Chapter Five: Not Your Traditional Fish-Bait Variety
Hiccup felt like a brainless mouse that was standing in front of a cat-hole, waiting for the hungry cat to show itself. A bit of cosmic-irony where the prey waited for the predator to emerge instead of vice-versa. He knew, without a doubt, that something terrible was about to come out of that cave. This was how his life worked, after all.
The girl's smile suggested she didn't feel likewise. Still perched on her dais like a happy little sacrifice, she looked down at Hiccup with reassuring eyes. "Such fear in your eyes. Surely the Dragon Rider has faced worse threats and come out the better."
"I tend to come out the better when I know more about the threat I face," he rebutted. He boarded Toothless and attached his harness while gesturing to the girl to come down off her dais. "Let's not be here right now."
"But I must be here," she replied, again with the calm grin. "It is my duty, to my people and to the world."
"What? What does that mean?"
"One way or another, it must return to its slumber. Whether by my sacrifice or your efforts, this must occur."
Nestor let loose a groan of exasperation. "Lady, I don't do sacrifices and I don't sit around in front of caves waiting for it to show up. Come with me." It occurred to him as he finished speaking that he was asking a spirit to come with him like she was a real person. Yet she seemed so real, though, and what else could he offer her but an escape?
The girl quietly went back to bowing her head with her eyes closed, her determination undeterred. "My place is here. You may choose to face what is coming or to flee if you wish, but my fate is sealed."
Right then, Toothless's ears perked up, his head snapping toward a distant sound in the cave. A low growl vibrated through him, aggravating Hiccup's seriously-frayed nerves. He tried listening for ominous clues coming from the cave, heavy breathing or ground-pounding footfalls or something licking its chops in hunger, and at first he didn't pick up anything.
But then it came to him; a low rushing tapping, like a woodpecker drilling into the bark of a tree. Then a second woodpecker joined in a second later. Then it was a trio. Then a fourth made it a quartet. On and on, every second brought more of the insane tapping into focus until it was a virtual army of cave-tappers tapping their lives away.
Toothless instinctively intensified his growling and arched his back. Hiccup couldn't identify what could be making the insane noise, but it was getting louder and thus getting closer. The cave was about to spew forth something, and he wasn't about to stick around to welcome it.
"It is almost here," said the girl. "Make your choice, Dragon Rider."
He had, but he didn't think the girl with the martyr complex was going to like it.
"Toothless, fetch," he ordered, pointing at the girl.
The dragon leaped into the air, deftly collided against the closest cavern wall and rebounded to the girl on the dais. She offered no resistance as Toothless grabbed her under the armpits and launched straight up, out of the cave and out of the gap. The wind immediately assailed them, bits of sand greeting them with its abrasive touch as they left the safety of the gap, but Hiccup found it preferable to waiting to be lunch.
Hiccup felt very out-of-sorts right then, mostly because his rescue attempt had actually worked. Toothless should've passed through her, the expected result when trying to physically rescue your average spirit. He had already decided to flee from the cave, but not without trying to save the girl. The fact that he had saved her meant only one thing.
The girl was no spirit. She was flesh and blood… and that made all this twice as confusing as before. He could get behind the idea of a spirit playing tricks on him, but not crazy weirdness in real time.
"You're real," he yelled to the girl, though it was unlikely she could hear him right now.
"You can't do this," the girl called out from beneath Toothless. "You don't understand. I must be there, or the Wyrm will escape."
Hiccup ignored her for now and kept his eyes on the gap as Toothless circled above it. She had called it the Wyrm, which brought up images of creepy crawlies in bait barrels that fishermen used to catch fish. Not his favorite kind of animal, but worms were low on his list of nightmare fuel.
Then again, what kind of worm tapped its way to the surface?
The answer came in the form of a speeding mound of flesh that erupted out of the cave like honey squeezed from a warm honeycomb. The mound shifted upward, climbing the rock face like it was on fire. A worm it was, but far more than that, much to Hiccup's renewed horror. It had to be almost as wide as the cave it had emerged from, its mottled flesh gray and pale with fleshy bands ringing the beast at regular intervals. Streaks of some kind of wet substance adorned its surface. The head of the thing, the Wyrm, was mostly a tube-like orifice that contained several cluttered rows of grinding teeth that circled back and forth, each set moving independent of each other. The head met a man-sized boulder on its way up the rock face, the rock disappearing in the terrifying mouth and breaking into hundreds of smaller rocks within seconds. It had the same love of grinding minerals that Gronckles exhibited, only on a bigger scale.
The insane tapping filled the air around it, and Hiccup could now see why. The Wyrm didn't scoot or wriggle like a worm should. Battalions of beetle-like legs were attached to its sides, the legs working in tandem to push the creature along, undulating in wave-like patterns as the Wyrm advanced up the hill.
In less than twenty seconds, the Wyrm's head had reached the peak of the hill, angling its sightless head in Toothless's direction. The dragon nervously snapped at it, even though they were a good hundred feet above it. Hiccup felt like snapping himself, though his version of snapping involved fainting and passing out. The creature had climbed at least a couple hundred feet up a stone hill in no time flat… and it hadn't completely cleared the cave yet.
"The Wyrm emerges," the girl cried out, actual emotion in her voice.
"I can see that," replied Hiccup. "Toothless, convince it that we're not on the menu today."
Toothless did so with his standing opening argument – a pair of blue fireballs speeding into the rock underneath the Wyrm's head. A blast of flying rock and licking heat coated the creature from below, its head rearing back and shaking violently. Hiccup was pleased to see the creature wasn't thrilled with fire. This might not be such a headache after all.
Then the creature righted itself and aimed its mouth right at them. From its mouth, a cone-shaped blast of sand flew out into the air, a miniature sandstorm localized around Toothless and company. Hiccup heard the girl scream and Toothless whimper as a flood of flying particles pelted them all, Toothless going into a quick dive to escape the worst of the sand blast. Hiccup covered his eyes and silently prayed that Toothless wouldn't smash them into the dunes as he braced against the whipping touch of the sand blast.
Toothless soon outraced the Wyrm's sand attack and banked away from the rock sanctuary, getting some welcome distance between them and the creature. Hiccup cleared the moist sand from his body and tried to dig out the saddle linkup from the pile of sand coating it. The rudder's response time began to slow with all that sand clogging the mechanism. He needed to land and clean it before it jammed up completely.
"Toothless, is she okay?" he asked the dragon, who was too busy sputtering and spitting sand to waggle or shake his head. Then Hiccup heard the girl cursing in some guttural language, so he assumed she wasn't too bad off. But he needed her out of the way before he could combat the Wyrm directly.
Hiccup looked behind him and saw the Wyrm facing them from its perch on the hill. Despite not having any eyes of note, the Wyrm seemed to know where Toothless was approximately, its head tracking the dragon's movements as they speed away. Hiccup no longer thought this was a simple-minded beast; definitely not the same as the traditional fish-bait variety of worm back home. There was deliberateness in its hesitation, as if it was debating whether or not to pursue its escaping sacrifice.
Then it began to climb down the hill, its army of legs propelling it straight down as easily as it had ascended. In the length of several breaths, it reached the bottom of the hill and left the solid footing of the stones to enter the sand dunes on the opposite side of the rock sanctuary. . But instead of pursuing Toothless across the sands, it acted suddenly disinterested in its prey and headed off in a northern direction. It slid through the sand like a sea serpent through the ocean, undulating along the surface and plowing through the pale dunes, its legs flinging tuffs of sand out to the side.
Its hideous length had an end point, and like a regular-sized worm it tapered off into a round bottom. The monstrous chorus of tapping faded as it cleared the rock formation, the full length of the creature measuring three hundred feet or more. While not as bulky as Red Death, it certainly had the former Hyperion monster dragon beat in terms of yardage.
Out of immediate danger, Hiccup had Toothless circle back to the stone hills and land on the crest of the tallest one. Upon dismounting from Toothless, Hiccup received another mini-sandstorm when the dragon shook free the sand on his scales, but Hiccup was so focused on the mystery not-a-spirit girl, who was gently and calmly smoothing out her robes like the previous minute of her life only ranked a mere inconvenience, that he barely felt the sand hit him. He had enough presence of mind to keep an eye on the Wyrm as it fled across the desert, though at the rate it was going it would be out of sight within a matter of minutes.
"Lady, are you touched in the head?" he blurted out testily. "Are you trying to get yourself eaten? If Toothless and I hadn't come along…"
"Then I would have been sacrificed, and my village would be safe," she answered in her infuriatingly calm tone.
"What? Sacrifice? Okay, we're well past the point where you should have explained things."
The girl glanced out at the fleeing Wyrm as if she was afraid of losing track of it. "This is how my people have satisfied the Wyrm for generations. Every ten years, one of us must make the trek to this location, to the cave where the Wyrm abides. In our sacrifice, the Wyrm is satisfied and returns to its slumber under the earth."
"Your people threw you to this creature?" Even though Vikings weren't the most pleasant of people, your typical Viking clan wasn't big on human sacrifice, and it shocked Hiccup that any tribe would stoop to such a horrible practice.
"I came of my own free will," the girl replied. "I walked the sands for three days to reach this place, and I placed myself on the ceremonial dais. To save one's village is to perform the ultimate act of selflessness, and thus you are remembered for all time." Her face acquired worry lines as she watched the Wyrm grow smaller and smaller in the distance. "You deprived it of what it wanted. Now it races off to find an alternative."
"But… it's massive, and you're not. There's no way it could make a meal of you."
"It doesn't want a meal, Dragon Rider. It lives on the rocks of the earth. But it wants to be worshiped, to be remembered. My ancestors made a deal with it centuries ago – spare the many for the price of a few. Now, in anger, it will seek out my village for retribution."
Hiccup wanted to argue how senseless that sounded. Again, his Viking heritage taught him to oppose monsters, not placate them. But after seeing the size of the Wyrm and sensing that it wasn't a mindless eating machine, maybe there was no way to fight something like that if you didn't have dragons or a giant fishhook at your disposal.
"But if you were going to sacrifice yourself, why did you want me to stand with you? Why did you call to me? How did you call to me? I saw you in my dreams, and I saw your footprints appear out of nowhere."
"The footprints aren't really there, Dragon Rider. I put them in your mind so that you would find this place. I did it the same way I called to you in your sleep."
"You say that so casually. Are you and your people… human?"
The girl faced him again, those kind eyes of hers putting him at ease despite the numerous and varied reasons he had to stay anxious. "We are few, but we have abilities that some might say makes us more than human. We find sanctuary out in the Desolation, in a hidden place away from others who would judge us a threat. Alas, we share it with the Wyrm, but the Wyrm is reasonable compared to the minds of humans. As to why I wanted you with me…"
She lowered her eyes and seemed to grow insecure. "I confess, Dragon Rider, that I don't really wish to die like this. I felt your presence arrive two days ago, a mystery that I would have desired to explore had I the luxury of time. I saw your mind as you slept, learned of you and your magnificent dragon. " She gestured at Toothless, who was rubbing off the more stubborn sand deposits on his scales by scraping his body on the rocks near him. "We have a legend that talks of how the Wyrm fled to the Desolation out of fear of dragonkind. I hoped that his presence might sway the Wyrm into returning to its lair and thus spare my life. Now I know better."
The story sounded good, yet Hiccup couldn't help but feel like the unluckiest guy in the world. "How do I do it? How do I keep running across every oversized monster in the world?"
"Sorry?" The girl seemed perplexed by his attitude.
"Let's just say that you've caught me at a rather bad moment in my life." Hiccup didn't feel at all heroic right now, and part of him was practically livid at the idea of going back into action when all he wanted to do was get out of the desert and find a cold, wet place to be miserable. Let someone else save the day. He'd done his part already, and he was paying for it dearly.
That livid part of him couldn't shout past the better part of him, though. The part of him that saw the girl as someone unique and special, who didn't deserve to have her life cut short no matter how vital it was to her people's well-being. The part of him that knew a monster no matter how big and wormy it might be. The part of him… that knew that Astrid would've kicked his rear until it fell off for turning his back on someone in need.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"You may call me Valha."
Hiccup hid his surprise under his tired, sand-covered face. That name… of all the names in existence, she had that one? What were the odds, especially in a land where names were more rare than raindrops?
"Okay, Valha. I don't know if we can stop the Wyrm with just one dragon, but we're not going to sit back and let it destroy your people. And if we can't stop it, we can get ahead of it and warn your people. But the deal is that I'm not about to let you sacrifice yourself to it as an alternative."
"There may be no other…"
"That is the deal!" said Hiccup, and he said it so forcefully that Valha backed up a step. "Got it?' Valha nodded unsurely, but not unhappily.
After inspecting the rudder linkup and cleaning it as best as he could in the spate of twenty seconds, Hiccup mounted Toothless and gave Valha a hand up. She took to the rear saddle seat without complaint, or even any emotion, despite the fact that it had to be her first time riding on a dragon. She gripped Hiccup around the waist, forcing Hiccup to push away a barrage of remembrances he couldn't afford to dwell on right now. Her touch also dispelled what remaining doubt he had about how real she was – she certainly felt real.
Toothless sped into the air and went after the Wyrm, which remained visible due to the geysers of flying sand left in its wake. It traveled the sands like a longboat plowed through choppy seas, but Toothless was still the champ in terms of top speed and he soon gained on the monstrous earthworm.
As the sharp anticipation of battle set in, Hiccup found his thoughts focused less on coming up with a successful dragon versus mega-worm strategy and more on how lonely he felt now. He was used to going into a fight not just as a rider and his dragon, but as a team of like-minded individuals skilled in their respective talents. He trusted Nestor and Saga to handle the ground game, Arc to be a fierce wingman… er, wingdragon, in the air… and Astrid to always have his back. And they were all gone, scattered to the Four Winds… or worse.
He even missed the earlier days, flying in loose formation and looser discipline with his Hooligan friends around the skies of Berk. Snotlout and Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut – the first dragon riders and arguably the best ones. Despite the omnipresent dysfunction that permeated the group, he always could count on them when the hatchets started flying.
As the Wyrm loomed larger and larger before him, he thought little of strategy and instead said a Norse prayer of well-wishing for all his friends, old and new. They had to be doing better than he was, because it was hard to imagine them doing worse.
In a different part of the world, a far colder and wetter land that Hiccup knew all too well, there existed a tiny drop of land on the ocean that graced the waters the same way a mole might intrude on the face of a fairy-tale princess. The tiny island always disappeared when the ice flows moved south in the winter, swallowing it up neatly. The Berkians called it Last Gasp and used it as a barometer for how soon winter would set in over their own frostbitten island.
It did have other uses, such as allowing four teenage Vikings a final breather from the cooped-up lifestyle they would soon be experiencing all winter long.
"You know, this kinda bites," said Snotlout, sitting against a driftwood log and impatiently poking the burning wood in the fire pit with his shabby club as if the fire wasn't doing its job properly. The daylight was clouded and insufficient – the fire existed to keep their hands from falling off due to the chill. Good thing they had a squat hill to block off the western winds that would otherwise turn them into living ice sculptures, fire or no fire.
"We remembered the wood this time," said Fishlegs, sitting on the same log and rubbing his hands in front of the fire. "I told you it would work better than using rocks."
"Yeah, great," said Snotlout. "Instead of being bored and cold, we're just bored."
"You're the one who picked this place out," said Tuffnut, sitting next to his sister, Ruffnut, on a separate driftwood log. The logs had been transplanted from the ocean to Last Gasp via Monstrous Nightmare, as the only other sitting accommodations the little island offered involved saltwater and snow.
But it also offered privacy, allowing impatient teenagers a measure of independence if you were willing to numb your fanny in the process. The Dragon Squad was used to such wintry conditions. Snow graced Berk nine months of the year to some degree and the thin crust of white that covered all of Last Gasp paled in comparison to the massive drifts that blanketed the village in the deep winter months. But they did like to stick to the pebbled-beach part of the island, where the high tide washed the snow away.
"You said, 'we need our own place away from the prying eyes of fuddy-duddy elders'," continued Tuffnut at Snotlout. "If I'd known we'd be sitting around the whole time, I would've stayed in bed."
"It's too cold to go flying right now," said Fishlegs. "Chomps has a tender nose that gets frostbite easily."
Chomps, Fishlegs's Gronckle, along with Fenrir the Nightmare and Barf-Belch the Zippleback (a name the twins finally came to an agreement about after many black eyes, not that they could agree on which name belonged to which head), were dozing behind the young Vikings in little makeshift nests on top of the island's sole hill, which was little more than an oversized mound of dirt that hid the western side of the island from the Viking campers. The dragons liked to sleep a lot in the winter, though most of them weren't hibernators by nature. Getting them to fly became less fun and more chore-like as winter progressed, and chores were always frowned upon; hence the camping.
Snotlout sighed. "Face it, we're the wussiest Vikings ever. How am I suppose to prove my manhood when we end up befriending every dragon we come across and making peace with all our enemies?"
"I think the Scauldron we buzzed a few weeks back is still ticked at us," offered Tuffnut. "You could try your luck with him."
"Actually, Scauldrons have pretty bad memories," stated Fishlegs. "There was this one story about how…"
"Don't care, move on," griped Snotlout.
"We could play back-end dragon fire again," suggested Tuffnut. "I've been saving it up since this morning."
"You save it up?" said Snotlout.
"You never know when it'll come in handy. Not like it'll matter. Fishlegs always wins."
"I can't help it if my digestive system is bigger than everybody else's," Fishlegs meekly defended.
"It's bigger than all of us combined," replied Tuffnut.
There was a curious component missing from the proceedings, and Tuffnut realized it was his sister's biting candor. He never got past three complete sentences before she chimed in. By the Gods, he might actually have to look her direction.
He did so and saw something that almost shattered his sanity. Ruffnut's legs were bent and her eyes were contentedly focused on an object resting upon them. The object in question was scroll-paper bound up in leather, a weirdly boring object that didn't exist in Tuffnut's household. Yet one of those things had somehow materialized on Ruffnut's lap… and she was reading it.
Too blown away to address his sister directly, Tuffnut turned his horrified eyes toward Snotlout and Fishlegs. "Why didn't you tell me?"
The two Vikings exchanged glances, surprised at Tuffnut's surprise. "Uh…" stammered Snotlout, "we thought you knew, considering you two spend every minute together."
With the others of no help to him, Tuffnut finally turned to his sister, who was quite happy to utterly ignore him. "Ruff, is that what I think it is?"
Ruffnut didn't bother to look up, but the irritation was thick in her voice. "Considering how little thinking you do, I'm not surprised you're asking that question."
He couldn't stand it any longer. He reached over and yanked the book from Ruffnut's hands, standing up and dancing back a few steps to avoid the predictable protest and lashing out from his sister.
"Hey! Give that back!" she ordered as she got to her feet.
"A book," said Tuffnut, holding it like it was a rabid lamb trying to bite him. "Where'd this come from?"
"I've had it for… a while." Ruffnut's indignation waned as she noticed the eyes of her friends, all of them wondering if she'd been switched out with a clever look-alike. "It's a first edition print I got from the last trade ship."
"First edition… what? Ruff, we made a pact that we would never learn a single thing in life, and that included reading."
"We were five."
"Right, and we've done pretty good since then. What is this about, anyway?"
"It's a… story about… how two people go around wrecking the lives of everyone around them."
"I think I know that one," said Fishlegs.
"That sounded suspiciously like it's the opposite of what you just said," accused Tuffnut to his sister. He then noticed a piece of leather in the pages and assumed that was a bookmark. He flipped the book open and began reading the first paragraph on the page aloud.
"Belvus pulled Nella into his encircling arms. She could feel the hot touch of his breath on her skin, and it made her blush in anticipation. 'Oh, Belvus, I never thought I could love a man like you,' she exclaimed, her heart twittering in her chest. He gently pulled her face toward his and WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS, RUFF?"
"Sounds like a romance epic," explained Fishlegs. "I hear it's popular with female readership."
"Really?" asked Snotlout. "How popular?"
"Very popular," said Fishlegs.
"If you guys are done being stupid, can I have my book back now?" said Ruffnut.
"Romance epic," spat out Tuffnut, tossing the book back to his sister. "Who are you and what did you do with my sister?"
"Excuse me for not wanting to sit around while you guys invent new forms of boredom." She placed her book carefully into her personal satchel, taking care to check that her bookmark was still in its correct spot.
"It's not just the book," said Tuffnut. "You haven't wanted to go yak-tipping in weeks, you joined a class in pottery-making, and I'm pretty sure those flowers in your room aren't there because you're waiting for them to rot and smell up the house."
"So I'm branching out," said Ruffnut. "Big whoop."
"Forget branching out. It's like you've joined a completely different family tree."
"Can you blame me? The old one's got rot."
"Yeah, that's what makes us great! Low expectations!"
The argument soon became the traditional Ruff-Tuff conversation with insults flying hot and fast, accompanied by intermittent head butting and shoving. Snotlout and Fishlegs sighed forlornly, as what had started out as an intriguing wrinkle in the Twins' lives was now back to typical sibling abuse.
"Maybe it's time to say goodbye to Last Gasp for the winter," suggested Fishlegs.
"Too bad we can't do the same to these two," replied Snotlout, shaking his head. Then a thought jumped into his head. "If we leave now, how long do you think it'll take them to figure out we're gone?"
"I don't know," said Fishlegs, "but I'm willing to find out."
The two of them moved off toward their respective dragons, the Twins so embroiled in their newest argument that escaping them was easy breezy. Ditching your friends wasn't considered a noble thing to do, especially when you were out in the frozen immensity of the Arctic Circle. But few in Berk would blame them for cutting and running. Mention the names Ruff and Tuff to any adult Viking and your response would be a story about how they started a sheep stampede or loosened the wheels on all the village wagons.
Fishlegs got to his dragon first, the Gronckle happily snoozing in her self-dug nest with her tongue lolling from her mouth. She looked so peaceful that Fishlegs felt waking her would be almost cruel. Not such a problem for Snotlout, who had strolled up to Fenrir's head and was shoving him with a boot, not harshly (it was never a good idea to shove a dragon harshly) but enough to get the dragon's attention. The Nightmare was also out like a broken lantern, snoring loudly enough to be heard over the crashing surf echoing from the other side of the hill.
Snotlout frowned at his dragon's continuing slumber. Fenrir could be a heavy sleeper, but not this heavy. "Fenrir, wake up. I want to be out of here before the Twins wise up."
Fishlegs glanced at the two-headed Zippleback, resting a little ways from Chomps. The Twins' dragon was also zonked out. Barf-Belch had a tendency to get agitated when its riders got into fights… which was constantly. The Zippleback was as peaceful as a snowcapped mountain, the twin heads entwined around each other.
Then Fishlegs noticed the fish-head pile in front of each dragon. When the Dragon Squad made their trips to Last Gasp they always brought a basket of fish for their dragons to snarf on while the teenagers hung out. The baskets were always empty by the time they were ready to go. This time out, none of the dragons had bothered to finish their meal before taking their naps.
"What gives?" complained Snotlout, rocking his dragon a little harder and getting the same result.
Fishlegs reached down and picked up his dragon's unfinished meal. He gave the fetid aroma a good whiff and noticed that something was off with the odor. The fish didn't smell rotten – Chomps wouldn't have cared if they were, considering she ate rocks on occasion. The smell resembled one of those stomach-churning aromas from the herbalist's house, where all sorts of health remedies were concocted for the ill and infirm. It reminded him of one of those draughts you drank that cured everything from bad gas to the plague, but most of the time it was just some sedative that put you to sleep for a long time.
"Snotlout, I think our fish got tainted with a drug," he said, though Snotlout didn't seem to hear him over his curses at his dragon's continued laziness. Fishlegs looked at the fish on top of the pile and realized the species wasn't local. Fishlegs's memory was good for more than just dragon factoids – he dabbled in botany and zoology as well. Most of the catch in Berk this time of year was cod. The smelly ones in the basket were trout.
Fishlegs faced Snotlout's direction and was a second away from saying that something nefarious was afoot when he realized that Snotlout was now well aware of this possibility, what with a large, dirt-smeared Viking standing over Snotlout with one beefy arm around the boy's throat and the other holding a barbed club at the ready. Snotlout's fearful eyes darted between the sneering Viking and Fishlegs, asking him for any and all immediate assistance.
Fishlegs felt a beefy arm snake under his left armpit, and in a flash a wicked-looking sword was under his chin. The face of another nasty Viking moved into view from behind him. "Don't be doing anything stupid, whelp," the face said in a deadly whisper, "or your own head will be joining the fishy ones below."
"No, I'm good," squeaked Fishlegs.
Several other Vikings soon emerged from their hiding spots, rising from the ground from which they had laid upon in eager anticipation of their upcoming ambush. They wore clothing the color of dirt and had covered their exposed skin in grime to blend in with the island's natural environment. Surprisingly sneaky for Viking warriors, but then these guys weren't your death-and-honor types. Much to Fishlegs's horror, he recognized several of the men as belonging to the Outcast Tribe, though calling them a tribe was a big stretch. They were mostly exiled Vikings from Berk and other tribes in the area, and over the last two years the Outcasts had shown up from time to time to make life difficult for the village. They had a problem with Berk in particular, especially their self-appointed leader who…
On cue, said self-appointed leader walked into view, coming in-between Snotlout and Fishlegs and giving Fishlegs his full attention. Even amongst his disheveled minions, whose appearances were vastly improved through the use of the obscuring mud they had donned for camouflage, Alvin The Treacherous outclassed them all in terms of pure physical intimidation. With dark wild hair and an equally dark and wild beard, a body frame that matched Stoick The Vast muscle for muscle, a seven-horned helmet that was rumored to be more weapon than hat, a preponderance of curved blades on his shoulder and arm guards that made patting Alvin on the back a surefire way to get impaled, and a nasty scar on his right check that seemed to get bigger over time, the only pleasant thing about the Outcast leader was that he wasn't smiling. Nothing good ever happened after Alvin began smiling.
"I think I remember you," said Alvin, his voice far too cheerful for his outward persona. "Just not sure how and why."
"You tossed me off a cliff once," answered Fishlegs meekly.
Alvin broke into a laugh, a smile now visible between his guffaws. Fishlegs's heart revved up – nothing good was about to happen.
"Sorry, boy," said Alvin, "but that doesn't exactly narrow things down for me."
Fishlegs dared a glance down the hill to where Ruff and Tuff had been arguing, hoping they were gone from the scene, which meant they were hiding or fleeing from the Outcasts. No such luck. Two more Outcasts had the Twins grabbed and restrained, dragging them up the hill to join the rest of the gang, worried expressions on their faces. They were all now officially in trouble, especially since they hadn't told anyone back home where they'd gone. What was the point in playing hooky if the adults knew where to look, after all?
"Well, lucky for you, I don't really care who you are," said Alvin. "Unlucky for you, I care about who you know, and I want to know where he went."
"Uh… who exactly?" asked Snotlout, playing dumb (not hard to do) and stuttering slightly as his nervous eyes glanced at Fenrir. The dragon snored like there was no tomorrow. No help there, either.
Alvin turned to Snotlout and gave the young Viking his best and cruelest smile. "Three guesses. I'll even help you out: Dragon Conqueror, Dragon Conqueror, and Dragon Conqueror."