Life with the Night Furies Chapter 23
"...and the killer is probably hiding in there now, with his knife drawn, waiting for us to go back inside and lie down." Anya did not like the sound of that.
"Don't blame us for that!" Ruffnut exclaimed. "We thought it was just a prank! We didn't know he wanted to kill anybody!"
"It's bad enough getting blamed for the stuff we did do!" Tuff added.
"Fun is fun, but we're not murderers," Ruff said urgently. "Or murderers' helpers, either."
"I think they're telling the truth," Rangi said to his new wife. Anya held the lantern aloft and moved as though she was going to look into the house. Rangi caught her arm and held her back. "Don't risk it," he cautioned her. "We've got a big friend with a sensitive nose who can tell us if somebody's in there. Thing One, is someone in the house?"
The Night Fury stepped up to the threshold, making sure there weren't any more yak patties there, and sniffed. She sniffed again. "Yes, one man in there," she snarled angrily. "You want me kill him inside, or chase him out, then kill him?"
Rangi considered some possibilities. "Neither one. I don't know how many times the dragons have saved my life tonight, and I'm thankful... but I'm going to ask you to do it one more time. These murderers have ruined my wedding, my reception, and my wedding night, and I have had it! When that happens, I usually unwind by having a little fun at someone else's expense. That's what I'm going to do tonight. Thing One, go get your sister; I've got a special job for the two of you, and I think you'll like it. Ruffnut, Tuffnut, guard the back door and keep the bad guy inside until the Night Furies return."
"Why should we?" Tuff demanded. "We cleaned up our mess, just like you said, and now we're even!"
"Yeah!" Ruff added. "We don't owe you anything now."
Rangi thought fast. "If you'll guard the door, then we'll tell tell the chief that it was the Berserkers who made our yard stink tonight, and you were never here."
"Deal!" they grinned and ran around the house to the back door, drawing their belt knives as they went.
"Rangi, what are you going to do?" Anya asked, somewhat nervously.
"I'm going to let Thing One finish what she started," Rangi grinned, then whispered in her ear for a few seconds.
"Isn't that kind of an extreme solution to the problem?" she asked him.
"It's a Rangi solution," he answered. "Like I said, I have had enough of these killers, and getting rid of them the chief's way isn't working, so we're going to do it my way!" The Night Fury twins returned a few seconds later and landed next to him, grinning with anticipation. He explained his wishes; they nodded gleefully, then took off straight up. For about thirty seconds, there was silence. Then they heard two rising whistles from overhead, and two bright firebolts lanced downwards and blasted the main roof beam in two places. The roof collapsed; hundreds of pounds of dried mud, straw, and timber fell into the house; the dust clouds rising upwards and pouring out the open door made it hard to see the house at all for a few seconds.
Then they could hear a man coughing and shouting, "Hey! Get me out of here! I'm trapped! I can't move! Somebody, help me!"
"We help him, all right," came another voice from overhead. It was Chief Night Fury, he did not sound happy, and he'd brought his entire family with him. They landed in front of the house and waited for Thing One and Thing Two to join them.
"How did you know we needed help?" Rangi asked him.
"Nothing happens on this island without me hearing about it," Hiccup answered. "We hear Thing One wake up her sister in middle of night, both fly away. That mean bad news for somebody. I find out what kind of bad news, and for who. Those twins break all records for being in trouble now. Why they ruin your house?"
"Don't blame them! It was my idea!" Rangi exclaimed. Hiccup-the-dragon and Astrid-the-dragon did matching double-takes. "The house was half-ruined anyway. Thing One put a hole in the roof – it was an accident, she didn't mean to do it – and the whole place is going to stink of yak patties for days. It's no place for a honeymooning couple, and I wanted to be sure the bad guy didn't get away. I asked the twins to do this; please don't punish them for it. Once we fix the roof, and once the yard has aired out a little, it will be a nice place to live, but not tonight. In the meantime, there's another Berserker bridegroom-killer stuck inside, which is right where I wanted him. He's all yours now."
"This not good start to your honeymoon," Mother-of-twins commented.
"We need humans to get killer out of there," Smith-flies-for-fun added.
"Why yard smell like yak patties?" Six wondered.
"Can we deal with all that later?" Rangi asked. "This isn't even close to what I want to be doing tonight!"
"What you want do tonight?" Thing One asked as she and her twin sister landed. "You did mating, I think; what else is there?"
"Sleep!" Rangi and Anya chorused. All of the ex-human Night Furies laughed. The ones who had hatched from eggs didn't understand.
"How she know you did mating already?" Hiccup demanded. "She promised she not sneak inside!"
"Well, she didn't... technically," Anya tried to explain.
"What you mean?
"That's kind of a long story," Rangi shrugged. "I'd rather tell it tomorrow, after we've gotten some rest."
"But where will they sleep?" Full-of-surprises asked. "My bratty little sisters just blew up the man's house!"
"He told us to do it!" Thing Two shot back.
"He really told you to wreck his own house?" Full-of-surprises wasn't expecting that.
"We probably saved his life by doing it," Thing One added. "And my friend, the female, as well."
Faithful-brother waved his tail for attention. "We can sort out all the details later. For now, we need to put our heads together and figure out where our human friends are going to spend the rest of their wedding night."
"How about my old bedroom?" Mother-of-twins suggested after a few seconds. "I know it's available. No one has slept there for a year or more."
"We'll have to wake up your mother so she can prepare it for Rangi and Anya," Hiccup noted. "I don't think she'll appreciate that, will she?"
"Trust me – I know my mother! She's a classic 'mom' type. She'd much rather wake up in the middle of the night and do some quick housekeeping, than find out later that her son and her new daughter-in-law spent their wedding night sleeping in a field." It was agreed, and it worked out very much as Astrid had predicted. The chief found a few men who were still awake and celebrating in the Mead Hall, and drafted them to rescue and imprison the latest Berserker assassin. Chief Sigurd the Sociable was shaken; he'd assumed that the Berserker tribe would follow his peaceful lead once he became chief, and he had been proven badly wrong. He resolved to show more backbone and make fewer assumptions about his people's state of mind.
The only difficulty arose when Thing One tried to follow Rangi and Anya into the Hofferson home. Edda Hofferson was not prejudiced against dragons (which was a good thing, seeing how her daughter, her son-in-law, and most of her grandchildren were of the reptilian persuasion), but she had some strong views about dragons in her house, which could be summed up in the word "no." Thing One made the puppy-dog eyes; she sat up and begged; she wrote "PLEASE" in the dirt in front of the door; but Mrs. Hofferson was unmoved. "My house is for people," she said firmly, and just as firmly closed the door. Thing One sighed sadly, lay down in front of the door, and thought about what she should do next.
Peace returned to the Viking village.
The bride and the groom lay down together in the loft of the Hofferson home, still very keyed up from the night's events. "I'm tired, but I don't know if I can fall asleep," Anya yawned.
"I know what you mean," Rangi nodded. Then his eyes sparkled. "So, if we're going to be awake anyway, do you suppose we could... you know... do another round of... uhh..."
Anya blushed, but her eyes were sparkling too. "Well, since we can't fall asleep right away, then I suppose we –"
They were cut off by a heavy quadruple-thump right over their heads. A few light siftings of dust drifted down on them; they clung to each other, held their breath, and waited for the rest of the roof to cave in. But Thing One had learned her lesson about Viking roofs. She kept her weight on the main roof beam and did no damage to the Hofferson house, except for a few claw marks that couldn't be seen from ground level.
"Does she have to follow me wherever I go?" Anya quavered.
"It's only because she likes you, you know," Rangi tried to reassure his nervous bride.
"I know," she nodded. "It's just a little unnerving now and then." Then she asked, "Rangi, do you like me?"
"Yes! Of course I do," he exclaimed, surprised by the question. "I mean, I wouldn't jump on the roof for you like Thing One does, but I'll definitely follow you wherever you go. I think you're going to make me very happy, and I'll try to do the same for you."
She snuggled up against his shoulder. "I like the sound of that," she said softly. "Now do you think we've gotten through all of tonight's surprises?"
He shook his head. "After everything that's happened since the first time I said that, I don't dare say it again. But I sure hope so."
They never knew it, but the Berserker plot still had one last killer on the loose, and he was determined to finish what his fellow-plotters had started. He watched where the bride and groom went to spend the rest of the night, and his dagger was sharp and ready. But he spotted the Night Fury on guard on the Hoffersons' roof, and decided that waiting until morning to do the deed would be wiser than tangling with the black dragon at night. He never got his chance. As soon as Rangi and Anya stepped out the door the next morning, Thing One glided down to join them. She walked right beside them, alertly looking and sniffing all around, as they reported to the Mead Hall for the presentation of the bride's morning-gift. The killer didn't dare get within forty feet of an escort like that. As soon as the morning-gift was given, the marriage became legal and the peace treaty was irrevocably sealed. The last Berserker assassin, watching from a corner of the Hall, realized this and gave up. There was no point in trying to kill Rangi and earning a death sentence if it wouldn't change anything. Thing One had saved Rangi from the first attempt on his life and from one of the attempts in the middle, and although no one ever knew it, she saved him from the last attempt as well.
The wedding-reception party went on for a week, and the couple's vacation from work lasted a solid month. Chief Night Fury occasionally turned to his language assistant when ironing out difficulties with the visiting Berserkers, but for the most part, he let the couple enjoy their honeymoon. Within a week, they weren't acting like strangers to each other. In their second week, they had their first disagreement (about whether to let Thing One into their newly-repaired and cleaned-up house) and learned how to make up. In the third week, when Mother-of-twins called Rangi a little troll in the Mead Hall, Anya angrily demanded that the dragon show respect for him. Astrid was taken aback by this, and while she didn't quit calling Rangi a troll altogether, she did cut back on it in public. In the fourth week, while Anya and Thing One were out for a joyride together, they spotted Trader Johann sailing for Berk as fast as he could, with a pirate ship slowly overtaking him with sails and oars. A few well-placed firebolts shattered the pirates' oars and persuaded them to surrender, which cemented Anya's place as a citizen of Berk and made Johann extremely happy. He gave her a white fur hat as a combined wedding present and thank-you gift.
Everyone agreed that Chief Night Fury had done well by arranging this marriage, with Rangi and Anya agreeing the most of all. Thing One also approved, because the male human made her friend happy. Rangi returned to his role as Chief Night Fury's translator, and Anya plied her trade as a skilled embroiderer and got her new house organized. But the pair had so many problems trying to keep Thing One out of the house that they gave up trying. Rangi hired a carpenter to make the doors of his house wide enough for a Night Fury to enter and leave easily. Night-fury-faithful-brother used a sand table to draw a set of two-way hinges so Thing One could push the door open from either side, and Varinn and Night-fury-smith-flies-for-fun forged them, along with some friction catches so the door would stay shut when they wanted it to. The tribe's stonemason laid a large flat slab at the foot of the bed, so Thing One's claws wouldn't wear out the floorboards, and the young Night Fury moved in as though she owned the place. Rangi and Anya sometimes tripped over her tail, and they had to be careful about leaving their fish dinners unattended in the kitchen area, but they never had trouble with pranksters or thieves for the rest of their lives. Besides, it was easier than worrying about their Night Fury friend cavorting on the roof again.
Usually, when a newly-married Viking couple welcomed someone new into the house, it was due to a birth. In Rangi and Anya's case, it was due to a strong-willed black dragon. It took some adjusting, but they all eventually agreed that they liked it that way.
The End
(of this part of the story)