18 First Leg
The Dragon Riders of Berk moved with speed and purpose all around him, as Hiccup strode back to his home to check on Little Freya; he found her still resting while talking with Agnar.
"How are you feeling?" Hiccup asked.
The young girl shrugged and sighed while trying her best to hold back the tears.
"She's managed to remember a little" Agnar informed the Dragon Master "she says she was on biggest of the three ships, so I assume that was The Mighty Ivar, and all three were aflame. Apparently they were anchored off the coast of a small island, but Freya doesn't think anyone went ashore."
"Mummy said it was getting too dark" Freya piped up "and we would have to wait till morning but..."
As the memories of that fateful night returned, Freya fell silent once more.
"Did she say how long they were at sea?" Hiccup asked expectantly.
"Three days; and she says that a day and a night had passed since Astrid put her on Stormfly, so if this attack did happen in the middle of the night, then she would have been in the air about thirty hours."
"Luckily the weather was so good or Stormfly may not have managed to get here so quickly" Hiccup sighed with relief "Three days at sea... so they could be on Lookout Island after all, but then the flight back would have been much quicker so maybe not."
"Only one way to find out" Agnar grinned "I'll go get me dragon."
"Hold on there a minute" Hiccup insisted "With Olvor away, you're the closest thing to a doctor here so you are definitely staying... and besides, with Hoark in charge I'm gonna need you to keep things on the straight and narrow."
"Well... yes, but... but... oh bugger" Agnar sat back down with a thud.
As a man more used to fighting wars from horseback (or from a tent well away from the fighting), General Karoc was not enjoying the constant moving of the ship, and was beginning to wish that he had gone back to New Loren on one of the Clippers. Those ships were so fast, that they would probably be in port inside of one more day, while he could look forward to a trip three times as long in the two slow and badly damaged ships that now made up his small fleet. Emperor Scias would not be happy when he heard about the losses Karoc had suffered, but hopefully his anger would be tempered as soon as he was told about the Generals success in procuring him some dragons.
The enemy fleet had consisted of only three ships; one huge Warship, one smaller Barque and one even smaller Longship. It should have been an easy victory considering the twelve ships under Karoc's command, not to mention the element of surprise he enjoyed. When he attacked in the middle of the night, it should have been quick and decisive, but just as his forces were about to swam onto the three ships, the alarm was raised by a young girl on the big ship, and an old man on one of the small ones.
'Seriously, who uses women and the elderly as sentries?' Karoc thought.
His frustration was only intensified by the fact that the only real reason his men had triumphed in the pitched battle, was because he had four times as many ships, ten times as many soldiers, and almost all the dragons were already shut up in their pens below deck for the night. The three dragons that were loose had caused him no end of trouble at first, but fortunately the big blue one had flown off with a child on its back, while the two round rock-like ones had left with the burning longship.
Karoc shook his head and sighed as he went over the battle in his head; it was bad enough that the enemy had a few dragons, but even without them those Vikings were crazy. No battle plan, no strategies, just wild screaming, yelling, stabbing and slashing; he shivered at the thought of those axes. It was not as if size mattered either; it was true that it took five of his strongest soldiers to hold down Chief Stoick, and almost as many for each of the other Vikings... even the women, but what he found most worrying was how fast and slippery the children were. The boys were young (they didn't even have any facial hair to speak of), but they were so beefy. And the girls seemed so delicate until he saw the cute blonde one coming straight at him with another one of those horrific axes; General Karoc shivered again at the thought.
He had never fought against such a determined foe, and he had never seen such loyalty amongst a fighting force either. His men knew that their main task was to carry out their orders or face disciplinary charges, but the Vikings would often abandon their own fight just to help one of their shipmates who was at risk of losing his or her life; it was these kind of actions that kept the battle going long after any other enemy would have been subdued. Before the battle had commenced, Karoc ordered his men to keep the Vikings away from their dragons at all costs, but even so they were continually shouting orders to the beasts and before he knew it, half of his ships were on fire or sinking... or both. The blue dragon could fire on a ship over a large distance, even when it was fighting off half a platoon at the same time, and it only stopped when Stoick was threatened by General Karoc.
"CALL OFF YOUR DRAGON OR I START SLITTING THROATS" he shouted out to the bound up chief.
On the Generals order, knives were drawn and held to every captive throat; and so Stoick relented, ordering everyone to end the fight and surrender.
Stoick was no fool; he knew that Karoc was the kind of man who would definitely carry out his threat if pushed, and he had plenty of prisoners to prove his point with. The Viking Chief looked around the deck as the fighting continued in small pockets, and it was plain to see that his people and their Elydonian allies had been beaten by overwhelming odds, but he swelled with pride as he noticed that every last one of the Vikings captured was being held down by at least three soldiers, with many needing four or five to subdue them.
An intense pain pierced Stoicks soul when he saw the number of dead Elydonian sailors on the deck; amongst their number where his own good friends Fjori the Wise, Grison the Gruesome and Halfig son of Hoark the Haggard. There were far more casualties among the invaders, but that did not bring Stoick any joy. It did bring a small amount of satisfaction however, to see that the attackers had paid for their insolence. Before everything finally settled down, two more of General Karoc's ships had succumb to their damage and slipped beneath the waves with the survivors swimming as best they could to any of the four remaining New Loren vessels. Of the three ships in Stoick's fleet, only the Mighty Ivar was reasonably intact, in spite of the fire damage, but the Sharktooth and the Noble Pigg both appeared to be beyond hope; they were abandoned by their captors and left to founder.
Even though he had triumphed over the Vikings and Elydonians by sheer force of numbers, Karoc was bothered by the fact that he still failed to hold on to just one of the three dragons that were loose during the fight. The two rock-like beasts had simply flown off to the badly damaged longship where they had come from at the start of the fighting, and the big blue one was last seen fleeing with something on its back that had been placed there by that blasted blonde girl with the axe.
The more he thought about it, the more General Karoc was relieved that the biggest of the enemy's vessels had survived the battle, because it was the only ship specifically fitted out to carry the dragons; he would have had no end of trouble if he had tried to take them on board any of his own ships. He was also pleased that the dragons obeyed their Viking masters so readily; neither he, nor any of the soldiers under his command, had any hope of controlling them alone. He had tried when he first went below deck to inspect his winged prisoners, but the only way he knew was to use force and that was resulting in more and more injuries to the dragons (Karoc knew that would greatly upset the Emperor, who wanted these creatures captured alive and healthy) as well as more and more badly burnt soldiers.
"If you want your people and your... pets to come out of all this unscathed, then I strongly suggest that you keep your dragons quiet before I have to resort to spilling more blood" Karoc informed Stoick.
The Viking Chief never liked to just give up, but he knew the time had come to regroup. Even though they were all captive, they had to look for opportunities, plan for future escape, seek out possible allies and most of all... trust his son.
About an hour after the sun had risen, Karoc took stock of his situation and settled on a plan; he transferred Stoick and most of the prisoners under heavy guard, to the two fast Clippers that he had left and sent them back to New Loren with an undamaged Barque, while he and the rest of his men remained behind on the last of his Warships. A few smaller Vikings were left on board the Mighty Ivar with forty soldiers, to control and care for the dragons he had captive below deck.
By staying close to the captured ship and its precious live cargo, he hoped to gain the highest praise and reward from his Emperor. When the first three ships arrived in port with the Vikings on board, word would be sent immediately to the palace that General Karoc had succeeded in procuring a large number of dragons and was on his way home with his leader's prize. When Emperor Scias heard of this, he would surely leave the palace and make for the coast at once, escorted by his Imperial Guard, to receive some of the creatures he had sought for so many years.
Karoc was also thinking about Borges, his long time rival for the Emperor's favour. Borges had spent many long months getting back into Emperor Scias's good books after his failure to extract any useful information from Astrid and her artificial brother Victor when they were his prisoners. Now that he had succeeded where Borges had failed, General Karoc planned to obtain Emperor Scias's blessing to raise an even bigger force and a much bigger fleet on the pretence of sailing off to expand the empire and to bring back more mythical creatures for his leader.
Even though it was now proven that dragons did indeed exist, Karoc still found it hard to believe that the likes of Gryphons, Unicorns, Minotaurs or any others creatures awaited discovery in faraway lands, but the Emperor's belief in these beasts gave the General opportunity to leave New Loren in command of the Imperial Force and then one day return in greater strength and take over the entire Empire himself.
General Karoc stared at the Mighty Ivar from the wheel deck of his last warship; it was a complex plan, but he firmly believed he could pull it off... if he could only get back to New Loren with the dragons and his prisoners intact... his prisoners... there was something wrong in his mind and it was starting to drive him mad. What was it about these Dragon Riders that seemed so familiar? He had never encountered them before, only seen them in the sky, although he had been through many skirmishes with the Elydonians in the past. Karoc closed his eyes and ran through the battle in his head once more, trying to discover what it was that was bothering him, but he found that he just couldn't get past the memory of that blonde girl with the axe. Blond girl... axe... blonde... ... ... ...
"AAAAAH; ROSE!" he suddenly cried out, causing everyone on deck to jump "LOWER THE BOAT; I NEED TO GET TO THE ENEMY VESSEL... NOW!"
I ended up re-writing this one a few times to try and get it to make sense, but I'm still not sure that it does. Oh well... the next one is much more fun.