13 Make 'Em Scream
Olvor smiled as she removed the cork, and checked the contents of the bottle Astrid had retrieved from Berk for her.
"Oh yeah; that's the stuff!" she exclaimed.
"Wait a minute" Stoick exclaimed as he caught a faint, yet distinct aroma from the open bottle "isn't that the vile stuff you put on my shoulder?"
Several months ago Stoick was assisting Fishlegs's father with the rebuilding of the Ingerman home after yet another dragon raid, when a falling beam had struck him and left a splinter of considerable size in his shoulder. As was usual, the brave Chief showed no sign of the pain when Olvor had removed it and wiped away the blood. Stoick had been very pleased with himself as some of the village children had been staring intently to see if any tear would form in corner of the mighty chief's eye during the operation, and all those present had seemed suitably impressed with his bravery. After the worst was over and Stoick was more relaxed and unprepared as Olvor opened up a flask and poured some strong smelling fluid onto a clean cloth.
"This'll make it better" she said as she dabbed at the wound.
All the children had fallen over laughing when Stoick had jumped up and roared in pain.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?" Stoick had screamed at Olvor.
"Keep it clean and make 'em scream" Olvor had declared "that's what I always say."
The memory of the intensely painful sting was still quite fresh in Stoicks memory.
"Won't that evil concoction kill him? After all he's not as strong as I..."
"It won't kill him, it'll save him; if the wound goes bad he'll die for sure" Olvor was adamant.
"How do you know it won't kill him?" Stoick asked suspiciously.
As Olvor began to delicately remove the binding she had wrapped around Hiccups leg the night before, she told Stoick a little story of her youth.
"Back when my father was still alive, he had kept a strange contraption that could turn perfectly good grains into a liquid that when consumed, could send a Viking temporarily blind."
"Oh yes" Stoick grinned "I remember that... that... drink; I also suspect it was that stuff that eventually killed him."
"It wouldn't surprise me" Olvor agreed "well one day I decided that I really needed to dispose of particularly volatile batch before it could cause any more problems."
"You mean send him blind?"
"Exactly" Olvor agreed.
"Your dad would not have been happy about that" Stoick frowned as Olvor continued working on Hiccup.
"He wasn't but it had to be done. Well I stumbled and tripped while carrying the large wooden crate full of bottles and dropped it leaving a long gash on me lower leg; I still have the scar" she bragged and continued her story.
"The cut was a bad one about ten inches long and I found it hard to walk much further with the heavy crate, so I decided to dump me father's fire water where I was. So I pulled out the stopper and began to pour out the contents of the first bottle onto the ground, but the stream struck a rock and splashed back over the lower part of me leg near the ankle."
"Ah... so you have suffered from the agony for yourself have you?" Stoick felt as if justice had been done.
"Oh yes, first hand; I have definitely felt the sting of pain from this... stuff as you call it. I didn't want me dad to know that I'd taken his entire stock, so I quickly stuffed the end of me scarf into me mouth to muffle the scream. When the pain had finally subsided, I finished me task with a little more care before I slipped back into the house, where I replaced the crate and wrapped me wound. Well over the next few days it became pretty clear that the cut was infected but strangely, only at the top whereas the lower part of the cut that had been splashed from the bottle was clean and healing nicely."
"So that was when you discovered that the alcohol kept wounds from going bad" Stoick nodded.
"It certainly helped and so I decided use it to clean up the rest of me leg but I'd thrown it all out."
"Then how did you..." Stoick began.
"Well dad was still making the stuff so I just snuck down to where he was makin' it, and drained off a flask full. Then when I was far enough away so nobody would hear me yell, I poured some on me leg. It didn't hurt as much on an old wound as it did on a fresh one, but it also took longer to heal so I figured that it was always best to clean a wound as soon as I had the chance or, as I like to say 'Make 'em scream to keep it clean'; understand?"
"Yes but wasn't it the other way round? Keep it clean and..."
"Who cares; it works however you say it. So then... after me ol' Dad died I just kept makin' it for wounds and cuts."
Olvor had finished the slow and delicate process of unwrapping Hiccups leg and after studying it for a short time, she mixed some of the bottles contents into a small bowl of fresh water and returned to the work of cleaning and re-dressing the wound.
"I should have asked Astrid for more gear from home" she straightened up and grinned "but we'll make do though."
"This bag was with her dragon." Stoick picked up the satchel and handed it to Olvor.
"It might be worth a look" Olvor declared as she looked inside "Hmmm; Gothi must have been there when Astrid arrived."
"It looks to me like you've had quite a night ya big blue lizard" Gobber liked to talk to animals because they never interrupted him and they never talked back. This was one time though when he wished the dragon would.
"Pity ya can 'nay talk cause I'd love to hear all about your trip." he sighed as he hobbled slowly away.
Stormfly sat by the fire nearest to the cave with Hoark the Haggard, who was still trying to get used to being so close to a Nadder without an axe in his hand. This was also the first time he was so close to a dragon when its rider was not nearby, but Gobber had asked Hoark to take good care of the heroic beast, so he thought that he may as well give it a good try.
Most of Berks Dragon Riders still only possessed a few days of experience with their mounts, but the incredible display that they had put on the day before, had made every Viking look upon the children as experts in dragon handling; Hoark felt sure it was a skill that he could learn as well if he put his mind to it.
"Would ya like some pickled fish?" Hoark picked up a stick from near the fire and held it out to Stormfly; the dragon sniffed it and wondered what the man had done to ruin this perfectly good fish.
"Nice fish; tastes much better than ol' Hoark does."
'If I wasn't so hungry' thought Stormfly as she took the horrid offering.
"Oh good." Hoark gave a sigh of relief while Stormfly decided to take a rest by the fire, and then head off to catch something a little fresher and a lot tastier when she was feeling stronger.
Back at the beach, Gobber was assessing the progress being made on the wrecked longships. Sigrid was heading up a team charged with pulling anything usable that could be salvaged from the hulks and with the few tools they possessed, her team had begun to amass a small pile of thick iron nails, hatches with hinges and metal plates as well as shields, oars and an ever growing pile of planks and beams.
"Not bad for a start" Gobber seemed satisfied.
Most of the ships that had been pulled ashore late yesterday afternoon were smashed, burnt to the waterline or both, and the rest were composed only of the bows torn off during the salvage efforts. But even these were like a treasure to a Viking stuck on an island with no resources except rocks, more rocks, wild dragons and rocks.
"And that's just the gear for ship building" Sigrid pointed out.
"We found a nice little stash stowed in that bow over on the end" She led Gobber several feet away to another pile.
"We've got another sail more fresh water aaand..." she grinned "two fishing nets."
"Brilliant" said Gobber hungrily "I think I'll put those to some good use today because that pickled fish makes some people very unpleasant to be near to."
"And you're one of them." Sigrid noted.
"Well I do have a very delicate tummy" Gobber explained as he hobbled away.
"Gobber, come look at this!" the voice came from Thorfinn who ran up to Gobber while beckoning him back to the water's edge.
"What have ya got?" he enquired.
Thorfinn led him to a spot nearby and squatted down, pointing into the water.
"Look, do ya see it?"
Gobber squinted as he attempted to see through the glare on the water, and slowly as his eyes adjusted, he began to make out a shape. About fifteen to twenty feet below the surface was one of their ships and although it was damaged and had lost its mast, it was completely intact.
"It must have been holed and gone down before it got too badly burnt." Thorfinn was confident "so if we could bring her up to the beach without doing too much more damage, we may be able to repair it."
"Aye" agreed Gobber. "I can see some sharp looking rocks down there but we should be able to rig up something to get her over them; I'll tell Stoick and you all see if you can find any more like that one."
"We'll try, but that's the only one I've seen so far without too much fire damage."
"Do your best then." Gobber was unwilling to see anything but good today. After surviving yesterday's monster and last night's storm, he felt that nothing could stop them; especially now that they had the dragons on their side.
The sun finally decided to show itself over the horizon as Gobber approached the camp. He turned to look up at the sky when his ears heard the familiar whooshing sound of dragon wings; some of the other Vikings were also looking up and a few were instinctively gripping the hilts of their swords.
"It's okay" Gobber remarked casually "it's one of ours."
He had expected to see young Snotlout return on his Nightmare sometime during that morning but he had not expected to see Olaf riding with him; the respected warrior and skipper of the longship Sea Mist was looking as white as a sheet while sitting on the dragons back and gripping its neck with all his strength and his eyes shut tight.
"Are we d-d-down yet?" Olaf enquired.
Gobber lent in close to the shivering Viking and whispered gently into his ear.
"Hullo Olaf... pleasant flight?"
"Oh Gobber" Olaf opened his eyes and fell to the ground with a thud. "I've never been so frightened in all me life; that little troll told me it would be easy."
"Hey; that was easy" protested Snotlout "you should have tried flying all the way here from Berk."
"Leave him alone Snotlout" Gobber helped his friend up "some Vikings aren't used to flying yet."
"And some never will be" gasped Olaf with finality.
Gobber helped him over to the fire where he sat down opposite Hoark and his big blue friend.
"I could barely believe it when the boy told us how he and the dragons had saved us from the monster, but this is even harder to take in" said Olaf, his voice still shaking.
Hoark patted the Nadders flank "Once you realise they're not gonna eat ya... it's not so bad."
Gobber wandered into the cave as Olvor continued to dress Hiccups leg.
"Where's Astrid?" he enquired as Stoick pointed to the sleeping girl on the yak skin.
"Ah...; how's the lad doing?"
"Olvor cleaned his leg with her father's grain alcohol, and he didn't flinch" Stoick said grimly.
"Whoa! that's not bad; I remember you screamed like a... sorry... go on."
Olvor picked up the report "I've seen this kind of thing before; remember about ten years ago when Krabbi fell off a rock ledge and rolled all the way down to Crescent Bay? Well some of the tribe carried him back I cleaned up his scratches with the same stuff, and he didn't move or yell or anything. Then he stays asleep like Hiccup is for the next five days before he wakes up feeling a little sore, but otherwise fine. It was like his body was taking its time to rest and heal before he wakes up."
"So this is good then" Stoick stated.
"Well I hope so, but I have to be honest; sometimes they don't wake up... they just waste away and die. I'm sorry to be so blunt Stoick, but there is still a lot to be hopeful for; his heart still sounds strong, just a little slow."
Olvor hated being honest; she wanted to say with confidence that everything would work out fine, but she could not lie to her Chief and Stoick was pleased about that.
"I appreciate both your honesty and the care you take of... of all the tribe."
There was a short silence that uncharacteristically, Gobber broke delicately.
"Olaf's back Chief."
"Right then; let's go make some plans" Stoick declared as he strode from the cave.
I've been thinking about some other Cat Stories you all could write about and there are so many (although I often feel that my whole life could be referred to as 'The Hunger Games').
Just take the Harry Potter series for example, you could have;
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (with the little tinkly bell inside)
2. Harry Potter and the Litter Tray of Secrets
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Laundry
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Tuna
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Persian
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Dog Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Meows
See what you can come up with if you will only try!
With love (but not for dog owners), Moon =^..^=