Freefall, Part Fourteen
What has she forgotten?
Astrid's never been so grateful for Berk's sullen weather. Brooding, low, dark-grey clouds wallow overhead like so many muddy, disgruntled sheep, without a flicker of lightning in their bellies; she wouldn't try this in a storm. It's the sort of black night that sends normally brash Vikings sulking for their beds or the cavernous comfort of the Great Hall and as much human, familiar noise as possible.
A dark night for dark work, Astrid might have said if she was someone else entirely, but since she's herself, and intends to carry on being so, she pins down the thought with one foot and steps on it until it squeaks.
"– and try to get the hall doors nailed up," she goes on, running down her list of things for Gobber to keep an eye on, feeling as if she's careening down a staircase. If she slows down or tries to stop, she'll lose her footing entirely, and the ground far below is so very hard.
"Fishing boats stay in harbor, out of sight. I know how much everyone hates the rationing, but it could take ages for those ships to get a clue and give up on us, depending on how much they're paying attention." She really hopes that, just for tonight, they're not. Or that the twins' distraction works to draw all eyes away from the flock of dragons they're trying to smuggle by over their enemies' heads and away.
"The Terrors are getting into those storage caverns somehow, so there's probably a rat hole that needs sealing. I've asked Gothi to see what she can do about them, since they're not coming with us. I'd love to see that lot try to steal Terrors; they're not exactly combat dragons –"
"Ruddy little pests, though," Gobber tries to put in, but Astrid's too busy counting off things on her fingers. She may be leaving Gobber in charge temporarily, but if she doesn't keep him busy, she suspects she'll come back to a Berk overrun by mechanical monstrosities.
Actually, maybe that'd be a good thing. Maybe their indestructible blacksmith will come up with something truly terrifying and all the ships will have run for their sorry little lives by the time she gets back. Then she'll just have to chase down the ones with their dragons aboard.
She should be so lucky.
"Keep Sven and Thurston off the same patrol, would you? Sven borrowed Thurston's third-best sword to get that tree stump out of the south field, and he's still sore about it."
"Aye, I 'member, I fixed the bluidy thing –"
"And do feel free to punch Spitelout if he opens his big mouth one more time. Maybe if you hit him hard enough, he'll notice."
Even in the faint light from the couple of torches and small hand lanterns scattered around the field, glinting off shifting dragon scales, Astrid can see Gobber roll his eyes. How he's kept both of those, when he's down to just one of most other things, she has no idea.
"Tell me again, why don'cha?" he snorts. "That'll be the fourth time." She knows. "We'll be fine, Chief! Ye'll jest be gone a couple a' days, right? Berk can manage more than tha' wi'out a chief – di'n't Stoick go off a-questing for the dragons' nest for months a' a time?"
"I suppose," Astrid admits reluctantly. Stoick's never again mentioned the way she'd clung to his leg the first time he'd gone off on one of those journeys, trying to keep him from leaving. It had been a couple of years after she'd come to live with him, but the last person she'd seen leave her in pursuit of dragons had been Finn, and she'd remembered all too well.
No one on Berk had ever found the nest, of course. The lucky ones had come home. Finn hadn't.
Stoick had, though. She'll come back, too.
"And I've got this big fella to help me, aye?"
"Hey," Eret says from the darkness, and Astrid will just have to imagine the disgruntled scowl. "I said I'd sweep your forests for nets and dart tripwires, see what my guys can do about disarming them. Never said anything about wrangling all your crazy Vikings. Rather go back to dragons."
Gobber snorts, glaring back over his shoulder. "Eh, well, mebbe I'll see 'bout turfin' Stoick outta his house, then. All sorts o' burrs I kin put in his blankets, if I hafta."
Before Astrid can get over this rather alarming image, Gobber pats his hand on her boot and says, "Ye just worry 'bout this lot, Chief. Get 'em out safe."
As if she's done anything else but worry since she and her friends started working out this plan for real. It was never going to be easy, persuading every dragon in the village to do the same thing all at the same time. Dragons, like Vikings, can argue over anything, and so many of them delight in looking right at what they're supposed to be doing, and immediately running off to do something else.
But the gold and green eyes watching her where she stands on the big rock at the edge of the field, the one even the Gronkles couldn't move and so they'd just dug out the furrows around it, are anxious and restless. So many of them are cowering low beside the human friends who'd led them here.
Gronkles and Nadders and Zipplebacks and Nightmares, scattered haphazardly across the field that, a lifetime ago, Astrid had been waiting for Eret to bring seeds back home for. Some of them wear ragged collars; most of them wear scars; that the same people put both on them is some kind of miracle.
Stormfly stands ready at Astrid's side, all the metal in her harness wrapped and muted as she shifts from foot to foot uneasily. Astrid's axe is strapped tightly to her dragon's shoulder, where it won't foul Stormfly's wings. If all goes well, she'll never have to draw it.
If all goes well, every dragon in this field will get away from the men who've come here to trap and enslave them. If all goes well, every dragon in this field will come home to the people who reached out their hands and said, "Come on, we have to go, trust me, you're not safe here," however they'd said it.
Astrid has very little faith in all going well. She's from Berk.
Nothing binds all these dragons to this place. No chains wrap around Nightmare throats, no ropes around Zippleback paws. The only thing that's brought them here is that, despite everything, these dragons have learned to trust these humans. Astrid's here to make sure that achievement doesn't go to waste.
The thing is, Astrid has learned these past few years, that dragons aren't stupid. Oh, she always knew they were cunning – she'd learned the hard way to spot a dragon's chosen target from the way its eyes moved and its muzzle turned, and to decide in a split-second whether she should leap to meet it with her axe swinging or get out of its way as fast as she could.
But they're intelligent, too, even if it isn't always in a way she understands. They may not think the way she does, but they know they're in danger. Astrid saw the dragons she called out to rescue Gustav's gang fussed over by their friends, yowling and shuddering and yipping their alarm and fear and being cooed over. They were so obviously talking to each other that Astrid had wanted to bang her head against a wall for not seeing it years ago.
(She'd settled for banging a hammer into some iron nails, helping to put a protective barrier up around the well. Berk really doesn't need a flying tar ball splashing into their main source of drinking water, and no one ever leaves the lid down.)
"Good girl," Astrid murmurs now, resting a hand on Stormfly's head to calm her. "I think they heard us."
She knows Stormfly understands her, at least some of the time, and so it had been Stormfly she'd explained all this to, keeping it as simple as she could in hand signals and baby talk.
We're flying away. We're hiding. Danger here. Everyone comes.
She'd trusted Stormfly to translate for her, as she said it all again to every dragon she could find, her Nadder friend stalking beside her.
There's no way she has every dragon on Berk gathered in front of her – she knows for a fact they're missing Barf and Belch, and if there's some dragonish rumor mill that would get word out to the wild ones, Astrid isn't in on it. Also, she tasked Edda and Madge and Ingeborg with gathering up the Terrors and getting them out of the way almost an hour ago, by her count.
But in the pit-darkness, she can hear the shifting scales and subdued whines and muttered growls of every dragon left in the village. A few years ago, she'd have been met with disbelieving laughter if she asked her people if they would be willing to stand in the middle of a crowd of dragons, and yet now Astrid can also hear the quiet reassurances of all the Vikings who have gathered here to wait with them, holding them steady.
Not that many of them were happy about it, which Astrid is obscurely pleased about. She's spent more time in the last two days arguing with Vikings about this plan than she has trying to explain it to dragons, and felt like a hypocrite every moment. She's not happy about this plan. It's just still the best bad plan they have.
And then, she's promised everyone, I come back. We get the captive dragons back – and we get them out too. The fleet goes away when they've got nothing to steal. And the dragons come home.
Simple, right? As long as she hasn't forgotten anything.
One stepping-stone at a time, no matter how slippery they are, and all Astrid can do is hope no one moves them while she waves her arms and teeters and desperately tries not to fall in between leaps.
And her riders are in this with her – mostly. She has no idea where the twins are, which is sort of like saying that she has no idea where a giant, hovering, invisible bubble of paint is: someone isn't going to be happy, and she can only hope it's not going to be her.
Somewhere out to her right, Snotlout and Fearsome are pacing back and forth, ready – she hopes – to fly perimeter, to herd wandering dragons back into the pack until they're all away and safe.
Somewhere off to her left, Fishlegs and Minnow, his fastest Gronkle, should be ready to keep the stocky smaller dragons all moving together. Fishlegs swears they'll bunch up on the egg-bearing female, whatever her name is – Astrid can't keep track of all Fishlegs' Gronkles when she's got a midair, midnight jailbreak to orchestrate with escapees who can't talk to her.
"Psst! Astrid!"
Except for the ones who can.
Astrid only realizes she's pulling on her braid, which she's put her hair back up in to keep it out of her eyes, when she clambers down from her rock and finds she needs to use both hands in the near-darkness. "Fishlegs, what's the matter?"
"No, it's not, we're as good as we can be," he whispers, his voice high with the tension Astrid hopes isn't quite as clear in hers. "I just should have checked before – so if we get separated, we head north, right? To Hiccup and Toothless' home?"
Astrid remembers that fantastical, impossible island, its shattered ice spires glittering even as the ruin and damage of war blackened its frozen shores. She's never going to forget it if she lives a hundred years.
"No," she says anyway. "That lot out there," she explains, pointing back at the village and the ships beyond, even though there are ships in all directions, "they know where it is, remember?" She might not, though. She'd gotten there the hard way, some of it in the depths of Drago's flagship, and had slept for an embarrassing amount of the journey home.
"They attacked it once, and if they give up here and decide to take another shot at it, I don't want to leave our dragons in the next line of fire. That's not helping anyone. I don't think they will, though," she admits, "because they lost there, and they lost scary."
A Bewilderbeast could destroy any of those ships easily, if it turned its attention to them. She doubts her Wildfire friend's "dragon chief" would give Drago's fleet a second chance to get away.
"We're going somewhere I know they don't know about."
And besides, she doesn't say, we might not be welcome. Dragons are territorial; she's counted on that before. She'd originally wanted to train dragons to defend Berk from dragons. Later on, she'd pointed them at Dagur's now-laughable excuse for a raiding fleet, intruding on their home, and suggested it might make a fun toy.
Hiccup and Toothless may know and somewhat trust her and the other dragonriders, but she doesn't believe for a moment that all their wild friends will. What if they flew all the way out there only to be met with fangs and fire, chased away again?
And besides, she doesn't say, I don't want our dragons to think we're sending them away for good.
Everyone comes home. She's promised. And if she led their dragons to a place where only dragons are welcome and left them there, could she really blame them for thinking that she had sent them away for good? That they'd been rejected, and they weren't wanted anymore? She's worked too hard to persuade them that they are.
No, Astrid vows. They belong with us; they are our friends and our neighbors, and they are part of my tribe, and they never, ever need to think they're more welcome there than they are here.
"No," she says aloud, turning slowly in place to orient herself. The village is that way, some faint lights still visible through the trees. That shadow blotting out the sky is the low mountain, its cliff faces belonging to a much taller one. Is that a flame, or a star? It's too high…oh, no, that's the twins' treehouse, and Astrid shoves aside the reflexive impulse to yell at them for leaving a candle burning unattended, because she doesn't know where they are.
And anyway, Ruffnut and Tuffnut might consider you'll burn the whole bloody forest down to be a prediction it would be rude to leave unfulfilled.
She can't see the stars through the heavy clouds, but Astrid knows Berk, even in the deep dark.
"We head that way," she points.
Fishlegs thinks about it for a second; Astrid can hear the moment when he gets it. "Oh. How do you know they can't find us there?"
"Because Dagur's here," Astrid replies confidently, reliving his howl of frustrated rage with smug pleasure. "And I'm not the one he really wants. I'm just the one he could find."
And then there's nothing to do but to send Fishlegs back to his post, and to try to remind Gobber about just a few more last things. The ragged old smith huffs at her, hooks a low-burning lantern away from the nearest unwary Viking, and stumps off back to the village, grabbing Eret by the arm in passing and hauling the protesting former trapper along. She can hear them arguing all the way up the path, under the sound of shifting dragon wings. It sounds like they're having fun.
At least someone is.
And then there's really nothing to do but climb back up her rock and wait. It's past midnight, and they need to get moving – what's taking the twins so long? Usually all Astrid has to do is say "snap", and those two have broken something, and are yelling at each other in the wreckage. They've got a long way to go, and the dark doesn't last long, this time of year.
Tension coils in Astrid's gut like a serpent growing there, stretching tighter with every breath, plucked like a bowstring by every heartbeat. She locks her hands behind her back to keep from pulling on her braid again, turning her face towards the village, waiting for whatever distraction Ruffnut and Tuffnut have cooked up to start.
Fear claws at her heart like a monster out of her dreams, settling behind her ribs and chewing on her spine; she can feel its spittle slide down her back beneath her skin, as cold as frost. The stone beneath her boots is solid, but she's all too aware of how thin the ice she stands on is. A single failure, just one thing she's forgotten or that's slipped beneath her notice, and a single flaw in that ice will fracture out into a dozen, a hundred, until it all comes tumbling down. The water below is midwinter cold and dark, racing away beneath her feet so fast. If she goes down just once, she'll be swept away and never come back up…
Against it, she sets the fire burning in every inch of her, eager to lash out at the people who think they can come here and treat her like a child and a fool, someone not even worth fighting, just brushed aside and ignored. She's got lives to save, so she'll trick them better; if she can dance this dance just perfectly, the satisfaction of deceiving them right back will be as bright as dragonfire.
Astrid rests one hand on Stormfly's head, and takes a deep breath when her friend warbles softly at her, and even in the darkness, refuses to show her fear.
She still jumps, just like everyone else, when the deafening roar of a massive explosion splits the midnight air.
The sound is so loud it's almost not a sound at all – it's a thing, slapping a huge, flat hand against the side of her head, setting her ears ringing and knocking her entire world dizzyingly askew. It slams through the trees and bounces off those cliff faces she'd just been eyeing, sending waves of echoes across the world; a few months ago, everyone would already be yelling "'ware avalanche!" and making everything worse. Vikings do that.
Astrid had asked for loud, she'd asked for bright, she'd even asked for scary, as terrible as she'd felt about it,because frightened dragons will look for a leader. But even she hadn't been expecting the jet of fire that shoots up from the direction of the village, blinding as the sun.
Oh, gods, you two, Astrid thinks, in the deafening moment of shocked silence before everything explodes around her, what did you DO?
But she can't stop to wonder, she doesn't have time – what she has is an entire field full of dragons leaping up with startled screams and alarmed cries, their wings unfolding and their heads rearing back, fangs and eyes flashing, all too visible in that wash of light. What she has is a moment that's flying away from her, that she has only a split second to grasp or it'll be out of her reach forever, and all lost –
Astrid's feet are moving before her mouth is, and somehow she's already in Stormfly's saddle, her hands moving as fast as they ever have to snap her safety straps into place, because this would be a terrible time to fall, even while her mind is still back on that rock, boggling and staring.
"Mount up!" she roars to her riders, and "Get down!" to her people, and she'll just have to trust them all to do so, just like they'd talked about. She can only see what's right in front of her, her world narrowing to her hands on Stormfly's saddle grips and her knees and heels tight against Stormfly's fluttering sides, the rattle of her ring of whistles hanging from her belt like a matron's keys, her dragon's surge of frightened power as Stormfly spreads her wings and leaps.
Stormfly erupts into the air in an explosion of wings and bristling spikes and the chaos of dragons doing the same thing all around. All Astrid can do is put her head down as she would in a furious thunderstorm at sea, fighting to keep her footing and her hands on a line knowing that a single misstep meant she'd be swept away and lost, and jam one of her whistles between her teeth.
The sound shrieks out through the frightened mob like a sword blade, sharp and bright and demanding attention, and Astrid signals to them as loud she can. To me! this whistle says. Come here! Follow me!
She has to trust Stormfly to navigate this cascade of wings and teeth and claws and spikes and tails and bodies and jaws glowing with the first wisps of fire; she has to shut her eyes and brace herself against a strike she prays isn't coming; she has to keep blowing her whistle and pull Stormfly up, up. She can only pray that she's being heard, among the shrieks and screams and wails of frightened, panicked dragons, and that they'll settle into following her once the shock fades a little, because right now, in this moment, it feels like everyone for miles around must be able to hear them.
They'll still have height and darkness going for them, Astrid recalculates frantically. They can afford to lose the cover of silence, if barely, in exchange for the night-blindness of anyone who so much as looks at that blazing inferno in the village –
Gods, if the twins have burnt down the Great Hall, Astrid will kill them.
And yet it's exhilarating, too – she'll truly never get over that breathless first moment of flight, when the ground that had always been the only world falls away and everything changes, when she sees everything anew. Her body forgets it's heavy, just for an instant. For that heartbeat, Astrid feels like she could fly all on her own, and longs to float away into the sky and soar.
And as Stormfly cuts through the mob, twisting and dodging and dancing and veering aside from blindly flapping wings, Astrid finds a ferocious, teeth-baring grin on her own face, bitter and bloody and fierce with the satisfaction of doing something, of striking a blow against all their enemies, as surely as if she had her axe in her hands.
She has to trust her team, too. She doesn't have time to look back and make sure they're all where they should be. She can't check and be sure that no dragons have collided mid-air, although as far as she's seen, dragons usually don't unless they're trying to. She can only worry about herself and her dragon, right now, and Astrid fights to turn Stormfly onto a steadier course, sweeping up and over Berk, sideways on to the bright beacon everyone should be watching and wondering about.
The knowledge that she can't save everyone at a single stroke is a heavy stone in her gut, unaffected by the breathless joy of their wild flight. But she can give them a chance. She can lead her flock over at least some of the island – and they are following! she sees in an instant's glance back; the air behind her boils with scrambling dragons – and hope at least a few of the wilder ones will come along, slipping in among their tamer friends and staying hidden. She may never know if they do, but she has to try.
Wind howls against her face, making her eyes water, and Astrid narrows her eyes against it, ducking into Stormfly's slipstream as they spiral higher. She looks back, and down, her gaze instinctively seeking out her village, her home…
Even from here, the Great Hall is the biggest shadow in the mess of bridges and houses and stalls and sheepfolds and battle torches and makeshift shelters and carts and semi-organized workspaces that is Berk, unburnt, untouched.
Up in the mountainside, the stone bowl of the arena blazes.
Flames fill the old training arena like a cauldron, howling as the stone chars and cracks, eagerly devouring whatever her pair of firebugs have filled it with; Astrid can only imagine. The dragons once held captive there are long gone, but the hardened wooden cage doors have remained, give or take the odd housebuilder prying out a sturdy log for a roof's center beam. Over the seasons, it's been filled with everything from hay for the sheep to sides of boar stockpiled to be smoked. As one of the few places on Berk where full-size dragons won't go, it's become the go-to place for Vikings to store things they're going to get back to any day now, including Gustav's gang and all the assorted debris any group of teenagers accumulates.
Maybe she can see the ancient stone, hewn straight out of the mountainside, blackening. Maybe she can see the metal of the broken cage doors and the chain-nets warping under the forge-hot heat; Astrid wonders how much of Gobber's stock of coal the twins stole while she kept him distracted with the same old instructions. She'd say they owe her one, but if this works, she'll owe them. Or maybe it doesn't work that way.
Maybe they'll just be a team and call it done.
Surely she can't hear the walls and floor groaning in pain and cracking, fracturing into jagged shards, fire turning stone coated in Monstrous Nightmare saliva to something as weak as spring ice. Maybe she can see a jet of fire blazing out from the ramp entry like flames from the maw of all the dragons once kept captive there, the pit breathing its last in spiteful revenge.
She does see the moment the spectators' seats catch alight, the fire racing across them eagerly, blazing in flares of green and blue and a deep, powerful red from whatever Ruffnut and Tuffnut drenched them in, and that's before the fire finds the sheep bladders full of Zippleback gas – Astrid recognizes the pop! – hidden beneath the wood. It looks like the twins had piled everything on Berk that could burn in there, and a few things that explode, too.
The arena burns like all of Berk that was, put to the pyre.
The smoke can't have reached her yet – she's glanced back for only a moment – but Astrid can taste it. It tastes like the pride and excited fear of her training days in that arena, the throb of her heart in her throat as she ran and jumped and fought and bled and bruised, laced with the smug superiority she'd felt so strongly, watching her cohorts – the same people who have become her mostly-trusted rider team – yell at each other and treat the whole thing like a game. She'd worked harder, determined to be the best warrior she could be, knowing she was going to be the chief of Berk someday, resolved to earn it so that no one would ever question her.
That sure hasn't worked out the way she expected.
Maybe there was salt in that fire somewhere, because the air tastes tainted by tears, with the knowledge now that they'd been doing something terrible, even if they didn't know any better. For an instant, the smoke could be the ghosts of all the dragons who'd died there without a chance, under the roar of the mob and the sharp edge of an executioner's blade.
If Astrid has to spend her entire life atoning for that, she'll do so willingly. Never again.
But there are good memories there too, bright and unmarred. The arena burns, and with it goes her first days of training with Stormfly, learning just as much as she taught. Her first tries at doing something new and impossible, because she believed that it wasn't so impossible after all, and that she'd turn the world upside down if that's what it took to grasp that one chance. Arguing with Fishlegs, around and around, with the Book says set against but look what just happened, the Book is wrong.
The clean pride, however nervous, of performing with Stormfly under the amazed eyes of her people and Stoick's grim, haunted gaze. The moment she's imagined, even if she wasn't there to see it, when all the chains and cages snapped for good.
Finding new ways to use old ground, however bloodied, however haunted. Chasing children into it to keep them out of the way of their parents, organizing Terror races until the whole world seemed made up of happy, silly little dragons and overexcited kids who wouldn't have to grow up killing them like vermin. Rolling her eyes and struggling not to laugh while Ruffnut and Tuffnut tried to flood it in the middle of winter because they wanted to go ice skating. They'd succeeded, too – they're just terrible ice skaters. Astrid's never admitted how much fun she had watching them.
It's almost too bright to look at, and Astrid squeezes her eyes shut altogether, happy to blame the water that leaks from them on that brightness. In the weird shadows of the afterimages flashing against the backs of her eyelids, she sees the small spots of Vikings running towards it with torches, making a big scene for the entertainment of anyone watching.
Good riddance to it. Let it burn. All Astrid wants of it is the distraction, and the delighted yelling of the twins and their Zippleback as they follow the flock Astrid and Stormfly are leading – she can't believe this is working! – up towards the clouds.
"Sweep over, Stormfly!" she yells, throwing her weight sideways, and feels more than sees Stormfly turn one wing cooperatively and bank across the island, Berk's dragons in their wake.
Her island streaks past beneath them like a dream of falling, the high soar into the clouds and safety still ahead but feeling more achievable with every wingbeat.
Pure chaos, and the single thread of an escape she can pull from it, wheels around her as they race for the blockade and the clouds and the chance of being over and past it before those soldiers realize what they've done. Astrid knows, bitterly, that if they're seen and shot at, they can't afford to turn back for anyone who goes down, but she forces herself not to dwell on that, shoving her focus forward. It's all momentum and surprise and height and luck from here.
But in the moment, all her world is flight and fire and Stormfly's brave heart racing beneath her, and the sharp, bright knowledge of how far she's come. There's how much she wants to save this to hold on to, as tightly as her knuckles popping around her saddle grips.
For all her people who haven't flown yet but could –
For all her people yet to come –
For her hopes of putting her own little apprentice onto a dragon's back one day, and the chance that whatever girl or boy she trains will grow up knowing dragons can be spoken to and listened to, and how much she wants to see that someday –
For her riders flying perimeter, at her left hand and her right and at her back –
For the people depending on her now, Viking and dragon alike –
Berk's chief and her dragon fly with Berk's flock following.
"How many did we lose?" Astrid calls out, somewhat hoarsely, as the sun begins to creep over the horizon. It looks different from up here, scattered out over the heaving sea.
"Not sure!" Snotlout shouts back to her. Fearsome crowds too close to Stormfly and the Nadder bristles at him, snapping her tail-spikes out in warning. Astrid can't blame her. "Didn't see any of 'em get hit. All I could see was fog."
Astrid nods firmly, and has to brace herself on the back of Stormfly's neck while the world spins. "Good," she says anyway. "If you couldn't see anything when you knew they were there, no one on those ships could either."
She glances back over her shoulder now that she can see again – it has been a long, dark, cold flight; gods, she loves her cloak – and takes a moment to appreciate the cloud of dragons spread out behind them. Most of them have their wings spread out in a steady, weary glide, except for the Gronkles, who don't really glide so much as flutter. But they're still with her, and that's the important thing.
If they did lose some in the passage over the blockade, which had happened so fast for Astrid – they were over the ships' lights far below and then they were gone – then she'll just have to steal them back later. But if she's got fewer than sixty dragons in Stormfly's determinedly even wake, she must be seeing double from how tired she is.
Shame on her. Her messenger Terrors do this flight all the time, running letters back and forth.
Still, there are some things about Stormfly's saddle that Astrid's ready to redesign. Maybe if her luck holds, there will be hot water ready on the boil where they're going, and a cauldron big enough to sit in…
"Swing back to the twins and tell them they did good, will you?" Astrid tosses off to Snotlout before Fearsome can snap at Stormfly again. "Tell them I'm both pleased and terrified. They'll understand." And she fears for their lives if they'd raided Elva's still, the one the woman thinks no one knows about and that, of course, everyone does.
"Gotcha, chief," Snotlout says with a salute that's almost not sarcastic, and ruins it all by sneering, however halfheartedly. He drags Fearsome away with a whoop, and the big Monstrous Nightmare dives and doubles back beneath the ragged flock.
All she has to do is keep this lot together for just a little longer, and where else are they going to go? There isn't anything else out this way, which is one of the reasons Astrid has led them out here. Even if these dragons know the area, the nearest place they can set down is the island she wants them to go to anyway. She's counting on that, and on getting them far enough away that they won't try to wander back on their own.
"Just a little way further," Astrid mutters, to herself as much as to Stormfly, and pats the side of her Nadder's neck as Stormfly rolls an eye back to her and burbles what sounds like encouragement of her own. "That's right, my girl. We're getting there. We're going to stay with some friends of ours for a while, that's all."
With the sun climbing swiftly, and so long flying in darkness behind her, it doesn't seem like long before Astrid spots the dark shadow of a large island on the horizon, taking shape as they fly closer. She recognizes the shape of the low mountainside, not unlike Berk, but with far sheerer faces that make it look impossible to explore. She knows it's an illusion – on the north side, the way no one from the Archipelago would approach, the mountain gives way to a thick ring of forest facing the ocean. It looks no different from any other uninhabited island in the loose expanse of islands the Vikings of the north call theirs, all the way out to the western fog banks.
From the water, it looks threatening and hostile, the high sea cliffs and jagged rocks ringing it promising deep wounds in the side of any ship that tacks near.
From the air, Astrid can see differently.
A clearing in the interior of the island is freckled with low fences penning in curly-horned black and white goats, and with the beginnings of fields, the stumps of felled trees still sharp and raw. Those trees have gone to building the first houses and shelters and lodges that the people who live here now had raised together. Astrid had helped too, with some volunteers from Berk. Some of them are made from the bones of the ships they'd sneaked here, heavily laden with everything they could steal.
Although was it really stealing, if the people taking it were the people it belonged to, no matter what their always-absent, careless, so-called "chief" thought?
No trickles of smoke rise into the sky from the hearths that should be lit by now, and no ring of metal chimes out from the blacksmith's forge, but Astrid isn't worried by that. The forge was built into a cave to be as soundproof as possible, and she'd warned these people herself to stay low, at least until she could get rid of Dagur again.
She doesn't know what the former Chief of the Berserkers will do, if he finds where his rebel tribe has run off to, but she knows it won't be good.
As if they all share one mind, Berk's dragons veer towards the island in unison, chattering and shrieking to each other. Maybe they're as ready to set down and find a bed somewhere as Astrid is.
And as they do so, the settlement springs to life. Weapons in hand and helmets hurriedly crammed onto their heads, Vikings race out of their homes and stop, staring, pointing at the cloud of dragons sweeping in from the sky. Geese erupt from beneath their feet and flee to wherever geese hide, honking and squawking.
Astrid's almost sorry for the fear she can so readily imagine, catching in throat after throat. Berk wasn't the only tribe to suffer under dragon raids for hundreds of years, and the Berserkers react the way Berk would have, any day. They brace themselves with their weapons and shields ready to hand, yelling to warn the invaders away and remind themselves that they're not afraid, clustering into groups ready to defend each other, to fight and die for their tribe –
Someone pushes out into the middle of it all, weaving her way through her people with practiced grace. She sets one hand on her hip, next to the folded blades there, and the other over her eyes, shading them from the morning sun making her long, dark plait flash as she stares upward.
She's a slim young woman half a head taller than Astrid, and Astrid isn't ashamed to admit that she's prettier, too. The Chief of Berk – and the new Chief of the renegade Berserkers – don't get things done by being pretty, they work for a living. But the curious pale-green eyes, set high in her oval face above a wicked twist to her smile, don't hurt. Her usual outfit of beaten silver-grey armor over sturdy brown leathers is pieced together from many places, but each one has a story, and she can tell it, too, puncturing the objections of anyone who dares to doubt her with a few sharp, well-placed comments.
"Astrid?" Heather shouts.
Despite everything, Astrid can't help but smile back. She has missed her friend so much. How had she gone so long without a best friend before, someone who understands her so well, who keeps up with her and laughs with her and works with her to twist the world into something they want it to be?
Who else could she trust all her endangered dragons to in good faith, but the girl who makes her heart lighter just to see her?
But there's nothing but fear on Heather's face as her friend stares past her with her pale eyes wide, and Astrid barely has a moment to notice that before Heather screams, "Look out!"
And something dark and heavy and jagged barrels out of the sky and hits Stormfly full-on.
Stormfly's screams are like a knife through Astrid's throat, leaving her breathless, or maybe that's the jolt from tumbling from her saddle in midair, her straps stopping her short and hard. Her own harness saves her, leather straps digging into her shoulders and back and waist, and Astrid scrabbles for a grip on something, anything, her flailing hands finding only blue dragon scales and the instantly ripped-away edge of a fast-fluttering wing.
Everything's spinning, and everything hurts, spears of lightning jolting through her head – something hit me. Suddenly a maneuver she's practiced a dozen times, walking back up Stormfly's side, is the hardest thing Astrid's ever done.
No. No, it's not. I've done worse things than this – and even as Stormfly spirals, thrashing in the air trying to ward off the heavyset dragon attacking her – what is that? – Astrid gets hold of a saddle grip. She pulls herself towards it like it's the last thing she has to do and then she can rest.
It's not; the instant before she's in the saddle again Stormfly twists sideways to avoid another strike, snapping her tail around and following that spray of sharp spikes with a blast of flame that sends her attacker backwinging, its small, beady eyes almost shut. Astrid manages to get her seat back anyway, and rips her axe from its straps with a yell of defiance.
"Back off!" she yells, not caring if the strange dragon can understand her or not; what matters is that her voice is big and unafraid. All around, her own dragons have sprung away like splashes fleeing a thrown rock, recoiling from the threat, and in that empty space, Astrid finally gets a good look at the creature whose claws have torn into her Stormfly.
It's Gronkle-heavy, but much, much bigger, with none of the essential good nature of a Gronkle's face; its scales, the red of drying blood, are ragged and rough and scarred. Something wraps tightly around its broad shoulders – leather? Is it wearing armor? Is this one of Drago's war dragons? Hadn't they all been set free? – but that's abruptly of less concern than the strong, sharp-tipped tail it carries flexed up and over its back, held ready to strike like a rearing snake, or the crablike claws that snap out from its forelegs, which Astrid chops out at on reflex. Her axe clangs off one, chipping into it, and it springs away with a roar.
If this thing breathes fire, Astrid doesn't want to know about it – "Stormfly!" she cries, less a command than a reminder that her friend isn't alone, and Stormfly blazes at their foe defensively, flaring her wings wide.
The morning sun glances into her eyes, and Astrid lifts her axe not for the blade, but the flat, catching that light and reflecting it back into their attacker's eyes instead, fighting to keep the angle just right as Stormfly tumbles away, favoring her right side and keening as blood drips past Astrid's boot.
A howl over her shoulder gives her an instant's warning before a blue-green Zippleback darts over the heads of dragon and rider alike, one head spewing poisonous gas into the space between them and their attacker. Stormfly drops for a heart-stopping instant, getting out of the way of the blast – smart girl, Astrid will tell her when they're safely on the ground – just before the other head opens its mouth and spits sparks past its jutting fangs.
The resulting explosion sends them all careening, but while Berk's flock closes in around Stormfly defensively, their assailant is set upon by five or six dragons – just how many does a Zippleback count as? – who snap and flame it into fleeing, harassed by a howling pack. With its first ambush failed, and its prey fighting back, it races for open air and escape with only a snarl and Stormfly's blood on its claws to its credit.
And that's far too much for Astrid, who'll take her own wergild price out of its hide if she gets a chance.
"You're all right," she tries to soothe her whimpering Nadder, patting reassurances onto Stormfly's neck. "Brave girl, Stormfly – thank you, thank you – I'm so sorry – down, girl, c'mon down, let's go see Heather, yeah?"
Somewhere else, the flock they led here is scattering, some of them fleeing into the distant, untouched parts of the island and others settling down amongst the Berserkers that Heather is clearing away to make room. Distant yelling behind her and higher up must be her dragonriders shouting, demanding to know what just happened, but Astrid doesn't have answers for them. She just doesn't have time to wonder about one aggressive, strange dragon that shouldn't be here – she'd checked this island out herself, with Heather riding pillion behind her, and found no trace of dragons.
It'll have to go on the list.
All she can do is shout back, "Bring 'em down!" and decide to miss the spectacle of her riders trying to direct a flock of dragons like a herd of sheep. Stormfly is faltering in the air, and the pitiful little cry she makes as her claws hit the earth knocks the wind out of Astrid's lungs all over again.
"Good girl," Astrid whispers, leaning over Stormfly's neck and wrapping her arms as far around her friend's neck as they can go. "You did so good, my girl. We're all right. We'll be all right. We'll get you patched up, all right? Brave girl, Stormfly."
Actually setting her own feet on solid earth feels like a dream, something that makes so much sense but that she knows is wrong somewhere, and Astrid staggers slightly.
No sooner does she find her footing again but that she's hit all over again.
"Astrid!" Heather cries, catching her up in a full-force hug. Astrid wraps her arms around her friend's waist and lets herself sag into it.
Heather will hold her up for a moment. Heather won't tell anyone. And she smells like fresh-cut wood, which is nice, and just a trace of the familiar oil she puts on her armor and her blade to protect them from the sea air, and a little bit like sweat, not enough to be unpleasant, just enough for Astrid to know her friend is really here.
"Are you all right?" Heather demands, once Astrid's standing up on her own again. She grips Astrid's shoulders like she's refusing to let her go, eying her up and down critically. "Oh – Stormfly! I can't believe – those things have been driving us crazy! I don't know where they came from, but they won't go away! They don't seem to want anything, they've just been ambushing anyone they can find and then flying away again. What are you even doing here? I got your message."
Sure enough, they're immediately dive-bombed by two shrieking – and variously blue – Terrible Terrors. The pair of little dragons both try to perch on Astrid's shoulder – the same shoulder, of course, because Terrors really are that terrible – and scold her roundly for not having treats for them.
Heather frees up a hand to wave them off. "Shoo! Shoo! Turquoise, get lost, and take the Noisy Baby with you, can't you see she's busy? No, of course you can't, because you are dumb little brats. You're lucky you're cute. Down! Now!"
Turning back to Astrid, she says, "What's happened?" in a rather gentler tone, and it's all Astrid can do not to slump into her friend's arms and fall asleep on her shoulder, which wouldn't be particularly comfortable anyway, as Heather's wearing those shoulder-guards of hers. The Noisy Baby howls piercingly at Turquoise, and lands on one, her claws scrabbling for a hold.
"Why are there so many dragons?" Heather asks, still in that gentler tone. Somewhere behind her, Astrid can see Fishlegs touch down in the middle of a larger-than-usual Gronkle horde. "This must be every dragon on Berk."
Astrid blurts out, "Gods, I hope so."
Heather blinks at her, looks around again, and says, "Astrid? You want to tell me what's going on? What can I do to help?"
Later last year, just as the summer had turned to autumn, a stranger had turned up on Berk, exhausted and alone and with her head held low. The usual mob of curious Vikings had bundled around her and hustled her up to the village and Stoick, barely shutting up long enough for her to answer any of their nosy questions.
With her eyes cast down, she'd asked Stoick for shelter, saying that she'd come to them because she had nowhere else to go. The small group of families she'd been traveling with had fallen on hard times, and then fallen ill, and left her with no one. She said she'd heard that Berk was doing well, now that the dragon raids had stopped. She'd hoped that they might have a corner somewhere for one more, even if she was just a girl with nothing to bring except a willingness to work.
There was something about her, though. Maybe Astrid's spent long enough watching dragons that she's started to recognize the small signals humans make. That's not you, Astrid had recognized instinctively, seeing past the submissive attitude and the bedraggled clothes. And without thinking any further, Astrid had stepped out and said, "Chief? We can take her."
Stoick had grumbled amiably about Astrid adopting even more strays, and handed the girl over to her to figure out.
Green eyes had peeked up at her through a tangle of dark hair, and the girl had said, "Who are you?"
Astrid will never get over the shock and the hope on Heather's face when she'd followed up "I'm Astrid," with, "and I'm the next chief of Berk."
Practically overnight, Heather had gone from subdued stray to the best friend Astrid has ever had, full of questions and honesty – as soon as she believed that Astrid wanted to hear it – and praise and a willingness to listen that Astrid had quickly come to prize above even big handfuls of silver. She'd been willing to try when Astrid took her by the hand and introduced her to Stormfly, genuinely amazed when Astrid had greeted her Nadder like a friend and been greeted joyfully in return, and she'd won Astrid's loyalty forever the first time Heather had seen dragon and rider fly together, and immediately said, "That looks amazing, can I try?"
As soon as she realized that neither Stoick nor Astrid was going to shout her down for making suggestions, and that she was welcome to shout back if anyone else challenged her, she'd bubbled over with them. Before long, Astrid had discovered how much fun it could be to sit up talking until dawn, bouncing ideas and dreams back and forth over a heap of sleeping Stormfly between her bed and Heather's cot.
They might have stayed like that for years, a two-woman whirlwind turning every handspan of Berk upside down and shaking it to make it run better, if Heather hadn't emptied out her ever-present carry bag on a Great Hall table one night. She'd been searching for some trinket or relic to back up a story she was telling, but one of the things that spilled out was a little drinking horn. The horn had been weathered with time, but it had still been clearly marked with not just Berk's crest, but a variation that meant it had once been Stoick's.
"Where did you get this?" Astrid had asked, turning it over in her hands curiously.
Heather had pulled it away from her and said, "I've always had it," cradling it protectively, as if she thought Astrid would snatch it away.
Astrid had asked, "Is that why you came here?" just to buy time while she scrutinized her friend's face anew. Green eyes, different from Hiccup's, but green. Her coloring was all wrong. Surely not. No way –
And she'd been right, as it turned out when the two of them had cornered Stoick privately the next day and asked a couple of very firm questions.
She wasn't Stoick's hidden daughter.
She was Oswald's, sent away as soon as the long-vanished Chief of the Berserkers had gotten himself a son for an heir, because firstborn children could be such an inconvenience if they were the wrong shape and also you were an idiot, or particularly subject to bullying by your own tribal council. But then, he'd been Dagur's father, so what could Astrid have expected?
The drinking horn had been a name-day gift from one chief to another, and then sent along as a trade trinket with the no-longer-wanted child when she'd been replaced.
Heather had spent a few days vowing vengeance on a dead man, and finally Astrid had dragged her up to the arena and offered to spar with her until neither of them could see straight and the sun had gone down.
Propped up on each other in the fading darkness, Astrid had huffed out a bitter laugh and said, "Ugh, it just gets worse – you realize you're Dagur's sister, right? Heard of him?"
"Nothing good," Heather had growled.
Astrid had complained about Dagur for a while, the two of them getting their breath back and working out the aches in their shoulders and the ringing in their fingers from misaimed strikes. And somehow she'd ended up at, "He's being a real pain, smashing around the Archipelago. He's not very good at it, mind. I have seen so much worse. But what I wouldn't give to bloody his nose proper…"
They'd staggered back down to the village bickering tiredly about something much more important – who got the bath pan first, if Astrid remembers correctly, but it might as well have been about what color their bruises were going to turn – and she'd forgotten all about it.
Who cared who Heather's relatives were? They didn't want her, and Astrid – and Berk – did.
Except.
Except.
Except a few days later, Astrid had woken up to just enough dawn light to see Heather sitting cross-legged on her cot, elbows planted on her knees and fists under her chin, a thoughtful frown on her face. Not like she'd been sitting up all night worrying, but like something had occurred to her, and she hadn't been able to sleep through it.
"What?" Astrid had said, or something similarly coherent.
"I was thinking," her friend had answered, staring at nothing. "Dagur's the chief of the Berserkers, right? But he's out raiding all the time."
"Yeah?" Astrid's not always very talkative first thing in peacetime's mornings, especially if she's spent the previous evening arguing with Vikings who persistently don't understand that they can't graze their sheep in the last unharvested field of the year, dammit, people need to eat that stuff. She usually needs an hour's run for her feet to remind her mouth how to move.
"So who's in charge at home?"
She blames the early hour for how long it had taken her to catch on. "I dunno," she'd muttered. "I guess people are just doing the best they can. Why? What did you have in mind?"
Heather – the other Berserker heir, the sane one – had beamed at her like the rising sun and said, "Let's go steal the Berserker tribe."
Astrid had blinked at her for several seconds, and said…well, she doesn't remember exactly what she'd said, but it had been both deeply obscene and utterly delighted.
And that's what they'd done.
Dagur didn't throw the remains of Drago's war fleet at Berk because Astrid laughed at him a few times. Dagur's mad because she and Heather stole his whole basis for being a mighty chief while he wasn't looking.
And then, after everyone Heather could persuade that they deserved something better had fled Berserker Island with her in all the ships her new tribe had left (plus a few Astrid had loaned them, claimed as spoils of war from Dagur's failed raids, because she appreciates good irony)…and after they'd made their homes somewhere new and hidden…
Then they'd laughed at him.
But Dagur had thoroughly deserved it, at that point.
Astrid does regret not being there to see Dagur's face when he returned to an all-but-deserted island, with no one to resupply his raiding ships, or to hop when he said "frog" and laughed at the sky, or whatever it is Dagur actually does whenever he's not charging around giving everyone else a headache.
She doesn't regret helping her friend become the chief of her own tribe in her own right, even if Dagur had gone out and found a war fleet to aim at her and everyone else she loves in payback. Not even if she and her best friend are down to the occasional scribbled messages that Turquoise and the Noisy Baby don't eat – it's happened – and quick flyby visits.
Just from those few visits, she can see how much better the Berserkers are doing now, and that was worth it. Anyway, Astrid always knew that if she could be a chief, Heather could be too, and she was so right.
"Oh, Heather," Astrid says now, sighing deeply. "You would not believe the week I've had."
The easy chuckle her friend offers her is exactly what Astrid needs to hear right now, though the worry on Heather's face says she knows this is serious. Oh yeah, and also Berk's dragons are everywhere, far from home, and Stormfly is whimpering in pain that wrings Astrid's heart as bloody as her dragon's side.
If not for all that, she might just be listening to Astrid complain from beneath her blankets about yet another massively stupid village argument about who left buckets of half-brewed cloth dye out where children, dragons, and sheep could run through them on laundry day. That had been an interesting – and only much later, hilarious – day. "You going to tell me about it?"
"Maybe. You mind me dumping all these dragons on you for a while?"
"Nope," Heather says instantly. "You're always welcome here." She tosses a grin over her shoulder at Fishlegs waving happily at her, and the twins racing over to say hello, and Snotlout still flailing his arms at the exploring dragons like Fearsome crashing to the ground in a heap like a dropped tunic and immediately falling asleep hasn't done more to shift them than anything else.
"I dunno about that lot, though…" she adds, just loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Aw, c'mon! What have we done recently?" Tuffnut protests, skidding to a halt. "Hey, this is Heather's island! What'd you end up calling it?"
"Other than burn down the arena, of course," Ruffnut answers her brother's question helpfully.
"You did what?"
"Astrid told us to!"
"She really did! You shoulda seen it –"
Heather throws a friendly arm over Astrid's shoulder as the twins babble excitedly, and scratches around Stormfly's eyes as Astrid's wounded, faithful Nadder whimpers to her, and searches the curious crowd of her own people to wave over their healer, whom Astrid knows and who isn't completely terrified of dragons. Silly healers don't last long.
Beyond them all, Berk's dragons range out across an island without the shadows of slave ships ringing them in, and for a moment, Astrid finally feels like they can win this.
To be continued.
Author's Note: Heather has been extremely patient with me while I worked out how to import her from the TV shows into this series, even if I might have tweaked some details in the process; please welcome her!