XXXV.
She found his helmet lying near an enormous shard of ice. It was cracked a bit beneath the left eye slit and stained in still-wet blood.
Astrid nearly dropped Hiccup's mask once she found it.
A short distance away, Gobber removed his helm, holding it reverently with his one good hand, staring teary-eyed at Stoick's battered body. He had been standing there several minutes, completely mute, simply watching unmoving over the remains of the chief of Berk. Enormous blocks of ice surrounded both of them, most of them green-bluish in color, some of them red. Though many battle-worn, grime-smeared Berkians forlornly slumped away from the blacksmith and his best friend, shaking their heads and murmuring prayers up to the gods for mercy, eventually a few dared approach Gobber, speak softly with him, and then prepare to carry Stoick's body to a ship for one last trip on ocean waves. Yet even as several strong Viking men reverently hoisted up the corpse and carried it away from the ice and gore, Astrid remained, crouched down, fighting away the fear welling in her heart and threatening to spill out of her eyes as tears.
She knew she should be assisting in the after-war efforts along with the other Hairy Hooligans. No one had any time to sit stooped over an empty helmet, not with the threat of another new battle looming. For above their heads a moment before, rising up out of ice on the back of a night black dragon, rode a dragonesce figure proclaiming war on Berk, leading an army of feral dragons with her freed Bewilderbeast at the front, a multi-colored swarm of wings and fangs headed straight south. Berk would need to load the ships and flee – both from her and their new enemy, Drago. For it had been witnessed and told throughout the Hooligan tribe that Drago attempted to overcome the Bewilderbeast and kill the chief of Berk.
He had died anyway.
And so there was not much time to search for soldiers missing or collect the dead. Only quick cremation ceremonies would honor the Hooligans who had fallen before the living rushed swiftly back to Berk. Both the Visithugs and the Vigilante had retreated and would be preparing for further bloodshed.
Astrid nonetheless still needed a long moment to stare at Hiccup's helmet. Her eyes often fixated on every little detail of that mask, as though this lifeless object could somehow transmit the truth of Hiccup's whereabouts. Sometimes her eyes rose to examine the enormous slabs of ice covering the battlefield like overgrown tombstones. Who knew how many lives were encrusted in that ice? How many of the dead, bodies never to be recovered? Women and men like… Hiccup.
It was what Gobber had murmured to her disconsolately before plodding heavily toward Stoick: that the Vigilante riding overhead on Toothless' back, the ice-spitting Bewilderbeast behind her, and Hiccup's bloodied helmet lying unused on the earth, indicated something Astrid still refused to believe. Hiccup had died.
But we haven't seen his body yet. We haven't seen his body. He's only missing… not dead…
That helmet had been lying face-down very close to an enormous frozen spire protruding out of the earth. Asphyxiation in ice seemed far more likely a fate than staggering off the battlefield alive. For if Hiccup had been in this confrontation between Stoick and the Vigilante, then received serious injury, the Hooligans would have found him lying amongst the ice chunks by now. And if he had been uninjured, well enough to walk at least, then would he not have regrouped with the other Vikings?
Astrid shuddered. Turned her eyes away from the ice. It was just a simple slab of blue and green crystals – at least to simple examination. The mental pictures inside her head were not so innocent.
The death of both Berk's chief and its successor in one day.
Hiccup, I'm so sorry…
She felt numbed, cold as though a chunk of ice had frozen her mind. She could not quite fully process what had occurred, nor could she cry as Gobber already had. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes, though nothing fell…nothing ever fell. Yet though dry-eyed, Astrid was far from fine, hardly functioning at all, and she knew that once the battle had passed, the numbness had worn off, and the information had time to fully seep into her cognizance, that she would break and cry.
Preferably alone. She did not want anyone to see her weep.
"Is that…?" a hoarse voice moaned hesitantly behind her. Astrid rotated her body and looked upward from her kneeled position on the ground.
"Yeah," she told Snotlout. He glanced toward the spire of ice just beyond them. That little shift of his clouded blue irises threatened to drip more tears from already-soggy eyes down to his blotchy red cheeks. While Astrid's face probably appeared numb, mournfully expressionless, Snotlout's own countenance depicted the exact definition of unfettered pain. And when Astrid nodded mutely to his eyes' query, and Snotlout realized Hiccup too must have passed from this realm, his pupils contracted, fear and uncertainty layering over his grief. What might have been a slight shake of his head accompanied a small stagger backward. The implications of losing both Berk's chief and its successor – his uncle and cousin – rocked him rearward, and without another word he trudged away from Astrid.
Just a few days ago, Snotlout had been boasting about how he was next in line after Hiccup for the chiefdom.
A cruel, cold world indeed.
He was trying to busy himself by collecting arrows for his uncle's funeral. That much the Hooligans would do before launching off the shores of this frozen wasteland. Face hidden by his hair and helmet, Snotlout stooped down, yanking unbroken arrows out from where they pierced wood, or were elsewise lying seemingly innocently on the snow and soil at his feet. But nothing could be innocent anymore. Not truly innocent. Astrid, sighing, finally picked herself up and joined in the same activity. Her mind never engaged in it, though. It remained idle, thinking constantly – though still numbly – about the mask she carried in her other hand. Hiccup's mask.
He can't be dead.