VIII.
Dragons.
She thought her fear of dragons had long since faded. The terror of the attack; the frantic charge through a burning village, hoping solely to survive; the roars of Vikings and dragons in combat; the panicked midnight hustle to salvage a few houses in the village – that past had all but faded. Five years of peaceful coexistence with the dragons dissolved childhood memories of children crying in their parents' arms, staring out at their homes' charred ruins. The smell of smoke, faded. The taste of blood, faded. The sensation of a burning inferno, faded.
Until now.
That fear of dragons returned instantly as the swarm descended.
Pumping wings, unblinking eyes, wide-opened, fang-filled jaws. Screeches and snarls and roars and howls. Sudden pillars of fire. Heated lava rocks. A sail catching on fire. The screams of desperate men.
The years of the dragon raids returned vividly in her mind.
It was time to live it again. Time to fight.
Her heart pounded with adrenaline as she held up her axe, the familiar weight of its head waiting to hack at death.
Perhaps "fear" was the incorrect word to use. Antagonism. Her antagonism against the dragons. For "fear" had never controlled her. And indeed in some ways it would almost be a thrill for her to fight again, to call upon what had always been her strength – to fight as a warrior.
She threw up her axe with a determined shout.
The axe struck flesh.
Indignant roars pursued Astrid and Stormfly as they wheeled through the sky, jostling into other dragons – though the one beast she injured, an angry wart-covered purple brute, somehow surged through all the bodies and snapped at Stormfly's tail, seeking out revenge for the axe wound. Spine shots pushed it back; Astrid and Stormfly wheeled around, and the Viking woman's axe struck again. Jaws snapped at the axe and grabbed a hold of its handle. Astrid found herself nearly pulled from the saddle as the dragon yanked on her weapon, dragging her along, too, staring her straight in the eye. Black slits glared out from each of the dragon's eyes.
"Oh, you're not taking that axe from me," Astrid growled. She jumped off Stormfly's saddle completely and planted both her boots with full force into the assailant dragon's face. With one hard yank she managed to pry the axe from its jaws, and she flipped around again, jumping down to Stormfly. The Nadder caught her, and the two again shot off.
They suddenly burst from the cloud of dragons. The creatures swarmed so thickly around Eret's ship Astrid could see no sign of the vessel itself; only the occasional bright flash of burning arrows shooting from a central source indicated any humans fought in the mass itself. For a brief instant, the streak of a fire sword whipped through the dragons, but the form of a charging beast engulfed it an instant later. Then one dragon shot out from the main mass, headed straight toward Astrid, and she could make no further observations. She fell into the flurry of combat. She and the axe spun as one and Stormfly added fire to the fury. Their assailant raced off at twice the speed at which he had attacked.
Astrid and Stormfly shot once more into the center of the mayhem, tail and claws and axe and teeth and fire and metal blindly striking at anything and everything. They spun upward, shooting through layers of dragons.
And were halted by an enormous four-winged form.
Looming above, owl eyes focused intently on them, hovered a peach and orange colored dragon, at least three times the size of Stormfly. On its back stood an armored rider.
"The dragon rider!" Astrid exclaimed with her breath caught in her throat. Holding onto her axe firmly with one hand and placing the other on her own dragon's neck, she whispered, "Come on Stormfly! Let's get 'em!"
As the Deadly Nadder rose vertically into the skies, wings pumping forcefully, Astrid calculated the time it would take for them to rise and meet…
The armored figured hurled off her own dragon, plummeted feet first down from the skies, and landed on Stormfly's back, facing Astrid with a sharp-ended staff. And swung it.
Reflex more than skill prevented Astrid from flying out the saddle. The young Viking threw her axe handle up desperately against the rider's staff, shoulders straining against the other woman's strength. None of the weight she threw against her axe appeared to disturb her assaulter. The armored fighter lightly spun around, sliding down Stormfly's back, taking no mind at all the Nadder flew nearly perpendicular to the ground. Astrid heard more than saw the warrior clout Stormfly's wings twice, one for each limb, and then rush off the dragon and skydive downward. She barely had time to gasp before she realized Stormfly, too, was plunging downward.
The mast of a ship nearly impaled Astrid's head. She flung herself tight against Stormfly's saddle and braced for impact. The dragon crashed against the deck of Eret's ship, somehow not completely breaking through the wood on deck.
How did that rider disable Stormfly's wings?
Terrified for her dragon, Astrid jumped out of the saddle to investigate the Nadder's wings. "Hang on, girl, let me see!"
From above she heard a startled, high-pitched tenor shout.
Hiccup.
The swing of a staff from above. That dragon rider jumped from one dragon to another?
A flaming blade plunged to the deck.
"Hiccup!" Astrid shouted. And through the mass of fighting beasts she could see Toothless' distinct black shape being carried away by a four-winged dragon.