Chapter 4: Nuffink's New Job
The next day, Nuffink went into Arendelle to look for a job. To make himself seem less intimidating, he left his sword and leather breastplate at home, only carrying the whip on his belt and the two knives in his boots. His iron-studded leather bracers were still on his forearms, and the new cloak he got from Elsa warded off the morning chill (not that Nuffink was bothered by it, having grown up on an island that saw snow most of the year).
It seemed like nobody was hiring at the moment, not even the kind baker who gave him free bread. Eventually, Nuffink ran into Kristoff, and the two went to a tavern for a drink.
"Any luck with the job hunting?" Kristoff asked as the two sat down at the bar.
"Not really," Nuffink admitted. The bartender approached them, and Kristoff ordered beer while Nuffink ordered mead.
"Y'know, I got to thinkin' after you left last night," said Kristoff after a few sips of his drink. "You said you're a blacksmith, right?"
"Aye," Nuffink confirmed with a nod.
"Well, I happen to harvest ice for a living. Around here, we use ice to make our food keep longer. Anyway, me and the rest of the ice harvesters go up to a high mountain lake that often freezes over, cut the ice into blocks, and ship it down here to sell to the fishmongers and other shopkeepers. The problem is, ice is a difficult material to work with. We could use someone like you to fix our broken tools so that we don't have to replace them as often," Kristoff offered. "What do you say? It would put your talents to good use."
Before Nuffink could respond, he felt a hand tap his shoulder. He turned around to find a grungy, unshaven man staring down at him with a frown on his face. His clothes were disheveled, and a long, broad knife speckled with spots of rust was haphazardly thrust into his belt.
"You're sitting at MY stool. Beat it!" the man growled. Nuffink looked around. At that time in the morning, the tavern was mostly empty.
"There are plenty of empty stools, friend. You could sit somewhere else," he suggested. The man's frown deepened, and he drew the knife and held it at Nuffink's neck.
"You're a stranger. I never let strangers sit at MY stool. Now move before I-" With a flick of Nuffink's wrist, the knife was sent flying across the room, embedding itself point-first in one of the wooden support columns. Nuffink hadn't even looked up from his flagon of mead. The man looked at where the knife landed with wide eyes, then looked back at Nuffink, who smirked before taking a sip of his drink. The man scowled again. "Alright, buddy. If it's a fight you want, then you've got one!"
"And here I was hoping to live peacefully," Nuffink sighed before setting his drink down and standing up. "Okay, let's get this over with." The other man threw the first punch, which Nuffink easily sidestepped. He clearly lacked actual fighting experience, as his form was bad and his guard was wide open. "You've never actually fought anyone before, have you?" Nuffink asked, dodging another punch. "Slow!" he taunted as the man punched again. "Sloppy!" he said as the man tried to knee his groin. He caught the man's fist in a vise-like grip as he tried one final time to punch Nuffink. "Sad!" Nuffink grinned with a glint in his one good eye and threw his own punch, sending the other man sprawling and gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
"Wow. Remind me not to get on your bad side," Kristoff commented when Nuffink sat back down.
"Agreed. Let this be a lesson for you: never challenge a Viking to a fistfight. You are almost guaranteed to lose," Nuffink said. "I accept your offer, by the way."
"Really? Great!"
...
Kristoff and Nuffink left the tavern upon finishing their drinks to see several people running past them and screaming.
"Hey, what's going on?" Kristoff asked.
"RUNAWAY BULL! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" one passerby yelled. True to their word, a black bull with white speckles was charging down the street, constantly crashing into a variety of objects as it attempted to turn. A young boy was trying to run, but tripped right in the bull's path. The two men looked on with horror as the boy scrambled to his feet, spotted the bull charging toward him, and froze.
Thinking fast, Nuffink took out his whip and snapped it forward. The end of the whip wrapped around the boy's waist, and with a sharp yank on Nuffink's part, he was pulled to safety. Once the boy was safely out of the way, Nuffink ran after the bull and jumped on its back. He was almost jolted off with each bounding step the bull took until he grabbed its horns with both hands. With a yell of effort, Nuffink used his grip on its horns and his own body weight to flip the bull onto its side. It flailed its legs, trying to get back to its feet, but Nuffink pinned on of its horns to the ground with his foot and drove his fist into a pressure point on the side of its neck, causing it to go limp. He then stood up and dusted himself off as a crowd gathered around him and the subdued bull.
The people were just staring and murmuring to themselves until the boy Nuffink had saved came forward.
"Y-you saved my life. Thank you, Mister!" he stammered. Then, without warning, the boy jumped forward and threw his arms around Nuffink's waist, catching him off-guard.
"That was incredible! How did you do that?" Kristoff asked as the boy was escorted away by his parents. Nuffink shrugged.
"It's how my mother and I dealt with stampeding yaks back home in the Archipelago," he replied. "Speaking of which, that has got to be the ugliest yak I've ever seen! And yaks are ugly to begin with!"
"Oh, that's not a yak, whatever a yak is," Kristoff explained. "I'm guessing you've never seen cattle before?"
"No. Not this kind of cattle at least. Yaks look similar to this thing, only taller, bulkier, and with much longer fur. Regardless, this bull will be as limp as a boned fish for the next several hours, which will give us plenty of time to find out where it escaped from."
While the two men were talking, unbeknownst to them, someone had been following them ever since they left the tavern. This individual spied on them from the shadows, carefully taking note of the Viking's every word and every action...
...
A few days later, having returned the escaped bull, Kristoff took Nuffink up the nearest mountain to the headquarters of the ice harvesters in a sleigh pulled by Sven the reindeer. Nuffink had been approved to work for them as a blacksmith, and this would be his first day of work.
"So...how profitable is your business, anyway?" Niffink asked out of curiosity.
"It actually used to be pretty poor," Kristoff replied. "Then the fishmongers figured out that ice can help keep their wares fresh. Our services come highly recommended now. At first, the others thought Queen Elsa would put us out of business with her magic, but she actually helps us meet the new demand by re-freezing the lake once in a while, especially in the summer, when we're the busiest. Did you use ice for anything in the Archipelago?"
"Not really. Mostly because it snowed for nine months of the year. If we happened to catch a whole lot of fish all at once, what we couldn't eat right then, we either smoked or pickled so we could feed ourselves in the winter."
They continued on in silence until they got to the headquarters, a squat wooden building with a blazing fireplace, racks for tools, shelves for spare coats and hats, and a desk with an elderly bespectacled man seated behind it. A few yards away from the main building was a second, longer building that served as stables for gigantic shaggy horses. Brief introductions were given, and Nuffink asked the elderly man, who he now knew to be Kristoff's boss, where the smithy was located so he could get to work.
"Smithy? What smithy?" the elderly man asked in return, to Kristoff's confusion and Nuffink's frustration.
"What smithy?" he echoed. "I'm a blacksmith! I need a smithy to do a blacksmith's work! That's what you hired me for, isn't it?"
"Ah, I'm afraid there's been a slight misunderstanding," the man replied. "While it may seem that I hired you as a blacksmith, I've heard about you and your unfamiliarity with our customs. Before I can allow you to work in a smithy, which we don't have yet, I'm going to need you to prove your work ethic on the ice. Kristoff, I trust you are capable of showing him the ropes?"
"Uh, yes, sir," Kristoff said. "C'mon, Nuffink, we don't have time to waste!" Kristoff practically dragged the seething Viking out the door and back to the sleigh.
"Unbelievable. The one job I know how to do, and I'm not allowed to do it!" Nuffink grumbled.
"Hey, working with ice isn't so bad. It's just back-breaking labor in frigid temperatures, that's all," Kristoff said in an attempt to console him. Predictably, it didn't work. As the sleigh got closer to the lake, Kristoff and Nuffink could hear a collection of deep male voices singing in unison:
Born of cold and winter air
And mountain rain combining
This icy force both foul and fair
Has a frozen heart worth mining
So cut through the heart
Cold and clear!
Strike for love and
Strike for fear!
See the beauty,
Sharp and clear
Split the ice apart!
And break the frozen heart!
Hup!
Ho!
Watch your step!
Let it go!
Hup!
Ho!
Watch your step!
Let it go!
Beautiful!
Powerful!
Dangerous!
Cold!
Ice has a magic,
Can't be controlled!
Stronger than one,
Stronger than ten,
Stronger than a hundred men!
Ha!
Born of cold and winter air
And mountain rain combining
This icy force both foul and fair
Has a frozen heart worth mining!
Cut through the heart
Cold and clear!
Strike for love and
Strike for fear!
There's beauty and
There's danger here!
Split the ice apart!
Beware the frozen heart!
"They seem like a lively bunch," Nuffink noted.
"Most of them are, once you get to know them," Kristoff agreed. Once they arrived at the lake, Kristoff showed Nuffink the basics of the job, then the two got to work. Most of the other workers were deeply impressed with how much Nuffink could handle without tiring.
Everyone worked all day until well after sundown, periodically stopping to rest. With the freshly cut blocks of ice in storage under mounds of sawdust to keep it from melting, one of Kristoff's coworkers treated everyone to a round of drinks at a tavern at the base of the mountain. The conversation among the workers eventually turned to the subject of one another's romantic endeavors, with several boasting about having asked out the girls of their dreams and Kristoff claiming that he intended to ask Anna to marry him.
"What about you, Nuffink? Any special ladies on your mind?" one of the workers asked.
"Aye. I was betrothed once," Nuffink replied with a sad, wistful smile. "Her name was Brunhilde, and she...was the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid eyes on..."
...
Nuffink sat on the edge of a cliff with his bride-to-be, Brunhilde Jorgenson, the daughter of Snotlout. Brunhilde was a head shorter than Nuffink, with straight jet-black hair tied back in a loose ponytail, icy blue eyes, and cheeks that were lightly dusted with freckles. Under her armor-plated black leather vest and spike-studded skirt, she wore a form-fitting brown long-sleeved shirt and brown leggings. There were knives tucked into her boots and a pair of short swords hanging from her belt.
Brunhilde sighed and leaned her head on Nuffink's shoulder, prompting him to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her closer.
"Why did we have to go to war so close to our wedding?" the young Viking maiden asked.
"It's not necessarily anyone's fault, Hil," Nuffink replied, removing his hand from her waist to run it through her hair. "If anything, blame those rotten savages for attacking the other tribes and saving us for last. We'll show them, though! We Hooligans won't go down without a fight!" He shifted and placed a kiss against Brunhilde's forehead. "When we win, and we will, nothing will ever get between you and me again. I promise." Brunhilde smiled, closed her eyes, and tilted her face upward. The two young lovers' lips met, and they wrapped their arms around each other as their kiss deepened.
Too bad Nuffink wouldn't get to keep his promise.
Chief Hiccup had assigned Brunhilde with a few other of his younger warriors to be the last defense of the elders and children. When he found her corpse among the carnage, Nuffink wept arguably even more bitterly than he had for his parents and sister. He clutched her limp body to his own as he sobbed, his tears soaked up by her blood-matted hair.
...
"...but alas, tragedy snatched my bride away. Along with my family and the rest of my tribe," Nuffink concluded, raising the wooden tankard of mead to his lips. After a few hearty chugs, he set the empty tankard down. "I just wish I got to kill more of those Helheim spawn than I did. Maybe then I wouldn't be the only survivor." He looked up when an older, more grizzled ice worker laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Believe you me, lad, we know how you feel. We've all lost family and friends at one point or another," he said with a slight Scottish accent. "Some of us have even lost them in wars, just like you."
Nuffink let out a dry chuckle and replied, "Oh, I wouldn't exactly call it a war. The battle itself couldn't have lasted more than a day. A more accurate term would be extermination. Those cannibalistic vermin had it coming." Several of the other workers, including Kristoff, spat out their drinks.
"Cannibals?!" they exclaimed.
"Aye, cannibals," Nuffink confirmed. "Each one had the shape of a man, but the mind of a beast. Heartless, relentless, and savage. We called them the Wendel, the Eaters of the Dead. I lost my eye to one of their women, and she nearly took my life as well. I patched myself up, and here I am now." He sighed. "I no longer mourn for the fallen. For Vikings like me, to perish in the heat of battle is among the highest of honors. Their souls will live on in Valhalla, the Feast Hall of the Slain, where they will train to fight for the gods in the great battle of Ragnarök."
"Nuffink. Buddy. We have got to meet up and discuss this some more," Kristoff said excitedly. "I want to know everything about your culture now!"
...
A few days later, when the ice workers' wages were due, Nuffink was outraged when his potential employer refused to pay him at all. Rather than outright kill the man in his rage, Nuffink quit on the spot and trekked back down the mountain alone. On the way, he passed Queen Elsa and her royal escort, who were headed in the opposite direction so that Elsa could replenish the ice on the surface of the lake. Elsa was surprisingly sympathetic to Nuffink's plight, informing him that a position as a smith in the royal armory was, in fact, open.
Upon bidding Elsa and her escort farewell, rather than return straight to his cottage, Nuffink made periodic stops on his way through the forest to check his rabbit snares. That's where Captain Bjornson and several guards found him; walking down a trail with a brace of rabbits slung over one shoulder.
"AH-HA!" the captain exclaimed triumphantly. "Poaching on the Queen's land! I knew you were up to no good! Get him, men!" Having been caught off-guard and unarmed, Nuffink fought back as best as he could with his fists and a tree branch. Only this time, the guards had the upper hand. Nuffink fell to his knees when a guard's sword slashed open the inside of his left thigh, and the captain smashed his sword pommel into the back of Nuffink's head. The last thing he felt before the world went black was the guards forcing a set of manacles onto his wrists.
...
When Nuffink came to, he was in a kneeling position on a hard stone surface outdoors. His arms were stretched out to either side and tied to thick wooden posts. The gash on his thigh left a small pool of blood beneath him, and the same crimson liquid trickled down the sides of his chest from the numerous slash and stab wounds on both arms. His tunic was gone, and judging by the breeze on his face, so was his eyepatch, leaving his battle-scarred body exposed. He gazed up into the smirking face of the Captain of the Guard, who was flanked by two guards, each of whom held a cat-o'-nine-tails at the ready, small bits of glass and bone woven into the cords.
"I'll be honest, whatever your name is," Captain Bjornson began, "I hate when foreigners like you stir up trouble for me and my men. Today, I'm hoping to make an example out of you for the rest of the rabble-rousers, because the punishment for hunting on the Queen's land is forty lashes. This won't hurt a bit...for me, anyway!"
The cruel man started to laugh, only to be hit square in the eye by a glob of phlegm and saliva that Nuffink shot from his mouth with impressive aim. The captain wiped his face in disgust and signaled to the guards. The lashing began, and the young Viking squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as the scourges bit into the flesh of his back and shoulders. Lesser men would have begged for mercy, but Nuffink only glared at his captor in defiance. He grunted and snarled in pain as he was struck again...and again...and again...and again...
When each guard had just struck their tenth blow for a total of twenty, they were suddenly immobilized by twin blasts of icy magic.
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!" Queen Elsa bellowed, angrily striding up to the captain, who was likewise immobilized by ice. "HOW DARE YOU ATTACK AN INNOCENT CIVILIAN?! YOU SHOULD BE ABOVE THIS KIND OF CRUELTY!"
"I-I-I caught him poaching, Your Highness. He had to be punished!" Captain Bjornson nervously defended himself.
"This is exactly why I abolished the hunting restrictions! The citizens have to feed themselves in the event of a food shortage, so anyone who wants to hunt is allowed to hunt! And you of all people should know that!" the queen ranted. She paced about, grinding her palms against her eyes and sucking air through her teeth. When she could finally bring herself to look at the captain again, her face was equal parts angry and weary. "Now I know why so many of my citizens have been complaining about you. It's obvious to me now that I have been far too lenient with you, Captain Bjornson. We are supposed to welcome visitors with open arms, not punish them for crimes they never committed. You are an embarrassment to me and a disgrace to my kingdom. Henceforth, you are hereby BANISHED from the Kingdom of Arendelle!" She waved her hand, and the ice encasing the now former Captain of the Guard shattered. "Clear out your quarters. I will send for Marshmallow and have him escort you to Arendelle's border."
Marshmallow was the gigantic Snow Golem created by Elsa during her brief self-imposed exile, while she was struggling to get a proper grasp of her powers. It would take him a while to lumber his way down from the Ice Palace deep in the mountains, so she would have to keep her former captain under close supervision until he arrived. Meanwhile, she ordered that Nuffink be escorted into the castle and for his wounds to be dressed. She was willing to do anything to compensate for her guards' mistakes and earn his forgiveness.