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Minding the Fort
Chapter Four: The Mind's Eye, Part II
Letting the boy live had been a mistake. The Fury would not make it twice.
With a roar that shook the bones, the dragon spun and violently knocked the insolent human to the ground. Shock stilled the other humans. Their astonishment barely registered in the back of the Fury's mind. His attention was fixed with blazing intensity on the boy trapped gasping beneath his claws.
The Fury opened his jaws. Fire welled in the back of his throat. Not inches from the human's face, he inhaled deeply, then—
"Achoo!"
The boy sneezed in his face.
Startled, the dragon jerked his head back reflexively and the fire in his thorax dwindled. It was just enough time for the quicker-thinking Vikings to recover from their stupefaction and collectively leap on him before he could deliver his killing strike. He could hardly bay his frustration as half a dozen of them wrestled his head to the ground and forced his claws from the boy's chest.
From the corner of his eye he saw his prey sit up none too quickly, wheezing. A human girl rushed to its side, followed by several others.
"Hiccup! Are you alright?" it noised at the boy.
It did not respond, but looked at the Fury with confounded eyes. The two stared at each other, and the dragon kept his gaze level as he waited for the killing blow by the humans trapping his jaws.
It didn't come.
After a few moments the Fury felt confused; he had never known humans to hesitate in their slaughter. He realized they were looking at the boy; no, looking to the boy, waiting for its word. Slowly it got up, unaided but closely attended to by the yellow-haired girl who was gripping an axe protectively. Seeing it raised the dragon's hackles again. He smelled the nervousness of the men that held him down. The fear was still there.
The boy moved forward until its eyes were again far too close. The Fury stared balefully back.
"Toothless. Buddy, what's wrong with you? What's happened?" The inflection was questioning, atypical of someone just threatened by a beast prepared to end its life. It touched his head. The dragon thundered his disapproval but the boy did not move its hand.
"Hold him still," it told its fellows. Then it bent to examine him, running its hands over his head and neck, stopping to prod at a particularly sore spot behind his head-plates. The Fury tried to roar.
What on earth was happening? Nothing made sense. Instead of ending his life as he knew they'd always wanted to, the humans were merely incapacitating him and allowing this human boy to inspect his wound. And rather than rush to his aid, the dragons he'd seen only gathered in uncertainty, although he could sense their growing discomfort. Why did they just sit there?
Some humans came up with restraints and fitted them around his head and body. The boy seemed ready to protest but held back, confusing the dragon further. It stared at the Fury with what he recognized as sorrow. Its shoulders slumped and hands now hung at its sides. The girl now had a hand on its shoulder, and was staring at the dragon uncomprehendingly as well.
"He took a hard knock to the head," the boy—Hiccup? That appeared to be its term of address—said numbly. "A concussion, or... there's still so much we don't know about them..."
Sympathy was directed at the boy from all sides, and at the Fury too. He sensed it. Their scents, their tones, were all devoid of the anger he'd come to expect.
With the collars fitted infuriatingly to his body, they loaded him onto a pushcart and bolted the restraints down. A part of him was pleased how carefully they went about it; he was not a dragon you took your chances with. Then they wheeled him back inside, chattering at each other all the while, arcing bewilderment and distress and worry that spiraled around each other in a song of emotions.
He was inside again, after a fashion. Unable to lift his head, he could see the place they wheeled him to was a different one from where he'd been kept before. Here, a dome of sorts had been created from webbed chains. An uncomfortable smell permeated the area, and the feeling of neglect too; the smells of past humans were months old.
There they left him. All but the human boy and and girl. A few others lingered in concern but the boy dismissed them with some words. Odd. The boy was not the largest or strongest or even oldest of them, but they deferred to its authority without much question. Humans had an unusual way of structuring their hierarchy.
The Fury knew the leader of this place, a large human with bright eyes and a great red mass of hair at its neck. He had seen the man before, had directed a blast at it once or twice. Where was it?
He avoided the boy's disconcerting stare. Humans were too aggressive with their eye contact. Again, the boy—Hiccup—placed its hand on his head presumptuously.
"What are we going to do?" it mumbled. "Buddy, it's me. It's Hiccup. I'm your friend. Remember? Remember flying?"
The Fury studied him guardedly. A minute passed and the boy let his hand drop.
"Hiccup," began the girl. "We—we should go. You should go."
"I can't leave him here," the boy protested.
"You can't do anything now. Maybe he'll get back to his senses overnight." Its tone was hopeful, but the dragon knew the furrowing of the brows to be anything but optimistic. Another oddity: creatures that said a thing one way, while they felt something else. Out of any beast he'd come across, humans were the only ones that relied on deception to function.
The girl put a hand on the boy's shoulder and gently, but firmly, drew it away. Directing a last, mournful look over its shoulder, Hiccup allowed itself to be steered from the arena. Then he was truly alone.
Night shrouded the arena. Moonlight came and went as clouds passed overhead. It was quiet. The restraints binding him to the cart made it difficult for the dragon to sleep, if his wariness hadn't. A large human came along at one point to carefully unfasten his muzzle and offer a fish. The Fury did not accept it at first, fearing some trick, but the human only waited patiently until he finally ate it. He knew that to take advantage of the very limited mobility he'd been given by the muzzle's removal to kill the human was foolish, as he could not get at the remaining collars still. The human knew this too, and that infuriated him.
He knew they were being careful to keep him alive and unharmed. What he did not know was why.
A nagging sense that had lurked in the back of his mind since he'd woken to alien surroundings now inched closer to the front. Something was missing, something important. It itched his memory.
Half an hour later a Terrible Terror came sneaking into the arena. The Fury saw him and his head-plates came up hopefully, but the little dragon made no move to free him, though it easily could have. The small thing simply crooned at him, almost pleadingly, until the Fury snorted at it in exasperation after it was clear the Terror refused to be of any help.
This bizarre relationship between the humans and dragons seemed to have sprung up overnight. Nothing explained it.
Morning came and went, the sun rose and lingered above, then continued its journey to sink in the west. The boy came only once, nominally alone but the dragon spied the yellow-haired girl hovering near the arena entrance. He was sore and stiff from his time in the constraints. From the worry that crossed the human's face, it was aware of this and concerned by it. Again, the dragon was baffled by its sentiment and this time did not resist as the boy patted his nose and scratched his head a little, steering clear of the sorest part of his skull.
His permissiveness appeared to relax the boy a little, but doubt clouded its eyes as it became obvious that the Fury was still not responding the way it hoped.
The boy turned away reluctantly and walked to the exit.
The dragon was surprised to note the boy's false leg, which in the torrid conflict before he had not noticed. While the missing limb did not seem to pain it, a limp hindered its ease in walking. Surprising himself, the Fury felt a little sorry for it. Humans were such frail creatures that anything at all could set them back. They only had the two legs to begin with, choosing inexplicably not to balance on their upper limbs as well. He wondered how it had happened.
A long time passed. The sun made another trip over the horizon. Night fell again. The Fury was by now aching head to tail. The restraints were meant to confine and bind; they lent no support at all and so the dragon had to remain standing of its own power, unable to lay down.
He suspected there was a discrepancy of time between what he remembered and what had occurred since. How long? Hours, days? Evidently enough time had passed for a radical shift in the balance between the humans of this village and the dragons that had apparently made themselves at home there.
Faint rustling alerted him to a presence at the far end of the dome. The Fury could not turn his head but even so he knew it was the boy even before it came into his line of vision. Hiccup came forward but this time did not touch him, did not do or say anything, only stood there with a pained expression.
He carried metal tools that humans had frequently used to construct new things. They could also be used as weapons. Construct, or destroy.
Minutes passed. The Fury might have felt anxiety once at the silent standoff but he had quickly adjusted to the idea that the humans had notions other than of killing him.
For the first time however the Fury's disquiet arose from a deeper place. What did the boy want—really, truly want? It seemed to be waiting for something.
Hiccup stared directly at him with what the dragon realized was misery. It was in the lines of its brows, the set of its shoulders, and most of all in its eyes.
"Toothless," it said softly. "A part of me would like to keep you here forever until I can make you remember. But I don't think I can prove anything to you by keeping you like this. I'm so sorry bud. This was all my fault."
Suddenly the boy was overcome by emotion and fell quiet. The Fury was amazed to see its eyes were wet; he'd had no idea that such a thing could be triggered by feeling. It breathed hard and stared at the ground, as though it could not bear to see him.
It continued, directing its words at the ground. "Maybe someday you'll remember, and you'll come back. I'll wait." Those green eyes traveled to his tail, now bereft of the false fin. "When you're ready to fly again, buddy, I'll be here."
Finally the boy moved forward. By now the dragon naturally expected to feel the small palm on his nose and he lowered his eyes; when he heard softly clinking noises he raised them suddenly and twisted much as he could to see what was happening.
The heavy restraints were removed with some puffing effort by the boy. It put the metal tools to work in prying bolts and forcing open firm clasps. First his muzzle was removed, then the anchored wooden yoke around his neck, and at last those that secured his body and legs.
When the last of them had fallen away the boy stepped back with some minor trepidation. After all, they had made no agreement. The Fury doubted the other humans in the village were aware of this; Hiccup had acted alone. It waited, too sorrowful to be truly afraid.
The dragon advanced on the boy, which stood its ground although its nervousness was palpable. For good measure he snorted a small blast of fire, and while the human flinched it did not bring up its weapons. Rather, it dropped them, and kicked them away with its metal leg.
"Whatever you do," it said in a low voice, "just please don't punish the village." Its mouth stretched in a strange, curved line. "I am in so much trouble already."
The Fury regarded it, then abruptly turned and scorched the restrains that had bolted him. He made sure to burn each, obscuring the true method by which they'd been opened. After he was finished a heap of molten slag lay smoking on the ground. No one would see and think the Fury had escaped by any other means than his own actions.
Hiccup's eyes widened when it realized what the dragon had done. It laughed—again surprising the Fury; humans could laugh?-very weakly. "At least they won't tear me apart now."
Once more silence descended heavily. Hiccup's fists opened and closed. Now that he was free, the Fury felt he was still tied to the ground by invisible cords of reluctance, fascination and the inescapable sense that he was missing something. That weird sensation in his head was bothersome, as though he'd gone out to sea with the intent of fishing and returned home having forgotten to bring dinner. He could either turn around and take the trouble to resume his hunt, or he could stay the night with an empty belly.
If he were a human, he might have described it as picking up a familiar book and discovering a chapter he did not remember ever reading before.
Suddenly a memory bloomed where it had not before. The night sky, lit by fire, that storm of twin stones whipping to wrap him up—and the long fall down, the thunderous crash through trees and dirt, and the horrific sensation of a part of him ripping away. The fall that had broken him. And the wait in the dark of night for death to come.
Realizing how really close the boy was, the Fury reared back in rage. The boy! With its pathetic stones and rope, it had brought down the most fearsome dragon ever to raid the island coast and crippled it forever. He had known before that Hiccup was responsible for mangling his tail, but the sudden clear memory of it now inflamed his thoughts. This scrawny, weak, maimed little human had ruined him and left him to die in ropes. How things had changed, how he had survived or been set free or whatever else had happened, none of it mattered.
He only hoped that it was he who had mangled the boy's leg. He could not imagine not having made retribution.
Let the other dragons live in their delusion. Eventually the humans would turn on them and things would return to the way they always were. Their gods help them if they thought he was no longer a threat. He would strike the fear again into their hearts with violent wrath.
Hiccup's eyes widened as it realized the change in the Fury's attitude. How he hated those green eyes. He bolted forward and knocked the boy onto its back, a third and last time.
The dragon opened his jaws. The sneaking, deceptive human deserved to die. It had made a joke of him. He was a Night Fury, the undisputed ruler of the sky he now could not reach.
This time Hiccup did not resist, knowing any effort to dislodge the great forearm pressed against it was laughably futile. It only breathed hard and stared up, nose to nose with the dragon. The Fury could smell its fear. And regret. And despair. One thing should not feel so many things; it complicated more things still: like the mind of a dragon set to kill.
After a moment, it spoke. Softly. "Buddy, I know. I'm sorry. Your tail is my fault. Your head is my fault. Everything I do...I always think it's the right thing, but then it goes all wrong..." It swallowed hard. "Toothless, you're the first thing I ever got right."
Would it please just stop. No more noises. Just stop just stop. He could make it stop.
His breath grew hot. Hiccup closed its eyes.
When it opened them at the pressure leaving its chest, the Fury was already halfway out of the arena.
"How long did they think they could keep him?" asked Astrid. "He's a Night Fury."
She knew the lie as she spoke it. During the previous morning when a Viking had come running from the arena yelling that Toothless was gone and nothing remained of his restraints but misshapen lumps of melted iron, she knew without even looking at him. Nobody raised any questions. She went along with it while giving Hiccup hard looks so he would be absolutely certain that she knew, and that she knew that he knew that she knew and she wanted him to know that.
Part of her—well, most of her—was tempted to be sore with Hiccup for doing it, but she truly didn't think that he'd endangered Berk by what he'd done. In fact she was pretty sure Toothless was done with humans altogether.
This Toothless was not the same sweet dragon that had doted on Hiccup. Whatever had shoved away his memories had introduced a dark, angry creature in their stead. Was it this Night Fury that Hiccup had taken pity on in the forest and Would Not Kill—the wild, snarling beast he was now? Because she'd seen none of the fear in his eyes that Hiccup claimed he had witnessed.
She might have done the same thing in setting him free. Or she might not have. However much she had become attached to Toothless, only Hiccup had ever managed to overcome her natural inclination to distrust.
What was Stoick going to say when he came home to this? He'd be back from the conference in another week, depending on the weather and the success of the tribes' arm wrestling. Hiccup was leaning a chin on his hand, looking tired and miserable.
"So are you going to go out after him?" she prompted.
"I don't know."
"Yeah right."
Hiccup stared at the wooden desk. "I can't hammer the memories back into his head."
"So make some new ones. I know what you're afraid of. You think that because your past with Toothless was somehow erased, you can't have a future with him either." Astrid grabbed a chair and swung her legs around the back, then leaned forward with her elbows on the backrest. "And maybe for somebody else, that would be true. But you're you. Stubborn, crazy, indefatigable you. How many times did you fall off that dragon only to get back on? You're the stubbornest Viking I know, and that's saying a lot. You don't know when to quit."
Hiccup smiled a little ruefully, but the words looked like they'd done some good. The fact was, Astrid was not speaking out of the misplaced sympathy that others were in their own reassurances. Even if she weren't positive of the outcome, she would never belittle Hiccup's reasoning like that. She was stating the truth, and both knew it. If hope did not drive Hiccup forward, good old-fashioned bullheadedness would do the trick.
What he needed right now was to get his mind off his concerns. The nest was something that could occupy his time. She picked up Hiccup's scattered drawings and tapped them into an orderly stack, handing them to him.
"What about the cove? That might be a good place too," she said.
"I thought about that for older hatchlings," said Hiccup slowly. "It has its own water source so they wouldn't need to rely on us."
Gathering the sketches, he stuffed them more or less neatly into a leather folder. He was rarely as careful with preserving his drawings as he was in making them, Astrid thought. Once an idea evolved beyond its original incarnation on the parchment, Hiccup more or less forgot about the sketch while he refined the idea on yet another paper. He used to burn old work but Astrid put a stop to that. She liked to save some of the pictures.
For someone who worked through a process so carefully, Hiccup's emphasis on the final result overshadowed everything else. Astrid was more interested in the development and what it said about the person who was making it.
The proposals for a nest were a more benign use for his attention than his previous undertakings. She'd seen some of the things he was working on prior to it, even before he'd come across Toothless, and she'd been a little shocked. Bola launchers. Catapults. Crossbows. Hiccup had always been the same sweet, gentle person, but his inventions were undeniably weapons—and dangerous ones at that. Those drawings were an insight she hadn't expected.
"I'll have to take a look at the cove," he said.
They walked out to the main paddock. While anyone could take off on a dragon just about anywhere, Hiccup and Stoick both had insisted on designating a few stations for liftoff. It kept the lines clear. When he'd emerged one day shortly after his convalescence to find everybody on dragons wheeling around willy-nilly and nearly colliding, Hiccup had gone a little green.
Only a short line waited at the paddock as they approached. Each day had brought a little more efficiency to the process. In front of them Snagrod clambered up on his Nightmare, Rowdy, and took flight after a short run. Only Toothless and the Gronckles could effectively launch from a standing position.
Hiccup was looking around, probably searching for Astrid's Nadder. But Gibby, named for a Nadder's gibbering tendencies, had flown a long sweep earlier that day and was now asleep outisde Astrid's home with her head tucked under a colorful wing. Instead Astrid motioned him to the Zippleback that the Thorston twins rode.
Predictably, the twins could not decide who got the Zippleback despite the abundance of other dragons to choose from, so they continued to share it. Ruffnut had christened the right head Guts; Tuffnut called the left Glory. When referring to the Zippleback as a single entity, "Gutsandglory" had become its common moniker despite Tuffnut's efforts to popularize "Gloryguts."
Astrid and Hiccup climbed up a short scaffold to mount on Gutsandglory's back. In the first grand ride to attack the Red Death, the Thorston twins had ridden high up on the necks just behind the heads, but that was impractical in the long run. It would place too great a strain on the necks. Unless they were put into another battle situation where it was better to stay up front, the sensible thing to do was ride on the back.
While Astrid took the lead when it came to weapons, discipline and just about everything else, Hiccup was the undisputed authority when it came to dragons. So he swung into the front of the two-seat saddle, fitting his metal leg awkwardly into a stirrup designed for boots. Astrid took the back. Unlike the seat on Toothless, which could accommodate a second person in a pinch but was really designed for one rider, this saddle was structured so that both seats were clearly defined and had their own pommels.
Personally, Astrid liked Toothless's better. Riding together was a little more fun when you weren't separated from the other by a foot of saddle—although, in the case of Ruffnut and Tuffnut, space was a good thing. They could start a fight even if one was riding up by the head and the other hanging onto the tail.
Gutsandglory were in a fine mood. Hiccup patted the flank with a bittersweet smile, and Astrid's heart sank a little. He was trying so hard to keep it together.
There was a short lurch as the dragon gathered its momentum, then charged ahead full blast and opened its wings. The air was uncommonly still and the Zippleback labored for altitude without the usual support from rising currents. At last it settled at an agreeable height that allowed it to relax its wings a little.
Hiccup's back was difficult to decipher but from the mechanical way he went about directing the dragon Astrid was aware of how much her boy missed Toothless. When those two flew, it was hard not to stare admiringly at the ease with which they communicated, making difficult maneuvers seem no harder than breathing.
The flight was short, not more than ten minutes. The landing was easy but the cove did not allow much room for a gliding stop. Hiccup frowned at that.
Otherwise, the cove was a fine place for raising hatchling dragons. Astrid could almost imagine the happy, playful atmosphere that hatchlings would introduce. Raising dragons, as opposed to training them in adulthood, would be a long learning experience. Vikings had been hardened by fighting dragons for so long but Astrid had personally witnessed some of the biggest, strongest and hairiest of them tearing up at seeing the baby Nadders, first dragons born in Berk.
Hiccup quietly dismounted, and did not say a word as he studied the cove. Maybe bringing him here was not such a good idea. He was here to objectively analyze the conditions of this place, but overwhelming sorrow tended to damage a capacity for reason and this place had so many memories.
The pool water really did occupy the better part of the cove, which would make it difficult for multiple dragons to maneuver and land. Perhaps they'd have to nix it as an option. At one end of the pool, an incline created a shallow bank a foot deep. Hiccup waded a little ways into it, leaning on his foot to take weight away from his metal leg lest it sink into the mud. The water was pleasant and Astrid dipped her fingers into the pool, creating little ripples that went a long way before disappearing.
Here, Hiccup had approached a wounded and angry dragon and somehow made friends with it. Here, he had fixed a leather fin to its tail and inadvertently went for the ride of his life. Here, he had eaten and played and trained with Toothless.
Suddenly Astrid didn't want to introduce anyone else here. This place belonged to Hiccup and Toothless and nobody else. She didn't want nests to leave scattered brush everywhere. She didn't want hatchlings to muddy up the pond banks. She didn't want them to crowd the small cave in which Toothless once sheltered.
The cave—the cave where...
Her breath caught in her throat.
The cave where Toothless still sheltered—