Hallowed Be Thy Name

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"We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down – now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we live helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and be revenged."

– Erich Maria Remarque
All Quiet On the Western Front

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How long had Hiccup been standing in the square? Had it been thirty minutes or an hour? He could not remember, and the thought passed quickly from his mind. The only thought that had formed since daylight was one of survival. The Langerhans had struck again, and had caught the village completely off-guard. Colored flames decorated the skies above him; any available rider had quickly taken to the air in an attempt to sink the quickly approaching fleet.

A shriek brought Hiccup from his thoughts. Turning, he spotted the next hideous wave of Vikings cresting the hill before him. His first opponent was easily chosen: the ferocious, heavily armored shield maiden leading the charge. Hiccup gripped his father's spiked mace at the hilt; his own weapon, a finely crafted broadsword, was clutched in his other hand. His mother's shield was strapped securely on his back. The woman carried a strongly-made battle axe, the kind that could easily slice a man to the navel. Hiccup advanced only a single step, his emerald eyes gleaming in the midday sun. The movement was enough to let his grip loosen on the mace so it dropped to his thigh, and opened the chainmail armor he wore enough as to tempt the woman's blade to his chest. As the down-thrust from the maiden's axe descendent upon him, Hiccup pulled his right leg back in an oblique turn and deflected the shaft with his sword, allowing him to drive the spiked tip of the mace into the exposed armpit of the woman; he slid his hand up the shaft for a shorter grip. The woman bellowed and screamed and screaming again as any creature would, as her lung was punctured and her feet left the ground with the force of the strike; Hiccup took her backward and down, swiping the sword across the warrior's throat and half-severing the wretched woman's head.

He turned his face from the hot spray, and snapped the sword back up to block another incoming attack from above; bringing his line of vision up with the sword, Hiccup straightened his legs, hammering the crest of his weapon into the man's bearded face. Blood and sweat flew and lunged up with the mace, still in a shortened grip, and rammed the spike through the man's face, severing his cheek and tongue in one fluid motion. The man squirmed pathetically; fresh blood streaming from his nostrils and split lips. Hiccup grabbed the man at his shoulder and flung him around, using his latest opponent as a meat shield against his comrades. Hiccup took a deep breath as he waded into the fray, making his way towards Tuffnut as the man's arms and legs were hacked off without remorse by his companions. Thrusting out with his weapon, chain mail scrapping on the steel as it pierced a gut and encountered spine. He twisted the weapon out, and drew another deep breath, teeth gritted, and flung the broken, armless man at the charging feet of the next man, which stumbled and fell onto his elbows. Hiccup lengthened the grip on his mace and coshed and killed the man with a single blow, the flanges of the mace biting through the rear of the skull and dyeing the man's blonde hair and armor a dark crimson.

Straightening up, he drew a pained breath and shook the sweat from his auburn hair. The slash to his ribs sustained earlier burned in protest to his recent retaliation. His chest was tight; he felt nauseous, weak. His stumped leg burned with the burned he had forced upon the handicap.

Glancing over the hill, Hiccup watched the horde shoulder one another in the frenzy to stamped through the village's choke point: the dock ramps leading into the island. Their weapons remained constricted here, one shield obstructing another. This is where the dragons had dealt the fleet the most damage; scorched and burned bodies retreated to the cool waters of the Baltic with each pass of the winged demons above. Another cry, and Hiccup had thrown himself back into the throng. A blow glanced off his helmet and hammered into his pauldron. Spike him in the privates, stab him in the neck, Hiccup thought as the man fought on from his knees, blinded by the fountain spewing from his arteries, still flailing with his sword for the joints in Hiccup's armor. Hiccup drove the final blow through the man's temple and stepped back. Step back again. Keep them at bay. He threw an upward sword cut to the thighs and a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest, in deep and twist. Another maiden had collapsed dead at his feet. Don't look in the eyes. The woman is done. An X-block, but with no room to swing, Hiccup struggled against the larger man to follow, before he managed a pommel strike to open him up and cosh him on the shoulders and collapse his chest with another thrust.

For a moment, he leaned on his sword and panted.

Half a day had passed in defending the village; half a day' worth of casualties to add to the list. Greta. Vyadek. Fern. Aslan. All had died defending their village, their pride. Alsan and Fern had fallen trying to protect the few village children not old enough or strong enough to wield a blade. Ruffnut too, had fallen, having gone out in a blaze of glory and an ocean of blood left behind in her wake. At thirty-two, Hiccup felt sick to the gut and utterly drained. His body had already begun begging for refreshments and eight hours sleep. Where was the strength and wind he had once possessed in overabundance? For the first time in almost four years, he was deeply shaken. He had never before fought men so difficult to kill, so reluctant to die when they were already dead. These Langerhans were maniacs and he was not – had never been. The afternoon stretched before him and he could not yet see the day's end. He was afraid, not of death, but of merely the effort in which it would take to simply survive. Yet, his second wind would come. He could feel it, buzzing deep in the bowels of his stomach and coursing through his veins. That, or a shared grave at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. To the clank and hiss of hammer and sword, Tuffnut and Snotlout drew level on the ground behind him, each soused from helm to greaves in sweat-speckled gore, their beards all matted and agleam, as if they'd drunk straight from a barrel of molasses.

Hiccup roused his Viking pride: He could not let himself be shammed by a tanned-skinned shipbuilder and the blonde carpenter. The three of them stood abreast at the mounting redoubt of corpses piled at their feet, and proceeded to impale the Langerhans foremen as they scrambled over their dead. Hiccup glanced over his shoulder towards the smoldering pile of stone and wood that was once his beloved forge: inside, the bodies of Astrid and her killer burned on the hot coals; the smell of burning flesh caused his nostrils to flare. To his right, Fishlegs' body rested atop the bloody pile that he had taken with him; he had died protecting his wife and young son Audun. Hiccup cracked his neck and heaved his heavy weapon to his shoulder. Swift and cruel this warfare was, with bludgeon and spike and blade, and the villagers that remained ventured up behind them and with their hammers and axes gave the group some respite from the sheer weight of their foreign warriors thrust upon them. A fresh shower of fireballs rained from above, and Hiccup and the others crouched with covered heads as the flames brought with them death and injury from above; the Langerhans stumbled in disarray. They had been used to fighting off the winged beasts during raids to protect their homes, but never had they encountered them as working as allies with the Berk Vikings. A triumphant roar erupted from the cliffs above, as survivors drenched their attackers in burning jelly salvaged from the mess hall; the attack ignited more panic among warriors known for stoicism and a rigid military lifestyle. Those drenched in the jelly fled for anything that might relinquish their pain, but none was found. Those who had not already found themselves in the icy waters below or had fallen to their demise were slashed and cut down. A wave of brief relief again washed over them, before another group thundered up the hill in a seemingly never-ending wave.

Tuffnut roared: "Back to back!"

Snotlout's war hammer flashed and the pick sank up the half in the face of a shield maiden and tore it half away. Hiccup swiveled and the pauldrons of the three warriors clashed together. Shoulder to shoulder, in a circle of woe, they stood, and woe was all their assailants found to greet them. Like the ancient warriors of old, the companions ravaged and butchered all their stirred within reach, hostile blows ringing from their harness as they were forced to give up what little ground they had won, overwhelmed by the horde's sheer force and staggering numbers, and reluctantly shuffled back through the flames towards the cliff wall that towered over the village, and towards the rest of the villagers; their footing unsteady on the smoldering mattress of the mutilated and slain and dying.

The dense smell of roasting meet was repulsively appetizing, and Hiccup's mouth filled with juices. A child of fifteen ran himself through on the point of Hiccup's sword, and with such frenzy did he come that his chest hammered hard into the quillions. Hiccup spiked the squalling boy in the head with the finial and like a farmer pitching a wheat blade he hefted the child aside, and a slash came at this head at Hiccup barely managed a parry with the mace half and he chopped his blade into legs as hard as cedar. The man dropped to his knees, and Hiccup worked his sword down into his chest, and an uncontrollable nausea exploded up his gullet, and his mace dangled by its wrist loop, and he doubled up over the sword, with both hands gripping the cross guard, and he vomited a torrent of gall and phlegm into the dying man's screaming, contorted face. Hiccup clutched his watering eyes, the gastric spasm shunting the blade deeper into bone and muscle. He leaned on the hilt until the fit had passed, then he spat and hauled his blade free with great effort, and kicked the corpse aside, and blinked and shook his head, sweat falling into emerald eyes and mucus flying into his beard; through the blur he saw too well-armored heads bearing up the hill towards them. Drawing a shaky breath, he braced himself to take their blows, when a scalloped blade whistled by, and both heads vanished, the skulls splintering apart in a bloody collage of eyeballs and brains and liquid ropes. A gaping gorge and, from his eye's corner, he saw Thane Garrick wrangle in the huge two-handed weapon and plant it's point into a third head as it bobbed up from a nearby pile.

Snotlout paused, his mouth heaving wide in his blood-smeared, beard-covered face, "I asked you to watch my back, Haddock."

Hiccup also battled to catch his breath, and managed to allow a smile on his face. "It would seem I'm still not up to fighting par," he admitted.

There was a lull in the assault and the three men fell abreast and they bludgeoned and stabbed those wounded within reach, and then they rested, and for a moment the docks boasted no life standing but their own. Hiccup prayed their chief had called off their assault, and that they had retreated to the large fleet they had sailed in on. They talked of dragons, and friends, and rest and hot food and soon they were forced to regain their line and assume their stations when the haunted sounds of war drums rose up from the harbor. For a moment, Hiccup felt improved. The pain in his leg had subsided briefly and he reached down to pick out bits and pieces of brain matter and flesh that had caught in the metal joins of his prosthetic. Turning towards the fading sunlight, Hiccup turned back to the shambles village before him and recruited his sprit.

Thus, the second ten minutes had passed, or so he had guessed. For them, time passed in the colorless faces of the dying. His body felt limber, his chest as sound as the drums on the enemy fleet. His mind remained crystal clear. His second wind as come, as he knew it would. He rolled his shoulders and loosened his grips and settled down to meet what was yet to come. It could only get worse, but he was up for it. Familiar footsteps thundered behind him, and toxic green eyes met his line of vision. Toothless had returned, fully matured and an unholy force of nature. A fresh wave of fanatical Langerhans foamed from the darkness towards the docks. He blew out his breath and drew a deeper, more calming one. As the only remaining champions of Berk braced themselves, Snotlout fetched up alongside his cousin, smacking his lips. He caught Hiccup's look.

Snotlout grinned and said: "Well?"

The twisted grin on Hiccup's scared face gave him away. He clapped Snotlout on the back and laughed and said, "Glory."

End.