All The Small Things Chapter 6
"We're now at war, Hiccup son of Stoick. It looks like you're going to be the first casualty. Got any stirring final words before Tryon cuts your throat?"
The Wild Men of the North had journeyed over a hundred miles to Berk to collect their annual protection money. Now their money had flown away, carried off by dozens of tiny dragons. "We got no payment, so you get no peace," the chief had said. Berk would be flattened by their first attack, with all the people either killed or sold into slavery, everything of value pillaged, and everything else burned. They wouldn't need a second attack. As for Hiccup, he was unarmed and trapped in a rowboat with the Wild Men chief's advisor, who was known to be good with a knife.
Hiccup knew he had to talk fast.
"Now hold on a minute, sir," he protested. "We paid you in good faith. The gold payment got away after you took possession of it. You said you accepted it, so it was legally yours, and its loss is your fault, not ours. It's the same as if you'd dropped the box overboard."
"Technically, he's right," Tryon added.
"I've already made up my mind! Don't confuse me with the facts!" Chief Gandolt roared. "We didn't get our gold, so we'll take it out of your hides! There's nothing you can do to stop us!"
"Maybe we can't stop you," Hiccup admitted. "But what's going to happen when all the other tribes learn that you don't keep your legal agreements? You can kiss all your trade deals goodbye; no one will trust you enough to do business with you. You'll never collect your debts, you'll never receive the goods you paid for, and your trading ships will be impounded as soon as they dock anywhere other than your own ports. You can kiss all your peace treaties goodbye, too. A lot of tribes will decide that you're probably going to break your treaty with them next, so maybe they should strike the first blow. You're big and you're tough, but are you big enough and tough enough to fight the entire Archipelago?"
Tryon added, "Technically, he's –"
"Yes, I know, technically, he's right," the chief sighed. "Tryon, I didn't hire you to give me nothing but bad news! Tell me something good."
The dwarf climbed laboriously back into his ship. "Well, sir, we never got to count the gold before the little dragons flew away with it, so it's possible that Berk short-changed us. If that was the case, then you'd be justified in holding the chief's son for ransom to make sure we got the entire amount that's due us... or maybe a little bit more."
"Now that's the kind of advice I like to hear!" Gandolt exclaimed gleefully. He grabbed a spear and pointed it at his frail-looking adversary. "Hiccup son of Stoick, you're about to become our guest for a while, whether you like it or not. Will you climb on board peacefully, or will we have to –"
His speech was cut off when a purple bolt of light struck his spear handle and blew it in half. The shock of the impact nearly knocked the chief over the side, and his leather gauntlets were blackened from the blast. He quickly took the gauntlets off and flexed his fingers to make sure they were all still there.
"What was that?" Tryon gasped. Aside from the chief, he was the only Wild Man still standing; the other men in the ship had thrown themselves flat on the floorboards.
Hiccup smiled calmly. "Oh, that was Toothless. He protects me."
Gandolt glanced at the smoldering remains of his spear, then at the thin, one-legged boy who was defying the might of the entire Wild Men tribe. "And what is a Toothless?"
"See that big black head glaring at you from my father's ship over there?" Hiccup pointed. "That's Toothless. He's a Night Fury. He –"
"A NIGHT FURY?!" The chief dropped all pretense of self-control.
"He doesn't like it when people point weapons at me," Hiccup finished with a hint of a smile. "You probably shouldn't do it again."
Gandolt didn't smile back. "So your pet dragon protects you, does he? But can he protect you against forty spear throwers at once? You're two hundred feet away from safety, and about four feet away from a quick death. Would you like to place a wager on how long you'll live? It won't change anything, but when there's no question who's going to win a fight, a good bet can make it more interesting."
"Sir, before you do anything you can't undo, may I have a quick word with you?" the dwarf suggested urgently. "It's extremely important." They stepped to the other side of the ship so Hiccup couldn't hear them.
"I've figured out what's happening here," Tryon went on quietly. "This boy is some kind of seidr-user, a magician. He controlled those tiny dragons with nothing but the sound of his voice, and he's tamed the wildest dragon in existence and bent it to his will. Anyone who can control a Night Fury is someone we do not want as an enemy! He started off by acting helpless, but he's revealing his power, a little bit at a time. I can't even guess how dangerous he might be if we provoke him any further."
"So, even though he's in our power, you think we should leave him alone?" the chief asked him.
"I think we should leave the whole tribe alone!" Tryon burst out. "It was only a matter of time before Berk found a way to gain an advantage over us so they could stop the annual pay-offs. I figured they'd make an alliance with some other powerful tribe like the Berserkers. I never counted on them stooping so low as to use magic! That's barely tolerable when a woman does it, but a man...? It's just not right! It's unmanly! Yet we can see the proof right in front of us. They're defending themselves with magic by controlling the dragons, and we can't fight against that. We need to get away from this island and not come back until we find a way to counter this boy's powers. That may never happen."
"Can't our witches fight this boy?" Gandolt demanded.
"Can our witches control a Night Fury?" Tryon countered. "They can't even bring one down! If this boy can control dragons, then what's stopping him from summoning a whole flock of them to descend on our towns in the middle of the night? That Night Fury didn't have to shoot your spear handle; he could have killed you, or he could sink our ship with one shot if he wanted to! They never miss, you know."
"Yes, everyone knows that," Gandolt cut in.
"Then you know that we're still afloat only because the boy doesn't want the Night Fury to sink us... yet. Can you swim home from here? I can't. Sir, I know you're used to getting your own way, but this time, we're in over our heads. We need to get out while we still can."
After a long, long pause, Chief Gandolt turned back and leaned over the gunwale to face Hiccup. His face betrayed no emotion at all. "Son of Stoick, tell your father that we accept your payment of gold in exchange for friendship on an eternal basis. We wish him good health and a heroic death... and the same for you. As for us, we're going to skip the 'trading' part of our visit. It is time for us to go home now." Without another word to Hiccup, he turned to his men and snapped out the orders that raised the sail, turned them around, and sent them scudding before the wind back toward their distant home.
Hiccup let out a huge sigh of relief.
He rowed back to his father's ship, even more slowly than he'd rowed away because his arms were tired. "What happened over there?" were his father's first words. "I recognized Chief Gandolt and his advisor, I saw the little dragons take off, I saw Toothless shoot somebody, and now you're back intact and they're leaving. What have you done?"
"They accepted our payment," Hiccup answered, "and I don't think they're coming back. Ever. I think the dragons spooked them." He rubbed Toothless' head. "Nice shooting, bud. Nice timing, too." Toothless burbled happily at him.
"You actually pulled that off?" Stoick was amazed. Any solution that didn't involve brute force tended to mystify him.
"You put me in charge, Dad. I didn't want to disappoint you." Stoick could only nod. The ride home was uneventful.
Stoick called for no celebration for the end of their oppression by the Wild Men, because no one in the tribe except him (and Hiccup and his friends) even knew about it. He and Hiccup celebrated privately that night with an unusually fancy supper, prepared by Edda Hofferson at Stoick's request. "Son, you never cease to amaze me," he said.
Hiccup just said, "Mm-hmm." It was his good luck that his mouth was full so he didn't have to answer any more than that. Any answer he could offer would have given most of the credit to the dragons, not to himself, and he knew his father wasn't fond of those answers, even though he was slowly adjusting to the idea of dragons in his village.
Stoick went on, "Do you think there's any chance of us getting our gold back?"
"Just about no chance, Dad. Those nano-dragons love their shiny things, they're too hard to find in the forest, they're too small and quick for us to catch, and they can shock the daylights out of us if we touch them. Even if we set traps and caught them, the only way we'd get the coins would be to kill the dragons."
"And you're against that?" Stoick said, already knowing the answer.
"Dad, you once said to me, 'Hiccup, you are many things, but a dragon killer is not one of them.' You were right. We just have to accept the fact that our gold is gone forever."
Stoick shook his head. "Well, this was an expensive lesson to learn, but if the Wild Men are really done with us, I think it's worth it."
The next day, Hiccup went alone to the thicket. He held his right hand up and called, and after a few minutes, one of the nano-dragons spiraled down and landed in his palm, still holding tightly onto its gold coin. He stroked it for a few seconds, then sat down and used his left hand to sketch the dragon from various angles. "Fishlegs will appreciate this," he told the dragon, which squeaked at him, then flew back into its home in the leaves.
Fishlegs was, indeed, happy with the drawings. "These are perfect, Hiccup! Thanks! Now I can add a section to the Book of Dragons with something that Bork the Bold never knew about, even though they were living right here on his home island. But I was thinking..."
"Go on," Hiccup encouraged him. "Thinking is good."
"Well, we've kind of changed the way those nano-dragons live," Fishlegs said. "They all have coins now, and that will make them happy. But... what happens when their eggs hatch? Will the babies want our money, too?"
"They probably will," Hiccup thought out loud, "and their parents know where we live. I think I'll have to make some polished bronze discs that look like coins, and we'll leave them out for the nano-dragons to take. Even if they get picky and hold out for real precious metal, that won't be such a problem because we're not paying off the Wild Men every year anymore. Berk will be keeping more of its money than we used to, and we'll be better off because of that."
Fishlegs considered that. "So, even though the nano-dragons stole all our gold, we're going to be richer than we used to be, because of them? That's totally ironic, Hiccup."
"It sure is," Hiccup nodded. "Irony is good, too, especially if it gives us a happy ending." Then he yawned hugely. The previous day had been long, eventful, and very stressful. He ate an early supper, took a quick evening flight with Toothless, and they went to bed early – Hiccup in his bed and Toothless on his sleeping stone.
As he was drifting off to sleep, he heard a soft fluttering sound. A tiny leaf-dragon had just flown through the open window and landed on his pillow. It held his silver coin in its mouth, which meant it was the one he had rescued from the spider's web. It set the coin down, planted a tiny paw on it when it began to slide off the pillow, and trilled softly at him. Toothless opened one eye, glanced at the little green-and-brown dragon on Hiccup's pillow, and went back to sleep. Evidently, he no longer considered the nano-dragons a threat.
"I've got no gold left to give, little fellow," Hiccup said sleepily. "I hope you can be happy with silver… or with plain old me."
The tiny dragon curled up on the pillow next to him, and both of them were soon fast asleep.
The End
o
A/N
This story was born from multiple points of inspiration. The first one was a comment in my story "The Dragons' Convention," in which a dragon from another fandom wondered why Berk's dragons didn't covet gold and jewelry like other dragons did. Then someone (I can't remember who) posted somewhere (I can't remember where) about a challenge to write about a small dragon defending its hoard, which consisted of one gold coin. Then I found the picture of the leaf dragons on deviantart dot com (the link is at the bottom of Chapter 1), which really jump-started my plans for this story. And finally, there was Cressida Cowell's HTTYD story "How to Speak Dragonese," in which she invented the idea of nano-dragons, one of which (the Electricsquirm) could give a nasty electric shock. I merged all those ideas together, mixed them around in my peculiar brain, and this story came out.
I was originally going to call this story "The Power of Gold," because of the nano-dragons' electric power and the importance of the gold. But the "power" part wasn't a vital part of the story, so I changed it to "All the Small Things" (which is the name of a song by Blink-182) because both the gold coins and the nano-dragons are small, along with Hiccup himself (relatively speaking).
