It was impossible to wrap his mind around. The girl needed a bodyguard? For what reason? Tuff looked pointedly at the weapon girded around her waist but before he could ask for any decent explanation, a tumult outside drew Fergus' attention. The large man frowned and walked over to the window to see what was afoot and Merida did the same.

Slightly exasperated but curious as to what all the shouting was about, Tuffnut sidled up next to Merida, nearly shoving her aside. She scowled and elbowed her way back into the space and he almost grinned; the non-verbal argument reminded him of Ruff. But what he saw down below soon wiped the smile off his face.

Men with faces burnt and clothing singed were limping into the castle, many having to help or carry others. They were shouting over each other, arguing loudly and one word caught Tuffnut's ear – one that needed no translation.

Dreugan . . .

Oh Gods . . . had they found Hookfang? It had to have been him; had these men encountered a wild dragon they would have been much worse off. Their injuries looked as though Hookfang had burst into flames and rolled on them a couple times, true, but a wild dragon would have done so much worse.

It also raised the question of whether they had managed to kill Hookfang – a possibility Tuffnut really didn't want to accept. The idiot dragon wasn't his, but he'd developed affection for all the dragons, aside from just Barf and Belch. Hookfang was at times cranky and temperamental, but he had a sense of humor and sass that Tuffnut appreciated – especially because Snotlout usually bore the brunt of it. He had no trouble admitting that it was pretty funny to watch. The thought of the Monstrous Nightmare dead left a hollow feeling of despair in his heart.

"What are they saying?" he asked, but Fergus was already striding quickly toward the door, leaving him with Merida. He expected her to leave him hanging as well, but much to his consternation she grabbed his hand and pulled him after her. Tuff went along, but he frowned, still not able to reconcile with the fact he was little better than a hired body to her.

Vikings of Berk did not have bodyguards. He'd heard of other chieftains hiring men to fight for them in times of warfare, and those were called hiromen. They were little better than mercenaries; paid with gold for their service rather than the promise of glory and honorable death in battle. But no Chieftain in the history of Berk had ever needed to hire men to stand by them in battle!

The entire village stood behind the Chieftain in times of crisis, no matter what happened, and he had been raised on that truth. Tuff rather doubted the Picts were going to pay him anything to protect this girl, not that he'd accept their gold anyway if they did. So that meant they were going to force him to, on pain of death. And Elinor had known this all along? The betrayal stung bitterly. He'd thought the older woman was on his side.

Merida chose an alcove where she could hear what was going on, looking over in surprise as Tuff yanked his hand away. He scowled and did not look at her, coolly staring down at the men. Fergus appeared before them and shouted down the resulting clamor as all tried to tell their story at once. It was a cacophony of words he did not understand and Tuff grit his teeth, frustrated and afraid for Hookfang.

"Are you all right?" Merida asked, and though Tuffnut could not understand her words, he heard the meaning in her tone. He gestured helplessly down to the men and looked at her, trying to convey his need to understand them. Merida tilted her head, then looked down at the men again, uncertain as to what was upsetting the boy so much.

{The raiders were many and they attacked in broad daylight! They hurled flaming bombs ashore from their dragon ship, but our archers didn't let them moor! Off course they went and somewhere past the cape!} One man was informing her father. (We didn't follow – but if they show their faces, we'll kill them all!} Other voices rang through the air, agreeing heartily.

Tuffnut surprised her by speaking. "Dragon . . ." he said, loudly, pointing at the men. She looked at him as he made a slicing motion across his throat. "Dragon?!" he asked again, all but shaking her by the shoulders.

{Ahh – what? A-Are you asking if the raiders killed anyone?}

He didn't answer, just staring at her and looking more distressed than ever. Merida put her hands on his arms, trying to calm him. {Easy. Lets go see my mum, right? Come on.} Tuff grit his teeth, unwilling to leave their position. He looked at the men hard, trying to find dragon teeth, horns, scales, claws – anything a warrior may have taken as trophy. He only allowed Merida to budge him when he'd satisfied himself that no remnant of the Monstrous Nightmare rested in their hands.

{Calm down, Maudie, please,} Elinor was saying to her frightened lady in waiting. {I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. We'll get some cool mugwort tonic on your cheek and the bruise will fade in no time.}

{He was fightin' with Lord Macintosh's men, like a demon! Oh m'lady, why did ye let him free to roam? He would've killed me, I'm sure!}

{Maudie, be reasonable, he wouldn't have killed you. He's a frightened boy. I will be having a talk with him about what he did, and he'll apologize – you'll see. All will be right in the end,} Elinor sighed.

The lady in waiting shook her head frantically. {Nay, I'd sooner not see him again!}

{Maudie –} Whatever Elinor had been about to say was lost in the excitable woman's shriek at someone in the doorway. She barged out the other way, bawling inconsolably. Elinor cried out after her, and then turned to regard her daughter and the Norse boy in question.

"Well, Tuffnut. I've heard you raised a bit of a ruckus this morning with breakfast. Mind telling me what happened?" she asked calmly, folding her arms.

Tuff's eyes narrowed. "I don't mind telling you what happened, so long as you don't mind telling me what happened!"

Elinor's brow wrinkled in confusion at his words. "Er . . . what?"

Tuffnut opened his mouth to explain his outburst, but was immediately interrupted as Fergus burst in behind him, nearly flattening the boy against the wall with the door. {There's a been a Norse dragon-ship sighted, Lass! In daylight no less – it attacked the coast nearby. I've got to lead a hunt 'round the cape.}

{. . . What?!} Elinor cried. {A Viking ship!?}

{Aye. We'll kill em on sight and bring back the figure-head. It'll make a nice trophy, don't ye think?}

{I'd rather have a living husband than a trophy! You'll do no such thing! We haven't had raiders sail so close to the shore in daylight, let alone directly attack!}

Fergus looked immediately flustered. This was obviously not the response he'd anticipated. {But . . . but we can't let them get away!}

{Let them! Keep watch for further activity, but don't go embarking after a possible decoy! All you'll do is be out there at sea when our people need you here to ward against further attack!} Elinor's tone was firm.

{But . . .} Fergus sighed, relenting in the face of wisdom. {Lass, ye have a point. We'll watch closely for now. If they attack again, then we'll show no mercy.}

He kissed her and left to regroup the eager men outside. Elinor watched after him for a moment, turning back to Tuffnut. The boy had lost his confrontational stance, leaning against the wall and looking pale. Merida looked at her mother and shook her head, looking just as confounded as the older woman. "Tuffnut, what's wrong?" Elinor asked gently.

Tuffnut looked up at her and sighed shakily. "Why . . . did you lie? I don't want to be her bodyguard. Or anyone's. I don't. I want to go home. You can't make me stay here . . ." But it was hopeless wasn't it? He didn't have to understand Gaelic to understand what was going to happen to Hookfang. The dragon was going to be killed, horribly, if he wasn't dead already. And there was nothing Tuff could do to stop it.

He was more shocked than anything when Elinor embraced him tightly. "I am so, so sorry. It was the only thing we could do to protect you. We had to lie, not just to you. To everyone. We had to tell them all you'd agreed to it."

Tuffnut wanted to shove her away but found he couldn't bring himself to. "But why does she need anyone to protect her? She has a sword. On Berk, we grow up protecting ourselves as soon as we can walk – didn't you do the same for her? If it's so dangerous living here didn't you teach her?"

Elinor looked at him in surprise. "Fergus taught her to fight with sword and bow. She is second to no-one in archery. Merida can protect herself very well." Tuffnut looked at her, not having the energy to interrupt. "Because I am her mother, it wasn't enough for me that she knew how to fight. I wanted someone to be there for her – someone she could trust as a comrade. Someone who would fight beside her in battle, who wanted to be there. We did not plan on it being you. I placed the task of choosing such a companion in Merida's hands. I should have guessed she would choose you in order to save you from death."

The boy glanced over at Merida, who'd been surprisingly quiet this whole time. She offered him a smile, curious as to what on earth they were talking about.

"Ohhh. I get it. Because she's a girl, everyone thinks she needs a man to protect her, even though she can fight just as well as any man, if not better. It's stupid, but I understand. I have to be the man who rides beside her and 'protects her' so everyone else will let her be." Tuffnut looked at Elinor, whose eyes were wide with surprise. "And also so they won't call you a bad mother, for letting her be herself?"

"They don't call me a bad mother . . " Elinor started to say, but he interrupted.

"Not to your face they don't. Our mom gets flack too, for raising Ruff the way she did. My sister's really competitive – even though women can technically fight and divorce and have as many rights as a man in our village, she still has to work twice as hard to be considered as good as any of the boys. She takes it out on me a lot, but she doesn't mean to. It's hard for her. It's probably hard for both of you. Because you're both struggling to be free and still be respected. You're so used to struggling; you don't even know you are."

What . . . on earth? Elinor's jaw had dropped slightly. "Your village . . . is very different from ours, isn't it?" she asked, in wonder. Once they understood one another, he and her daughter were going to get along famously.

Tuff managed a wan smile. "In a lot of ways, yeah." He looked toward the window, gathering his courage. "So . . . what's going to happen to the dragon?"

Elinor shook her head to clear her thoughts. "Dragon? There's no dragon. It was another raider's ship that attacked. You are concerned with the fate of those on board?"

Relief coursed through him, and Tuffnut exhaled, shaking his head. He still felt guilty for hiding the truth from her, but not enough to tell her yet. Hookfang must have indeed flown on to other islands; hopefully back to Berk.

Letting the matter drop, Elinor let go of Tuffnut and turned to her daughter. She spoke in Gaelic to Merida for a moment, and then looked back at Tuffnut. "Tomorrow, you will start to learn our language, and Merida will learn yours. It's time you two got to properly know one another."

Dinner was as ever a noisy affair in Castle Dunbroch. With the addition of the clans Macintosh, Dingwall and MacGuffin, it was a cacophony of sound. Servants were bustling, serving ale and bread and boar's meat, and the triplets ran underfoot – testing the patience of all they encountered, but generally going unnoticed.

They'd been to the trophy room and they'd looked long and hard, but the facts remained . . . there was no way that tooth around the Norse boy's neck had belonged to a bear. In fact it hadn't belonged to any predator their father had ever hunted, not even the very last wolf in Scotland that their grandfather had killed – and that had been a monster. It was a mystery, and one the brothers were determined to get to the bottom of.

Harris watched Tuffnut like a hawk as he ate, seated between Fergus and Merida, while Hubert and Hamish whispered conspiratorially to one another. Tuffnut did his best to ignore him, slowly going mad just from the boredom of having everyone talking gibberish around him. Fergus was telling a story, that much he knew, and Merida chimed in occasionally, making others at the table laugh out loud.

He bit his lip, focusing on just eating his dinner and trying to ignore the sting of being left out. It was some kind of sheep dish – haggis, Elinor had called it. Well, it tasted weird, but it was better than most of what passed on Berk as food. At least there were apples at the table as well as boar meat, cheese, and bread.

The ale . . . oh gods, it was horrid. If the entire nation of Skotland put that into their mouths and called it a good drink, small wonder they were violent. A mere sip of Viking mead on the other hand would probably make them as docile as baby Gronckles. Tuff's uncle had a home-made recipe that Stoick the Vast had outlawed. If he could only remember it . . .

The only reason he was sitting at the table was because he'd refused to be left alone again; last night had been miserable. Tuffnut wanted company, but he hadn't expected to still feel so . . . alone. Everyone was talking, laughing, cheering, drinking . . . and he couldn't understand a word of it. It was almost worse than being left alone in an empty room for the night. After he finished his food, he tried to catch Elinor's eye, but she had excused herself momentarily to talk to one of the servants.

Tuff sighed and pushed his plate aside, getting up from the table. He knew the way back to his room well enough anyway. He muttered good night, and went unnoticed into the corridor between the dining hall and the kitchens.

At least, he thought he did. It wasn't until two turns later that he realized he was hopelessly lost . . . and that someone had followed. Tuff saw stars as his head was slammed against the door of a linen closet and he yelped as he was shoved inside it. He stumbled and tripped over a basket, landing hard on his arm. Tuff cried out in pain and scrambled to get upright but was slammed against the shelves, sending linens tumbling down on him.

A kick landed to his ribs and another to his hip, hard enough to knock the breath out of him. He swallowed his agony as the beating continued, all the while struggling to throw off the sheets that tangled him helplessly against his opponent. A hand gripped his hair, pulling him to his feet harshly.

{You Danish scum,} a voice snarled in his ear. {Think you lot are clever, aye? I bet you knew they were attacking all along, and you said nothing! We lost good men today, boy. All because of you!}

The man slammed Tuff's head hard into a shelf, leaving his mouth and nose bleeding. Tuff did not struggle, cocooned in a tight web of tangled linens. He hitched painfully and gasped as the cold metal of a blade pressed against his neck.

{I'm not gonna kill you, though I very well can. Remember that. And remember for the rest of your life that you're now nothing but a dog, begging for scraps at the high table.} The blade moved, though instead of tearing flesh, it cut through thick strands of Tuffnut's hair, through the braids that Elinor had so carefully and patiently pleated, dropping them to the floor.

Perhaps Tuffnut was at times ridiculously proud of his long hair – longer almost than his sister's – but to a Viking, long hair was a sign of strength and power. Only slaves had short hair. The sudden shock of air on the back of his neck and the gravity of what it meant rendered him completely still.

Someone's shout from the end of the corridor made his attacker let him go abruptly, fleeing from discovery. Tuffnut slid down the wall to his knees, frantically running his hand through his shorn locks. A gentle hand touched his shoulder and he looked up shakily, expecting to see Merida or Elinor. The person he saw instead was a boy with a shock of yellow hair, sticking straight up, as though he'd been on the receiving end of a lightning bolt. The boy didn't say a word, instead helping untangle him from the sheets.

Tuffnut allowed him to help, lacking the energy to do it himself. He should have known he'd be attacked; hadn't other Vikings just launched flaming missiles earlier that morning at the shore? Of course they would associate him with that and lash out accordingly. He was so stupid to think he was safe walking alone.

Tuff said nothing as the boy slipped under his good arm, helping him limp along the corridor. He kept his face down, devastated and thoroughly humiliated. The boy said something, leading him into a room with two other boys. They approached cautiously, raising their hands as Tuff flinched away from them hard. For a moment he felt betrayed; had he only been rescued to be another group's target?

He recognized the blue-paint of the tallest boy and nearly panicked – remembering that this was the same boy he'd kicked in a very sensitive place less a day before. Tuffnut grit his teeth, tensed for more harsh treatment, and was surprised when a hand lightly grasped his arm instead. The blond boy returned to his side and though he spoke nonsense at him, he was smiling, offering a mug of drink. Tuff made no move to take it, not understanding anything.

Overcome with pain and dizziness, he didn't struggle when the biggest boy – the same that had reminded him of Fishlegs earlier – made him sit in a chair, pressing a clean cloth to his bloody face. It was then that the blond youth spoke just one word he could sort of understand.

{Cider,} he said, and offered the mug again. Tuffnut could see that it was warm and he must have looked wary because the wild-haired youth took a sip of it and exhaled, making a show of being satisfied. He offered the mug again and Tuffnut shakily took it, sniffing and then carefully sipping the contents. It wasn't mead, but it wasn't that weird depressing ale from dinner either. Hot mulled cider, tasting of apples, cloves and cinnamon, warmed a path down his throat and settled in his stomach. Tuffnut licked his lips and drained the rest of it, perhaps taking far too much comfort in the delicious drink than he should have.

He did not flinch away again when the boys sat beside and across from him at the small table. Though they talked to each other in their own language, the straw-haired boy laid a protective arm across Tuff's shoulders and somehow he didn't feel nearly as alienated as before. Wearily, he rested his head in his arms folded over the table and simply let the words wash over him.

{Who attacked him?}

{Probably one of the MacGuffin clan,} sighed Keir, speaking in his thick dialect. {Not that I'm proud of admitting it, but we've been getting 'it pretty hard by the raiders. Lots of men ha' lost both property an' kin. And ye should have heard the dark mutterings after Queen Elinor endorsed him as a bodyguard.}

{What's the big deal with that, anyway? I should think men would be happy to be let off that particular hook,} Lachlan Macintosh snorted. By now he'd been around Keir long enough to understand his accent. {I think it might be a good idea; letting a Viking handle it.}

{Aye, but he's our age. And he's got just about every clan in Scotland after his blood, ye ken? So he'll protect Merida, but who will protect him?}

{Wait, who said anything about protecting him? Don't ye recall that night past? He fought like a lion!}

{So? An outnumbered lion can still get killed. We need to help him.} Gavin Dingwall stated firmly. His companions looked at each other, than stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

{Help him? Help the Viking? Have ye gone daft!?} Lachlan protested. {Don't ye know what it is they do? What's to stop him from turning on us like a dog?}

{Oh come off of it, I led him here like a meek lamb after what they did to him! He's in bad shape; I bet you his arm'll need reset again, and he's turned the cloth red with his blood.} Gavin actually sounded upset and Tuff turned his head a little to gaze at him, wondering why. {We should help him, at least escort him to his room, aye? And maybe one of us go and tell Queen Elinor what's aft?}

{Not it!}

{Not – blast it. Alright, fine, I'll go.} Lachlan got up, grumbling. The boy gave Tuffnut a jaunty salute as he left the room and walked down the corridor.

Keir and Gavin each stood, helping Tuffnut stand shakily on his own two feet. Where they started leading him, Tuffnut didn't know, but he felt oddly protected, limping between the two lads as they took him to another room. Things started to look a little familiar on the way; he'd really been turned around before. He looked from Gavin's cheery smile to Keir's calm and thoughtful countenance, and then attempted a broken smile of his own. He hoped that maybe he could now count these boys – Lachlan included – among his few friends.

Merida had not noticed when Tuffnut had slipped away, but she cursed herself now for not noticing as she tended to the Norse boy's swollen cheek and lip. He had made no move to refuse being touched or handled, simply sitting there on the bed. Her mother had been furious at the injury done to one of her charges and had promised Tuffnut that she would find out and punish who had attacked him. Tuffnut hadn't so much as blinked, simply staring at the wall. A couple times his eyes had glistened, but no tears had yet fallen that Merida could see. When she sat next to him on the bed, he didn't so much as glance at her. "I don't suppose you're mad at me, hmm? You've every right to be. We've let ye down. This should'nae have happened."

When Tuff didn't respond, she reached out and gently touched his shoulder. He flinched a little, but did not pull away from her. Merida could feel him trembling beneath her fingers. She bit her lip, then spied a brush and scissors lying on the table not far away. Who ever had cut his hair had done an awful hack job, several pieces longer than others. Merida picked the brush up and looked at him, trying to convey that she only wanted to help him. Tuffnut glanced at her then, at the brush, and shrugged, not looking her in the eye.

He closed his eyes as she gently combed the stray bits out of his shorn hair, bowing his head under her gentle hands. Not long after, he felt the gentle snipping of scissors, evening out the mess his attacker had left behind. His shoulders tensed, but Tuffnut didn't pull away.

It wasn't until Merida started to sing, quietly and under her breath, as she brushed his hair again, that he curled forward, shaking. "I'm sorry," Merida said softly, wrapping an arm around him. Tuffnut surprised her by leaning into the embrace, if only just a little. She kept singing gently, only a little off key, and it wasn't long before the boy was half-conscious, all but snoring against her shoulder. God, but he was heavy. Smiling fondly, she tried to lay him on his side on the bed, only for him to pull her down with him, arms and legs pinning her. Merida nearly yelped as he curled around her protectively, muttering a name into her hair. She recognized it and softened, disentangling herself as gently as possible, trying not to wake him.

As she left the room, she made a quiet vow to him that somehow she would find a way to see him home.