The Berserker War Chapter 03

The nest on Dragon Island was quiet when the Night Fury twins arrived. The dragons had all just returned from a nighttime fishing expedition. Their technique was simple: the Nadders and Nightmares would flame just above the surface of the sea, and when the fish rose to the light, the Gronckles would fire lava-bolts into the water to stun them. Then all the dragons would gorge themselves on floating fish, and come home fat and happy.

Toothless and Guana liked it when the dragons were happy; it meant no fights or arguments for them to break up. They were lounging on their favorite ledge, with their little son nearby, when the twins found them, greeted them, and delivered their news.

"That's bad," Night-fury nodded.

"That's much worse than bad," Lady-night-fury corrected him. "The Berserkers are the biggest tribe in the Northland! If they want war..." She paused. "Is it the humans or the dragons they're after?"

"Both," Young-girl-night-fury answered. "Their new chief, Dagur, has off-center thinking. He hates dragons, and he hates humans who would be friends with dragons." That got Toothless' full attention. The phrase "off-center thinking" meant "insanity" in dragon language, and it was something that almost never happened. If a dragon's thinking went off-center, he would usually be driven away into the wilderness by the other dragons. He certainly wouldn't be allowed a place of leadership! Sometimes, human behavior just defied explanation.

"Our parents were hoping you and your nest would join us," Young-girl-night-fury added.

"The two of us are with you, of course," Night-fury answered immediately, "but the rest of the nest... maybe not. Most dragons aren't willing to fight for somebody else's problem. In any case, they're all sleepy and their bellies are full; this isn't the time to try and stir them up for war. We'll make an impassioned speech in the morning and see what happens."

"That's all we can ask," Young-boy-night-fury replied. "We have to get home so we can find out what our Nest is planning."

"They're sending you two to war, too?" Guana was surprised at that.

"This is an all-or-nothing fight," Young-girl-night-fury said quietly. "If we stay out of it and save our lives, but lose our parents and our Nest, what good is that?"

"Fly fast and shoot straight, fighting dragons," Night-fury said solemnly. The twins took wing and spiraled up the volcano's cone until they were out of sight.

It was still dark when they got home. New-night-fury nodded when he got their report.

"That's pretty much what I thought would happen," he said to Night-fury-mother-of-twins. "Toothless will make a fine speech, and two or three young dragons will respond, but the rest will say, 'Why should we die for a human village?' We'll go to war with the dragons we've got."

"You have to admit, that isn't much," Night-fury-mother-of-twins said.

"We can take some steps to fix that," her mate replied, and grinned at each of his family members in turn. "Stoick wants us to hit their ships, but he doesn't want it to look like Berk did it. I'm thinking that our enemies are still at sea, so maybe it's time we had a talk with the sea dragons."

o

The Berserkers' trip home had been completely uneventful, except for the unfortunate warriors on Dagur's flagship. Those tortured souls had to endure his endless ranting against Berk, and Stoick, and dragons, as well as his increasingly impractical and gory plans for all of the above. He was in the middle of describing an extremely unlikely scheme involving Deadly Nadders, spears, and a huge pit full of mud when his guards stirred. They'd heard a series of quiet splashing sounds nearby. There wasn't much to be afraid of, out here at sea, but they were alert nonetheless.

They never saw what hit them, but they certainly heard it. An entire flock of Thunderdrums had risen out of the sea and unleashed their roars on the starboard side of the formation. Sails split; masts cracked and fell over the side; shields were torn from their mountings and tossed into the sea; and many men were knocked off their feet. Some of them landed on sharp, pointy objects, which wasn't good for their health. A few were blown right overboard, where they had to remove all their armor and let it sink before the weight of it dragged them down. Before any of the Berserkers could recover his wits and fight back, the Thunderdrums had dived back into the dark waters and disappeared.

They surfaced a mile away, where Berk's four Night Furies were orbiting. The Thunderdrum leader raised his head toward New-night-fury. "You're sure the other Vikings won't hunt us down and kill us for doing this?" he asked.

"If they knew what you were doing, they'd thank you with fish," New-night-fury grinned. "It sounded like your first strike went well. Did any of you get hurt?"

"I don't think they even saw us," the leader grinned back. "Can we have some fun next time?"

"Have all the fun you want," Night-fury-mother-of-twins replied, "as long as it's fun for you and not for them. Remember, make one more good strike, and then step aside until their formation falls apart."

"You've got it!" the leader answered. "Thunderdrums, huddle up! I'll tell you what we're going to do next!" The Night Furies broke their circular formation and began to climb.

All the Berserkers were on their guard now. Everyone was looking out to sea for any sign of the elusive Thunderdrums... except for the ones who had to row because their ships had lost masts or sails. No one was looking inward. When the sea dragons rose in the middle of the ships' formation, they achieved surprise again.

The damage was greater this time, because some of the ships were already strained from the first attack. Boards flexed and cracked; water spurted in through the newly-opened holes. Some of the warriors had to drop their weapons and bail out the water with buckets. That left even fewer to fight back. Casualties mounted.

One young Thunderdrum got too bold, and tried to tail-whip a big Berserker who had thrown a spear at him and missed. Several of the man's friends grabbed the tail, hauled the dragon on board, and made short work of him. Three of the dragon's friends avenged him by roaring the length of the ship, which almost fell apart from the sonic stress.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the attack was over. Few of the Berserkers could hear properly at this point, but they desperately tried to hear where their assailants would surface next. At the sound of the slightest splash, every able-bodied warrior would rush to the gunwales with spears at the ready. The first two times they did this, it was in response to waves splashing against the sides of their ship.

The third time, they presented a massed target to a Scauldron, which had a full shot of superheated steam ready. It couldn't miss, and it didn't. Suddenly, that ship didn't have enough rowers to keep up with the rest of the ships. It began to fall behind, which forced the ships behind it to veer to either side to avoid ramming it.

Scauldrons are solitary creatures, unlike the sociable Thunderdrums. They live alone, and they attack alone. Hiccup and his family had managed to make contact with only two of them. Those two kept submerging and reappearing in random places, which made it impossible for the Berserkers to know how many of the huge sea dragons they were fighting. Wherever they struck, they decimated the crews and left the ships wallowing at reduced speed. More and more ships were breaking their formation to avoid collisions. This made it harder for them to protect each other. It was around this time that the ship that had been triple-blasted by the Thunderdrums finally sank. Men shed their armor, dropped their weapons, and swam for their lives toward the nearest ship.

The Scauldron attacks stopped, but that was no mercy to the beleaguered Berserkers. The sudden absence of big sea dragons only meant that the battlefield was clear for the creature the sailors feared most of all.

One by one, the survivors of the sinking just vanished below the surface, pulled down by an unseen threat. In the darkness, it wasn't clear what was happening, until a man who was climbing the gunwales to safety was suddenly yanked away and down. The men who were trying to help him saw what had gotten him, and raised the alarm.

"SHARKWORMS!"

Night-fury-mother-of-twins had ventured far to the south of Berk, where the waters are warmer, and persuaded a big school of the fearsome predators that, if they could endure cold water for a night, it would be worth their while. Now they struck without mercy. Some focused on the men in the water; others climbed aboard the ships in twos and threes, siezing terrified sailors and dragging them overboard. The Berserkers fought back as best they could; they dropped their throwing weapons and stabbed with spears and knives at close range. Everyone's eyes were on the gunwales of their own ships.

Of course, that was when the Thunderdrums struck again. Over half of the great fleet was incapacitated by now, and losses were mounting. Another ship sank. Most of the men from that ship survived, only because there weren't enough Sharkworms to get them all. When a Scauldron raised its head to spray the lead ship and leave it crewless, the others veered to starboard or port to avoid it, and the confused formation virtually split into two smaller fleets.

Thanks to the Thunderdrums, the Berserker warriors were all deafened to some degree. Their ears would recover eventually, but for now, they had to rely on sight in the darkness. None of them could hear four rising whistles plunging down at them from above.

The Night Furies each made one firing pass; the goal was not to inflict damage, but to give the twins a fairly safe introduction to battle. They aimed at ships that hadn't suffered much damage yet. Their fireballs blew out the bottoms of the ships they hit, and those four ships sank quickly. The men panicked as they leaped into the water; some of them drowned each other. One ship's crew was almost wiped out when a rare Seashocker unleashed a full-strength electrical blast in their midst. Still more fell prey to the Sharkworms, or to the conventional sharks that were quickly gathering on the outskirts of the battle. The majority, including Dagur, made it to other ships, where they shivered and called down divine curses on every dragon that had ever lived.

The horror finally ended when dawn approached. Most of the Berserkers had never been so happy to see the sun rise; many had thought they would never see it again. Their ships were scattered all over the sea, and virtually all of them were relying on the strength of their oarsmen to keep moving. It took hours for Dagur's officers to gather a damage report and bring it to him. They had to write it, because none of them could hear. They drew straws; the loser took the report to Dagur.

"We lost eight ships. Most of the others will need masts repaired or replaced. Losses in men... too many to count. We think we killed two Thunderdrums and five Sharkworms."

Dagur stared incredulously at the parchment and wrote two words. "That's all?"

His officer feared his chief's temper, and tried to put a positive spin on his report. "There were probably more, but the men who killed those dragons are no longer around to tell us about it."

Dagur the Deranged crumpled up the report and threw it over the side. As an afterthought, he pushed the officer overboard as well. That man swam to a nearby ship that had lost its mast and was leaking like a sieve. He figured he'd be safer there.