VII.

The coastline flashed rapidly beneath Toothless' wings, pebbles and seashells and washed-ashore flotsam blurring into texture-less colored lines. The crisp waves of water hitting the shore were smudged into glittering streaks of white and pale blue, and the island's contour vanished into vague strokes. Hiccup, staring down from Toothless' back, pupils peering out from the eyeholes in his helmet, attentively scanned over every indistinct shape he and his dragon passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dragon trappers he encountered a few hours back.

The blue ice monolith, its sharp crystals ever-growing over the broken remains of the dragon trappers' fort, lingered unconcernedly behind them, not a single human being resting their feet on its mass. Hiccup and Astrid could only guess Eret and his dragon trappers had left the area by ship a few hours back, yet with no clue to the men's sailing direction, the young couple could only hope they flew toward – rather than away from – their quarry.

Increasingly blots of white supplemented the coastline, and the air, while naturally chilly in the skies, cooled to a particularly bitter, frosty bite. Astrid pulled up the fur-lined hood of her cloak, while Hiccup crouched lower into the saddle to rely on Toothless' warmth. The entire landscape transformed into a world of floating ice caps and stark, towering, snowy cliffs. Even the water from the ocean paled its colors, exchanging its typical deep dark blue hue for a cloudy, gray surface.

Still they encountered no signs of human life.

We might have flown in the wrong direction.

There was no point in turning back now, however, and starting anew in a different flight direction. They would not be able to overtake a ship if they continuously switched their course.

We just have to keep going and hope we somehow spot them.

Hiccup and Astrid possibly could have searched for the Vigilante in other ways. However, what came immediately to mind for both of them was seeking out Eret, asking him for any information about the Vigilante's location, and then searching for the dragon rider on their own from there. Otherwise, they would have no leads on tracing the Vigilante, and would have to blindly scour the archipelago of neighboring islands.

A voice in the wind jerked Hiccup's attention away from the sea and toward Astrid. "Look!" she shouted, pointing to a cluster of ice floes. "I think that's a ship!"

Man-sized ice chunks, looking like shards of pottery from the distance, rested lightly on the motionless sea. Periodically small round snowy rock lumps protruded from the waters. Bobbing up and down in the middle of the ice and islands, a small, two-sailed ship loitered, almost as though clueless of where to turn. Astrid and Hiccup could identify the distant specks of humans running around on deck, and they could hear the distant shouts – though not the words – of the men on board.

"That's them," Hiccup announced, crouching down and urging Toothless forward.

"You can tell from back here?" Astrid questioned.

"That symbol on the sail," Hiccup pointed. "I think I remember seeing that with the dragon trappers."

"Alright then." That evidence satisfied Astrid, for she pulled her hood back, and with a smile, hurtled Stormfly straight for the gray ship. One instant Astrid flew beside Hiccup, and the next, he saw but a tail of thorns thrashing in the wind as Astrid catapulted down toward the unsuspecting sailors. Before Hiccup could shout out warning, nets shot into the sky.

The world turned into a whirlpool as Toothless somersaulted. Both he and Stormfly managed to evade the first round of nets, as Hiccup noticed once the world righted and he could again distinguish the form of Astrid's dragon flying before him. They were still a distance from the ship, though – more than enough time for the trappers to send another volley of traps.

"Don't shoot!" Hiccup shouted out. Whether or not the dragon trappers heard them, no more nets were fired. Both dragons swooped down and boarded the ship, their weight tipping it slightly to port.

Eret son of Eret stood in the center of the port, his light brown eyes gaping at the two dragons aboard his ship – almost as though the dragon trapper had never before laid eyes on a living dragon. The other men fidgeted uneasily behind him.

"I thought we agreed to be friendly with each other?" Hiccup asked casually as he dismounted Toothless. He noticed Astrid holding an axe and waved impatiently with one hand for her to put it down and out of sight. She frowned but complied.

Eret gracelessly and rather uneasily scrubbed his hands through his hair. He attempted to cover his initial awkward reaction but failed. "Of course," he said. "You just surprised us, that's all, and we don't… tend to trust dragons." His eyes wandered over to Stormfly. The thick-scaled blue dragon preened herself, sharp-tipped lips rubbing up against her left wing, head bobbing up and down much as one would expect of a bird. It was a casual enough gesture. However, while Stormfly's body language clearly indicated the dragon felt comfortable and unthreatened, Eret slowly inched away from her. Due to the cold weather, one could see the nervous puffs of breaths trailing heavily out of Eret's mouth.

That man was a bizarre combination of pompous self-confidence and blustering gawkiness. One moment he bragged of being the greatest dragon trapper, the next, he stared wide-eyed at a tamed preening dragon aboard his ship.

There had to be some consistency to that man somewhere.

Hiccup waved a hand toward Stormfly and then toward Toothless, now standing on the other side of the ship for balance. "Dragons don't have to be enemies," he pointed out. "Once they see you as one of their own, even the testiest dragons can be trained. Right, bud?"

Toothless' lips strained into an awkward gummy smile. Yet even that seemed to intimidate Eret.

Turning his attention back toward Hiccup and pretending he never felt uncomfortable, Eret questioned, "What are you doing here? Back so soon?" By the final comment, his voice had again taken on the resonating cockiness Hiccup remembered from their previous encounter.

Cheerfully, Hiccup affirmed, "Back so soon indeed!"

"Did you talk to your chief already then? About the dragon rider?"

"We did, and we're preparing for the worst."

"Those preparations don't happen to include giving us a little of a hand, do they?"

Hiccup paused, mouth slightly ajar, before answering. He said, "No. I'm afraid not. But – but that doesn't mean we aren't concerned, it's just –"

"That's fine, that's fine," Eret said, but they could tell he was fretting. Though he attempted to maintain a calm, proud demeanor in front of the two Berk Vikings, they could still hear him mutter under his breath, "We've got no way to protect ourselves, and no heads to call our own!"

"Look, I still want to help you completely," Hiccup remarked. "And that is exactly why we are here."

"What game are you playing?"

"Hey, no game, we just want to meet the Vigilante."

Hiccup's casual remark brought an explosion aboard deck. Even amongst the cacophony, distinct emotions slipped out. "The Vigilante –?" Shocked wonder. "Did you hear that?" Puzzlement. Curiosity. "Meet him?" Suspicion.

Eret asked the one question that danced the most aboard the vessel. "Meet the Vigilante? Why?" His words were suddenly as cold as the ice floating off deck.

If I spoke a word in support of the Vigilante, Eret threatened to harm me, Hiccup suddenly recalled.

Keeping an outward calm, Hiccup answered, "Because I can change her mind about dragons. I can change yours."

"Her?" Eret narrowed his eyes. "Then you do know something about the dragon rider! Lying to us earlier, were you?"

"No, no, not at all, not at all. When I spoke to my d- the chief – he said he had come across the rider before in a chief's meeting. It's in part why he believed your warning and is preparing defenses."

"And yet giving no support to us? If we worked together, we –"

"Again, that's what I'm trying to do. My part in working together is to the Vigilante. To try to change her mind."

Eret scoffed, "There's no way you're changing the rider's mind!" From behind him, the murmuring affirmations of other Vikings traveled around deck.

"He can be very persuasive," Astrid remarked from Hiccup's side.

"I can do it now," Hiccup agreed, nodding up at Eret, "once I know where to meet up with her. We came to ask if you knew the best place to look for the Vigilante."

"Eret," a short man with a long chin next to Eret piped up warningly. When the taller Viking provided no immediate response, he prodded again, much louder, "Eret!" Brown eyes glared from under a heavily-creased brow. Eret's eyes followed his companion's pointed finger toward a low-lying gray cloud of smoke settled on the waters.

"What?"

That cloud appeared to be morphing shape rather quickly.

"Those – those are dragons."

Eret only squinted for a short while before shouting out orders for battle stations. Suddenly Hiccup and Astrid were the only still points on the ship; everything else – from men to ropes to sails to catapults – was repositioned; and shouts rose up; and the mood in the air darkened from tense to terrified. The mass of dragons coalesced from the sea, and they could see now a hoard rapidly approaching with the intent to kill.

"Fight with us or run!" Eret shouted out. "Either way, make up your mind quickly! There won't be any way you could escape them soon!"

Astrid pulled out her axe as response. "Toothless, get ready!" Hiccup shouted out, charging up and mounting his dragon. He had but time to pull out his sword and light it before the swarm fell upon them.

A hoard of gnats could not descend so thickly. And instead of a buzz, they heard one, loud, bellowing roar.

The command to attack.