A/N: I'd like to take this moment and thank all you lovely people for reading. The reviews were quite luminescent and encouraging as well.

This is where I start playing fast and loose with the historical accuracy. History, prepared to be turned pear-shaped!

Disclaimer: Quite unfortunately, I do not own How to Train Your Dragon. That honor belongs to Dreamworks and Cressida Cowell. That does not, however, stop me from wanting to give Toothless and/or Hiccup a big hug.

Valkyrie

Chapter Two: Little Savage

When Hiccup woke up, it was to a great deal of surprise at the fact that he had woken up at all. Confusion quickly steam-rolled the surprise. Not a split-second after, he realized he had absolutely no idea where he was, what was going on, or anything like that. And then the pain came tromping up right behind the confusion, body-slamming into him like a mob of Terrible Terrors. They were known to tackle him if Tuffnut wasn't an available target (he was starting to think that was how they showed their affection).

An egg-sized lump at the base of his skull throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He was wholly sick to his stomach too. The whole world was rolling and heaving under him, causing his stomach to roil unpleasant. There was a powerful odor of spoilt fish and a familiar briny sea smell that had him gagging. He tightened his jaw, desperate not to vomit.

Though he strongly suspected he might have already done that. There was an acidic taste on his tongue and his mouth was dry. The foul taste of that nasty "wake-up juice" that Astrid had made him drink was lingering on his lips. He was completely convinced that she had made him drink cow piss. He thanked the gods that he hadn't swallowed any of it.

His hands and wrists ached in a familiar way; the way they did after he had been set to spar against Snotlout and never got the chance to ice them down afterwards. They felt swollen; his wrists in particular. He noticed in a distant sort of way that his arms were partially crossed behind his head, his elbows somewhere about level with his ears.

Hiccup groaned softly and let his eyes slide open. His vision skewed almost instantly and he saw two of everything. The effect was dizzying and he squeezed his eyes shut. His stomach gave a distressing heave as the surface he was sitting on jumped upwards and then down very quickly. He groaned again, this time a little louder. Thundering on the heels of the thought of being sick again was the recognition of his current location. He was on a boat.

The Viking teen wondered how he hadn't recognized the constant rolling motion that was aggravating his nausea. The Vikings were largely a seafaring people and seasickness wasn't something they could afford to have. But Hiccup had never gotten his sea legs. If he was ever chucked onto a boat and expected to accompany his father to some distant location, then one could expect to find the chieftain's son clinging to the railing in the most out of the way location on the ship and occasionally spewing his guts into the water. Stoic had never called this a weakness. He knew that there was really no help for it. His wife would get horribly seasick and would avoid going onto boats if she could help it. He supposed that it just ran in the family.

Hiccup's general tactic towards combating seasickness was to curl up in a fetal position and refuse everything but fresh water until he was back on dry land. This time around, that tactic wasn't going to work as well as it did in the past. He was sitting upright -- kind of; uneven wooden planks were digging into his shoulders and upper back, with a gap between his lower back and the wall. The prosthetic foot was still strapped on, but his legs seemed to have turned into jelly while he was unconscious. And curiously, somewhere amidst rushing sound that dominated the silence, he could hear the jingle of chain links.

*thud*

Hiccup's eyes shot open at the noise. Again, everything in his sight doubled but adrenaline surged through him, temporarily washing away the pain in his head and the dizziness in his stomach. He raised his head, hearing chain links jingle some more. A square of sunlight had fallen on the far side of what he now identified as a cargo-hold, and a foul-smelling one at that. Open crates were scattered in a less than organized manner along the slightly rounded floor, each one reeking of something disgusting. He was certain that they might have been full of fish at one point, but now all the good fish were eaten and only the rotted, unpalatable ones remained, decomposing at the bottom of the crate. The putrid smell was too scattered to be overpowering, but when combined with the rolling motion of the waves, it resulted in an upset stomach for Hiccup. Fortunately enough, he seemed all puked out. All his stomach did was jump about level with his vocal cords before settling back down where it belonged.

Booted feet appeared on the first step of the ladder, blocking out some of the painfully vibrant sunlight. Hiccup stared at the crate nearest to the ladder so he could keep an eye on the feet, which had paused on that first step (the light was ridiculously bright, though his eyes had adjusted to the dark first). He could dimly hear two voices exchanging words in low, semi-urgent tones. The creak of oars and ropes, the snapping of the heavy sails, and the steady pound of a drum rendered those words indistinct against the background noise. Then the booted feet continued their descent, bringing with them a strange man.

Hiccup recoiled instinctively, his feet scraping on the floor as he pulled his knees to his chest. Bizarrely, Gobber's words about him being small and weak and less of a target came back to him and he inwardly scoffed at how much they didn't apply right now. He was the only target and this man -- this huge, beastly man looked as though he could break Hiccup in half easily.

The man fairly loomed, despite his shoulders being stooped and his head awkwardly bowed; too tall to stand properly in the low-ceilinged hold. An untrimmed beard grew wildly on his chin, completely hiding his thick neck. His black hair was shaggy and filthy, hanging around his shoulders in complete disarray. His arms were bare and rippling with corded muscles, brown and weathered from much time in the sun. His belly had a paunch; evidence that he was a man who enjoyed his meat and mead a bit more than was recommended and that his arms and legs were the only things that got exercised regularly. There was a sooty kind of smell about him too; overlaid with dirt, sea salt and the strong stench of sweat, among other unpleasant body odors. The smell in the hold was suddenly worse and Hiccup repressed the gag reflex, struggling to keep his digestive fluids where they belonged.

He heard the jingle of chain links a third time and realized in horror that his wrists were manacled to the wall behind him.

Seeing his expression, the huge man chuckled. He moved towards the Viking teen. Each of his steps rolled with the motion of the ship and he barely wavered off balance. He stopped several feet from Hiccup, far enough away that he would be out of range if the Viking lashed out with his legs.

The huge man towered over the much smaller Viking, his head and shoulders seeming to take up almost all of the space. Not for the first time, the teen wished that he had enough muscle to be intimidating and not a dragon-sized toothpick. The sooty, briny, sweaty smell practically rolled off who he presumed to be his captor.

"Awake then." the man said with false joviality. He bared his teeth in what was only a facsimile of a smile. He didn't seem to know how to do it properly. "Hope you're comfortable, little savage."

"Real comfortable." Hiccup said sarcastically between the teeth his gritted together. He was trying not to breathe too deeply. "Something smells awful and I can't tell if it's you or the crates. I'm really hoping it's the crates, because if it's you, that can't be sanitary."

The man's already narrow eyes got really squinty and angry. Hiccup didn't have the chance to protect himself when the man lunged forward and drove his foot hard into the Viking's solar plexus. Air rushed out of his lungs in a choked *whoosh*. Hiccup curled instinctively, pulling his arms down as far as he could. The chains didn't have much slack in them, but it was enough to bring his arms to shoulder level and angle them protectively towards his chest.

Black spots danced in his vision, partially obscuring the huge man as he kneeled down beside the Viking teen, his face inches from Hiccup's own. A rough, callused hand slapped onto the wall just shy of his ear; so close he could see the muscles working in that thick, hairy arm. It probably wouldn't be too much trouble for the man to wrap that hand around Hiccup's throat and start squeezing.

And that was immensely terrifying.

All Hiccup wanted to do was run, but he couldn't even take a proper breath.

"Don't get too comfortable." the huge man growled menacingly. "We might have to bring you back alive, but he ain't said nothing about bringing you back in one piece. And judging from that," His narrow eyes darted down to Hiccup's prosthetic foot. "You can't afford to lose any more pieces. Got me?"

The Viking found the rhythm again and green eyes turned up to regard his captor, fear mingling with anger and hate.

"They'll -- find--" Hiccup gasped, his breath still coming up short.

"Hmm, what was that?" the huge man asked mockingly, sticking a finger into his ear and twisting it around. It came out with an alarming amount of wax that he absently wiped on the leg of his trousers. He leaned closer and a cloying smell wafted from his hair, clearly flecked with bits of dirt. "Didn't understand a word you just said. Speak up."

"They'll -- find -- me." Hiccup said slowly, hoping he wouldn't choke on the odor. Did this man ever bathe? More importantly, had he ever heard of soap? "They'll -- figure out what happened--"

The huge man suddenly burst out laughing, completely drowning out the threat that Hiccup was trying to make. His rank breath washed over the young Viking and practically turned his innards upside down. Then, out of the blue, he punched the teenager in the stomach.

It wasn't nearly as hard as the kick had been, but it still robbed Hiccup of his recovered air. He doubled over again while the man was still laughing. Why did he get the feeling that this time, he had been punched for the fun of it?

His captor must have had issues.

"Hah! You're a bucket of laughs, little savage!" the huge man guffawed, clamping a hand down so tight on Hiccup's arm that he was certain there was going to be bruises left. "Your little -- village," He sneered the word, showing his yellowing teeth. "Is still being sieged even as we speak. Bil's orders are to not let up the attack until nightfall, unless you savages can chase him off before then. But that still gives us a good head-start. And it gets you plenty far away before your friends get their heads screwed back on right way."

Well, Hiccup had issues too. They revolved around being so massively stubborn that he didn't give up for nothing. Because dammit, he was a Viking. Stubbornness issues were practically hereditary.

"What do you want?" he demanded angrily, glaring at the Saxon. "You people haven't raided since before I was born! Why did you capture me?!"

The huge man snorted and withdrew, taking the majority of his foul odor with him. He looked down at Hiccup as though he was just a disobedient puppy who still needed to be broken in.

"Lord Cynerīc will explain everything to you when we get home." he said, his massive arms crossed over his chest. "You just sit tight. Don't cause trouble for us and this'll be an easy voyage."

"Once the village figures out I'm gone... Once they figure out that you-- you Saxons have captured me, it won't be just the village you'll have to worry about. It won't even be me you'll worry about." Hiccup said with a glare that would have melted steel. "You'll have to worry about Toothless."

It was morning -- past morning if the sun was to be believed. Even if there was chaos back in the village, his absence wasn't going to go unnoticed. The village was so used to keeping an eye out for him (just in case) that it was second nature to them. They were going to notice that he wasn't around and it wasn't going to take very long with the sun up.

He was certain that the Night Fury was positively furious by now. Where Hiccup was concerned, Toothless had a protective streak a mile wide. If the Viking teen was sick or hobbling around in pain as a result of his leg, the dragon was an overbearing mother hen -- even more so than Stoic in his more accomplished moments of fatherhood. At times like those, Toothless saw him as a hatchling who needed to be protected and instinct took over from there.

And it would just figure that the one night Hiccup had managed to get away for watch-duty without waking the dragon up, was the night his entire world got shot to hell. He was chained in the rank-smelling cargo hold of a Saxon ship with an equally rank-smelling Saxon man who was posturing and making threats that may or may not have been empty. He was probably miles away from Berk; no chance of swimming back even if he got loose of these chains.

He still didn't know why the Saxons were suddenly so interested in him.

However, the huge man didn't see the threat for what it was. Quite the opposite, really. He burst into another round of laughter, surprisingly harsh and grating, a hand loudly slapping his thigh in his mirth.

"Toothless? Toothless?" he repeated incredulously. He was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. "That's a terrible name! Even for a savage! What's he gonna do? Gum my fingers off?!"

Toothless is a dragon! Hiccup almost shouted it out loud, but by Odin he kept his mouth shut. He didn't want his captor to know that he had gotten under the Viking's skin. He didn't want to hear the Saxon making jabs at his dragon -- at his best friend. And you are you calling a savage anyways? I take a bath every week! What about you?! And at least Toothless doesn't smell like something that's died and rotten!

The huge man stopped laughing abruptly, like a switch had been thrown. All traces of mirth were wiped from his face. His demeanor shifted from that mocking friendliness to one of downright loathing. He hadn't really been hiding his true feelings on the matter of the Viking, but this seemed like the first time he was really showing them.

"Let me make one thing clear to you, little savage." the huge man said with a deadly glower. "No one -- and I mean no one, is coming for you. Not now, not ever."

"You're lying." Hiccup hissed defiantly.

"You're going to wish I was." the huge man said. His eyes were lit up by a funny, kind of dangerous gleam. "We're miles and miles away from your little village now. You might as well make yourself comfortable because you're in for the long haul."

He leaned over the Viking teen, his massive muscles bulging and flexing like snakes. Hiccup felt extraordinarily insignificant.

"Where you're going, no one is going to find you."

Years later in his life, Hiccup doubted that he would ever be able to tell anyone about how he had managed to survive the crossing to the landmass that the Anglo-Saxons called home. Quite frankly, other than the stubborn will to keep on living and get back home, there wasn't a lot of motivation. The conditions were abhorrent and there were dead rats in a corner. If the rats couldn't even survive on the meager amounts of unspoiled food, that had to be a bad sign.

Worse still was that the Saxons cared very little for his well-being and they made no secret of it. They avoided the cargo hold if they could and if they couldn't, then they stomped around, threw dirty looks at him like their presence down there was his fault and loudly grumbled highly uncomplimentary things about him, clearly not caring if he could hear them or not. They always muttered about how he was supposed to be alive at the end of the journey and acted like this was a large burden. They also didn't care how alive he was going to be at the end of the journey. Every day, Hiccup got the same sinking feeling that he was going to be half-dead by the time they got to where they were going.

The food they fed him spoke for itself. Twice a day they brought him this watery mush of a porridge-like substance and forced it down his throat. Hiccup would compare the texture to that of cardboard if he happened to know what cardboard was. Suffice to say, this porridge crap had very little taste of its own and choking it down was a chore.

Keeping it down was a battle he typically lost. Whatever made it into his stomach was often evicted less than an hour later by his nausea. Given no chance to make an attempt to obtain his sea legs, Hiccup stayed thoroughly seasick. It became less severe as he grew accustomed to the ship's constant rocking motion and sometimes he could ignore it when he only had water, but the sight of food caused his stomach to turn upside down. So he stayed hungry and learned to ignore the gnawing on his insides.

If the Saxons didn't need him alive (for whatever reason), then he would say that they were trying to kill him.

Hiccup also preferred not to think about taking care of particular bodily functions. The Saxons must have thought that their ship stunk enough as it was, because they had provided him with a bucket. Several times during the day, they brought him a bucket; the same bucket. They plunked it down in front of him, freed one of his hands and watched him intently until he was finished or until he announced that he was not in need of the bucket at that moment. At night, they left the bucket nearby and returned in the morning to empty it.

It was awful, the whole affair. Being watched when you were trying to do something like that. Hiccup had never thought it would be so hard to empty his bowels (not that much came out; not much food went in, first of all). He wished he knew how long it would be before they arrived; if just so he could get back to do that sort of business in private again.

He tried to keep track of the days as they passed. When the sunlight disappeared from the cargo hold and the thumping footsteps on the deck overhead began to taper off, he would scratch another line into the wood with the sharper edge of his prosthetic foot. He kept this up successfully for about seven days; seven squiggly lines carved into the floor. Seven days from Berk. Perhaps seven days before the village caught up to the ship.

Then, on the eighth day, he had drifted into a nap when the sun had been in the cargo hold. It had still been there when he had woken back up. He had no way of knowing how long he had been asleep and was therefore unsure if he was still on the eighth day or if the ninth day had come without his knowing. Hiccup hadn't marked an eighth line. He didn't mark any lines after that.

He didn't know anymore how long they had been traveling. He knew that the Saxons' land was far, far to the south of his own. He knew that it would take time before they made landfall again. The number thirty hovered around in the back of his consciousness and blew raspberries at him, but he refused to believe that so many days had passed.

It didn't help that thirty days sounded about right.

The days ran together like thick honey, the monotony punctured by the infrequent visits of his largely inhospitable captors. The huge, beastly man returned to check on him several times and it was on one of these visits that Hiccup learned two things about the man. One: His name was Ketelbern. And two: He was a blacksmith who had made the chains holding the Viking teen to the wall. What a blacksmith was doing so far from his forge was something that went right over Hiccup's head. Gobber took a great deal of pride in his work and never left the forge unless it was necessary. He had impressed this manner of thinking upon Hiccup and while it had not sunk in to the level that Gobber was at, the Viking teen was still a craftsman at heart.

Hiccup tried to keep himself occupied. He tapped out rhythms on the floor and clinked the iron manacles together until they shouted at him to cut it out. He stared at the whorls in the wood planks until he was certain that he could see faces in them staring back at him (and grew rather paranoid of one that looked like an old man's face had turned to melting wax). He tried to lose himself in his head, where he could at least pretend that he wasn't chained and likely heading towards his doom. He had an active imagination -- an overactive one for a Viking. It had served him well in designing and improving Toothless's harness and tail fin. It had been very useful in figuring out what sort of harness to design for the Nadders, Zipplebacks and Nightmares (his designs had gotten very creative, but they had worked). It was being downright troublesome now; supplying him with images of things he was trying very hard not to think about.

The Saxons never left their captives alive for long. That was what the adults had told them. The Saxons always killed; always wanting to take revenge on the Vikings for the raids they (the Vikings) had conducted on the Saxons in decades past. Raids that were no longer a part of living memory, but remained common knowledge nonetheless.

Hiccup kept wondering how he would die.

He told himself over and over that the village was coming after him; that his father was mounting a rescue. They would catch up on dragon-back, a longboat lingering less than fifty yards behind and waiting. They would raid the ship and remind the Saxons why the Vikings had been the first to conquer years and years and years ago. Then they would retrieve him and blow the Saxons to smithereens. And then he would be on his way back home before he knew it.

No matter how much he didn't believe it, he told himself that every night before let himself drift to sleep.

Hiccup had several vivid dreams on the matter, but none of them turned into reality. They became less and less vibrant and hopeful as the days worn on. He didn't want to say that that Ketelbern fellow was right, but it seemed that he was. No one was coming for him.

His regular nightmare hadn't left him alone either. It occurred with less frequency because he was too exhausted to care too much (how he could be exhausted after doing nothing for extended periods of time, he didn't know), but it was there all the same. The contents had changed very slightly, incorporating the smell of the cargo hold alongside the iron tang, as well as the ache in his wrists that had not quite left him alone.

In short, Hiccup spent the entire voyage huddled in chains at the bottom of the cargo hold in the most miserable little ball imaginable. He hardly stirred from a now-familiar semi-conscious daze unless someone touched him; an event that was limited to the large man (larger than Ketelbern, but in the realm of fat rather than muscle) who held his head still so another Saxon could shove that tasteless porridge mush down his throat.

So when a hand clamped down on his lower arm, Hiccup reacted with a traditional Viking-attack-first-ask-questions-later.

He bit the arm of the person who had grabbed him.

"Aaah! Little savage!"

And was slapped across the face for doing so.

Ketelbern's hand was still clamped around Hiccup's arm, just below the manacled wrist. He was glaring at the Viking teen with a new level of hatred and a bite mark on his arm. Hiccup hadn't broken skin (Ketelbern's skin was too thick for that), but he could very clearly see the indents left by his teeth. He felt very proud of himself, despite the stinging pain in his cheek.

"Rotten little savage!" Ketelbern spat, an iron ring of keys jangling in his other hand. "All the work we put in to keep you alive and this is how you repay us?!"

"Try harder..." Hiccup snarled. He was startled at the amount of venom in his tone. Then again... Though the blacksmith's visits had been infrequent, he had always managed to make Hiccup angry without expending much effort. "What are you doing?" he demanded, eyeing the key ring.

"Shut up." Ketelbern snapped, stabbing the appropriate key into the lock and twisting it with more force than necessary. The pressure from the manacle loosened and Hiccup's hand slid limply out of the iron ring's grasp. His eyes flickered down to the reddened skin of his wrist. He had done his best to not pull on the bindings, knowing that he could pull off all his skin that way. But even for his best efforts, his flesh still looked slightly swollen and there were small scrapes ringing his wrist like a bracelet.

"If I had my way," the huge man went on, shoving the loose manacle out of the way. "I'd keep you locked up here another couple days. Let you die of starvation. Teach you some respect."

Hiccup didn't see how your captors letting you die of starvation could possibly teach you some respect for said captors.

"Lucky for you, Lord Cynerīc thinks you're valuable." the blacksmith snorted. He probably thought the whole idea of a Viking being valuable in any manner was a load of hogwash. He glowered at the teen. "Should have stamped you out before the bitch carried to term."

An abrupt wash of bone-deep anger wiped away all the exhaustion, stress, and general bad feelings that had been bothering him for the past month. Suddenly poisonous green eyes turned on the blacksmith with an expression of such fury that would have had Stoic weeping with pride.

Hiccup didn't know his mother. He had never met her. She had died well before he was old enough to form coherent memories. What he did know of her was generic; that she was strong, capable and fiercely independent, like other Viking women. And that she could deliver a punch that could break your jaw, according to Gobber. Hiccup figured that she had to have been very well-endowed if her breastplate could be turned into two helmets. With the lack of information, he was left to form his own opinion of her and he liked to keep it as positive as possible.

And he did not like it when she was spoken ill of. Especially not by someone who just might have been responsible for her death.

Hiccup had been raised as a Viking in a Viking village with more than two hundred years of Viking history affecting his upbringing. And that meant, regardless of how differently-minded he was from his peers, he was still a Viking. He still subscribed to the 'eye-for-an-eye' mentality.

And when a Viking's honor was impugned while they were not present, the only thing left to do was for the next-of-kin attack on their behalf.

In a heartbeat, Hiccup decided that he would not be responsible for what happened next.

He ignored his still-manacled hand. He ignored his exhaustion and hunger. He ignored everything that was slowing him down -- physically, mentally, emotionally -- and attacked.

He bit, he scratched, he punched and gouged to the best of his abilities, drawing on every ounce of strength that still remained. It was far more than his knee-jerk reaction of simply biting Ketelbern. This was an honest desire to cause the man no small amount of pain and make him suffer for making Hiccup suffer that would have made the entire village weep with pride for Stoic's heir.

Hiccup had drawn blood by the time Ketelbern realized what was going on.

"Aargh! Loathsome little savage!"

Ketelbern's bloodied fist connected hard with Hiccup's face, sending the Viking reeling back and out of attack mode. Then he drew the hunting knife from his belt and held it to the Viking's throat. Hiccup's well-ingrained survival instincts kicked in; he tried to run. The manacle dug into his wrist and prevented him from even gaining more than a couple inches of space from the volatile blacksmith.

"I should kill you!" Ketelbern threatened, quivering with rage. "I should kill you right here! You're more trouble than you're worth!" He pressed the blade further to Hiccup's neck, not enough to break skin, but the threat was there. "I don't know why Lord Cynerīc thinks you'll be useful! He should have left well enough alone!"

Hiccup said nothing. If the last month had taught him anything, it was that the Saxons were under orders to keep him alive. Orders from whoever this 'Lord Cynerīc' was. No matter how angry they got with him; no matter how much they hated his very existence, they couldn't kill him. They just couldn't.

He smiled grimly and spat the blood out of his mouth.