First Contact Chapter 14
Cloudjumper winged silently through the night sky. "I've been on dozens of rescue missions with this dragon," Valka said over her shoulder to Agnarr. "Maybe hundreds; I've lost count. But this is the first time I've had a human companion."
"For most of my life, my twin brother was my companion in everything I did," he replied. "I've recently learned how dragons make good companions, too. The one thing I can't handle is having no companion at all."
"Is that why you got so agitated at the thought of losing Bang?" she asked kindly.
"It's a lot more than that," he said. "For as long as I can remember, I've known two kinds of people: Agmundr, and everybody else. My twin brother was good to me; everybody else wasn't. When I met Bang and started flying with him, he was good to me, so I put him in the 'brother' category. He's not just a dragon, and he's not just a friend. He's like a family member I never knew I had, until I finally met him. I know he feels the same way; he put his life on the line several times to save me during our big eastern adventure."
"I'd like to hear more about that, when you get a chance," she said.
"First, we need to find my friend." She couldn't see his face in the dark, but she could hear iron in his voice.
The trappers' island came into view. In the middle was a low hill, which the humans were turning into a fort with stockade log walls. Several sections of those walls were missing. There were dim campfires in random locations, surrounded by small leather tents. There were piles of tools here and there, and other piles of spears and similar weapons. The charred remains of their ship lay in the shallows nearby. A smoking row of logs on the shore testified that Bang had accomplished his raft-wrecking mission. But where was he?
"I see a couple of guards," Valka commented. "Do we know how many men are on this island?"
"Probably between eight and ten," Agnarr replied, "judging by the number of tents."
"I see Night Fury!" Cloudjumper burst out. "In human building!" Now they could all see a dark shape, tied up in a net, in the middle of the fort. As they watched, one of the guards wandered over to check on him, but didn't get too close and didn't stay for long.
"What we do?" Valka asked them both.
"Have Cloudjumper drop me on the far side of the island," Agnarr thought out loud. "Give me about ten minutes to get close to the fort, then make some kind of attack as a diversion. I'll cut Bang loose and ride him out of there." He repeated himself in dragon language for Cloudjumper's benefit.
"Make it twenty minutes," the big dragon answered. "I'll want to do this right."
"Twenty minutes, it is," Agnarr replied casually, and passed on the change of timing to Valka. She guided them to a darkened portion of the shore with no signs of human activity; Cloudjumper allowed the boy to slide down his wing to the ground.
"Wait for the distraction," Valka urged him as her dragon bounded back into the night sky. She left Agnarr alone on a hostile island, worried about his friend, with time on his hands. What could possibly go wrong?
He hid behind a rock on the shore and waited. Vikings didn't have wrist watches; he couldn't tell exactly how much time had passed, and his nervous state threw off his sense of timing. When he felt like half an hour had passed, and there was still no sign of a diversionary attack, he decided to sneak up to the fort so he'd be ready when the moment came. He was no outdoorsman, but years of being unpopular in his home village had taught him the art of staying out of sight. He crept from rock to rock until he was close enough to dash up to the nearest wall of the fort. Then he crept to the corner, watched as the guard checked on Bang again, waited until he left, then sneaked around the corner and through a gap in the wall into the fort itself.
It was nothing but an empty square so far, with no buildings inside it. The only contents were a few stacks of dried food, two net throwers, and one Night Fury in the middle, tangled up in a net. The sight of his friend, captured and helpless, roused a level of heroism in Agnarr that went far beyond common sense. He drew his belt seax, which was more than sharp enough to cut through the ropes of that net, and crept out toward the middle of the fort.
"Bang! It's me, Agnarr!" he whispered. "I'm getting you out of here!" The Night Fury's eyes snapped open and he tried to whip his neck around to see where the whisper came from, but the net kept him from moving freely. Agnarr got behind him, keeping the dragon's body between him and the gate of the fort, and he began sawing away at the ropes that imprisoned his friend.
He was over halfway up the dragon's tail when he felt a hard, sharp something in his back. He turned slowly, and stared up at a big, muscular man with lines tattooed on his angry face. The man raised the point of his spear until it touched Agnarr's throat. "And what, exactly, are you doing with my dragon?" he demanded.
Agnarr could have kicked himself. He'd kept an eye on the fort's gate, but he hadn't watched the gaps in the walls! He started by dropping his seax; maybe it would make the big man less angry. "He's not your dragon," he said weakly. "Dragons don't belong to anyone."
"They belong to whoever can catch them," the big man snarled, "so this one belongs to me. Who are you?"
Agnarr hesitated; the man poked his throat with the spear. "Agnarr, son of Angarrishu," he gasped.
"How did you get to this island?" his captor demanded.
"Sea turtles," he lied.
"Okay, I'll ask you again – what are you doing with my dragon?"
"I'm setting him free. All dragons should be free," Agnarr said, with a little more conviction in his voice.
"You can take that up with Drago, if you're brave enough," the man exclaimed. "But this dragon isn't going free. He's the only dragon we've caught on this entire gods-forsaken expedition! If I don't bring something back, I'm a dead man!"
"Why are you trying to catch dragons, anyway?" Agnarr wondered.
"I'll ask the questions here!" the big man burst out. "You're trespassing in my fort, you're getting in the way of me doing my job, and you're trying to set me up for another branding by freeing my only dragon. I'm within my rights to gut you right here and now, if I don't like your answers to all my questions. Why are you so worried about this dumb lizard?"
"He's every bit as smart as you or me," Agnarr exclaimed. "He has the same right to freedom, too!"
"Okay," the man sneered. "If he's so smart, then talk to him and convince me he's talking back!"
"Bang," Agnarr said urgently in dragon language, "can you tell me anything about what went on here before I got here?"
Bang replied with a description of the men's most recent meal. "He says you all ate dried codfish for supper," Agnarr translated, "except you – you had a fresh flounder. Then you washed it down with the last of your mead. Then your men went on guard duty while you ate dessert, which was six helpings of lingonberry pie. Then you –"
"That's not true!" the man burst out. "I only had five helpings of lingonberry pie! Hey, wait a minute. How did you know all that?"
"The dragon told me," Agnarr said simply.
"What kind of trick is this?" his captor demanded. He pushed Agnarr back with his spear; Agnarr gave way willingly, backing toward the dragon's head. Once he'd backed off four or five feet, Bang's partly-free tail lashed out and knocked the man's legs out from under him. Agnarr tried to grab the spear, but the other man was far too strong; even on his knees, he easily wrenched it out of Agnarr's grasp. "I've had enough of you!" he exploded, and drew the spear back for a killing thrust.
That was when one of his guards yelled, "Eret! Dragon to the north!" Another one added, "Lots of dragons to the north!"
The man with the spear knocked Agnarr down and held him there, the spear at his chest. "Man the net-throwers!" he shouted. "I have to keep this prisoner under control!" He stared to the north, trying to see the distant flying objects in the dark. "What are all those dragons doing up there? They're just circling!"
A moment later, a small hurricane of fire struck the ground about ten feet away, and began tracking toward him. The man dropped the spear with a panicky cry and ran for safety, forgetting all about Agnarr. As soon as the young man was safe, the Stormcutter's firestorm ended, leaving a track of flaming soil that gave him enough light to see by. He quickly found his seax and resumed cutting Bang's net away. In less than a minute, the Night Fury was free.
"Climb on!" the dragon exclaimed, shaking his head urgently. Agnarr needed no urging; the pair was aloft within moments. Agnarr looked down, and watched in amazement as a spiky-looking white island arose from the waters near this island. Then he realized what was happening.
"Oh, mother," he said with feeling. "It's a bad night to be a dragon trapper."
The Alpha rose up to his full height and stared down at the fort with unconcealed rage. With a roar, he breathed out a torrent of sub-frozen breath, which struck the ground and bounced upwards, freezing solid as it climbed toward the sky. In moments, the fort had been replaced by a jagged blue-green tower of ice, far taller than any human fort, with detached pieces of wooden wall sticking out in random places. The net-throwers, the food supplies, the hand tools… all were buried somewhere inside that frozen monument. Then the Alpha waded back into the sea, and all the other dragons returned to the nest.
"What happened down there?" Agnarr asked. "How did they get you?"
"They just shot their net-throwers into the sky as soon as their raft blew up, and they got lucky," Bang grunted. "I made a perfect attack, and I even swerved during my pull-out! It just wasn't my night. Thank you for coming back for me."
"That's what friends do for each other," Agnarr replied, rubbing the big black head lightly. "You put it all on the line for me when I was sick; I couldn't do any less."
"But you could have done more," Valka called to them from Cloudjumper's back as she caught up to them. "Like, maybe, wait for the diversion, the way we agreed?"
"You were taking too long!" the young man exclaimed.
"It only took us twenty minutes to fly back to the nest, rouse a dozen dragons, find out that the Alpha wanted 'in' on the action, and get back here," Cloudjumper rebutted him. "You were just too eager."
"Get used to that," Agnarr said quietly. "It'll be a cold day in a Fireworm's nest when I'm not eager to help my friends."
When they were all safely back in the nest, Bang and Agnarr spent a few minutes thanking the Alpha and the other dragons for their rescue, then collapsed on the first empty ledge they found. They were asleep within minutes. Valka glanced at them as she and Cloudjumper flew by.
"Do dragons believe in luck?" she asked. "Bang is good fighter, but has bad luck in fights."
"Every dragon has good day, every dragon has bad day," her dragon friend replied. "No one knows why." They soon joined the others in the land of sleep. Thanks to the Alpha, the atmosphere in the nest had a peaceful, relaxing effect that trumped even the most massive doses of adrenaline that coursed through the veins of men and dragons.