Chapter Five

It was the day after he gained the trust of the new dragon, and Rayden discovered a few things about the previously unknown beast. Like a Scauldron, it was dependent on the water and after a few hours, it showed duller scales and exhaustion hung over it like a fog. Though it soon recovered when it doused itself by flying high into the air and diving into the river. Through examinations of both the dragon's body and the behavior it showed around Stormfly, Hiccup determined it was male. Rayden named him Hydra, and the water drake was soon comfortable around everyone.

The flying pattern of Hydra was intriguing; he used all four of his wings in acrobatic feats that Rayden thought would even rival Toothless. Hydra flapped both of his wings in sync to gain altitude quickly and then he would alternate flaps, his front pair of wings at the top of their arc while the back wings were at their lowest point. By flapping both pairs in separate tandem there was no lull in speed as the down stroke of one set of wings compensated for the opposite upstroke of the other. As such, when he was flying level to the ground, he could outmatch even Toothless for speed, though Toothless excelled in other areas due to his almost fifty feet wingspan. Hydra's wingspan could boast no more than half of that, though his wings made powerful gusts of wind, showing he was still strong and fast, no matter the size of his wings. Once Rayden configured the saddle, he was able to experience his new friend's speed first-hand. The results were terrifying, but he was soon exhilarated and they flew at high speeds through the sky. Sadly, Rayden could not hold on tight enough for long bursts of speed because of his injury. Though, Freya used her skilled hands to remove the splint from his right arm, and he now used only a heavy bandage, to slightly restrict his movements so that he could not jar his wrist too much. Within a week he was supposed to be fully healed, and he could feel strength slowly seeping back into his appendage.

They had been at the same camp for the past five days, and Rayden was itching to leave, in more ways than one. His wrist was aching and it constantly itched no matter how much he scratched it. Even though it was almost as strong as his left arm, it felt and even visibly looked a bit smaller. He began to exercise his wrist by bending it for small intervals and finding average sized rocks, holding them at waist height until it burned. Which, sadly, did not take long. Rayden prided himself for his fitness, and as such, this was unacceptable. The previous night they agreed to leave soon, as they were slowly burning away their time.

It was shortly after lunch when they decided to leave. Normally they would have left much earlier, but after pouring all his attention to charts and maps, Hiccup stated that they did not have much flying to do, and they wanted to stop at the coast before attempting to cross the ocean. It wasn't as wide as the gap the crossed over the Archipelago waters, but they did not know if there were any islands they could rest on.

They flew slower than normal, due to the fact that Toothless and Stormfly were more laden than usual. Hydra could not carry anything that wasn't waterproof, as he often swam in any water they found. He could swim fast, though not nearly as fast as he could fly. Even so, Hydra appeared to love both the sky and the water. Not as much could be said for Freya, who hated the liquid contact. Her grip clamped Rayden in irons every time their mount glided down to a body of water. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it, and sometimes Hydra dived fully underwater, soaking them both to the bone. Thankfully the water was only mildly cold, and Freya still looked beautiful when her wet hair was plastered to the back of her head and shoulders. The scowl didn't help, though.

They reached the shore a little after suppertime, which they skipped to continue flying. Ironically, there was a village situated on the shore with several docks, that they had sighted not long after Rayden contemplated the fact they had seen no signs of civilization since they left. Toothless let off a signature plasma blast in excitement, but they flew out of its path before any of them were scorched. It seemed to have alerted the village, warning bells tolling. Hiccup let out a heavy sigh. He was hoping to avoid a confrontation.

"Well, hooray. A welcoming committee."

There was a group of warriors coming out in front of the villages, fifteen strong and robust looking men, armed with axes and javelins. As soon as the trio of dragons landed, the squad attempted to circle them, so with unspoken consent the dragons backed up a little, and Hiccup along with Rayden dismounted to calm their scaly companions. Rayden managed to snap Hydra's mouth shut before he let off a blast of fire, plasma, water, he didn't even know. A middle sized man walked forward a few steps, ignoring angry growls. He was probably the only reason why the men simply didn't attack. He had a greying beard that betrayed his younger appearance. A string of words came from his mouth, but nobody understood what he said. Hiccup held back another sigh as Rayden cursed. Negotiations just got a bit harder. Rayden walked closer to the man, a mere six feet away. If he wanted to, the elder warrior could have leaped forward and separated Rayden's head from his shoulders. Rayden spoke a loud and clear question.

"Norse?"

"Aye."

The man leaned on the haft of his axe, glad to be able to question why the four youngsters were on dragons.

"What in the blazes are you doing with dragons? Why aren't they attacking you?"

A few of his group spoke to each other with varying degrees of volume.

"…witchcraft…"

"Could be a trick."

Rayden let Hiccup take over from there. He backed up as Hiccup began speaking.

"We trained them."

As Hiccup explained their names, mounts and reasons for passing through, the man introduced himself as Rohan and dismissed all but three of his warriors. One looked to be his brother, and the other two held an air of confidence. Rohan addressed all of them in a calm yet slightly unbelieving tone.

"I'm sure you can stay as long as you like, but I need to make sure your lizards are not meaning harm."

Hiccup was eager to just find a bed, a real, soft bed to fall in, so he was brief.

"You'll need to drop your weapons."

Rohan grounded his axe and the javelin on his back as well as the sword belted on his waist. Heavily equipped, Rayden thought. As Rohan edged closer Toothless let out a huff of flame where his next foot would have fallen. Hiccup had a small amount of annoyance in his tone.

"All of them."

Rohan slowly crouched and pulled the long, jagged, wicked looking knife from his left boot. He tossed it without a backward glance back near his other weapons. Hiccup grabbed his wrist guard and guided his hand to Toothless' snout. After a brief contact Rohan uncomfortably retreated and repeated the process for the other two dragons. Hydra let out a growl during his turn, and Rayden quickly explained.

"I just trained him."

"When?"

"It was only a fortnight ago."

Rohan had no other questions or concerns for the moment. It was a warm night, so he ordered a barn emptied of animals to a fenced in pasture. The barn was given to the dragons, and the loft was given to the riders. Two beds were carried up for them, and Hiccup expressed his gratitude with a thanks and a hearty hand-shake. Rohan claimed it was nothing, as head of the guard he had no troubles making such demands. After Rohan left, Hiccup fell in bed, exhausted. The others were not far behind. Astrid climbed in beside Hiccup and curled close next to him. Rayden drowned himself in the sleeping furs after he checked on Hydra and the others, and he was surprised when Freya copied Astrid, crawling in close beside him. He did not have much to say on the matter, his eyelids were already drooping. But as he fell asleep beside her he could only thing how much better it was than a tent.

The next morning Hiccup went straight to the man in charge to explain everything about dragons.

"Don't wait up, I'll be a while."

Freya went to find the medicine hut to study herbs she had never seen before and to learn anything she could. That left Rayden and Astrid. They both had already planned to drop by the barracks for some weapons training. Toothless was Hiccup's weapon, and Rayden knew he could protect Freya, though she did have a dagger hidden on her. He wasn't going to use his bow, but he could get some knife practice in now that his wrist was sufficient enough. They met Rohan training some new recruits behind the barracks, a short walk from the barn. There was a competent obstacle course with a balancing log and a rope course among other things. Several pairs of warriors were sparring on the practice field, and there were archery targets, though nobody was throwing knives, Rayden noticed.

He strapped his blades to his belt and began climbing ropes up and down the wooden tower. Two of its sides were climbed by ropes, two on each side. One rope on each side was knotted every foot or so while the other two were smooth. The additional walls were decorated with random handholds. Rayden went right to work climbing up both the knotted and un-knotted ropes for half an hour, then spent the next half climbing the other wall. It was vigorous exercise, and his wrist was burning. He sat on the edge of the field for a breather, observing Astrid go through complicated forms with her axe. Any warrior brave, or foolish enough, to go up against the Viking warrior left with bruises. He took his knives, smaller throwing knife in his left and saxe in his right hand, and stepped in front of her. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

"C'mon Astrid, take a swing."

"This axe will shred you!"

"You'd be surprised." Rayden smirked "Now HIT ME!"

Galvanized into action, she took a half-hearted swing at him. He easily sidestepped the blow and laughed. Now, that made her angry. She swung at him hard enough to take his head clean off his shoulders, though not so fast she couldn't turn the axe at the last minute and simply smack him upside the head. The axe stopped and she couldn't believe her eyes. Rayden had crossed his two blades in an X shape, the throwing knife giving the larger knife leverage to stop the axe. Another cheeky grin crossed his face.

"Not impressed!"

An angry frown creased her brow and she swung with more determination. She tried left and right, a cascade of overhands and even underhand blows, executing every maneuver she thought of, but she couldn't break his defense. After a vicious overhand was about to be followed by another, he moved. The axe passed through where he was standing a moment before. Astrid, expecting her blow to be stopped, was caught off balance. As she stumbled forward, Rayden, who had neatly sidestepped, caught the front of her shirt and pulled her close. He laid the saxe across her stomach and wiggled the throwing knife, still in his left hand, in front of her eyes. She stepped back when he released her.

"How did you do that?!" Astrid asked in disbelief

Rayden sat on the ground holding his badly jarred wrist, waiting patiently for the pain to subside, which it eventually did.

"Practice."

"I've never seen anything so amazing! I couldn't get passed you! Not once did it look like I was even trying to-"

"-to cut me in half?"

Astrid took on a shameful expression.

"Sorry."

"No big deal. It was kind of fun"

Rayden moved to a human sized block of wood where sword drills were practiced and began to regain his inhuman accuracy. Time passed and he took no account of it, he was sorely out of practice and placed all of his attention on the small blade in his hand. He threw and threw and threw until he could hit a leaf out of a nearby tree at twenty paces. After consulting a recruit he realized nearly three and a half hours had passed and he missed the midday meal. He kept practicing until Hiccup came and got him.

"I just got out of my meeting with the village elder."

"And?"

"He wants us to stay."

Rayden laughed, but it was more like a cough. He hadn't drunk anything or spoke more than a few words all day.

"Not going to happen."

"I know. That's what I told him. We need to get to Blood's Peak sooner than later."

They made their way towards their barn accommodations, which Hiccup had told him food had been delivered. None of the meat was hot anymore, but it was still food, and Freya was there, Hiccup also told him. So he quickened his steps. They were soon eating and chatting about the village. They spoke Greek, Rohan told him, though Norse was a second language and most of the adults, and the more promising kids, could speak it well. It was a concern of theirs that communication would get difficult along their journey, and languages could not be learned in a day. They decided in the future they would avoid confrontations until they got to their destination. Hopefully they could manage-. His train of thought was interrupted by Hiccup, who was speaking to them.

"The chief had a lot of questions. He and his ancestors had been attacking dragons since the dark ages. They never tried to be friendly."

Astrid piped up with a mouthful of steak still being eviscerated by her jaws and teeth.

"Maybe they didn't notice that the dragons stopped raiding when Hiccup killed the queen."

Freya had a few words to say in the conversation as well, though her words were not as cheery as anyone else's. Not in the slightest. She sliced through the conversation with her ominous voice.

"Unless… Unless there's another queen."

Rayden set down his steak and swallowed.

"Hiccup, how big exactly was the queen?"

"It ate a Gronckle..."

"Well that couldn't be too-"

"...without chewing."

The discussion quickly died after that.

It soon became evening, and Hiccup was gone to meet again with the chief, to talk some more and share his knowledge with a choice few individuals. Rayden could've chosen to teach a few recruits the basics of knife throwing, but Freya was staying in the barn, so that was exactly where he wanted to be. He was up in the loft, doing chin ups on a wooden cross-beam, while she was on the ground floor tending to the dragons. She climbed up to see him, shirt on the ground, covered in a thin film of perspiration as he exerted himself. His eyes were closed in his physical efforts, so he didn't notice her until she was tossing a towel over his shoulders when he lowered himself to the floor. He started, turning and dropping into a half crouch, reaching for the saxe on his belt while realizing it was resting on one of the multiple hay bales nearby. Freya giggled and radiantly smiled.

"A bit jumpy, aren't you?"

"I'll show you jumpy!"

He crossed the space in between them almost instantly and playfully shoved her towards the nearest hay pile, but she was already grabbing him and they stumbled into the heap of straw, a jumbled mass of legs, arms and laughter. Rayden knew that in this state it wouldn't be long before their lips found each other's embrace, so they untangled themselves rather quickly. She was blushing and glancing away from him while she fixed her hair. She was nervous, he could tell.

Rayden understood, though the only time he had any real patience was when he had a bow in his hand, tracking a deer. But for Freya he knew he would make himself wait. He had to. As he rose to his feet, hay falling off of him, Freya realized she still didn't want him to leave. But as she reached forward she noticed he was only getting his towel and his shirt, and she regained her composure before he turned back to her. As he sat down beside her and wiped the straw and perspiration off his skin, she noticed a deep, dark black tattoo on his back. Viking tattoos were messy, usually done with a sharp blade and some ink. But this was a detailed, perfect shape… of the insignia of the Mystery Class. She stretched to trace the tattoo with her finger.

"What's this?"

Instantly, a thousand images flashed through his mind. Lost friends. A mottled tan and yellow cloak, a bronze oak-leaf on a chain, and the voice of a young woman. The voice spoke inside his head. 'I would never betray you…' it whispered.

"It's nothing."

He wasn't lying, really. It did have some serious meaning, would probably, no, definitely affect them in the future. But it no longer had any significance to him, it was beneath his concern.

He was going to sleep that night with Freya on the other side of the bed, still trying to convince himself that it didn't matter.

There's Chapter Five, sorry for the wait guys! hope you enjoy, make sure to review, review, review!