Life with the Night Furies Chapter 20
The bride and the groom had exchanged their vows; the actual wedding ceremony was over. But Rangi and Anya weren't officially husband and wife yet. There were some more traditions that they had to face first.
"Brave citizens of Berk! Brave Berkserkers!" Sigurd shouted. "This would normally be the time for the traditional foot race between the bride's side and the groom's side, in which the losers would serve the winners during the wedding reception. But Berk is too crowded for this race; we would all trip over each other, especially with Night Furies running among us. So form two lines, and Chief Night Fury will lead a dignified procession to the Mead Hall for the reception!" There was no resistance to this order; everyone was eager to get to the Mead Hall and let the party begin.
Hiccup-the-dragon led the way. Then came two rows. On the left, the Berserker side was led by Anya riding on Thing One's back, then Sigurd and Svenhund with young Skeetrat between them, then all the other Berserker guests. On the right, the Berk side was led by Rangi on Night-fury-mother-of-twins (he felt a little odd, riding on his sister's back, but she was insistent), followed by Varinn, Mr. and Mrs. Hofferson, and the rest of the Berk contingent. Hiccup glanced back at the bridal couple and recalled the days when he was first learning to ride Toothless. How thrilling those rides had been! What a price he would have paid if he'd been caught! Now, the bride and the groom calmly rode Night Furies to their wedding reception, and those Night Furies were the chief's mate and one of his daughters. Oh, how times had changed...
Once they reached the Mead hall, the bride and groom had two ceremonial tests that they had to pass. Anya had to step over the Hall's threshold in a long skirt without tripping, and Rangi had to throw his sword so it stuck into one of the wooden pillars of the Hall. Both succeeded without much difficulty (because both had been practicing for months) and took their places at the head table. They waited until everyone else was seated. Then one of the kitchen workers brought out a fancy mug of ale for Anya to present to her husband. She held it out to him and recited the traditional verse of bridal blessing –
"Ale I bring thee, thou oak-of-battle,
"With strength blended and brightest honor;
" 'Tis mixed with magic and mighty songs,
"With goodly spells, wish-speeding runes."
When she was done, she handed it to him with a smile. He smiled back at her, nodded to his dragon-sister who was watching from close range, raised the mug to his lips, and – "No!" Night-fury-mother-of-twins suddenly roared at point-blank range. "Do not drink!" He nearly spilled the mead on himself. Shocked silence fell over the Mead Hall.
"What's the matter?" he asked, stunned. His sister sniffed the mug of ale at close range, made a disgusted face, and covered the mug with her tail fin. She grunted, growled, and snarled viciously.
"She... she says it's p-p-poisoned," he translated, shaken to the core. Facing a man with a blade was bad enough; dealing with an invisible killer like poison felt much, much worse. He put the mug down on the table and slid it as far away from himself as he could without pushing it off the edge. Anya looked shocked as well, and clutched his arm.
"That was too close," she whispered. "Thank you, Mother-of-twins." Astrid was glaring angrily at the guests, trying to figure out who had done this to her brother.
"What is going on here?" Sigurd demanded of Chief Night Fury. "Are there assassins in your tribe as well?"
Hiccup barked some draconic syllables at the groom. "He says... he says everyone in the kitchen needs to get out here and pass the dragons' sniff test."
Gobber stepped to the door of the kitchen. "Ye heard th' dragon! Every one o' ye, out here, now!" A row of frightened-looking cooks and servers filed out of the food-prep area, where the three Night Furies sniffed them up and down. They were all slightly nervous, probably due to the close proximity of three suspicious black dragons, so the sniff test didn't prove anything.
"Is that all of ye?" Gobber demanded of the head cook.
The cook quickly counted heads. "One of the two new guys is still inside."
"New guys? What new guys?"
"We hired two men off a passing longship to help with cooking the vegetables," the cook explained. "They worked hard and didn't eat much, so I thought they were –"
Suddenly, the missing "new guy" stepped out of the kitchen behind him and hurled a meat cleaver at the bridegroom. It happened too fast; Rangi had no chance to dodge it. It flew through the air without spinning and struck him dead-center in the chest with a thud...
...and then it fell to the floor with a clank. Anya's wide-eyed scream died in her mouth. The cleaver had hit the Nadder scale that Fluffernut had hung on his chest, and bounced off as though it had struck hard leather armor. Rangi was shocked and as pale as a ghost, but unharmed.
Gobber took out the cleaver-thrower with a backhanded swipe of his wooden-hand attachment. But there was no time to heave any sighs of relief. One of the cooks pulled a wickedly-long kitchen knife out of his apron and rushed at the head table with a yell. At the same time, two men from the Berk side of the room drew short swords from under their vests and charged. Rangi stood to face the Berk men and drew his wedding sword, even though he wasn't very good at using it. Behind him, he heard Anya draw the gold-engraved sword he'd just given her.
They barely had time to raise their blades before their defensive measures became unnecessary. Just like that, the head table was surrounded by three very protective, very angry Night Furies. The cook with the knife tried to get around Astrid. Big mistake; big, big mistake. She tail-whipped him with a grunt and sent him flying through the air to slam into the far wall of the Hall, very hard. The other two assassins pulled up short when they realized they couldn't get past the snarling heads of Chief Night Fury and Thing One. They almost turned to run, but the rest of the wedding guests had them completely trapped, and they didn't dare turn their backs on the dragons.
"Drop your weapons, or I'll cut your heads off with that meat cleaver!" Sigurd ordered. Two short swords clattered to the floor. Spitelout and Gobber tied the two prisoners' hands with their own boot laces and led them out; two Berserker men carried the inert form of the knife-wielding cook, and two others took charge of the cleaver-thrower.
Rangi slowly sheathed his sword, and watched as Anya did the same. "You weren't kidding when you said you'd fight beside me!" he exclaimed.
"I keep my promises," she said simply. Her bridegroom was pale and shaking from all these attempts on his life. On impulse, she flung her arms around him. He clung to her for support; she might be mostly a stranger, but she was a nice stranger, and she felt a lot safer than anyone else in the room. The guests noticed them embracing, realized that this kind of affection between two strangers wasn't supposed to be happening yet, and chose to ignore it. These were not normal circumstances.
"So you did have some assassins in your tribe!" Sigurd said to Berk's dragon chief.
Snarl, grumble, snap-snarl. Rangi reluctantly disengaged himself from his bride's arms and stepped up next to his chief. "Chief Night Fury says he doesn't know who any of those men were. They were probably conspirators from your tribe, hiding among our people until the moment was right."
"I've never seen any of those men before in my life," Sigurd said firmly.
Growl, croon, rumble. "Then they must have been hired to do the dirty work; they were probably Outcasts. If they were killers for hire, then they were accustomed to stressful situations, which is why they passed our sniff test. But now they've seen what happens to people who try to hurt my friends; maybe they won't be so relaxed if we sniff them again!" The three Night Furies spread out among the guests, and Thing One soon called their attention to a Berserker man in unusually plain garb. Sigurd searched him and found another short sword on his belt, hidden by his vest. Sigurd drew the blade and pointed it at its owner's throat.
"Are you another Valhalla-seeker?" he demanded. "I'm tempted to give you what you want."
"Vikings are meant to die with glory, not to make peace with the dragons!" the man shot back. "We need enemies! We need someone to fight! We need a chance to meet a heroic end!"
"Did you think we were making peace with the whole world?" Sigurd burst out. "We've got a treaty with Berk, and that's all! I never said we were all going to become pacifists, did I? There will be plenty of chances for you and your bloodthirsty friends to die in battle against the other tribes, or pirates, or the Romans, or any of our other enemies! Even if we don't raid them, they're sure to try and raid us!"
"I never thought of that," the man said sheepishly.
"Well, it doesn't matter now," the chief said decisively. "I believe in being sociable, but enough is enough. If a violent death is the thing you and your friends want the most, then I'll have to be a good chief and give it to you. Guards! Take this man, and the other prisoners, to my flagship, tied hand and foot. Feed them bread and water. We'll bring them back to our capital when the wedding reception is over, and we'll have a quick relapse of the bad old days when Berserker justice was something to be feared." The guards nodded grimly as they obeyed him. Skeetrat hid behind his father and peered around him as he watched the condemned man being led away.
"Dad... are they going to... kill those men?" he asked nervously.
"We aren't going to tickle them, son," Svenhund said quietly.