Chapter 9:
Two weeks later
"Dagur named his armada 'The Las Cosmos'. It's armed with all sorts of weapons in the known archipelago. And it has five divisions, Cosmos-1 to Cosmos-5. Cosmos-2 is the strongest division, with more than 60 heavily armed battleships," Spitelout reported to the leaders of Berk.
"Needless to say, we are outnumbered," said Astrid, "We only have 20 ships."
"How about dragons? Do they have dragons?" asked Hiccup.
"Oh sure, the old Hiccup," muttered Snotlout.
"Well, I don't know. At least I didn't see any," Spitelout said.
"Don't worry about the ships, we Berkians can crush those muttonheads into pieces," said Stoick confidently.
"I don't think it's that easy," said Gobber, "we need to come up with a plan."
"Hey, I thought that should be Hiccup's line," Tuffnut said abruptly.
"Guys, this is not the time for entertaining. Just be quiet," gestured Hiccup.
"Oh, no?"
"How is your new rider training program?" asked Stoick, "Berkians are ready to fight, and I would like to have air support during a battle."
"Not quite good..." said Hiccup as he scratched his auburn hair.
"How so?"
"Because the new riders couldn't learn anything while they were mentally dating with their instructor," responded Astrid.
"And I think this situation needs a serious solution," added Fishlegs. He was Hiccup's assistant during the training, "Now we need more dragon riders. We only have five dragons and six Riders. No matter how powerful, strategic, and well-trained we are, we can't use five dragons to fight against a whole armada."
"Mmmm, that's weird," said Snotlout, thoughtfully, "those girls should come to me because I'm the reason why we have dragons."
"SNOTLOUT!" bellowed the Riders.
"So the new riders are all girls who fell head over heels in love with you, right? Then you need to come up with some useful solutions to your problem," said Stoick pointing at Hiccup, "I don't think it's funny. We need more dragon riders in battle."
"I tried to tell Hiccup about it," said Astrid, gave Hiccup a punch on the shoulder, "But he was way too lenient during training."
"Ok then, Astrid, you will become Hiccup's new assistant in the program. Be sure to keep an eye on both Hiccup and the new riders. I give you the power to alter and abolish every instruction from the instructor," Stoick then changed into a whisper that only Astrid could hear, "Don't be gentle to him."
"You got it, chief," said Astrid.
"Ha...ha...ha..." Hiccup gave a forced smile.
When Stoick and the Berkians were practicing sea battle strategies, Hiccup was training the new riders on the open field beside the shoreline, where they could view the harbor and the dock, and Toothless was entertaining himself with a stick that he found on the ground.
"First thing first, what did we do yesterday?" asked Hiccup to the eight girls in front of him, who were watching Hiccup just like ancient Vikings worshiping Freya.
"Well...we learned … you know… how to…" a girl said shyly, " how to bond with a dragon?"
"We learned that long ago," said Hiccup, "Come on, Nigerlina, you are better than this."
"Ok, I admit it," the girl who's name was Nigerlina said slowly, "I wasn't paying attention yesterday."
"At least you should know how to control your dragon first," Hiccup gestured at a young Nadder who was wandering around and clearly untrained.
"Oh, boy, it's gonna take him forever to train those new girls," said Astrid to herself while watching the class. Then she turned to Stormfly, who was standing next to her, "Stoick ordered us to train those girls into 'flying mortal Valkyries', but Hiccup has made no progress up till now. What do you think?"
Stormfly answered with a loud screech.
"That's it, Stormfly!" Astrid picked her axe from the ground and headed toward the class, "It's time for me to take over his useless training."
"Today, we are going to…" started Hiccup, deciding to ignore Nigerlina and start today's training. Astrid patted him on the shoulder.
"What?" he asked.
"Let me do the training," said Astrid.
"You? Are you sure? You are good at battling, but not teaching."
"Let me do it. Otherwise, we are screwed," Astrid said with a commanding tone.
"Fine, fine," Hiccup took a step back, "We will do it your way then. Try not to be too hard on them."
"Oh, now you are defending them?" Astrid pointed at the eight girls with her axe.
"Yes… no, no, no, I just don't want… want them to be too stressed out," said Hiccup quickly.
Astrid chuckled at her boyfriend's bashful reaction, and that was what made him attractive to her. She suddenly held onto the front of Hiccup's jacket and pull him closer to her and crashed her lips onto his.
"What was that for?" Hiccup asked.
"To show dominance."
"Dominance?"
"Yeah, so that those girls won't be daydreaming about you and your body."
"Hopefully."
The girls "oohed" behind Hiccup and Astrid, and Hiccup could hear the chitchats from the girls about him and Astrid.
"All right you girls," Astrid turned to the new riders, "I think I don't have to introduce myself, so we will get down to training immediately."
As Hiccup sat on a barrel beside them with Toothless next to him, almost all eight pairs of eyes turned toward him.
"What?" said Hiccup when he realized the girls' dreamy glares.
Before Hiccup could do something, Astrid threw her axe towards the first girl who turned her head away. The axe missed her forehead by less than an inch and sliced down half of her bangs.
The girls turned their attention back to Astrid with astonishing looks on their faces while the first girl screamed out loud and covered her face with her hands.
" Good," said Astrid with an unimpressed tone, "because I got your attention, shall we begin our training?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the girls responded with a slight shiver in their sounds. None of the girls wanted to be the one who was going to be the next to get her head chopped in half by Astrid's axe.
"We need to restart from scratch and forget the things that that nice-and-handsome Viking taught to you," Astrid pointed at Hiccup.
"Hey!" protested Hiccup, then turning to Toothless, "I think she is trying to overthrow me and take control forever."
Meanwhile, on the Island of Berserkers, The Las Cosmos Armada was gathering by the island and practicing their sea battle formations. Hundreds of ships were divided into five divisions, and each of the groups had their own jobs to do, so they practiced separately. The Berserker ships painted their symbols on the ports and the Outcasts put long spears on the front of their ships.
"Just look at this," said Dagur to Savage while they were standing by the dock watching the ships, "No tribes in this world can defeat this armada."
"Not even the Romans, Sir," Savage added.
"Hiccup is definitely training more riders covertly. That means we need to have dragons on our side as well."
"We tried to control some wild dragons on this island," said Savage, "but we lost ten soldiers and failed."
"Then we need to turn our attention to some… well, more trainable dragons," Dagur drew his metal dagger from the scabbard and held it in front of Savage, "Which our ancestors described in The Books."
***In your opinion, What was the dragon that Dagur wanted to train?
Leave a review and tell us your idea.