Tuffnut, Ruffnut, Snotlout, Fishlegs, Hiccup, and Gustav zipped over the towering trees of the outskirts that had branches so thick and mangled that they could hold all of the island's secrets.
Hiccup's eyes combed the forest, and lit in triumph. He pressured his ankles against Toothless's middle to halt him.
"Ok, gang. They're about half a mile ahead. We can't bring the dragons! There's no telling who these guys are."
"Dragon hunters?" Fishlegs speculated.
"I dunno. But we'll find out one way or another. Let's get down there."
Everyone followed Hiccup's lead to bank their dragons on a cave ledge.
Hiccup staggered down the cave's walls to the ground, landing silently on his boots . He charged forward with his armor's contraptions chiming like medallions behind him.
Tuffnut volleyed onto a branch and plunked on his boots while sprinting after Hiccup, just as easily as he would have done when chasing Ruffnut in an apple orchard.
After Ruffnut, Fishlegs landed, dusted his knees and hands, and then jogged ahead at his own pace.
Snotlout carefully scaled down a skinny vine from the cave ledge, which snapped and plummeted him to the dirt below. Gustav helped up Snotlout and agreed Hiccup's peg leg gave him an unfair advantage.
"Snotlout, Snotlout, oi, oi, oi!"
Gustav snickered at Snotlout's holler as they ran. "What was that for?"
"Jorgensons always battlecry; it warms the blood, scares the enemy. You should make one!" Snotlout cackled behind Gustav. "Can't you run any faster, sticklegs?"
Gustav remembered his dragon training and hefted over a forest log with one arm, minding to tuck in his knees to make his vault speedier and higher. A mammoth one appeared far ahead.
Gustav saw Hiccup launch to a low branch and arc over it. When Gustav successfully copied the maneuver, he celebrated in the air and grunted cheerfully on his landing. His own battlecry came instantly as he disappeared into the trees with the others: "Gustaaaav...!"
The group was stopped a bit ahead by a horde of leather- armored men led by a tall character with long, black lapels over his legs and boots. His white hair was spiked, combed hard at the sides with grease, and his chin was long and noble, his eyes wise and unassuming with a leery purpose.
When he spoke first to the Riders, he sounded amused, and even smiled. He beckoned Astrid forward from his warlord's grip with a passive wave of his hand.
"This is your leader? A boy who is half my age?"
"I'd say more like a third, Grimmel." Astrid countered darkly, but Grimmel took no offense.
"With age comes wisdom, but I see by the way you have hand delivered your crew to be captured, you have very, very little of it." Grimmel glowered slightly. "Where are the others?"
"This is all of us," Hiccup announced. "Now. Give us Astrid, and we'll go!"
"Not yet. Tell me something first. Is this your island?"
"Not exactly," Hiccup began, making up a favorable answer as he went, "but we're familiar with it, and we really like the place...and...want it to ourselves, for now."
"I see." Grimmel admired the honesty from the armored stranger in front of him. All of them were crafty enough to allow their helmets to keep them anonymous.
The lot had also came unnaturally quickly to Astrid's rescue, Grimmel thought, so he reasoned there could be no other logical explanation: "You have dragons?"
Towards the shadows, Snotlout shook his head at Gustav before Gustav spoke and gave them all away. Silence was key, and Hiccup wasn't talking, either.
"You don't look like you could handle them anyway, just look at you all." Grimmel chuckled for a length of time, as long as he found it amusing. "A silly question. However, I should clarify that this land does not legally belong to you children. There is an auction in three days time for this island and I intend to buy this land entirely, for all of my dragons and my ships...and so you will lose it of course."
"How can you be so sure about that?" Hiccup said.
"Dressed like that you have not seen riches a day in your life, yes? This auction is for true men, with real money. Lords, ladies, sons of chiefs."
Hiccup blinked, appearing understanding to Grimmel.
"I suggest you build your treehouses elsewhere...before it is too late." Grimmel gave Astrid a gentle push towards her crew. "A woman with brains. Given the chance with me and my men, she would be feared around the world. It's a shame she has refused." Grimmel and his more decorated warlords departed from Hiccup and the Riders.
"Where is the auction?!" Hiccup shouted after them. Grimmel laughed from afar.
Astrid looked warily to Hiccup looked down with racing thought.
Hiccup himself knew he hadn't brought any huge amount money to Dragon's Edge from Berk, and Hiccup could sense Grimmel was not an unnecessary liar.
Hiccup coralled the group further in the forests from Grimmel's settlement. "We're gonna be alright." Hiccup said to lift the group's tangible uneasiness. "We just need some money. If we put everything we have together, maybe we stand a chance." Hiccup interrogated each one. "Tuff?"
"I have a rock."
Hiccup skipped Ruffnut; a lizard wouldn't do. "Fish?"
"Nada."
Hiccup turned to his last hope. "Gustav, what have you got, buddy?"
"I'm fourteen."
Hiccup sighed. "Okay. I'll have a plan by morning."
Later that night, as Hiccup scribbled his twenty-second draft of plans to win the rights to Dragon's Edge, he heard a knock on his door. He saw Toothless asleep near his ankles. Hiccup reminded himself to be careful not to wake him when he tiptoed over his tail.
He saw Ruffnut standing before him, curling a plait of blonde hair in her fingers.
"Hello?" Hiccup said, bending unsurely to meet her eyes that hid themselves at her feet. Hiccup didn't prefer visitors after sunset unless it was Fishlegs with updates on a new prototype of Gronckle lava, but Ruffnut was also his friend. "What are you doing still up?"
"I dunno. I couldn't sleep." Ruffnut shrugged.
"Well, what're you thinking about?"
"Just that old guy in the woods." Ruffnut's toneless, gravelly voice confessed. "Do y'really think we'll lose this place and everything?"
"On my mother's grave that won't happen." Hiccup swore. "To get to the Edge he's going to have to get through me. You've got nothing to worry about."
Ruffnut looked comforted. "I was also thinking...y'were kinda brave today. It was cool, I dunno." She looked down at her boot sweeping in lazy arcs in front of his door.
Hiccup's hand traveled in his hair. "Uh, thanks, Ruff."
Toothless impatiently slithered past his legs and took off into the night. "Really?!" Hiccup exclaimed. Ruffnut shared in his confusion.
"He probably just doesn't want company. Come in." He made space on his bed for Ruffnut to have somewhere comfortable to sit.
Ruffnut refused water. "I just wanna hear the plans."
"They're not too complicated. Just, uh," Hiccup's voice dimmed beneath a table where he stuffed a pile of maps. "a few callibrations to be made. I'll tell you everything first thing tomorrow. Bread?"
"I'm not hungry."
Hiccup joined Ruffnut on his bed and worked to release his peg leg. He felt Ruffnut trace his movements with her eyes.
"Does that hurt?"
"No!" Hiccup assured brightly. He gave an incredulous smile. "Gobber made it," Hiccup explained, as if that explained his old master never made mistakes, and that crafting prosthetics was a more than usual task in a smithy on an island full of Vikings.
"That Red Death really messed you up," Ruffnut said quietly, watching Hiccup work. The peg-leg detached with a final, ringing click.
Hiccup's ankle-stump the peg-leg had hidden wasn't as gruesome as Ruffnut had imagined. Only bruised and red at the end, and a little oddly shaped around a jutting bone. It had been at least a decade since he lost the foot, Ruffnut recalled.
Hiccup shrugged and smiled humbly. "Ah, well, you know."
Ruffnut giggled. "You know, you always say that." She removed her boots too, and her feet immediately heated from the warmth of his room.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I dunno!" Ruffnut said sharply, wondering why he sounded cross all of a sudden. "Maybe something like: 'Stoick's my dad, whaddya expect'?!"
Hiccup considered that suggestion. He even laughed. "I think I'll use that next time. Thanks."
"Did you feel it fall off?"
Hiccup tensed his lip, not enjoying many discussions about the day, but he decided Ruffnut deserved some vulnerability.
"Not really. All I saw was smoke... and fire...and Toothless there, coming for me." Hiccup hadn't realized he had stilled. He quickly continued to replace his peg leg under his bed.
"The next thing I know, I was home." He perked when he thought of something Ruffnut might like to know, and then grinned. "Know what I found later?"
Ruffnut's eyes glittered. "What? What?!"
"A Red Death incisor. Somehow it got stuck in my shirt. It's my favorite paperweight." Hiccup silently pointed to his desk when Ruffnut failed to believe him. He smiled when she gasped.
"You're crazy; I like that." Ruffnut said to him. She looped her hair ends between her fingers.
After a reflection, Hiccup inquired, "yeah?" A smile grew crooked on his face. Hiccup shifted comfortably and preened his brunette hair again. His hearth made pleasant crackles and snaps that filled his patient silence for her reply.
Ruffnut chuckled at her own disability to explain why, and simply muttered, "yeah."
"Okay," Hiccup stated. "I started to wonder." He shrugged matter-of-factly.
"What?" Ruffnut said. She looked down, touching her toes together above the shadows flickering over his warm floor.
She watched Hiccup's single and bare foot beside her. It was longer, more angled, and streaked every now and then with scars and callouses, which made it appear graceful somehow. It make slow circles beside hers, and finally Hiccup relaxed it with a small grunt of pain that Ruffnut believed wasn't meant for anyone's ears. Ruffnut wondered if he exercised his foot every night.
"Well, you do stare at me a lot lately." Hiccup went on. "A little more than a lot, sometimes, I think. Not that it bothers me too much. Or at all." He observed Ruffnut's wringing hands, and then he carefully asked: "Is there something else you want?"
Ruffnut's chest tightened, and she prepared to leave if that's what he wanted, but was not quite ready yet. "No."
Hiccup bent to Ruffnut, and expecting her sheepish smile, kissed her once on the cheek. Hiccup looked pleased when Ruffnut faced away shyly, and his eyes appeared to laugh when he whispered, "I think there is."
Ruffnut felt Hiccup's arms glide around her, then felt another kiss plant on her jaw, and then her chin, and twice on her neck.
Ruffnut, imagining she had suddenly become her Aunt Freyja's fruit pudding from the way she was trembling, then felt Hiccup's fingers purse her face and cusp her lips.
Ruffnut made a weak noise of contentment at being rewarded for acting coy long enough around him.
Ruffnut considered Hiccup in front of her as the same freckled pipsqueak who she loved to bully in Dragon Training who had somehow morphed into the closeted bad-boy of her dreams.
Her caged feelings about him had only bloomed since he had single handedly revolutionized the entire archipelago by uniting Vikings and Dragons, and was now barreling full force into a new challenge against another Dragon trapper he had no clue how to win against.
Now he was alone with her and at least appearing to enjoy it. He hadn't sent her to her own barracks, at least. She rested her palms on his lean shoulders and let herself be spoiled by his needy caresses.
Ruffnut felt Hiccup's unworking her tunic laces, his breath feeling like wind on her skin. She heard Hiccup reveal that he couldn't believe how skinny she was.
Hiccup felt Ruffnut distance from him and he reluctantly stilled. "What's wrong?" He said, coralling neglected desires at bay that the daughters of Stoick's friends had finally introduced him to, the first year that word had reached Berk's allies that he had tamed a Night Fury.
"Am I that skinny?" Ruffnut asked. She sheilded some of her ribs showed under her skin.
Hiccup looked into Ruffnut's eyes, insisting he was only teasing.
Relieved, Ruffnut watched Hiccup unfurl the rest of her clothes as her heartbeat started to dribble between her ears.
"This- -off," Hiccup stated like a passive command, gesturing to Ruffnut's belt. He began to strip his waist free of his own.
Ruffnut felt her hands were leaves in wind, never still as she tried for her waistband's buckle. She had caught the sight of Hiccup's braies in the firelight. When Ruffnut focused back to her belt, she felt the cloth covering him trip past her ankles.
"Here," Hiccup said. His hands tingled Ruffnut's fingers as he spindled her belt loose.
Suddenly, Ruffnut felt Hiccup's loins warm beneath her. Hiccup nudged Ruffnut forward into him while she squeezed her eyes shut to not see anything.
Hiccup entered her and punctuated once before catching a moan from his lips. "You're making this so easy, Ruff," he said. "This is what you wanted all along wasn't it?"
Ruffnut resigned to speak back to Hiccup in fear he was right, but couldn't stay silent when he wrapped her legs around himself and lifted her to him. She simmered with desire and discomfort but hugged Hiccup close, feeling liberated to answer his ruts with her hips. That seemed to pain him somehow, and then Ruffnut awkwardly paused.
Hiccup recentered her, annoyed, and then he continued at a slower pace. Then, Ruffnut felt his weight pillar her on her back. When Hiccup rocked into her, Ruffnut began swearing.
Ruffnut closed her eyes like Hiccup, thinking it would help calm her nerves about being completely naked in front of him, but soon didn't see the point in trying anymore. Hiccup's moans ebbed in her ear, interrupting itself with sounds Ruffnut had never heard a man make before and praises that weakened her knees.
Ruffnut's voice suddenly left her at once. After a blissful moment, she refocused to Hiccup, feeling surprised.
Hiccup paused, shaken. His eyes, burning amber in the firelight, met hers when he lifted his head from her shoulder.
"Sorry," Ruffnut blurted, not sure if she had done the right thing from the dissatisfied look on his face.
"It's okay," Hiccup sighed over her after a moment.
Ruffnut returned to her person as Hiccup steadily peeled on his clothes and refastened his belt. She watched him and believed for sure she had done something wrong.
"Well," Hiccup mumbled to Ruffnut at his door a short time after, a soft frown trained to his buzzing feet. His anxiety over Grimmel had dissolved some for the night, as he had expected. He shrugged to Ruffnut. "Good night."
"G'night."
Hiccup's fingers filed once, then twice on his door frame, and then he checked to see if Ruffnut was still standing there in front of him.
"Did you wanna stay?" he asked. He added that he could find another blanket somewhere under the mess he had made of his charting desk if she only gave him a moment.
Ruffnut desired to stay, already feeling felicity when thinking about being cocooned with Hiccup and safe in his arms for the entire night. She really wanted more of whatever they had shared, for it had happened too quickly, but she feared Hiccup would definitely refuse, thinking her as some kind of harlot.
Ruffnut pinched her fingers in her palms as she shook her head to him, and then she walked to her own barracks.
Immediately, steps tromped in the dark ahead of her, and Ruffnut believed it was only the one Speed Stinger that usually roamed the camp at night.
Ruffnut returned to her thoughts and replayed the night in her mind, later drifting with her thoughts to sleep.
Hiccup watched Ruffnut leave him with his own thoughts he preferred to mull over in private. He latched his door, snuffed out his candle lights and crawled into his bed. Too quickly, his ruminations of Grimmel's words returned, and they tossed and churned in him like a stormy ocean as sleep washed over him.
"I did something with Hiccup."
Astrid heard Ruffnut, but found her phrasing funny and showed it with twinged brows and a smirk.
Astrid continued poking at the team's break fast she was preparing at the bright, sandy docks of Dragon's Edge to fuel them all before their mysterious flight to some place according to Hiccup's plan. "What are you talking about? A prank?"
"No," Ruffnut said.
"What happened?"
"I kissed him."
Astrid looked up quickly. After Ruffnut's forefingers had made several circles around themselves, Astrid continued browning the eggs while being patient for Ruffnut to continue. "When?"
Astrid's newest egg on her small hearth of stones solidified before Ruffnut replied, "last night."
"Okay. Where?"
"His room. And, we did other stuff," Ruffnut added.
"What 'other stuff'?"
Ruffnut, acting unusually despondent to Astrid, shrugged.
Astrid was motivated to speak quieter when their Snotlout and Fishlegs came in view from over a hill. "How long were you there?" She asked.
"I don't know, bitch!" Ruffnut whispered. It had been shorter than she had pictured. "What kinda question is that?!"
"Was it nice?"
Ruffnut blushed and nodded to her own self as her cheeks lifted gingerly.
"Good." Astrid mentioned. She carefully added, "I know you might not understand what I mean, Ruffnut, but...I don't think you've been around a lot of guys besides your brother-"
"What are you getting at?" Ruffnut snapped.
"-because if you did, it wouldn't be hard to tell that Hiccup is not the type of person who just falls in love...with anyone."
Just as Astrid mouthed her follow-up to Ruffnut's sheepish plea for an explaination, Astrid glanced upward.
"Morning, m'lady." Hiccup said, stifling reservedly at the next name to mention. "Ruffnut."
Ruffnut focused on the grass she perched on.
Hiccup went on, "uh, don't forget to pack extra. We've got a long flight today."
"Where are we going?" Astrid said.
"You'll see," Hiccup and Astrid chimed together. Hiccup found it amusing.
Ruffnut bristled inwardly at how easy Astrid seemed to feel around him and how deftly she finished his sentence.
"Exactly," Hiccup bade Astrid with a flap of his arm in her direction as he parted from the women.
"You're not going to eat first?" Astrid called, getting a dismissive, friendly sound for an answer.
Ruffnut watched Hiccup swagger away without a farewell to her. Hiccup flinched his hand behind him for Toothless to hurry his scamper behind his heels.
"'He's just going on a stupid warm-up flight." Astrid explained to Ruffnut, who quickly turned her way. "There's a new tailwing for Toothless he's testing, and I think it's the worst one yet. But don't take my word for it." Astrid smiled at the smoke blooming in her face from the breakfast fire.
Ruffnut swiftly left the fire while ignoring Astrid's startled call after her.
"Did Hiccup and Astrid ever...y'know?" Ruffnut asked Snotlout when she cornered him. She trusted he would surely know; Snotlout knew everything about everyone.
Snotlout glanced in some directions for eavesdroppers. The other Riders devoured eggs near Astrid. "No. But it can't be long now." Snotlout then asked with a disarming teeter of his boxy head, "Why?"
"No reason!" Ruffnut cut in, annoyed by Snotlout's pleasantly intrugued voice. She tucked the thought away when it was time to board Barf.
The clear daytrip the Dragon Riders took across the ocean soon darkened with rumbling, faraway rain clouds that shaded the sea to a deep olive-green.
"The first part of the plan is this-" Hiccup shouted atop Toothless's racing body weaving above the crashing waves and through storm-pregnant wind. "-I'm gonna have to bet on the Edge with my birthrights."
A collected yell of shock sounded over the waves.
Hiccup recoiled and twisted the weathered, leather steergrips of Toothless' handmade reins. "There's no way we can make the amount of money this Grimmel guy already owns in less than three days. This is the only way we can stand a chance."
"Does Stoick know about this?!" Astrid yelled over the wind, flying always near his side on Stormfly.
"No, Astrid. Of course my Dad doesn't know. He can't know."
"How exactly big is your inheritance?" Snotlout quizzed.
"Uh, including the apparent harem of Sirens that will be singing praises to me in the afterlife, it's all acres of Berk and its armada."
"Is there any chance we could translate that into gold? That's what everyone else will be betting with." Fishlegs said.
"None. Land is more valuable than gold; it'll be accepted at an event like this. There's no way our dragons could carry it to the auction. I thought you of all people would know it is pretty obvious we would need ships for metal heavier than iron."
"Technically, a Gronckle can lift up to fifty pounds more than its own body weight, thus, Meatlug can handle gold, if you remembered anything from Dragon Training."
Hiccup tensed, and then he insisted hotly: "We're not using gold, Fish! I thought about this plan all night; it has to work!"
"So, tell me something else." Snotlout said. "If you lose to Lord Spikyhair, then we all might be homeless?"
"Yes Snotlout, if you put it that way."
"Brilliant. Couldn't have thought of a better plan myself."
"Will everyone just...follow my lead? I swear everything will turn out okay."
Tuffnut called, "where exactly are we flying?"
Hiccup said, "you'll see."
Tuffnut surveyed the landmarks ahead-a blackish moutain valley unsurfacing from the deep, and then he shared a knowing look with Snotlout. Snotlout made a hidden facial gesture for Tuffnut to speak up.
Tuffnut called, "hey, Hiccup," to the front of their flying formation, and Hiccup's helmet acknowledged Tuffnut with a nod.
"It kinda of looks like we're near Beserker Island? Maybe we should make a pitstop. I dunno about you, chief, but breakfast was forever ago and I'm kinda getting hungry. We can even stop by to see Heather."
"This is no time for breadbreaking, Tuff. We're on a schedule."
Astrid checked her team trailing behind her, who all looked sourly confused, exhausted, and annoyed. She took it upon herself to confront Hiccup by swooping Stormfly in Toothless' path.
Hiccup jolted Toothless's reins in a panic to halt, causing Toothless to screech. Hiccup's heart fell back from his throat as he caught his breath. Astrid's glaring face hovered in front of him.
Hiccup shouted, livid: "you could've hurt him!"
"Where are we going, Hiccup?!" Astrid shouted back. "If you're not going to answer Tuffnut, you are going to answer me."
A chicken squawked in alarm. Hiccup faced Tuffnut bobbing atop Belch.
"She laid an egg!" Tuffnut cheered. He gasped when the warm egg slipped from his armor's gloves and plopped into the sea.
Hiccup scornfully revealed: "I'm headed to The Defenders Of The Wing Tribe. Queen Mala might give us some intel to where this auction might be. We'll be there at sunset. Are you happy now?"
"Hiccup! Our dragons are starving, there's a storm forming over our heads for Thor's sake, it's not even close to sunset, and you have the nerve to make us fly for miles on end?!"
"We'll be wasting our time with the Beserkers! Mala has dealt with every kind of dragon hunter before we even got here-she has to know where Grimmel is headed!"
"We have time to rest!"
"The auction is in three days, Astrid!" Hiccup exploded. "Do you want to save Dragon's Edge or not?!"
"Why would you even say that!" Astrid bellowed, jabbing a finger to the East, towards Berk. "I left my entire life behind for the Edge!"
"This is gonna be good," Snotlout snickered to Tuffnut, who had already found a comfortable resting place for his head on Belch until Astrid and Hiccup handled another of their spats.
A sour feeling gripped Tuffnut at the way Astrid sat unflinchingly in front of Hiccup while he berated Astrid's question of his authority. They weren't really fighting, Tuffnut saw, Astrid was only trying to force reason into him, much like a wife to her husband.
Tuffnut envied that Hiccup could also be intimately affected by Astrid's show of strength by the way Hiccup let Astrid humiliate him in front of all the Riders. Sure enough, after a few more heated exchanges, Hiccup announced to the Riders that they would settle at Beserker Island to rest for the night.
"Thank you. Let's fly girl," Astrid said. Stormfly flapped off to a detour across the waves.
With a growl, Toothless batted his inky wings after Stormfly.
Meatlug, Hookfang, Fanghook, and Barf and Belch curtailed in the sky after them to approach a brownish-grey seashore speckled with firepits.
"Does that mean I get to try ale?" Gustav asked Snotlout, one of the senior Riders that liked to stick the closest to him in flights now.
"Don't even think about it," Snotlout warned, stealing Gustav's helmet at Hookfang's next turn. Snotlout chuckled as Hookfang soared over Fanghook, and then he footballed Gustav's helmet to Fishlegs, who rounded it over Gustav's arms to Tuffnut, who caught one of the helmet's ramhorns just before it grazed the crashing waves.
Gustav caught his helmet when it launched from his sudden right.
"It's on me," Tuffnut promised Gustav with a wink when his Zippleback passed him. Tuffnut was satisfied at the glare that met him back, and figured Gustav would get used to their hazing eventually.
Gustav sped after the Riders before he lost the sight of Belch and Barf's tail.
Belch looked back at Fanghook to encourage him to keep up with Toothless's pace, which was more unforgiving than usual as Toothless snaked a path to the firelit village below.
*END OF VOLUME 1* 10-16-22
