Chapter 4 | Nadder Runaround

Hiccup didn't get a wink of sleep as the sun slowly ascended into the sky. Instead, he worried about dragon training and the so-called vision he'd had of the Night Fury. He'd met the dragon, released it, then died. It seemed more clear that the gods wanted him to not meet the Night Fury than to take the fight to it, as Gobber had done with the Bone Napper. On top of that, why would the gods give him a vision in which he found it morally wrong to kill a dragon? That wouldn't be any way to suggest killing said dragon. Gobber's interpretation of events seemed even crazier than his story of the Bone Napper (Hammerheaded Yak-Whale-Sharks included).

Perhaps the opposite was true - the gods do not want him to kill dragons. Well, good luck with that Thor and Odin above, because now giving him a preview of events has put him into Dragon Training: He has to go fight dragons.

As the irony occurred to him, he realized that the sun outside had reached its apex; he was late, again!

Quickly as the scrawny Viking was able, he donned his vest and ran out the front door of the house. Down the village path, through the square and off toward the Kill Ring he ran, the Vikings he passed hardly even noticing his presence, as long as he remained out from underfoot.

As he finally crossed the last few steps of the log bridge leading up to the Ring - a great stone pit covered with iron bars and surrounded by spectator stands (who knew fire-breathing-pest extermination would be a spectator sport?) - he heard chatter from the kids up ahead, who had arrived more on-time than Hiccup. (Interestingly, it seemed he was working with the fire brigade's class.)

Entering the gate, he began to make out the words of their conversation, Ruffnut piped up, "I'm hoping for some mauling, like on my shoulder or lower back."

A slightly less enthusiastic (for the injury, but no less for the fighting) Astrid spoke, "Yeah, It's only fun if you get a scar out of it."

Without a trace of the other's enthusiasm - voice dripping instead with sarcasm - Hiccup spoke, "Yeah, no kidding, right? Pain. Love it."

Tuffnut didn't even turn around to give him a look, "Oh look, great Mr. I-Can't-Tie-Down-A-Nightmare is here."

"Oh yes," Hiccup agreed sarcastically, "Because it's so easy to use a flammable rope to tie down a dragon that lights itself on fire."

Ruffnut punched her twin brother, laughing to his detriment, "C'mon, even I knew that was a crazy thing to do!"

Gobber finally broke in. "Alrigh', enough with the chit-cha'. Now, in these cages are a bunch of nasty dragons, some of the deadliest species out there, that all attack our li'l island on a semi-regular basis. Since some of our recruits," he glanced pointedly at Hiccup, "can't seem to arrive on time, I'll keep the explanation of what you're doing short. The weapons rack has damaged and destroyed weapons. You all 'ill be facin' a Nadder. Can anyone tell me what we'll be doing with the mangled weapons?"

Fishlegs, apparently able to make the connections Gobber suggested, squealed in delight and raised his hand, jumping up and down in place. Everyone else wore expressions of confusion. Gobber let them think for a moment, then sighed out, "Fishlegs…"

"Oh! Ok," Fish began. "So The Book Of Dragons says that the Deadly Nadder has, like, the hottest fire of all dragons. I think it's like sixteen, whereas even the Night Fury gets only up to thirteen - based on its destructive power and the afterflame burn, obviously, because nobody ever got one in a controlled environment and-"

"'Legs! Focus," Gobber commanded.

Fishlegs' face fell a bit. "Oh, right. Sorry. So you want us to use the Nadder's fire to heat up the weapons so you can fix them. That's why there is an anvil over in the entrance gate."

"Thank you!" Gobber applauded. "Very good, Fishlegs!" He proceeded to walk over to one of the cages built into the wall, setting his hand on the lever.

"Wait!" cried Snotlout, speaking up for the first time since Hiccup's arrival. "Aren't you going to teach us some strategy to avoid getting our arms burnt off in the fire and stuff?"

Hiccup, meanwhile, backed away from the group and began to run towards the rack of broken weapons. Gobber decided to humor Snotlout for a moment. "I believe," the smith said slowly, "in learnin' on the job." At this, he opened the cage door and then began running at a limping gait across the Ring toward the entrance gate - and its anvil. The other recruits looked amongst themselves incredulously, then ran off after Hiccup.

The dragon - which very much resembled an accident with blue-dyed leather, teeth, scaly hide and a chicken - burst out of the cage, looking very upset for having been cooped up. Spotting the adolescent Vikings across the arena hefting twisted metal, it charged.

Hiccup managed to lift what might have once been a sword (but would now make a better short-handled mace) and sprinted to his left, counter-clockwise around the arena. Fishlegs followed, easily carrying a mace that had partially melted and elongated. Behind them, Ruff and Tuff carried off two maces that had fused together. They ran clockwise around the arena. Astrid and Snotlout remained next to the weapons rack. Snotlout leaned on a sword that somehow during the last raid had lost all of its edges and was closer to a rod. Astrid hefted a battle-axe-turned-mace.

"So," Snotlout began, his voice taking on the attempted-seduction tone he constantly follows Astrid with, "anyway I'm moving into my parents' basement. You should come by to work out. You look like you work out!"

Astrid paid Snotlout himself no mind, instead holding the end of her battle-axe-turned-mace in front of his face. "Wha?" he began, then remembered the Nadder charging across the arena. Apparently, Vikings weren't the only creatures who hated the sound of Snotlout's voice. The Nadder stopped before the two young Vikings, completely ignored Astrid, and fired a blast of flame straight through her mace-axe-thing at Snotlout. The male Viking, to his credit, was able to hide behind the weapons rack before he too was roasted, but his edgeless-sword didn't come with him and fell to the ground, still cold.

"Astrid, nice work. Get those weapons over to me quick before they cool!" Gobber called from the gate. She turned to look at the rack and noticed that, while the rack was on fire, all the weapons were just as hot as her axe-mace-thing. Grabbing as many cool handles as she could (about four plus the axe-mace-thing) she made her way over to Gobber. The Nadder lost interest after firing, and left to follow the bickering twins.

"Get your hands off my mace!" Tuffnut shouted.

"There's like a million weapons on the rack!" Ruffnut complained.

"This one is big and fuse-headed, like me. Take that warhammer over there, it looks like a flower. Girls like flowers, right?"

Ruffnut wrenched the fuse-headed mace out of Tuffnut's hands and whacked him over the head with it. "Oops, now this one has blood on it."

Tuffnut recovered, and grabbed the second handle of the fuse-head mace. Their shouting resumed unintelligibly, but was interrupted as the Nadder ran right between them, burning the mace-heads, which caused them to unfuse and fall to the ground.

"Ruff, Tuff" Gobber shouted over the banging of his hammer-prosthetic on the anvil. "Weapons here, now!"

Another third around the arena, Fishlegs and Hiccup hid underneath a wooden board leaning against the wall, weapons sticking out. The Nadder looked curiously at the wooden-board-with-arms.

"You think it knows we're here?" Fishlegs whispered to Hiccup.

The dragon perked up at the sound.

"It does now!" Hiccup cried, taking off toward the weapon rack. Fishlegs, meanwhile, just held the weapon in front of the board he hid behind. The Nadder squawked, fired a short blast at the wood, then ran off after the fleeing, scrawny Viking.

Fishlegs emerged from the now-burning lean-to, and found his weapon white-hot. "Cool!"

Hiccup ran a quarter of the way to the weapons rack before he tripped. Curling up on the ground as the Nadder charged after him, he held his sword-turned-mace above his head, hoping the dragon would heat the weapon as it had for all the other Vikings. His hand shook as the Nadder stopped just one (human) stride length from where Hiccup lay on the ground, staring intently at… the mace-sword. As it shook in his hand, light reflected off the damaged metal and it seemed to change color slightly.

"Attracted to the shiny stuff?" Hiccup muttered under his breath.

Just inside the gate, Gobber shouted across the Ring, "HICCUP!"

The Nadder, disturbed by the sudden loud noise, chirped its annoyance and let out a blast of flame, heating the head of the sword-mace-thing, but also lighting the handle on fire. Hiccup screeched at the sudden heat, the Nadder squawked indignantly at the much closer and louder noise than the smith's fear, and prepared to blast fire again, this time aiming closer to the ground.

Just then, Gobber's hook grabbed one of its fangs and pulled its head to the side, its fires scorching empty ground.

"That's a good eight weapons outta you. Makes up for my time outta the forge. C'mon, beastie," the smith muttered at the dragon, which was more than a little reluctant to return to its cage. After he'd locked it back inside, he turned back to Hiccup. "Wha' were you thinkin', lad? You gotta keep on your feet!" Getting in close to his student, the smith almost growled. "A dragon will never, ever, just stop fighting. Y' can't distract it, only disorient it. If you want to stay alive, ya' gotta learn to be the same way. Learn that now, or y' aren't gonna have a chance."

Gobber turned back to the class. "That's it for now. Meet me here tomorrow mornin' just after sunrise. We need ta get another sixteen weapons done before the boats leave."

"'Boats leave'?" Snotlout echoed in question. "What boats?"

Fishlegs piped up. "Stoick talked the town into doing another nest search!"

Hiccup didn't hear Snotlout's reply as he walked down the bridge away from the Ring.

The sun was near the horizon, casting long shadows through the trees around Hiccup. After the whole Kill Ring and nearly-dying thing, he'd meant to go home, get some sleep, prepare for tomorrow. That would have been the Viking thing to do. That would have been the sane thing to do.

"Then again," he said to the surrounding trees, "what part of the last few days has been at all sane?"

The trees didn't respond. He was out on Raven Point again, looking for the Night Fury - again. Because that had gone so well last time. "Why, exactly, am I out here?" he continued to complain. "Hell, maybe the dragon got the same experiential-vision too and decided to break free and fly off earlier today. I know I would."

He considered the ridiculousness of the statement, given that he was doing exactly the opposite by coming out here looking.

Hiccup hung his head. "What am I even doing out … Gah!"

He walked right into a branch at eye level, which proceeded to get tangled in his hair. If he'd had his head up, it would've smacked him in the face. In a moment of confusion, he realized just which branch it was. It was the branch that he smacked yesterday just before he'd found the Night Fury.

He looked up at the tree it was attached to. The tree swayed imperceptibly in the wind, trunk unbroken. Further down the hill and up the next rise, no sign of crash damage. No groove of upturned soil. He jogged down where he thought it should be, and over the rise in that tiny clearing with the rocks there was - no dragon.

"Well, this was stupid."

Hiccup sighed, his breath echoed by a nearby dragon's roar. Suddenly alert again, the young Viking searched the surrounding trees with his eyes. Not too far away, he heard wingbeats and claws scrabbling at rock. Staying low to the ground, he ran in that direction.

Soon Hiccup found himself looking over a sharp, rocky drop perhaps ten or twenty times taller than he was into a small clearing filled with grass. The center of the clearing contained a small lake, and scrabbling around the exterior was the Night Fury. It scrabbled at the edges, trying to make its way out of the cove but only managing to scratch and flap its way three-quarters of the way up any of the walls. When it tried to fly to the opposite wall, the flapping motion would cause it to tilt until its wings were vertical and its attempts to correct its trajectory with its tail sent it crashing to the ground. Hiccup remained low against the lip of the cove's surrounding cliffs, observing all of this.

He also noticed a couple of ropes floating in the lake. After a moment of consideration, he realized these were the ropes of the bola. The only plausible explanation, he reasoned, was that the dragon had altered its crash trajectory to land in the lake, then used the freedom of floating in the water to untangle itself from the ropes.

Just then, the Night Fury gave another attempt at climbing the cliff opposite him. Realizing he had a perfect opportunity to sketch the dragon with its wings extended, Hiccup drew out his notebook and a charcoal stick. After just a few moments, he had its outline and major details drawn.

It fell back to the earth, swinging wildly about its mid-wings just behind and below its main wings. It landed on its back in front of the lake and, after rolling onto its feet, its head snapped out at some fish below the surface.

"Why don't you just… fly away?" Hiccup muttered. He compared his sketch to the dragon now walking in circles before the lake. He rubbed out a portion of the tail that didn't exist on the real subject, then realized how that one change affected its symmetry.

"Boats travel in a straight line when they're symmetrical. Maybe dragons can't fly when they're not symmetrical?" he said to himself, quietly. He backed away from the edge, keeping a tight grip on any loose items that might slip and fall. As soon as he was further from the edge than the closest tree, he sprang up and began running back home.

He'd shot down a Night Fury, and now it can't fly. He should tell the town and get some better warriors out there - warriors who didn't find the dragons too "intelligent" to kill.

Or maybe that'd anger the gods. Odin knows he already had enough bad graces coming from them, what with burning down half the village himself every month. Hiccup wracked his brain for a solution. He was too weak (mentally and physically) to kill the dragon. He was too weak (mentally) to bring the village to kill the dragon.

What now?

Rather than focus on questions he couldn't answer, Hiccup jogged off through the forest and returned home to sleep.

A/N:

Hello readers! Sorry about being a day late with this one. My beta has a real job doing writing for real money, and couldn't deal with my story until today.

Please don't kill me!

Anyway, the "Wounded" scene for all y'all. Hope you enjoy!