I know I haven't been in the habit of typing anecdotal comments to readers for this fic, but I just want to wholeheartedly thank everyone SO MUCH for your incredibly wonderful reviews, follows, and favorites. Your kind comments and interest in this work really brighten my day so much! It's hard to believe that I'm this far along on "The Vigilante's War" and that it's coming to a close pretty soon! It's been a great journey for me and I hope for you, too. Stay posted as I plug through the last few chapters - woohoo!
XL.
To be caught in a blizzard like this usually meant death.
Even with the proper equipment to hunker down and wait out a storm, pelting wind and flying ice often triumphed over man. And Hiccup, traveling light without all the proper material required for a long winter journey, could do little but cling, shivering, to the spines of the Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon and hope to simply survive the day. Or night. Or whatever the time of day might be. It was a disorienting world of beating snow and blinded vision; he knew not what time of day it was, where he was headed, or even where he might be now. There was no "here" when he could barely open his eyes, when he could do nothing but stagger beneath the blows of impossibly cold and rough, abusive weather. A hard-fisted beating or stoning might have been less intense than this, and more likely from which to come out unscathed. Only the shelter of the Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon's protective hovering wing prevented him from crumpling down beneath the endless barrage of lance-like icicles.
All his senses were overwhelmed – sight with bombarding ice against his eyelids; hearing with deep-throated gusts of bellowing winds; taste with numbing cold; smell with frozen wasteland; touch by murderous blizzard rages. And the sky itself collapsed upon them, rocks and boulders and shards of pelting ice raining down, burying them, bruising them. How could he tell this onslaught came only from the clouds, and not an avalanche? Endless, endless, endless punches, his arms, his hands, his pallid cheeks, his stiffened legs, assaulted, everything tortured.
A blind hobble forward sought shelter to no ado.
There was no shelter, no shelter anywhere.
A frozen, near numb, cold-pained hand clutched the back of the Driver Dragon's scale, and pulled Hiccup forward to hopefully some safe haven it could detect but not he.
But his steps. So heavy. Mind… body… numb.
Cold.
Take. another. step. forward.
He fell.
His knees sunk in snow, impossible iciness burning through his clothing. From behind he vaguely felt a blunt dragon nose urge him upward, boost him back upright to keep trudging onward.
Stagger. Three steps. And downward.
Sink in snow. Drown in ice.
Cold.
Another nudge, and another, more insistent. He ignored them. Not because the nudges bothered him, but because he could not think about what this stimulus meant. Mind. Numbed.
Snow.
Cold.
Completely frozen.
Cold.
More prods, more and more.
Half-effort to step up. Fail.
Cold.
Numbed.
Blizzard howls and whines – a murmured undertone – "Do – you –" cut off "– that –" other words, unheard, screaming wind dominating "– dragon over –"
Squinting unseeing at white ground, shaking, Hiccup had to pause and think with great effort before he could even ask himself, Were those… other human voices I just heard?
Blustering tempests.
Straining his ears, Hiccup sought to filter ceaseless noise from the words in the distance.
Nothing.
Did I imagine it?
Howls.
Cold.
Listen.
Wait.
Cold.
Another half-broken conversation stream. The speaker must have been shouting, but Hiccup could scarcely hear half the sentence anyway – "back – think – to shelter after – then check – quickly!" – nothing at least with comprehensive semantic content. Yet nevertheless what he heard confirmed someone – for whatever unknown reason – was out there in the storm.
"Over here!" Hiccup shouted beneath the Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon's rattling wing. He could barely hear himself. He tried again, forcing vocal cords and lungs to screech out a call for help. "Over here! Here!"
Did he hear shouts in return?
He could barely feel the mittened hand abruptly supporting his back, the puff of warm air escaping a nearby human mouth, the concerned attentive question, "Gods above, are you – are you alright?" He just felt himself stumbling forward, numbly and vaguely thinking, I might make it through this after all.
"Not far. Not far from shelter. You almost stumbled right into us, you did, very lucky, since no one goes out in a storm. Not far from shelter – what were you doing? Come on, come in. Just… ease… inside."
Snow. Stopped.
Wind. Stopped.
Pelting ice. Stopped.
A slow, biting, eating tingling of warmth gnawed at his fingers and reddening cheeks. The painfully sharp growth of warm through his body stung almost more than the he had felt reeling through the relentless blizzard outside. Yet Hiccup, relieved, trundled straight to a large-ish blossoming fire, sat down beside it, and wordlessly absorbed its heat.
When his body had unthawed and his mind become less numb, Hiccup roved his eyes around the shelter he had blindly entered. His rescuers had led him into a cave, one occupied by a clutter of sled, skins, cooking gear, and hunting equipment. A much sparser scattering of humans hunkered down amongst their belongings. Most were so cloaked in furs they appeared to be animals – and indeed some even wore skinned bear head hoods over their foreheads, hiding natural hair with enormous furry brown ears. Even the children might have been pudgy cubs sitting around their handful of fires.
Nearest to Hiccup rested two women, his rescuers, both of them fairly young, and both of them staring at him with concerned near-black eyes. One of them, very stout, and with a hood framing a beautiful round face, bustled about and attended the fire beside them. The other woman simply squatted down and stooped by the fire to warm herself, brooding silently across from Hiccup. Occasionally she glanced behind him, where he realized at once the Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon had settled. Though she did not appear frightened by the dragon's proximity – unusual enough, for a non-Berkian – her thick black furrowed brows seemed to be more than pensively set, but also casted a rather suspicious frown.
Hiccup's portly host leaned in to grab a ladle and spoon out a thick stew from a pot overhanging their fire.
"Like something to eat?" the cook inquired with a velvety alto voice. Her round face sized Hiccup up astutely. Before he could even answer her question, she automatically snatched up a bowl to her left and spooned a generous helping into it, then held it out for Hiccup to grab. He accepted the stew with a nod of thanks, and now that he could start to process thought and words again, inquired, "Where am I?"
"Far, far in the north, in the territory of the Wanderers," the seated woman responded. Her jawline was notably sharp and angled, while her long blackish hair was tangled and half-thrown in her face, giving her the appearance of a feral cat. The bear ears on her half-raised hood only augmented her animalistic appearance. She continued staring at the dragon behind him rather than making any eye contact with her human guest, but she did at least engage Hiccup in conversation. "And if you're wondering," she continued, "we're the Northern Wanderer Tribe."
"The name's Dagmar," the cook answered, with a smirk, "and this girl over here with the dark, straggly hair and huge doomy eyes is Eggingarde." She set the ladle back down after dishing herself some stew, then plopped herself down on the ground. "So, how about you, traveler? Got a name?"
"Hiccup."
The edges of Eggingarde's thin lips twitched in a slight smile, and Dagmar outright snorted in amusement.
"It's not the worst in my tribe," Hiccup defended, gesturing with his spoon. "Parents believe a hideous name will frighten off gnomes and trolls."
"And I bet you've seen not even a glimpse of their toes," Dagmar determined. The younger woman beside her nodded in astute agreement.
With more than a little sarcasm dripping, Hiccup responded, "Oh, what a horrid life is mine, having never seen the toe of a troll."
"Still seems like a horrid life regardless of your name, trampling through that blizzard like that," Dagmar responded. "Not many come by here. Even fewer are dumb enough to try to hike through a snow storm… especially not in clothing like that. You should've frozen to death. What were you thinking?"
"Well, I – I didn't really have a choice," Hiccup responded. "I never planned to come out here in the first place, so I didn't exactly bring all the survival gear I'd need for conditions like these. But I need to get back to my home as soon as possible, and since I have no other way to travel, I just had to brace the –"
"Where you from?" For once, it was taciturn Eggingarde, not Dagmar, who spoke up to question Hiccup. She barked her inquiry right into Hiccup's narrative, quite sharply, all the while glaring right straight Hiccup's dragon.
"Berk. It's um, an island south of here inhabited by the Hairy Hooligan tribe."
"You're a Viking."
"Yes." Hiccup frowned, puzzled. That last comment of Eggingarde's had almost sounded accusatory.
"There's only two sorts of Vikings who make their way up here." Now the bite in Eggingarde's voice could not be denied. Dagmar, across from her, cringed visibly upon hearing that tone of voice, yet did nothing to stop the young woman's speech. "Those who go out looking for slaves –" she spat the last word out as though harboring a personal vendetta "– and that Viking dragon rider, who's been more of a disturbance than a whole lot of those no-good slave-trading ruffians."
The reason behind her guarded glares toward the Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon suddenly clarified, and her following question only pushed forward that point more. "You wouldn't happen to have any… relation… to that dragon rider, do you? I can't say I've seen anyone else able to handle a dragon…?"
Any relation to her? She's my mother. An incredibly uncomfortable thought, regarding what it all entailed now. Aloud, Hiccup vaguely but truthfully claimed, "No, I can't say I'm much like that dragon rider. We must have tamed dragons each separately from each other."
The two women glanced at one another, and then Dagmar shrugged. Eggingarde returned her intensive black-eyed gaze toward Hiccup and replied, "I certainly hope so."
Gods, that stare is discomfiting. No wonder Dagmar described her eyes as "doomy."
"Honestly," Hiccup said, "all I need to do is to wait out the storm. Then I'll be out of here and on my way. If you don't mind me… staying… I mean, your hospitality has already been wonderful…"
"It's fine," Dagmar answered with a half-smile. She probably meant her response to be warm and polite, yet some unsettled residue trembled behind her attempted friendliness. For some reason she seemed more disconcerted now that Eggingarde had spoken up and mentioned the Wanderers' strained relations with the southern Viking tribes. "Couldn't let you die out there. You're lucky you happened to stumble right past our shelter. We wouldn't have thought to let you die out there, no matter who you are. Although," she paused, "you're probably going to have to talk with our Elder about this, anyway."
"My grandma definitely wants to know everything that goes on with everyone," Eggingarde agreed with a vigorous nod. "And she always finds out about it, anyway. So once you're done eating, you should definitely go talk to her."