The Berserker War Chapter 06
The Night Furies' first concern was their wounded friends. They had made arrangements in advance with the Vikings, and Gothi had gotten her rest that day so she could stay up all night. She had extra herbs and infusions ready, and she'd chosen some of the town's women to help her if needed. But the sudden arrival of nine big dragons, wounded and in pain, taxed her resources to the limit. It didn't help that she'd never provided medical care to dragons before.
Some of them had holes in their wings, which just needed careful stitching. Others had deep spear wounds that needed special care. They all needed huge quantities of drinking water to help offset the loss of blood. The Night Furies took a minute to talk to each of them, reassuring them that they were in good hands and everything would be okay. Then they motioned with their heads to Gothi, signifying that they wanted to talk to her privately. Gobber followed them.
It was a strange conversation. The dragons would write runes in the dirt with their claws; Gothi would read them, and write her reply in the dirt with her staff; and Gobber would translate out loud so the dragons could understand her, sometimes with questionable results. The upshot of it all was that eight of the nine wounded dragons would live to fly and fight another day. The ninth one... there were limits to what even the wisest healer could do. Her only course of action was to reduce its pain by knocking it out with dragon-nip grass until it succumbed to its injuries.
"This stinks," Hiccup said dejectedly.
"This is war," Toothless replied. "You had an excellent plan, and it worked better than I expected. But when two groups of beings are doing their best to kill each other, some of them are going to succeed. I hope you aren't blaming yourself."
"No, I'm blaming Dagur! And his advisors! And every boar-headed, stubborn Viking who thinks war is the answer for everything!" Hiccup burst out.
"Maybe we could just take out Dagur," Guana wondered.
"He'd be hard to find, unless we got down on the ground with his army and went through them, man by man, until we found him," Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang thought out loud.
"Besides, if a dragon got him, there's a good chance they'd replace him with someone who's just as vengeful against dragons, but not as crazy," Hiccup continued. "We could end up worse off than we are now."
"But speaking of Dagur's advisors, there's another aspect of this that worries me," Astrid said, anxious to change the subject. "When dragons attack at night, Vikings usually fight back by trying to see them, and then throwing their weapons at them. They tried something different tonight, and that's what hurt us. They just threw everything into our flight path, instead of aiming at us. I've never seen that before, and it was effective." She took a deep breath. "It was scary. That tactic could work just as well against us as any other kind of dragon."
"You're saying somebody in the Berserker camp is actually thinking?" Young-girl-night-fury wondered.
"It sure looks that way," Toothless answered. "We'll need to think of a counter-tactic."
"But they all did it!" Hiccup exclaimed. "It wasn't just one clever person; it was part of the whole fleet's battle plan. Whoever this thinker was, he actually convinced Dagur and the entire Berserker tribe to try something non-traditional."
"That must be a remarkable individual," Guana mused.
"That's an individual who scares me," Astrid replied quietly. "Knowing that we had Hiccup on our side was one of the few things that made me feel like we could win this thing. Now it looks like the other side has a Hiccup of their own, and their leaders are listening to him, and that's really bad."
"He's not a Hiccup," Toothless said firmly. "There's only one of those, and we've got him. We're talking about an anti-Hiccup."
"Maybe we should call him the Burp," Guana suggested. The twins were still young enough to find that extremely funny.
o
The Berserker fleet, or what was left of it, had made it to shore safely before the worst of the storm hit. They lost one ship to a sharp rock just below the surface; all the others had been pulled up on a rocky, snow-covered beach and tied down, so a storm tide couldn't wash them away. The Berserkers themselves were huddled under trees nearby, trying to dry off, stay warm, and light fires so they could cook their food. These were all hard tasks to perform in high winds and drifting snow.
"I can't wait until this storm ends, so we can go home where it's safe," one of them grumbled.
"You mean, where it's less dangerous," his friend muttered.
"I almost wish we had a dragon here, so it could light this campfire for us," a third mumbled.
Dagur was instantly in their midst. "Who said that?" he demanded. "I order you to tell me who said that!"
Five men pointed at their neighbors and said, "He did."
Dagur grunted in disgust. "In the good old days, I would have killed all five of you!" He stalked away and was quickly lost to sight in the blowing snow.
The other Vikings waited until he was gone. Then one quietly said, "In the good old days, we wouldn't..." He paused and cupped a hand to his ear. "Did I just hear something?"
"It's hard to tell, between the noise of the wind and the crashing of the waves," his friend said.
"No, it sounded like... oh, no."
Then the others heard it too. "Night Fury!" "Get down!" They had barely thrown themselves headlong into the snow when the first firebolts crashed into their ships. Flames leaped high; all six of the hit ships were ruined and the flames had spread to a seventh by the time the Berserkers found the courage to get out of the snowdrifts and try to fight the fires. They looked frantically into the night sky in search of a target, but of course, they saw nothing. Nobody ever saw a Night Fury, even on a clear night. They never stole food, never showed themselves, and never missed – everybody knew that!
But why, all of a sudden, were there so many of them? And why were they all picking on the Berserkers? The idea that the Night Furies had allied themselves with Berk was so ridiculous, no one entertained it for a moment.
The first firing pass had come in from the sea. Where would they come from when they returned? More importantly, where would they go when they pulled out of their dives? The Berserkers had to have a few seconds' warning to put their Cloud of Death, as Dagur called their aerial barrage, in the right place to kill some dragons. If they could actually bring down a Night Fury...
They heard the dragons diving again, and prepared to hurl their weapons. This time, it was to no avail; the Night Furies came in along the line of beached ships, and pulled out to seaward where no weapon could reach them. Four powerful firebolts blasted four more ships into burning scrapwood. The fifth dragon did something different. It slowed slightly, and spat out six smaller fireballs in quick succession, setting four adjacent ships ablaze. When the Berserkers tried to put out the fires with buckets of sea water, a sixth dragon scattered them and sent them into hiding with a powerful blast of its own. All eight ships were soon consumed in flames. The Berserkers waited warily for another attack, but the Night Furies didn't return.
One veteran warrior turned to another. "Okay, we've got over two thousand men here, and only five good ships left. What do we do now?"
"I guess most of us start walking," the other Viking replied dejectedly.
A few hundred feet offshore, unseen by the Berserkers, a huge toothy head broke the surface for a moment, looked toward the shore, and submerged again.
"Have they left the land yet?" his friend asked him.
"No," the first Thunderdrum said. "The Night Furies said they'll probably wait until the storm is over."
"That's okay," a third one answered. "We can wait, too. When they're ready to come out and play, we'll be here." The rest of the underwater flock nodded in grim anticipation.
o
Back in the Nest, the black dragons began to relax from a successful raid.
"That's just about the end of the Berserker navy," Astrid commented happily. "From now on, we don't have to worry about them coming by sea."
"We ought to keep up the ocean patrols anyway," Hiccup replied. "Dagur could buy ships from other tribes, or conscript all his fishing boats into the invasion fleet, or who knows what else. We don't dare assume that he'll accept any kind of defeat."
"I agree," Guana nodded, then turned to Young-girl-night-fury. "But I want to know what you did back there! I counted six separate shots from one firing pass!"
Young-girl-night-fury allowed herself the luxury of a satisfied smirk. "Oh, that's a little trick Uncle Toothless taught me yesterday morning when we had some spare time."
"But I only taught you about firing four times in a row!" Toothless protested. "I've never even tried five, never mind six! Besides, if you shoot more than three, I don't think the firebolts will have enough blast power to accomplish anything."
"But I wasn't going for blast power – I just wanted to start fires," she retorted. "Six small fires seemed better than three or four medium-sized ones, even if I couldn't spread them enough to hit six separate targets."
"You should have told us in advance that you were trying something fancy!" Astrid argued. "When you slowed down in the middle of your firing pass, my heart stopped – I thought you'd been hit!"
"She told me about it in advance," Night-fury-makes-one-heck-of-a-bang answered. "She knew she'd have to fly slow to make it work, and she asked me to cover her."
"Well, I'm glad you were thinking that much, at least," Hiccup said. "Next time, please let us know when you're going to do something different! We're trying to surprise our enemies, not each other."
"Okay," said Young-girl-night-fury, only slightly chastened. "But you have to admit, it was a pretty good shot."
"It was a very good shot," Toothless nodded, "and, if you ask me, we all should start calling you Night-fury-six-shooter from now on."
"I think we can all agree on that," Hiccup nodded, to his daughter's great pleasure, "and I think we also agree that Dagur's next attack will come from the land. Let's discuss how we'll meet that threat without losing any more dragons." They were soon deep in the planning process. Stoick wandered by, listened to the six of them grunting and growling to each other, and left again. He couldn't understand a thing they were saying, but Berk's future seemed to be in good hands. Well, paws.
o
A/N If anyone questions whether a Night Fury can fire four (or more) shots in a row, watch "How to Start a Dragon Academy," around 3:56 on the timer. We see Toothless fire the first three of four shots; then we see four bursts near the other teens.