don't be offended if I am far off. Correct me if you will."

Viggo looked very much as if wanted to choke the life out of this obnoxious and overly rude trader instead. He did however nothing of the sort and consoled himself with the thought that he could deal out the most grueling death after this farce was over. Taking a deep breath he answered evenly.

"I am 28"

"28? I apologize, although you do not look...no matter. And when did you start business?"

Viggo frowned slightly, that was a question he could not easily answer.

"Probably at around 14. But the business did not really amount to something in the beginning. A noteworthy profit only settled in a few years ago, when I was about 23 years old." He inwardly shuddered as he thought of his early days in the business. Without men and resources he and Ryker had mostly sold parts of dragons they found shattered on the islands and rarely small dragons like the terrible terrors. Life had not exactly been easy and he was all to glad that these days were over. And would never come back. Viggo looked up only to find the trader considering him closely, with an annoyingly knowing smirk on his face. But before Viggo could open his mouth again the trader spoke up.

"That means you have worked as a dragon hunter for almost 15 years now and I assume the start was tough. 15 years of hard work, of hunting dragons, skipping from one island to the next, living in a tent. And yet you have a pile of gold hidden away. For what I wonder? Are you planning any big investments? And it would have to be a very big investment indeed to make an even noticeably dent in your savings. And investments that you need to further your business do not count, you know they will only increase your wealth in the long run. Or you have to at least hope they do."

The trader made a pause to give Viggo a chance to answer, but Viggo remained silent.

"No answer to that? Maybe these savings are your retirement plan? In this case let me outline for you how you can partition your gold. You have 276 kg of gold and with an average life expectancy of 45 years you should have 15 more good years to come, although your current life style may lower the odds for a long life. That means for every day of your future life, starting from today, you have 50 g of gold to use, provided of course you stop working entirely and do not become even more wealthy. How precisely do you plan to spent that much gold?"

Viggo was stunned. It was painfully obvious to him that no matter how extravagant a lifestyle one may lead it was impossible to spend that much gold in any reasonable way. He opened his mouth, closed it again and desperately cast his mind around to find an acceptable counterargument. His eyes found Ryker's, who was still waiting patiently by the entrance. The older Grimborn had a curious expression on his face, a strange mix of the confused boredom he always wore when Viggo went on about matters he didn't understand and a foreboding, that indicated he had maybe gathered more of the conversation than Viggo would have expected him to.

"It… it's... You know, it's not only my gold. A share of it also belongs to my brother." Viggo finally said. That certainly snapped Ryker to attention.

"Of course" the trader said. "Well, let us ask you brother then."

He smiled cheerfully, turned to look at Ryker and lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. Ryker merely stared back, obviously stumped to be suddenly drawn into the conversation. He blinked a few times and then gave his brother a questioning look. Viggo barely resisted the urge to bang his head on the table. This was not helping. The trader's smile widened and he apparently decided to help the brothers out, after a fashion.

"It is a rather simple question," he told Ryker "I merely wished to know if you have any costly purchases planned. Is there anything you heart desires that can be obtained by any amount of gold?"

Ryker threw a cautious look at his brother, to see if Viggo had one opinion or another about how forthcoming they should be with information to the strange trader. His brother was after all peculiar about these kind of things. But when his brother stared back rather blankly, Ryker internally shrugged and answered truthfully:

"I'd like a new sword."

Now Viggo did let his head fall onto the table. The dull pain that caused was still preferable to having to see the undoubtedly insufferable smug expression on the trader's face. Unfortunately, it did not block out his voice.

"A new sword. Yes, that certainly qualifies as a costly purchase. What do swords go for these days? 20, 25g of gold? That means you could..."

"No," Ryker said "That's way to much. And normally we don't even pay in gold. We would rather use silver." He hesitated and glanced at his brother, who still had not lifted his head from the table, before continuing "I'm thinking for a good new sword it'd be about 140g silver. Dunno how much gold that is."

"Currently the exchange rate from gold to silver is 1/10" Viggo said, his voice slightly muffled as he was speaking in the table. "Therefore a new sword would cost you 14g gold. And, as our dearest trader was certainly about to point out, you could buy a new sword each and every day for the rest of your life and still have enough gold to lead a life in luxury." He wearily lifted his head to meet the smirking traders gaze and ignored his gaping brother. "You have made your point. I am filthy rich, richer than one single person should ever be. You are of course aware that leading a business such as mine means that a great many persons depend on you to provide for them?"

The trader opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, Viggo cut in again.

"Yes, you know that. And you also know that with paying my men 2g silver a day, I could easily finance them for year without making a notable dent in my savings."

The trader nodded casually and said:

"About 70g gold for each hunter, if you give them a few days off. From what I have seen so far you have about 100 men, so if you paid them for one year without having them work and gain any gold you would still have over 200kg for yourself and your brother."

"200kg gold." Ryker repeated softly, his eyes gleaming. Viggo did not bother to pay him any attention – he could surmise what his brother was thinking of. Food, shining weapons, women and other worldly pleasures.

"What do you suggest I do then?" He asked the trader.

"I suppose you want me to abandon the dragon hunting business, give all my gold to charity and start planting rose gardens?"

"Heavens, no! That would not suit you at all. And me neither, if you want to know. I am not a huge fan of the peaceful, tranquil life of law-abiding citizens."

"Well, then why come here and tell me all this?" Viggo snarled in frustration.

"Because you are wearing yourself out!" The trader now stared at Viggo intently.

"Look at you." he said softly. "You barely sleep. You are agonizing over new moves, pressing your men relentlessly and antagonizing your brother, the one person in the world I know you really care about. Oh, I know you still enjoy the thrill of the chase and the excitement of outmaneuvering someone, especially Hiccup. But that pales in comparison to the nights spent bent over maps, planning and worrying and not taking enough time just for yourself. You used to enjoy your life as a dragon hunter, when your business was smaller and you did not feel the need to plan so many moves ahead. When it was just planning the raids and outwitting some other obnoxious hunters. And afterwards, you could go for nice glass of wine with your brother or relax reading a new book you found. When was the last time you did that?"

Viggo looked away. He did not want to think about that, but a part of his mind was already screaming in concession, demanding that he listen to the trader and take a well deserved rest from hunting dragons. A different part insisted rather adamantly that he throw the trader into the next Screaming Death hole. Another part of his mind wondered absently how the trader knew all this stuff about him. He seemed dangerously well informed.

"He is right, you know" Completely thrown of guard, Viggo's eyes flew up to Ryker. Ryker stared at him firmly. "You don't relax enough. And if we really have that much gold what harm would it do to take a break from time to time?"

Viggo sighed. It seemed the second, bloodthirsty part of his mind was loosing this battle.

Ryker smiled and led his new sword glide back into the shed. It was made of Gronckle iron and decorated with six gleaming sapphires and therefore certainly worth the 200g silver he had paid for it. And even if it wasn't, who cared? As he now knew he could waste money for a dozens of overpaid swords without worrying about the consequences. The men were in a good mood too and his brother had sailed off mumbling something about a library in the south and building some weird construct measuring stars or the horizon or whatever. Life was good.

A few miles away, on an island now called The Edge, Astrid finally had enough of Hiccup's incessant pacing and threw him out of her hut. Crestfallen, he made his way down to the lake to think. He was sure the dragon hunters were planning something huge. There was no other explanation for the almost two weeks of peace during which they had not encountered as much as a single hunter ship. No, Viggo was definitely up to something. And since they couldn't be sure what it was they had to prepare for every eventuality. Hiccups resolve strengthened as he changed path in the direction of his hut. He would make plans for the following days, weeks even, with training every day and they would reinforce their defenses, schedule reconnaissance flights every morning and evening and they needed to gain money to give Berk its gold back…

It was after two in the night and Hiccup was still bent over his desk, furiously scribbling away when he heard a deep voice from high above, one that he was sure he had never heard before "Oh, for the love of … not again."