The Berserker War Chapter 10
Hiccup and Astrid returned from their secret mission a few hours before sunrise. "I think we can make it work," he told the others.
"I hate to admit it, but it is possible," Astrid added. "We'll just need a little luck." They caught a few hours' sleep before beginning to plan their raid in earnest. This was a Night-Furies-only affair; the other dragons stayed on watch, but aside from the patrolling Nadders, none of them had anything to do.
After much discussion and some heated argument, Toothless had been persuaded to stay home. He could flap without pain, and Gothi had cleared him for limited flight, but in spite of his intense desire to join the mission, he was outvoted 4-1 (Guana abstained) and ordered to finish his recovery.
"Besides," Hiccup told him quietly afterwards, "if something goes wrong, the dragons will need you to be their leader."
"Hiccup, my friend... please don't let anything go wrong," Toothless almost pleaded. They shared a TrueSight before the five battle-worthy Night Furies took wing and vanished into the night sky.
o
It was a quiet night in Zerk village. Dagur and his forces hadn't returned from the field yet, so the population was reduced to the young, the old, and the few tradesmen who were deemed more valuable in their shops than in the army. There had been no messages since that army marched on yet another mission of conquest. The ones who stayed behind were beginning to suspect that this mission would end like the ones before it – with the army slinking home in defeat, having lost some men and much of its gear, without accomplishing anything in return. Dagur would bluster about how bravely his men had fought, and how they'd taught the dragons a lesson. Everyone else was wondering when Dagur was going to learn a lesson.
The silence was broken by two quiet, harmless-sounding "whumps." The night watchman looked in the direction of the sounds, and saw light where there shouldn't be any light. "Fire!" he shouted. "The roof of the forge is on fire!" He roused as many people as he could find, and they fought the fire with buckets of water until it was extinguished.
"We saved as much of the roof as we could," the watchman said to Slobberguts. "I don't know if it's safe for you to go inside, though."
"There's one way to find out," the smith decided, and looked around for his apprentices. "Agnarr! Agmundr! Grab some lanterns and see what the inside of the forge looks like."
"Shouldn't we wait until the morning, so we can see properly?" Agnarr asked. He was always the impertinent one, or "the practical one" as he liked to put it.
"We have a full load of work that has to get done in the morning!" the master-smith shot back. "If we have to make any repairs to the forge, it has to be done now."
"Okay, we will bravely look inside," Agmundr nodded. His sense of sarcasm usually went right over the smith's head. They found two lanterns, lit them, and hesitantly stepped inside.
"What's it like in there?" the smith called from the doorway.
"It's dark in here," Agnarr called to his twin.
"The fire made two new skylights, but they don't help much," his brother replied. "I don't see a lot of damage, but the tools are scattered all over the place."
"The tools are always scattered all over the place," Agnarr said as he worked his way toward the back of the forge. "The forge itself is covered in debris from the roof, but –"
"But what?" Slobberguts called. All he could hear in reply was a low growl.
"There's something in here!" Agmundr whispered in panic.
No one in the village was precisely sure what happened next; it happened so fast, and it was too dark to see much. They all agreed that they heard two sharp cries, and then two sleek black shapes rocketed out of the far side of the forge, each carrying one of the twins with it. At the same time, a bigger black shape leaped at the master-smith and tried to carry him off as well. This man was much bigger than his apprentices, the black shape seemed to have an injured leg, and the pair had trouble getting into the air. Some of the villagers who had helped fight the fire grabbed weapons from the forge and tried to chase them.
That was when the walls of the nearby buildings moved. Out of nowhere, three scary-looking dragons appeared, blocking the road where the black shape had run and was just getting airborne. Changewings!
The villagers stopped in their tracks. They had no interest in fighting dragons that appeared out of thin air. They could see the black shape just rising above the trees, making a clean getaway with his prisoner. The other two were already out of sight. After a few seconds, a purple firebolt crashed into the roof of the tanner's shop, and another one blew the front wall off of the Mead Hall. As the villagers ran to fight these new fires, the Changewings melted into the walls again, waited until all the humans were out of sight, then flew away.
The five Night Furies, three Changewings, and three humans met on a tiny, rocky islet about two miles to the north. The dragons released their captives, who stood motionless in a tight cluster because they couldn't go anywhere, and had a quick conversation.
"Thank you, friends!" Hiccup began. "I needed that help. And thank you, Astrid, for thinking of it and arranging it."
"You said we could have a free meal in exchange for helping you escape?" said one of the Changewings.
"Yes, just show up in Berk and eat your fill from the fish in the round trays," Astrid said. "The dragons and the humans are all expecting you, and they won't bother you."
The Changewings nodded politely and took off into the night sky. This would be the easiest meal they'd ever enjoyed!
The three humans cowered in the midst of the remaining dragons, who watched them intently. "I bet they're scared to death, but they'll never admit it," Guana suggested.
"Let's wait until they find their tongues, and then listen to what they say," Astrid agreed. "It might prove very interesting."
All this reasonable conversation sounded like unspeakable horrors to the humans. All that snarling and growling – what could it mean? Surely nothing good! Yet the dragons didn't move. They just stared. In the darkness, their eyes were all that could be seen clearly.
At last, Agnarr softly said, "Are they going to eat us?"
"I don't think dragons eat people," Agmundr replied. "But I've never seen this kind of dragon before, so I don't know. Maybe they're taking us away for Human Training, the way we catch dragons and use them for Dragon Training."
"I still think we could have done well at Dragon Training, if they'd given us a chance," Agnarr lamented.
"You'll never get that chance, you insolent young pups," Slobberguts burst out. "Look at you! My late, lamented wife had bigger muscles than you! The only way you'd ever kill a dragon is by jumping down its throat and choking it to death!"
"Not to be disrespectful," Agnarr said quietly, "but you didn't do such a great job at fighting dragons either, a minute ago."
"And what, exactly, was I supposed to do?" the older smith demanded.
"Well, kicking your feet and screaming like a girl wasn't very helpful," Agmundr said with a trace of a smirk.
The smith drew back his fist. "Is that how you talk to your master? I should –" Two of the dragons snarled viciously. He relaxed his arm and tried to look inoffensive.
The twins glanced at each other. "Hey... what if they can understand what we're saying?" Agmundr wondered.
"I've never heard of that," his brother shrugged, "but I've heard of a lot of other weird things."
"Who cares if they can understand us?" the master-smith said suddenly. "You need to think up another clever way to kill them, not talk to them!"
"Okay, let's see what we can use for a weapon," Agnarr said snidely. "We've got rocks, we've got sea water, and... we've got you. What do you think, Agmundr? Should we go with the rocks or the water?"
"Definitely the water," his brother decided. "When you boil water, you get steam, and steam can do some interesting things. I've been wanting to experiment with it, but I never get the time. Of course, we'd need a fire to boil water, and there's nothing here to make a fire with, so..."
Hiccup couldn't help it; the timing was too perfect. He spat out a small fireball onto the rocks about five feet in front of the twins. It burned brightly, with enough light that they could all see each other's faces. They stared at him in shock; he gazed back with his best wide-eyed innocent look.
"O-o-okay," Agmundr quavered. "So you can understand us! Uhhh... my name is Agmundr, this is my brother Agnarr, and this is Slobberguts." The twins bowed slightly.
Guana scratched quickly on the rocks:
PLEASED TO MEET YOU
The humans stared in total disbelief at the runes she'd carved.
"No!" Slobberguts exclaimed. "This is not happening! Dragons are not intelligent!" Hiccup had to respond to that –
SOME HUMANS AREN'T SO BRIGHT, EITHER
The twins snorted into their hands, desperately trying not to laugh out loud. The situation was too ridiculous! Here they were, kidnapped by dragons and stranded in the middle of the ocean, and suddenly the dragons were not merely communicating – they were giving a well-deserved mocking to the master-smith!
Then, at exactly the same moment, the twins looked at each other and turned serious. "You know what this means, don't you?" Agmundr exclaimed.
"They're just as smart as we are," Agnarr nodded.
There was a long pause.
"Should we be trying to kill them?" Agmundr asked.
"Of course you should be killing dragons!" Slobberguts roared. "That's all they're good for! We're at war, remember? They're the enemy, remember? They've killed hundreds of us, remember? For smart boys, you can be pretty stupid sometimes!"
Hiccup turned to the other dragons. "I think we've heard enough. The master-smith is obviously no threat to us. Guana, take him back to his village. Then shoot his forge once or twice, and come back here."
"What if he tells the others about us?" Astrid wondered.
"No one will believe him," Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang said, "and even if they did, what harm can he do? It's the young men who make him dangerous, and we're keeping them."
"In fact," his sister added, "if Dagur demands another clever idea and the smith doesn't have one, that may be the end of him, without us having to do anything at all."
Guana nodded, caught the older man with her front paws, and flapped away into the darkness. They could hear him screaming half a mile away. That left four Night Furies and two nervous young men on the islet.
"What are you going to do with us?" Agnarr asked worriedly. Hiccup wrote:
WE'RE TAKING YOU OUT OF THE WAR
"Permanently?" Agmundr gasped.
NO, ONLY UNTIL THE WAR ENDS.
YOU'RE COMING BACK TO BERK WITH US
"Then it's true!" Agnarr exclaimed to his brother. "The Berks really did make a devil's deal with the dragons!"
WE AREN'T DEVILS. IN FACT, WE'RE
MORE LIKE YOU THAN YOU REALIZE
Astrid laughed out loud at that. The twins gaped at her. The idea of a dragon laughing was as ludicrous as... as a dragon writing runes on a rock. The young men fell silent again.
Then, as one, they said, "Are you...?" Agmundr deferred to his brother, who finished the question. "Are you Night Furies?"
The four dragons solemnly nodded "yes."
"You're not going to kill us?" They shook their heads "no."
Agnarr turned to his brother and said, very softly, "I think everything we know about these guys is wrong." Now it was Hiccup's turn to laugh, though they couldn't understand why.
About half an hour later, Guana returned, looking smug. "The town got their smith back, but he's a smith without a forge," she said. "I can't make him much more harmless than that."
"Okay, let's finish our night's work," Hiccup nodded. He wrote:
WOULD YOU RATHER RIDE US
OR BE CARRIED?
The twins looked at each other, flexed their shoulders (which were still a little sore from the dragons' paws under their armpits while they were being carried through the air), and both said, "Ride." Hiccup and Astrid crouched down; the boys climbed onto their backs, cautiously and awkwardly. Guana wrote:
HANG ON TIGHT
Night Furies don't have handles, so the boys held on tight with their legs. The dragons took off as easily as they could, and were soon cruising northward along the coastline. The sun was beginning to rise in the east. For the dragons, it was a familiar sight, but the twins had never been off the ground in their lives. The aerial view of the land and sea mesmerized them. Finally, Agnarr broke the silence.
"If this is what it means to be taken out of the war, they can take me out any time they want."
"Yeah," his brother agreed. "I have to admit, this is pretty cool."
Astrid glanced at Hiccup, who nodded wordlessly. They began climbing; the other three Night Furies followed them. They leveled off just below the cloud layer. The twins were getting nervous as the ground fell away below them, but then they realized they could reach up and touch a cloud.
"It's just vapor!" Agmundr exclaimed.
"That means clouds and fog are the same thing!" his brother agreed. "One is just higher than the other." They waved their hands through the clouds for several minutes. Then the dragons climbed some more, took them right through the clouds, and burst into the sunlight above.
"Whoa!" both boys exclaimed. The usual dim light of the Northland was replaced by an unexpected brilliance. The murky cloud layer was white and puffy on top. Far above them, a few wisps of cirrus clouds were set on fire by the light of the dawn. The two passengers were stunned into silence.
After a few minutes, Astrid turned to Hiccup. "I don't think they'll give us any trouble."
"It's the old 'flight through the clouds' trick," he grinned. "It gets them every time."