"Terrible Terror, where do you go," mumbled Hiccup, watching them tumble around the square. The sickness had spread with a startling quickness among the dragons, but the Terrors remained resilient. Not only that, but they showed no signs of illness at all. Suddenly the flock of tiny dragons took off in a whirlwind of so many wings and whiplike tails and they darted away.

It was an amusing sight but Hiccup did not feel like laughing. Not when Berk, in the best of times held together by prodigious Viking spit and prayers, seemed ready to explode from tension. Vikings did not fret well. Actually they tended to overdo the concern. This resulted in the unusual sight of dragons, only some as sick as they were acting, being unabashedly coddled by their humans. Ticktack's had actually sewn pillows for each head.

The dragons that were exactly as sick as they were acting were a source of serious worry, and not one yet seemed to be recovering. Again, the ugly thought that this was a human disease they'd introduced to the dragons reared its head.

Hiccup got up and cast about for something to do. Crisis, he'd always imagined, was a whirl of chaos and action with no dull moments. Berk ever had one foot sunk firmly in chaos but the action was not forthcoming. It was a lot of waiting.Waiting to see how the dragons would ride it out.

Perhaps noticing Hiccup's morose attitude, a returning Terror came cartwheeling from the sky to land in front of him, its belly big from an afternoon snack. "Hurp," it said by way of greeting, and Hiccup barely had time to yank his boots away before the contents of said concerned Terror's stomach could spill all over them.

"Ugh," said Hiccup as the three-in-one-course meal was laid out in front of him.

The Terror was pleased. "Ugh" was the most typical reaction of humans when gifted by regurgitated food, and thus clearly signified their pleasure at receiving it; sometimes they were so overwhelmed with gratitude they insisted that the scaly donors consume the gift themselves. Thus the Terrible Terrors were satisfied that their generosity did not actually require them to be generous.

This time it was a fish head, and a little lizard—wasn't that a kind of cannibalism?—and some... odd berries, it looked like. They were still a vibrant orange-red. Hiccup hadn't even known dragons would touch those. "Thanks," he said weakly, "but ah, you have it."

Not needing to be told twice, the Terror scarfed up the meal again as satisfied as if it was the first time around.

Fishlegs came up with Roppke, both with eyes upon the departing Terror.

"Why aren't they getting sick?" asked Roppke, musingly. "Much as they get around you'd think they'd the worst off."

Fishlegs looked nervous, and wrung his hands a little as he sneaked a look around them. "We gotta talk." He drew them further away from the open view of the village.

"Find something out?" asked Hiccup, thinking over Roppke's question. "Because I've got to tell you, without the other dragons to keep them in line, those Terrors live up to their name."

"I've been thinking," said Fishlegs, "and I don't like to think it, but the thought's got to be thunk eventually, and—"

"And," said Hiccup impatiently.

"I think... this might not all be an accident."

Not an accident? Hiccup couldn't remember ever catching pox purposely. Conveniently maybe, the day, years before, he was supposed to go dragon baiting with his uncle Spitelout. But the look on the Vikings' faces did not suggest a joke, and Fishlegs never made one intentionally.

"What kind of not all an accident?"

"Someone's been making the dragons sick," Roppke said.

Suddenly Hiccup began to feel ill himself.

His silence prompted Fishlegs to go on. "Roppke saw Bolwer Gorm sneaking away from one of the paddocks. I looked around and saw some of these." The boy held out a hand, and laying in his palm were berries of a smaller, darker character than the ones the Terror had just offered Hiccup secondhand. These berries Hiccup recognized instantly as the toxic Hel's Yew. Every Viking growing up was taught not to pick the poisonous bushes that fringed part of the island, lest they die in as unmanly a fashion as a citizen of Berk could fear.

"Oh, man," he said, picking up one of the berries from Fishlegs' outstretched hand. Roppke's face was grim.

They were still learning about dragons and what their systems could tolerate, and it was possible that what meant quick death to any human might yet not be enough to kill a beast so large as they were. He hoped. "Get them a lot of water," he said with a lot more confidence than he felt. "Fresh water, not the filtered stuff from the ocean."

Fishlegs hurried off, yelling as loud as his voice could carry. Roppke studied Hiccup, whose mind was in a whir. "Will that be enough?"

"It's worth a shot," mumbled Hiccup. Whenever a Viking caught sick, Grima always flushed them out with as much water as she could without drowning them, to the point where everyone avoided her until they were just about on their deathbeds and she could corner them easily. Maybe it could drown the poisons. "I need to get to Bolwer."

Berk had surprised him so thoroughly with its willingness to embrace the dragons that he'd given in to the illusion the village's enthusiasm was of one mind. He should have known better. He should have anticipated this. Not everyone could have turned over so quickly, but even so Hiccup never would have thought they'd dare to break the truce Stoick proclaimed.

Except Stoick wasn't here. Hiccup was. This had been carefully timed.

Anger and humiliation flooded his system and stained his cheeks red, and he didn't catch what Roppke said. "What was that?"

"They've already gone to get him."

Startled, Hiccup spun to face him. "'They '? Who's 'they'? I don't remember sending any 'they.'"

Roppke blinked. "I sent them. I thought—"

"Did you?" snapped Hiccup, his frustrations spilling over. "Do you ever come get me first? Next time you whip up a mob, maybe give me a heads up so I can scalp tickets, since you obviously don't think you need my permission. If Bolwer's hurt before—"

Any further berating of a totally surprised Roppke was interrupted by the aforementioned 'they' storming quickly up the hill with a struggling, bellowing Bolwer Gorm in white-knuckled tow. Hiccup was relieved he wasn't visibly injured, but his chances of remaining so dwindled the more Vikings caught the gist of the uproar and storms broke over their faces as they joined the crowd.

Astrid came running up, skirting the group cautiously. Ruffnut and Tuffnut followed close behind. Tuffnut was shouting vague obscenities mainly for the fun of it, as he derived great joy from mobs of any reason, but the girls were thankfully restrained. Astrid sidled up to Hiccup, who told her and the twins (once he got Tuffnut to stop hollering) to help Fishlegs in obtaining more water. At least somebody could get something useful done. Although clearly wary of leaving Hiccup, Astrid ran off after collaring Tuffnut and dragging him behind her.

Bolwer Gorm was thrust to the ground before Hiccup with a spear's tip at his neck to discourage any thought of rising. Gorm stared up with sunken eyes and Hiccup was confronted with the rare and uncomfortable perspective of looking down on him.

This was all happening too fast, before Hiccup had the chance to digest what was happening. He and Bolwer stared at each other.

What am I going to do with you? He raised his hands and shouted. "Calm down! Everybody!"

Surprisingly, yelling for calm didn't work well. It took a full minute to quell the crowd, growing every second, to a level where Hiccup could hear himself think. "Now all of you just shut up for a moment," Hiccup said in his best Stoick impersonation. Eventually the group subsided, glowering at the man on his knees. Even lowered so, Bolwer was as intimidating a creature as Hiccup knew.

Gorm's fury radiated from his eyes, his face, his clenched hands.

Whenever Stoick encountered a problem he couldn't swing a sword at, he skillfully dissected its components until he isolated the problem. It was a form of distancing, of removing oneself emotionally from the situation in order to solve it practically. This habit had served both the Haddock men well, for when Hiccup needed to solve a mechanical problem and Stoick needed to solve Berk. Of course, a mob had never deposited an offender at Stoick's feet—the chief preferred to go after them himself—and mobs tended to override practicality.

"Okay, um, everybody... go away." The crowd stared uncomprehendingly. Hiccup flapped his hands at the wrists. "Shoo."

Disbelief silenced them more effectively than anything else. Gobber pushed through the throng and slapped his hand to his leg. "You heard 'im! Go help Fishlegs and the others! You're doin' no good here!"

After much poking from Gobber and ambiguous words of encouragement from Hiccup, the mob disintegrated into individual Vikings stalking away and reluctantly muttering. The interim chief blew out his breath and gave Gobber a grateful smile. A minute or two later, only Hiccup, Bolwer, Gobber, and Roppke remained.

Now that Bolwer's every word wasn't threatened by the point of a spear, he was spitting his words like venom. "Fine chiefing, boy," he snarled. "Turning the village into a hell-horde."

"Shut up," said Roppke angrily.

"No, he's right," said Hiccup just as sharply. "It shouldn't have happened."

"Are you gonna tell me what I almost got gutted over, or should I just figure it's for a good reason?"

Hiccup almost admired his defiance. "Someone saw you sneaking out of a paddock, and these were found afterwards." He showed Bolwer the berries.

"So? They aren't mine." The great Viking spat.

Roppke said derisively, "So it was just a coincidence?"

Bolwer glared at them. "Guess it was. I didn't have nothin' to do with it. Not the berry picking type."

"Why were you at the paddock?" Hiccup asked, crossing his arms. "You've never shown any interest in riding dragons before."

Giving an enormous shrug, Gorm said, "I only wanted to see how sick they were."

By their snorts Roppke and Gobber made obvious how much they believed that. Hiccup wasn't so sure. What he was sure of was that this wasn't the time to deal with this. The dragons came first; he had to see to them.

Bolwer Gorm sensed his hesitation in the way that he had often sensed it in the prey he was now forbidden to hunt. "So how are you going to deal with me, Haddock?"

"I won't," said Hiccup distractedly, already thinking of other things. "You'll be kept to your house until Dad gets back. He'll decide what to do with you."

For the first time real consternation crossed the big Viking's rough-hewn features. Perhaps the skinny temporary chief did not strike fear into his heart, but Stoick was another, bigger, hairier, and meaner matter. "Too much for you to handle, boy?"

Hiccup frowned at him. "You're not going to bait me."

Roppke poked at the kneeling man harshly with a spear handle. "I'll escort this one back and watch him."

"No," Hiccup said, feeling achy. His hip was beginning to hurt and his skin had the itching sensation it occasionally got since he'd been fried in the lake. "Gobber will do it." Roppke was still too angry.

The Viking made no protest but glared at Bolwer as he was led away with Gobber's hook crooked under his shoulder. Then the two of them went back to the paddocks, Hiccup thinking hard.

Water helped some, but in the same way that poison had to work harder to spread through the system of a dragon, it was equally difficult to flush out. They worked together for a time, Hiccup doing what he could but mainly trying to keep the scared dragons from getting too excitable. Vikings, too. Both seemed to respond to his reassurances, and he felt guilty for deriving less comfort from the words he said than they did.

As the hours flew by he tried not to think of what his father would do, mainly because he couldn't imagine what Stoick would be doing differently and partly because Hiccup was Hiccup and not his father and there wasn't any point trying to do anything other than what his own reasoning told him was best. Doubtless the Vikings wished the chief was there, but in the meantime they were cooperating well.

He found his way to Astrid and filled her in. Predictably, she was furious.

"Berries," she said while hefting a pail. "I didn't even know dragons would eat them."

"Not normally." Only if it was offered to them by someone they trusted, a thought that made Hiccup, who was beginning to understand something, miserable. "The Terrors do, though."

"So why aren't they sick? They get into everything. They've probably eaten the same berries."

Given the little dragons' propensity for eating anything at least once to test its edibility, including but not limited to leather, ink, and Gobber's left everythings, Hiccup figured that 'probably' was probably 'definitely, duh.' "They've eaten different ones, too," he pointed out. "I didn't recognize the kind. Maybe...maybe that's got something to do with it."

Setting her pails down, Astrid wiped her forehead. "Maybe. If they're the only ones eating them and they're the only ones not sick. Some kinds of berries are supposed to be good for you."

Hiccup was sure this was true but the people of Berk were not a berry-loving folk as they preferred food best harvested by battle-axes, so his knowledge of edible plants was mainly constrained to trial and error.

"What are you going to do with Bolwer Gorm?"

"He's under house arrest," said Hiccup.

"Did he do it?"

Hiccup began to say something but closed his mouth as more as other Vikings came within hearing range of them. They wanted to know what everyone else did: was Hiccup really going to wait for his father? Even after two witnesses fingered Gorm for the crime? Hiccup corrected them; only one witness had, in fact, seen anything at all. What Fishlegs discovered was after the fact.

Retribution on Berk had never been anything but swift and decisive, and this idea of waiting was something new to them. Hiccup called this being methodical; Bolwer, when Hiccup went to check on him that night, called it being a wuss.

"You're not helping yourself," said Hiccup. "Why are you being so combative?"

Bolwer stared at him balefully, heavy chains on his ankles doing little to diminish his intimidating presence. Gobber watched him carefully from his place near a firepit. They sat there a long moment, Bolwer leaning heavily on the bed to which he was chained and Hiccup sitting on the chair, which creaked during the awkward silences.

Eventually, when Hiccup was beginning to think he should go, Gorm spoke. "Some days I wake up and the first thing I wonder is whether today will be the day I join my brother." He gave his chains a thoughtful rattle. "Then I remember, no, there's a truce now. And when I remember that, I'm disappointed."

"Why?"

"You don't understand, boy. You're too young. There's no decades of war you have to put behind you."

"Everyone else has," Hiccup pointed out. "Gobber's put a hand and a foot behind him."

As though to illustrate the point, Gobber began polishing his hook lovingly. Hiccup thought it rather by the grace of the gods, for the sake of everyone else in the world, that Vikings were not born with such things naturally.

"What I'm saying is, we've all lost something," he finished.

"Yeah." Bolwer gave a giant shrug. "But you can't just strip the fight from us, boy. We're Vikings. We need the battle."

Struck by this, Hiccup was momentarily quiet. He hadn't considered this effect. Berk had long before given up warring against any other tribes for the main reason that dragons gave them all the fight they wanted; and Gorm was right, Vikings wanted a fight. How long could they stay docile?

Hiccup stood and regarded the man before him. "Bolwer Gorm, did you poison the dragons?"

Gorm snorted. "If I'd wanted to kill dragons, boy, they'd be dead."

Hello again! Note: this was last updated before I think 'Gift of the Night Fury' was released, so some of the dragons' names are off.

Reviews are encouraged and encouraging :)