CHAPTER 6

ASTRID

Despite thinking ahead enough to paw through the contents of Eret's trunk back at the camp, Astrid had not considered grabbing shoes.

At this point in her escapades, she really couldn't blame anyone but herself for not having shoes.

Instead, from Eret's trunk she'd lifted a sturdy belt outfitted with various contraptions - including a holder for her new dagger. Only looping the belt around her waist twice kept it from falling, but the awkward fit didn't cause too much discomfort. Her fingers ghosted over the hilt, and she filled her chest with air and grim satisfaction that lasted only a moment, because-

The pads of Astrid's feet ached.

She should have looked for shoes.

Nothing could stop Astrid from trampling through the forest, though. She ducked and weaved around crackling branches and leaves, and she pinched her skirt between her fingers so that it didn't catch on any bushes or other tall plants. All this caution slowed her pace. Luckily, Eret and his men stomped and chattered through the forest at a slow and steady rate, so following them from a distance proved nearly effortless. Even if she lost their trail, a few more men lagged behind Eret's main group with a large cage, a clanking, rattling beast of metal.

"We're getting closer." Eret's voice traveled back through the trees to Astrid, who huffed and quickened her steps. Maneuvering her way around Eret's crew to move in front of them would prove difficult. Astrid was determined, though, to meet the dragon first.

She couldn't explain why.

Having tracked both her progress across the ground and the sun's progress across the sky, Astrid had measured the passing of several hours. If she hadn't slept so well in the cot for the past two nights, she doubted her body would have let her walk this long without much stronger protests.

Her breath shuddered unsteadily as she moved, keeping the movement and colors of Eret's crew in her peripheral vision as she rushed to outpace them. It took a few minutes, but Astrid finally moved northwest of the crew - enough to adjust her direction easily if they adjusted theirs, but far enough ahead of them that such adjustments wouldn't reveal her presence.

The real problem, she admitted with a grimace, was that she hadn't planned anything past finding the dragon before Eret did. Hic- he had made it sound so easy to find a dragon, to befriend it, to convince it your hands would not land harshly on its back.

You have to trust that the dragon won't want to hurt you any more than you want to hurt the dragon.

The memory of the voice sent violent shudders rippling across Astrid's body. She forced a sigh and pressed forward, mentally ordering herself to continue.

Move forward. Figure out what to do with the dragon when you actually find it.

Only when she stumbled into a small field-

Only when the bushes growled at her-

Only when something huge and silvery-blue sprung out at her-

Only then did Astrid realize how stupid it could be to make up plans on the spot.

Astrid crouched down the moment that the dragon rushed from the underbrush. Copper coated her lips as she sank her teeth into her tongue. At least she hadn't screamed. The dragon before her, twitching its head as its nostrils flared, didn't seem like it would enjoy anything that would rip apart the soft clamor of the forest.

The creature stood frozen only a few feet away, rumbling out a growl that Astrid felt safe in assuming was a warning signal. Still, Astrid remained somewhat crouched, with her arms raised in a fool's shield over her head.

"Okay, easy, easy," Astrid managed.

The dragon's tail lifted, giving Astrid a clear view of the spikes bristling at the tail-end. The spikes and the teeth were the only aspects of the dragon's appearance that Astrid could process. The dragon brandished both tail and fangs before her in a zealous warning.

"Not easy then," Astrid whispered, much quieter, and this time the beast seemed largely unbothered by her voice.

Hic-

He had explained it to her, back on the cool stone floors of the library: what he'd always done, what had nearly always worked for him. She could only hope she wasn't about to lose an arm. Astrid swallowed a massive ball of nerves before she slowly stretched her hand toward the beast. The dragon hissed, but Astrid maintained her gradual movement. When her arm reached straight out and her palm faced the monster's nose - only a few feet away now - Astrid pressed another tremulous sigh through her teeth.

She turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut, offering a silent prayer. Please. I think I'm your only way out. This is how you avoid getting captured-

So that was why she was doing all this.

Cages.

The shock of reality pounded a deafening rhythm in her ears that synchronized well with her thundering heartbeat. That cacophony stopped the moment that warm, smooth scales rubbed against Astrid's trembling fingers.

Oh.

Were her fingers trembling? Was the dragon trembling? Was another Whispering Death about to punch up through the ground? Was she only imagining the shaking that was blurring lines and colors around her?

It couldn't be this easy. Hic-

He had acted as if befriending a dragon was an everyday process, and Astrid had scoffed in his face. Nothing could be so trusting, she had argued - whispering, so as to keep the quiet of the castle library intact. Definitely not a dragon.

You'd be surprised. His smile was wide and crooked and-

No, that was a pathway of thought Astrid couldn't bear to stumble down. So she yanked her head to stare up at the dragon.

It stared back.

Initial panic had kept Astrid from fully seeing the creature. Now, she could fully survey the intricacies of its appearance - the smooth, cream-colored stomach that stretched into the wings, the underside of which resembling the mottled gold, brown, and green of tree-bark. Oblong sky-blue scales stretched across most of the dragon, blending into a russet sort of purple around the twitching yellow eyes. It peered down at her from beneath the crown of yellow horns atop its head.

As if it was taking the moment to investigate Astrid just as much as Astrid was investigating it.

Humans must be threats in a dragon's mind.

We could kill each other.

The calmness humming between them seemed heavier with its new-found significance.

"Hello," Astrid said, the word light enough to be swept along within her breath.

A noise that could only be described as thrumming pulsed in the dragon's throat. Astrid traced the slope of its throat with her eyes, watching how the dragon's sounds and chirps spasmed in its throat, watching how those spasms smoothed out into a rapid but steady pulse in the dragon's chest. Its head twitched back and forth. Birdlike: that was the word. The dragon's long gray claws tilled the earth beneath, and it stomped on the dirt a few times. The dark stripe of pupil pulsed into something only marginally wider.

"Wow," she said.

It chirped at her.

A thin, glinting object whizzed past Astrid's ear and buried itself in the dragon's stomach.

Astrid dragged her eyes to the dragon's, and they stared at each other in a brief moment that dripped past them like molasses - too slow for Astrid to move or do anything. Then, finally, she opened her mouth, a scream blazing forth, but a large hand slapped over her face and caught the scream between its fingers. Another thick arm reached around her waist to pin both her arms to her sides.

The dragon began to panic, lunging forward. While he kept his arms around her, Eret yanked Astrid backwards into the shadows of the trees. His men swarmed forward and launched more objects, tied to thick ropes and chains, over the dragon's back, tail, and wings. The creature snarled and snapped, but whatever Eret had thrown was rendering it more and more sluggish. Astrid watched its feet stumble over each other. She strained against Eret's arms even as he pulled her into the leaves of a large bush.

"Be still," Eret's voice snapped in her ear, hushed but still demanding her obedience. She writhed in his grip to no avail. "Astrid!" he hissed.

She roared in response, though his hand still muffled most of the noise.

Eret muttered, "The lads didn't seen you, though Thor knows how. Stay still!"

Astrid hated cages. She also hated people putting their hand over her mouth. So she bit down hard.

With a yelp significantly higher than his normal tone, Eret slid his hand down to grip her jaw - still silencing her while keeping his fingers away from her teeth.

"You are in far more danger than you realize, doing whatever it was that you just did with that creature."

Something invisible seized her gut. She tried to question Eret, tried to demand that he and his men leave the dragon alone, but his hold on her jaw only let her mouth produce incoherent growls.

Keeping a hold on her jaw, Eret pushed her forward before using his other hand to spin her around to face him. "I don't even know what you did, but you need to go back to camp. If you show up to my crew right now, they're going to ask questions."

Astrid glared at him. What kind of danger was he talking about? Was he threatening her? What happened to their agreement? What had changed?

Whatever brain-cells Eret possessed apparently let him guess at her suspicion. "Believe it or not, my men and I are not the biggest danger to you." The tension gripping his frame bled out slightly as he sighed.

Eret rolled his shoulder. His vest slid down his forearms, and the wide collar shifted to reveal something pink and tattered on the skin of his chest. Astrid stared. On Eret's chest glared a wound of some kind. Thanks to her hair, she had little to no experience with scars.

As he stared her down, Eret dropped his head to jerk it at the massive, circular pink mark peeking out of his vest collar. "The man who gave me this. That's who I work for." His brow furrowed farther down over his eyes, and his lip curled. He looked nervous, pleading. "He's who you need to be afraid of, Astrid. Who both of us need to be afraid of."

Confusion had dulled her glare, but Astrid redoubled her ferocity when a loud thump behind them told her the dragon had fallen to its captors. She snarled at Eret and thought of a few names she would quickly bestow upon him the moment she regained control of her jaw. What does his boss have to do with the dragon?

"Eret! Oy, Eret!" Eret flinched at his men's calls. He peered over Astrid's head for a moment before refocusing on her. "Go back to camp. I'll explain everything I can. Just, please, for your own safety, don't go near that dragon." He frowned, clearly frustrated and perplexed as to why he even needed to issue that warning.

Her preservation instincts voiced their own frustration in the back of Astrid's mind. Why am I trying to free a dragon? Am I insane?

Astrid was far enough from camp. She could leave. Eret certainly wouldn't bother chasing her. Her mother still thought Astrid was inside Eret's tent and unable to escape the frankly pitiful men guarding his quarters. Astrid had a clear head start and - as long as she stayed away from dragons - solid self-preservation instincts.

A weak warbling sounded behind her.

Astrid thought of the dragon pacing panicked circles in a cage.

She groaned and made her best attempt at nodding.

Eret hesitated only a moment before relinquishing his hold. He nodded at her. She briefly contemplated spitting at him. Then they both moved, brushing past each other.

Foolish and redundant as she knew it was, Astrid grunted out, "Don't hurt her."

Bypassing confusion for exasperation now, Eret tossed up his hands and groaned.

HICCUP

Maybe Hiccup's senses were improving, or maybe Cass wanted him to notice her before she slammed him into a wall.

"Ow! That's going to bruise!" Hiccup couldn't temper the whine in his voice, and he couldn't even believe what he was saying. It wouldn't bruise - the wall was comprised of mud and straw, being only a farming hut on the outskirts of the capital city. Cass ought to be informed that being slammed against any wall would cause pain, though.

She didn't reply. She only glared.

Rude.

"Chatty today, aren't we?" he grumbled, serving her his driest, most deadpan stare.

"You."

He waited. He listened to the tremors of her breath hissing through her bared teeth. Finally, Hiccup ventured to reply, 'Slow down, Cass. You're talking so fast I can barely understand you."

Cass only pressed his shoulders harder against the wall and curled her lips wider around her bared teeth.

Her nostrils flared. Wow, Hiccup could only count five occasions where he'd caused this stage of her anger.

Assuming I'm the cause of her anger.

Oh, who am I kidding?

"Alright, the suspense is killing me. What did I do?"

"What did you-" Cass shuddered with the clearly difficult effort of reigning in her fury. She pressed her voice back down to a near whisper as she spit out, "The dragon's missing from the dungeons. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

As if she needed to ask. "Dragon? What's a dragon?"

Him being the future heir of Berk was probably the single reason Cass didn't slap him.

"Don't make me ask again," she said.

He had pushed his luck to its absolute limit in this case. "Ah yes. Dragons. Gigantic winged creatures with a notorious reputation." He shone his best smile her way. "I have absolutely no idea where the dragon in the dungeon supposedly went or might be currently."

"Hiccup."

"You have to stop blaming me for everything, Cass."

He watched her eyes widen and then squint at him even more. Gotcha. She would not be admitting that, from a purely logical perspective, he made a good point, but at least they both now knew she was in the wrong.

Even if she was in the right. Because in this case, yeah, definitely his fault.

In any case, Cass did release Hiccup from her death grip. He rolled his shoulders and relished the soft burning of the stretch. A woman hurried by with a basket of dirty laundry. Hiccup had spent the morning with Toothless, and he had hoped his next run-in with Cass would get him more information on the various political and social events of Berk. She wouldn't be spilling anything with civilians bustling around, though.

He might as well try anyway. "Any news from my father?"

Cass surprised him. "A few complaints about a dragon terrorizing the area, and then suddenly no complaints at all about it."

"Okay, first of all, that was not my dragon, not that I know what dragon even escaped from the dungeons anyway-" she rolled her eyes. "-And second of all, that would mean the dragon in question migrated to a different area, correct?"

"More like it dropped off the surface of the world."

Even the stealthiest dragons left a trail, in Hiccup's experience, and any kind of person with any level of experience with dragons could pick up the trail. "Trappers?" he asked, naming the only reasonable explanation.

"Most likely, but unregistered with the proper authorities."

Curiosity manifested an itch on the back of Hiccup's skull that he couldn't leave alone. "Does the crown usually care about that?" he asked.

Twirling a dagger between her fingers, Cass huffed. "They don't care about it now or ever."

The realization came quickly. "But you do."

"It's suspicious," Cass protested, but her shoulders sagged in anticipation of yet another dismissal of her concerns.

For obvious reasons, Hiccup wouldn't label himself a fan of dragon trappers. He shrugged. "It's at least worth investigating, isn't it?"

Cass quickly pulled a mask of professionalism over her dropped jaw. "I think so, but their majesties are more concerned with the... anomaly in the southeast." Of course she would phrase it that way, to protect news of the unrest from wayward ears.

If Stoick and Corran were more invested in the unresponsive towns in the southeast, they might not devote much curiosity to a lone dragon scoping out suspicious activities - and that would work in Hiccup's favor. He still ought to lay low for a bit, until Toothless's escape was old and stale news in the kings' longhouse, but some cloudy-weather reconnaissance flying should go largely undetected if he and Toothless employed wisdom in their flights.

"Where exactly have the complaints come from?" Hiccup asked.

"A small village north of Arnarfel."

Hiccup's fingers pulled through his hair as he thought. "Briars?"

She squinted at him again. "What?"

"That's the only village directly to the north of Arnafel."

Cass shrugged and replied, "It's too small to have a name on our maps."

"The locals call it Briars." A year ago, that whole area had suffered under a Terrible Terror infestation, but the creatures had steered clear of Briars. Hiccup had wandered around until he discovered that the local fish merchant, on account of his daughter's allergy, wasn't selling a particular type of fish in Briars - a type of fish that had come into high demand in most other areas in the region. A bit of rumor spreading was all it took to make that type of fish fall from favor everywhere else, and the Terrible Terrors migrated elsewhere once their favorite snack became less available in the region.

Cass's fingers had stiffened, stopping the twirls of her dagger. She stared at Hiccup, who just smiled.

"I get around," he said.

She recovered quickly enough to fire back, "There's a good tavern in Briars, I suppose?"

Flattening a hand to his chest and gasping, Hiccup shook his head at her. "You always think so little of me."

"Well-" she began, but this conversation was proving too long to be worth much, unless Cass had something else to lob at him besides insults.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Anything else to report?"

In the distance, a wagon creaks, and goats yelp. Cass doesn't speak at first, but she finally intensifies her glare one last time - for today, anyway. "No."

He knew her well enough to know that the truthful answer was "yes", but no amount of annoyance on his part would wrench the truth from her.

"In that case, I have a... request to make of you."

Her frown deepened. "You know you could just order me."

Hiccup waved her statement away with one hand while his other hand dove into a pocket. "I'm hoping you could circulate this picture among the ranks. If anyone sees this woman, they're to report to me immediately."

Snatching the paper from Hiccup's hand, she surveyed the sketch with a raised brow. Her fingers traced the lines of the drawing: the thin-trimmed brow, the kinks and curls in long dark hair, the claw-like sharpness of long fingers. Hiccup had taken great pains at accuracy, which had involved bribing Snotlout and the twins with food so that they would help smooth over any fuzzy spots in his memory of Astrid's mother. Cass, at least, seemed to appreciate all the effort. "You... drew this?" she asked.

"Yes?" His voice ticked up at the end without his permission.

"I always assumed it was the fish boy's drawings I found everywhere..." she murmured before glancing back up at Hiccup. "This is a good sketch."

Hiccup scratched the back of his head and blinked up at the grey sky, for once not willing to shatter the moment with a sarcastic comment.

After carefully folding the parchment, Cass slid it into one of the pockets on her belt. "What did she do?" she asked, her voice laced with the standard snark that brought their conversation back into more familiar territory.

"Well, she stabbed me."

"She what?" Cass screeched. "Why didn't you bring this up earlier?"

"I thought you knew!" Truthfully, he'd been worrying over how to find Astrid, and only recently had this idea formed: just telling the truth. Crazy stuff.

Making Cass's jaw drop twice in one conversation might shatter a record. "Someone made an attempt on your life - on the life of the heir to the throne of Berk - and you didn't think to tell anyone?" She was still screeching but now at a less attention-grabbing volume.

He shrugged and rubbed his neck. "I was busy?"

Cass groaned. "You could have led with the stabbing. I'll send out orders to have her captured on sight-"

"No!" he yelped. When Cass sighed, Hiccup added, "She's holding someone hostage - someone important. I need to know her whereabouts so I can follow her and figure out where she's keeping..." He hesitated for reasons he couldn't decipher.

"Someone," Cass finished. Hiccup offered nothing else, and she grunted. "Fine. I'll see that it's done."

"Thank you."

Planting her hands on her hips, she leaned forward. "Now, where are you off to-"

"Ah, yes, it's been great running into you!" With a salute to Cass, Hiccup sauntered off at a leisurely pace toward the fortress.

"Your highness!" she hissed after him, but he ignored her.

Though his original plan had been nabbing a quick supper and then returning to Toothless, he'd have to devise even more creative methods than usual of getting to the Cove. Now that Cass had tracked him down, she'd be watching Hiccup much more closely than ever before in the hopes that he would lead her to Toothless. Hiccup would likely have to spend the night at the fortress and sneak out to his dragon tomorrow morning.

He glanced over his shoulder. Cass had disappeared from sight. She was already following him.

His steps morphed into a swagger. Cass still hadn't accepted that though she might be good at tracking, Hiccup was a master at evading.

Groaning, Hiccup poked at the saddle beneath him, as if he hadn't already poked and tugged at it enough back in the Cove. He had so much work to do. The saddle - or rather, the backup saddle - had frayed across the edges, with lumpy padding and rust creeping at the corners of the metal. It would serve their purposes until Hiccup could fashion a new one.

Hiccup's glare drifted to the stirrups, the true source of his frustration.

"You couldn't have taken the right leg, could you?" he grumbled at Toothless. The dragon, with closed eyes and a blissful expression, ignored Hiccup in favor of enjoying the wind across his faces for the first time in weeks.

Hiccup had let that joy of flight seep into him for the first few minutes of the journey. Then, as always, his mind had scrambled for the next challenge to tackle, and the few moments of mental peace ended.

Given that Hiccup favored his left hand despite technically being ambidextrous, and Toothless's prosthesis replaced his long-gone left tail-fin, Hiccup had always controlled the flight apparatus with the left stirrup. With Hiccup's left leg now reduced to a simple metal peg for the foreseeable future, he would have to switch to a base prototype pulley system that employed the right stirrup for control. It was, as expected, proving more cumbersome in flight.

Hiccup had spent the past week sketching out new designs for his own prosthesis and for new stirrups that would smooth out the new mechanics. After years of sneaking around Gobber to use the forge for various dragon-related projects, Hiccup foresaw no issues turning those schematics into actual prototypes. The new limp would only marginally impede the agility needed for all his plotting and crafting.

Independent of the many new factors to consider in flight, his own personal mobility would take time for proper adjustment. Breaking Toothless out of prison a few days ago and evading Cass's eyes earlier this morning had drained more of his energy than usual.

One of many long-suffering sighs blew past Hiccup's lips.

Design better leg .

Design new tail-fin controls.

Craft new saddle.

Fix pants of flightsuit.

Find Astrid.

Of everything on his list of tasks to complete, the last item evoked the deepest feeling. One that might choke him if he stood still for too long.

He shook his head and reached forward to scratch at the scales beneath Toothless's right ear. Moping wouldn't help him find Astrid. He grappled with his focus to force it toward an objective with a path he could at least see.

The second-to-last item, he already knew, would prove a pain in the rear. Hiccup avoided the process sewing and alterations whenever possible. It didn't offer a challenge and a puzzle the way that prosthetic designing and crafting did for him. All he'd have to do with his flightsuit would be cutting off a few inches of the left pant-leg, hemming it, and lining it up with his prosthetic.

He'd have to grab more of the scales Toothless had shed in his romps around the cove. A mixture of ground dragon scales and dragon saliva made for an excellent fireproofing mixture, and Hiccup doubted any of the prosthesis sleeves in the forge had ever been fireproofed. They'd have to be, if he was going to use them in conjunction with his flightsuit. Riding a dragon without any kind of flame resistance was inviting disasters - he'd learned that lesson personally. Another item for his to-do list: fireproof the sleeves.

He swept his eyes over the trees beneath him and how their branches rippled in the wind. As he'd hoped, the cloudy sky he'd spotted approaching from a distance yesterday filled the sky today. The puffs of gray proved encompassing enough that the wind wouldn't soon be able to yank them away.

"Don't go too low, bud," Hiccup called to Toothless as they slipped between the gray curls of cloud that loomed over the trees. While Hiccup wanted to scope out the forest surrounding Briar, the idea of attracting local attention was far from appealing.

Practice led to perfection, and the way Toothless wove through the clouds to offer Hiccup good vantages of the land below while still evading any possibly detection was pretty close to perfection, if Hiccup had anything to say about it. Below them, the people of Briar puttered about in the standard chores and tasks of a dreary mid-afternoon. Pressing his spyglass to his eye, Hiccup squinted at the villagers. He didn't see any jerky movements, wary twisting around, or rushed footsteps that would signal an aura of wariness. Neither did he spot weapons in anyone's hands or belts. Strange - if the people of Briars were suffering the wrath of an irritated dragon, for whatever reason, Hiccup would expect nearly everyone in the village to be on high alert in behavior and equipment. The only exceptions in his view were a group of rougher characters lounging on benches outside a larger building in the center of Briars. Judging by the worn paths around it, the size and location, and the chatter leaking from the doors and windows, Hiccup could guess the building was the tavern, and the rougher characters well-outfitted with hide armor and weapons were passers-by and temporary patrons of said establishment.

Just as Hiccup squinted at the weapons the men carried, the entire village shook. Cries from the people below lifted to Hiccup's ears, and he tightened his grip on Toothless even as he swung his spyglass around to assess the reactions and effects. An ache grabbed hold of his stomach - because many different dragons could shake the ground of a village, but most of said dragons would be immediately visible. His search of the village revealed no apparent dragons. Travelers from foreign lands had brought stories of naturally quaking earth; such phenomenons did not plague Berk without a dragon's involvement.

If his terrible luck held true, a shaking village with no dragons in sight meant-

A sinkhole tore an entire house into the ground, and Hiccup swore. From the crumbling rocks and dark depths came a low, thundering roar that belonged no doubt to a Whispering Death.

Toothless sprung out his teeth and snarled in return.

"Don't call him out yet," Hiccup said, scanning the countryside. "Give me a moment." He could only hope the inhabitants of the obliterated house had been elsewhere. A drop like that into a Whispering Death never yielded any survivors. It was a fact that always came to mind but remained unspoken whenever Fishlegs insisted that all knowledge was a gift.

No other holes formed, but Hiccup didn't notice that as much as he noticed the people. Usually a dragon attack on any size of civilization led to people rushing toward their homes or fleeing the town. Berk boasted a large population of Idiots With Weapons who generally enjoyed facing any threat head-on regardless of statistical survivability, but generations of human-dragon conflicts had drilled into Berkians' minds that some creatures were better avoided than faced. Only seasoned warriors trained in dragon combat and the occasional moron took their chances.

These villagers neither fled nor took meaningless cover. As Hiccup watched, adults grabbed children, the young grabbed the elderly, and all sprinted toward a specific spot in the village. Hiccup swung his spyglass toward the spot and almost laughed. In the ground was a giant metal plate - or rather a bunch of smaller cast iron squares fastened together with strips of metal hammered across the gaps in a perpendicular fashion. Boulders perched on the edges of the area, most likely to make the plate still more unmovable.

"That's genius," Hiccup whispered to himself. Whispering Deaths could tunnel through largely anything except for metal and cast iron. If the creature tried to rupture the surface of the earth beneath the structure these people had created, it would fail and likely be spooked enough to leave the area in search of a more accessible place. Even an obstinate dragon who became only more enraged to discover the iron square would cause less casualties.

Already Hiccup's mind took the next step, forming a conceptual house made of such plates that would provide cover from above as well.

A screech ruptured the air, and Hiccup yanked his gaze back to the sinkhole. The crew of armed men had left the tavern behind and stood circling the hole. They had flung a net of chains over the hole and secured the net with unfamiliar contraptions rather than foolishly holding the net themselves.

Toothless tensed, and Hiccup yanked at the harness to signal his own urgency. "Hold, bud," he called. "Wait. I have to see what they're-"

Waiting proved unnecessary. The Whispering Death shot out of the sinkhole - or, rather, it tried. It rose only a few feet above the roofs of the village before the contraptions surrounding the sinkhole snapped together beneath the dragon's body. The men yanked at the chain ropes extending from the contraption and dragged the captured creature away from the sinkhole and into the dirt at their feet.

Pity lodged in Hiccup's throat. The Whispering Death writhed and convulsed to no avail. The men nodded to each other and dragged their captive toward the nearby patch of woods. Doubtless the rest of their equipment was clustered in a shadowy spot among the trees. Hiccup had suspicions earlier, but now he harbored no doubts at all: the men were dragon trappers, seasoned ones at that. The net device and the cast iron safe zone meant they were unlikely to be Berkians, or at least their leaders hailed from another land.

Hiccup could do nothing for the dragon. He risked the lives of the villagers, and the Whispering Death would turn its fury on Hiccup and Toothless if they succeeded in freeing the creature. Night Furies and Whispering Deaths by nature disagreed on each other's continued existence.

One of the trappers craned his neck toward the sky. Hiccup caught the motion just in time to usher Toothless up into a patch of clouds.

It would do no good staying around here any longer. "Come on, Toothless," Hiccup called. "We can at least locate their camp."

Cass is right, Hiccup thought with a grimace. Trapping groups comprised of foreigners in Berk's lands were not unusual, but they weren't common either. Years had passed since Stoick and Corran harbored any suspicion toward trappers roving across Berk, and such a fact couldn't have escaped most people here or abroad. A rebel group could easily masquerade as a faction of dragon trappers. Nobody would question their mobility, cordial interactions with locals, or large supply of weaponry if "trapping" was mentioned in conjunction with the observations.

Hiccup groaned as another task was added to his to-do list, a task he'd have to complete right after he found the trappers' campgrounds.

Accuse dragon trappers of treason.

After glancing at the now grumpy Toothless beneath him, Hiccup rolled his eyes. Great. Not like I'll be accused of bias or anything.

Author's Note:

Hi!

It's been a year since my dog died. Still miss her. Still healing. I know in the grand scheme of things, maybe that's not a big deal, but- she was family. Before her, I never met a dog whose natural reaction to seeing me cry would be to launch herself into my lap and cover me in kisses. I tell myself she's sprinting through the fields of heaven now, free to snack on as many blackberries as she pleases.

Aside from that, right now, life is... weird. Not bad. Just weird.

I don't have any footnotes for this chapter. Tell me how you're doing in the reviews. Or just say hi. Or leave no reviews at all. Hope you enjoyed the chapter!