Learning from the Masters
A How To Train Your Dragon Fanfiction
Based of Le'Letha's "Nightfall"

After descending the cliff, Alekt covered their tracks and made sure to take the corpse out into the woods and brought the local crows swarming in with attention calls so that they would make short work of it, and bring any other carnivorous scavengers looking for an easy meal, too. By the time anyone was aware of it, it would be impossible to discern if the killer had been man or beast.

Unnamed things happened all the time to careless vagrants, after all. What was to say some Changewing or stealthy mountain lion hadn't been hunting and dragged them off quietly?

Getting (click)-uhp to follow him down the cliff and to the shore was the easy part. Convincing him to get back on the knar without force was less so. Even telling him that they were returning to where Tt-th-ss was almost wasn't enough. Almost. But when Alekt played strategy, he played it well, and he had all of this worked out ahead of time.

He'd predicted that (click)-uhp would be furious with him to find himself alone and without his dragon, but he knew he could handle it, and had told the men not to rush to his defense, since a cornered animal was a more irrational one.

The feral wouldn't kill him without knowing where to find his dragon unless he thought the Fury was dead, or he had been banking on as much anyway. He might have miscalculated that, but in the end, he had still come out of it and managed to do what he intended.

The next part of his plan should seal the deal. (click)-uhp saw the dragons and the trappers and found an enemy he obviously despised and distrusted more than he did Alekt and his crew. As the saying went, the enemy of my enemy. He didn't know that he'd go so far as for them to call each other friends any time soon, but perhaps they would be on neutral ground, at least.

The men went about working and Alekt made sure all of them were too busy to pay (click)-uhp much mind, so the dragon-man was slightly less nervous, though he didn't seem to like being on a ship enough to relax. That didn't mean he wasn't curious about the workings of the ship and watching the men go about their business as much out of interest to learn as out of caution.

Alekt saw him watching the men tie knots and loosen ropes, adjust the sails or turn the rudder to adjust coarse as the wind tried to set them a different path. Sometimes he would look over the edge of the railing or the back at the waves and the paths of white foam that trailed behind. He held a certain fascination towards all of it, like a child. Not one who had never seen such things at all, but had never seen them up close and truly in action to where he could see how it was done right.

Occasionally (click)-uhp would get a little closer to things that interested him, to the men, but never within arms or weapons' reach, and Alekt tailed close in case he would need to intervene if something happened or a conflict of any kind arose. Though (click)-uhp was good at keeping a healthy enough distance to avoid such things, and retreat if he started to feel boxed in anywhere.

Either because he had grown bored or simply overwhelmed by the uncensored proximity to so many Vikings, he retreated to a part of the ship where the activity was less. Likely he needed space. He was still like a wild animal, and Alekt didn't doubt (click)-uhp probably believed as much about himself with every fiber of his being. Other than the occasional, clumsy word of broken Nordic, he didn't really show any acknowledgement of being human. Either he couldn't fathom the idea, or he didn't want to. Either way, Alekt wouldn't force him to. He didn't care one way or the other, he only needed help to accomplish his goals. Whatever (click)-uhp's personal beliefs were was irrelevant.

Alekt stood by and watched as well. While he could do a moderate job, sailing was not one of his or his clan's strengths. They lived much further inland than most Norsemen, so it wasn't necessary, even less so with their truce with other allied clans at the moment.

That didn't mean he didn't know how to navigate to a respectable degree, paying acute attention to their course and the shift of the wind.

"Adjust thirty degrees East," he called, the men immediately hopping to do so.

(click)-uhp watched them go about their tasks with wary curiosity, balancing on the balls of his feet in a crouch rather than standing to full height, and turned green eyes towards Alekt, questioning "Tt-th-ss?"

Alekt only nodded and pointed in the direction they were headed and the island far ahead in the distance, barely visible.

"Yes, we're going to Tt-th-ss. There. See?"

"Isss."

Only after a few more minutes had passed, something else caught Alekt's eye, and the eye of his crew members, and (click)-uhp.

"Dragon!" one man shouted. Alekt saw it, and what he saw was that it was a rather large dragon. Larger than a Nightmare, and bulkier.

"It's a Stormcutter," Alekt warned as he continued to watch it. Somewhere off to his side, (click)-uhp barked excitedly, an odd sound like "(click)-shhh-prrr!" and roared an eager greeting, answered in turn by the beast, but it didn't sound happy nor friendly.

Darting overhead, it circled around, turning with great precision, and came to land on the bow of the knar as the men parted away from it fearfully, making the ship tilt halfway towards sinking nose-down, effectively halting their progress and leaving them a sitting duck on the open waters.

The dragon snarled at them angrily and flared, many men drawing their weapons at the same moment they half-cowered and half-stood their ground, trying to gather up the courage to lunge at the enraged beast.

(click)-uhp chattered with a mix of elation and distress, the beast snarling and roaring back at him with large eyes darting between the men who had not fully decided yet whether they were going to jump ship or fight it off, some taking a few experimental jabs towards it. It didn't help matters, the dragon spreading its wings threateningly and drawing itself up, roaring more furiously and ready to set their entire ship alight.

"Stop!" Alekt ordered sharply, stepping forward and pushing the men aside, putting himself between them and the dragon. (click)-uhp was close behind him, more eager to reach the dragon than he was afraid to get close at the moment, though his claw-gloved hand twitched many times readily in case he would need to use them. "Stand down! All of you!"

At first they didn't listen, not willing to back down from a dragon that had landed straight on top of their boat and was hissing and snarling angrily at them.

"I said: Stand. Down!" Alekt ordered again, this time with even more force. He hated to raise his voice or lace hardness into it - it didn't come naturally to him, it sounded wrong even to himself - but he had had to learn while commanding people from the other allied tribes who were used to being heard by being the loudest. The men obeyed, but no one relaxed.

At the same time that he was ordering the men not to engage in a fight, (click)-uhp pushed past him and chattered to the dragon. It didn't relax either, but when swords, axes, and hammers lowered, it turned its attention to the dragon man and responded.

There were still a lot of growls and snarls and huffs, but they seemed more the kind of doting and alarmed scolding than true aggression even as the dragon towered menacingly over the smaller man, who was dwarfed by comparison of the beast, much more so than he had been by the Night Fury. (click)-uhp was obviously not the dominant between them and was placatingly submissive.

There was so much overlapping vocalization to vastly varying degrees and different motions and signals that Alekt could not keep track of it all. So much communication. Alekt had mostly only heard (click)-uhp and Tt-th-ss communicate but he had not seen it to this level because they had kept the two separate from each other and all other dragons.

He could make sense of some of it, but there was a lot to try to recognize and process, and while his experience with crows and other animals had helped, it wasn't enough to bridge the gap. They were still quite different. Not completely, but enough.

He moved closer now that it seemed hostilities had subsided, but he was not forgotten. The Stormcutter snarled at him and he froze. It wasn't a mindless vocalization and the dragon could not have communicated it any clearer if it had spoken pure Norse.

Not one more step closer, or you'll regret it.

So much meaning behind only one sound. This dragon was much akin to the Fury in its intelligence. It might have been even more so, either by raw intellect or merely age and experience.

Honing in on him, the Stormcutter growled low in warning and stepped forward, Alekt matching it with a step back. The dragon watched him in calculating appraisal and moved another bit forward, and Alekt matched him again. The way that the beast eyed him, he wasn't sure if he truly had avoided a fight.

(click)-uhp could have told the dragon anything, really. Even perhaps that they had done horrible things to him and the Fury and was turning the larger dragon loose on them. Alekt had thought through his plans carefully, but he knew that there was always that one wildcard that couldn't be factored in until it came into play. This was that wildcard, and Alekt would have to adjust accordingly and carefully.

The dragon advanced again, and he retreated, not out of fear, but only to maintain distance as he ran through what to do in his mind, his movements slow and non-abrupt but deliberate.

He grasped his blades and slowly unlatched the sheathes around them just as he knew he'd be backed to the mast, the dragon growling both in challenge and wariness as it lowered its head and thinly parted its jaws at him.

He could feel the Stormcutter's growl through the wood floorboards of the top deck. The dragon was healthily cautious of him and his weapons, mindful, but not afraid. Not in the least. No short amount of either skill on his part or mercy on its part was the only thing that would make or break whether or not he ended up as a pile of smoldering ashes within the next few moments.

Its large eyes bore into him accusingly, but it didn't immediately attack. It was waiting to see what he would do, testing him. At least that was the sense that he got from it.

Unsheathing his sickles from both hips, he noticed the beast tense, snarling low sounds of uncertainty and warning, and then he dropped them, hearing them clatter on the wood but not taking his eyes off it. He wasn't afraid of the creature either, challenging it with his stare, unflinching, but all the same, acknowledging that he knew full well its superior strength. He was to hold his ground, not fight it.

The creature chattered at him, noises that had gone from hostile to wary, but there was a certain returned acknowledgement there too, rigidness leaving its form somewhat as the message passed between them both silently.

I'm not your enemy.

Backing off, the dragon sounded something that might have been approval, seeming to have decided Alekt wasn't a threat. It was not so trusting as to turn its back, but it did refocus its attention back on (click)-uhp, snarling low and reprimanding. The interruption that Alekt had provided had not made it forget that it had been scolding the dragon-man before that.

The blue-eyed brunette retrieved his blades and strapped them back to his side, his men still gawking uncomprehending at everything that had just happened. At the very least, none of them had seemed dumb enough to go charging in during that judgment call period, when the Stormcutter had been assessing his worth.

"We're going back to your Night Fury," Alekt announced, catching (click)-uhp's attention as well as the older dragon's. "To Tt-th-ss." He nodded to the men over his shoulder. "All of you, prepare to sail again." When no one immediately moved, he ordered crisply, "Now."

Once they scattered to rig the ship, he turned his attention back to the Stormcutter and (click)-uhp, motioning with a swift curl of his fingers. They didn't seem to understand, so he motioned with his entire hand this time, voicing, "Up. Off my ship."

The Stormcutter tilted its head at him, then at the boat, of which the nose was still tilted precariously close to having water spill over and fill the deck under the beast's weight. The dragon made a sound that might have been indignant realization, and (click)-uhp clambered onto its shoulders just before it took flight, flapping above the ship.

Alekt nodded his approval and turned back to the men.

"We're sailing back to the cave," he announced. The men seemed nervous, eyeing the dragon flying above, but didn't argue. As they went about their work, setting course for the island they were temporarily calling home, Alekt slipped beneath deck.

Sangrida greeted him from a pen, and Alekt went about checking her tack, making sure it was still adequately secure, and then leading her onto the top deck once they drew close. The ship was already into the shallows by this point, and the Stormcutter and (click)-uhp were waiting just on the shore at a deliberate distance.

The larger dragon seemed somewhat startled and shifted warily as Alekt leapt atop the mare's back and jumped her off the side of the boat, splashing onto land the last several yards. He pulled her to a stop, the horse dancing a few steps to the side. Both the dragon and feral chattered to each other, Alekt not having a hard time guessing what they were discussing.

"Have that ship secured but ready to sail again. This won't be the last use we see of it today," he ordered, then turned and commanded Sangrida into a gallop, blazing past the dragon and dragon-man into the trees and indicating for them to follow and match pace, through the forest and marshland, and the long ravine beyond that.

The Stormcutter's shadow cast over him most of the way, and he could hear its wings, so he didn't bother to look back and make sure they were following.

As they came closer to their camp, he heard distinctive wails and howls that he recognized as those of the Fury. It was answered in similar distress by (click)-uhp and in uncertain anger by the Stormcutter, which overtook Alekt and swooped through the entrance just a third of a minute ahead of him.

Startled cries of Vikings met his ears and roars of the Stormcutter as it circled around the top of the cave above them, hovering for a moment and not daring to land as the men brandished weapons at the beast.

"Stand down!" Alekt ordered sharply, adding to their surprise. The men faltered, but when the Stormcutter landed, they snarled battle cries of alarm and habit, the dragon snarling warning and flaring itself up to full, intimidating height.

Alekt road between them, Sangrida kicking the air and bellowing, both sides backing off slightly.

"I gave you an order, now you follow it, unless you're really so eager to be ripped limbs from body."

Terrified silence overtook the group, but of course, there was always that one who wouldn't let the issue rest. It hadn't taken any effort on Alekt's part beforehand to guess who that person would be.

"Stand down?" Embrik hissed. "Alekt, do you know what's behind you? A dragon, totally free to kill us on the spot if it chooses, no chains or cages to stop it at all!"

"Yes, it's a dragon," Alekt deadpanned. "One that's already chosen of its own desire not to kill me," he added as he slid down from the saddle, and motioning behind him with a sweep of his hand. "But if you are dying to know that badly what the inside of ones stomach looks like, then by all means, ignore my orders."

He could see the fury flash across Embrik's eyes, but there was also fear and alienation, and not only for the dragon crouched behind Alekt. Since it seemed no one was daring enough to challenge either him or the Stormcutter any further, he turned his attention away from them.

The cries of the Fury had not ceased. If anything, they had grown in volume, frequency, and desperation, and now had everyone's acute attention.

(click)-uhp was shrieking and crooning back in response so that it was entirely impossible to tell them apart in voice, and Alekt was well aware of the Stormcutter's eyes burning into his back as he went to the cage, holding a hand up to stop them from rushing toward it yet.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside, where the Fury was busy pacing and pulling at the chain and keening and wriggling. He'd had the muzzle returned before leaving with (click)-uhp because he was absolutely certain the Fury would not simply leave without blasting open his confines to chase them and his dragon-boy otherwise, and the dragon gave him a heated glare as he entered.

Alekt held up his hands in a show of peace, a few noises of placation, and reached out for the muzzle, taking it off and tossing it aside. Tt-th-ss shook his head in relief and immediately gaped his jaws to cry out to (click)-uhp plaintively. Alekt circled around its side, and the beast swiveled to follow him, never trusting to let the man out of his sight. Alekt grasped the chain and indicated for the black dragon to come towards him more, and it did, though with reluctant distrust.

Then he did something that he had not yet dared to do and would most likely make all of his men think him completely nuts. He removed the chain from Tt-th-ss' neck entirely, nothing keeping him contained any longer.

Most would have seen it as the perfectly presented opportunity for the dragon to turn the tables, to attack and kill him, since the Fury was between him and the door now. Alekt knew better than to be afraid, because the dragon really didn't care at all for him at this point.

It whirled around so quickly that Alekt had to duck to avoid its tail as it tore out of the cage straight for (click)-uhp and bowled him over. If it hurt at all – and Alekt had a strong suspicion that it did – the feral man didn't seem to notice, too enthralled with properly greeting and reuniting with the Fury as they rolled over each other, butted heads, nuzzled affectionately, crooned and sang, rolled over some more, parted to dance and chase in a circle and laughed, before tackling again, rolling over each other once more, licked, batted arms and paws, knock each other over with playful shoves (or at least try to in (click)-uhp's case), roll again, messily writhe around each other, submissively croon and placate the Stormcutter as it towered over and scolded them with shrieks and growls again, and then promptly went back to writhing and rolling and latched around each other with an overly needy possessiveness.

It seemed as if they'd entirely forgotten everything else at the moment, or the possibility of Alekt and his group being enemies, too caught up in becoming reacquainted with each other to even think of or care about anything else around them.

It was an odd but touching sight. Both dragon and dragon-man obviously loved each other. This went beyond a simple master-and-pet relation. This was something deeper and familial, like twins cut from the same cloth and inseparable despite the clear distinction of different species. Alekt didn't think that (click)-uhp and maybe not Tt-th-ss either thought each other all that different though, as anything less than two dragons that found a need in each other. If they noticed, they didn't care. More likely was that they probably just didn't care to notice. Their being together seemed almost euphoric, and Alekt wasn't sure if it was only always like that or if the separation had truly been that horrible to them both.

The man had no doubts that, if something tragic truly ever happened to one of them, especially if one died, the other would never recover. Perhaps even wither away and die themselves from the sheer loss. Just observing them from a distance, he could almost feel the unbridled connection they shared, more intense in just the one instance than any other relations he had seen.

Alekt stepped out and shut the cage, and was soon joined by Hartvig, who had taken the long way around the dragons to give them a fair distance.

"That Fury never once shut up for more than ten seconds since you left. He was rattling the entire cave with death throes without pause for hours. I was worried the other men would mutiny and kill the damn thing just to get it to shut up," he informed, laughing faintly, though there was an edge of seriousness to his voice all the same.

"Is that so?" Alekt hummed.

His eyes wandered to the men at this point, who were watching with both terror and amazement at the display the feral and Fury were putting on, seeming more like tumbling puppies than a terrifying Child of Lightning and Death and its equally wild rider.

The two finally became aware of their other surroundings again and looked to Alekt, with noises and expressions of mixed feelings; thanks, confusion, uncertainty, and undecided trust/distrust. They still clearly didn't know what to make of Alekt, but they at least didn't appear to think him an enemy, since he had had plenty of opportunity to have hurt or killed them while they had been trapped under his mercy, or what they had probably been sure would be a lack-thereof.

"Well, if you've all been well reacquainted…" Alekt hummed, stepping closer. All the while, he was being watched, not only by the dragons. He stopped just short, closely watching the dragons and dragon-man to judge how close was still safe. "We have something that needs doing. The dragons, in the other Viking's traps, the bad ones. We help the dragons, and you help us, yes?" He took out and unfolded the paper where he'd sketched out a map of the place from above, holding it up to see for emphasis.

He wasn't sure they understood, but (click)-uhp started to chatter dragonic urgently, and he could only hope that he was explaining for the two dragons to understand. After some minutes had passed with the three talking and deliberating, (click)-uhp looked back at Alekt, sitting up and crossing his arms, tilting his head up. There was calculation in his eyes, his lips silently twitching as if he was trying to figure out how to say something, but it took him a few moments to form the word.

"Drakkkn kkko fuh-rrree." He stumbled slightly over the last word, but Alekt understood it, especially once the man indicated to the cages.

Alekt nodded.

"Yes, the dragons will go free, but not until after."

(click)-uhp growled disapproval at him.

"Drakkkn kkko Fuh-rrrree!" The Fury added to his command with a roar of its own, backing up his rider.

"(click)-uhp and Tt-th-ss have to agree to help us, first. We help you free the hurt dragons, from the bad Vikings," he said, with a note of domineering finality to his voice that caught them off guard, not backing down as he was sure they had been thinking he might, especially with Tt-th-ss free to kill him if the Fury wanted and the larger Stormcutter behind them. "And you help us. No help, no freed dragons."

They dissolved into dragon sounds again, the Stormcutter included, before looking back at Alekt with wary reluctance. (click)-uhp looked like he was struggling to find another word, before speaking again clumsily.

"H-e-e-pp pfikingr, drakkkn herrr kkko ffrree?"

"Yes," Alekt nodded.

(click)-uhp looked skeptical, and both he and Tt-th-ss chattered to each other, trying to come to a decision, but he had given them no reason to doubt, so far. True, it had been purely for ulterior motive, but he could have done away with them if he'd truly decided he wanted to. They would have continued working, even without help. This, however, was the better choice. The path of least resistance, if only they could win favor.

It seemed as if they'd decided, (click)-uhp and Tt-th-ss both staring at him with a look like this had better not be a trick, mirroring each other perfectly.

"Isss h-e-e-p pfikingr."

Alekt nodded his own approval.

"Gather around me," he called, this directed at the other men, who had been quite content to stay well out of range up to this point, save for Hartvig, who was a little less worried than the rest. More confident that Alekt knew what he was doing. He set the papers down, flattening them out on the stone. "Bring me small stones and paint."

"Well, you heard 'im!" Hartvig barked when everyone looked lost. "Get to it!"

With the sudden activity, the dragons became a lot more nervous, and flew up to perch on the tops of the cages where they could see everything from a safe distance and out of the way. They shifted uneasily as the Vikings warily made a circle around Alekt, and likewise the men were skittishly looking up at the beasts above them, wanting to be anywhere else.

Alekt kept the dragons primarily at his back, not worried about any threat they might pose him, and made sure they could see his papers just as well as the men.

The pile of stones, which collectively made up the same number as the men, dragons, dragon man, and the number of enemies he'd counted (plus a few more, in case he missed anyone), were painted different colors respectively.

He made sure to indicate to everyone, even to (click)-uhp and the two dragons there. He had already figured ahead of time that explaining with words would get him nowhere, so he was hoping the visual aid would get the message across.

He explained that red were the BAD pfikingr, the blue the good ones (them), yellow for the trapped dragons, green for the Stormcutter that the dragon-man said was (click)-shhh-prrr, and black for (click)-uhp and the Fury, positioning them across the paper.

"Alright, so this is what we're going to do…"