The Berserker War Chapter 11

They arrived over Berk a short time later. The Vikings had been warned that the Night Furies would be bringing back some important prisoners from among the Berserkers; a good-sized crowd had gathered in the town center. Hiccup sent Guana down first, so she could explain to Stoick that the twins would be more talkative if they were treated like envoys than if they were arrested and examined under pressure. When the chief heard that the new arrivals were smith's apprentices, he decided to leave them in Gobber's care.

Then the rest of the Night Furies spiraled down and landed just beyond the crowd. When the Vikings began to surge toward them, Hiccup warned them off with a sharp snarl. Everyone knew that this Night Fury was the chief's son and used to be human, but they saw and heard a black dragon, and they backed off. Agnarr and Agmundr climbed off hesitantly and edged away from the dragons as Gobber approached them.

"Well, well! So these are the young men wi' the clever ideas that are killin' our dragons!" His tone was jovial, but his words carried menace. The boys weren't sure how to react, which was exactly what he had in mind. "My name's Gobber, an' I'm the smith o' this town. Ye've been placed in my care until ye convince me that I canna handle ye. When that happens, ye'll be locked up an' treated like prisoners o' war. So don't make me think I canna handle ye, eh?" He gave them each a gentle shove and guided them toward the forge.

"I'll let my new apprentice keep ye company fer a while. I'm thinkin' the dragon's wantin' to have a word with me." The one-armed, one-legged smith and the three-legged dragon stepped aside, leaving the twins a few steps away from the forge. They stopped there.

"Okay," Agnarr began. "Starting with the moment they woke us up to fight the fire in our forge, I want you to name one thing that's happened to us that you could call 'normal'."

"Well, let me think for a second," Agmundr said. "We got kidnapped by black dragons out of our own forge, and carried off to a tiny island. That's where we found out that those dragons are Night Furies, they're as smart as we are, they can understand us when we talk, they can write, and they have a sense of humor. Then we rode those dragons into the sky, we got our first look at the world from half a mile up, we became the first Berserkers ever to touch a cloud, and we flew above the clouds. Now we're prisoners in a village that's at war with us, but they're treating us like guests, and our only guard is turning his back on us while he talks to a dragon.

"What's so abnormal about all that?"

"Well, go on, you two! Git in there!" the smith called. They hesitantly stepped inside.

Berk's forge was laid out differently than theirs, but they readily recognized everything in it. The forge itself, the anvil, the sharpening stone, the untidy racks of tools... it all looked totally familiar. A serious-looking boy, perhaps a year younger than they were, was using the sharpening stone to repoint an assortment of leather-worker's tools. He looked up when he saw them enter.

"Hi! I'm Varinn, apprenticed to Gobber. Welcome to the forge. Can I help you with something?"

"I'm not sure. I'm Agmundr..."

"...and I'm Agnarr..."

"...and I think we're prisoners, except we aren't, and Gobber told us to go in here."

Varinn set down his tools. "That sounds confusing."

"You have no idea!" both twins said at once.

Gobber joined them. "They're both smith's apprentices from the village of Zerk, an' they're gonna be stayin' here fer quite a while. I've been chattin' with the Night Furies, an' they say it'll soon be okay to tell 'em about our little secret, ye know what I mean?" He winked. "Start by showin' 'em Hiccup's room, why don't ye?"

"Okay, Gobber," Varinn nodded. "If you two could walk this way, I think you'll be interested in what you see." He led them to a back room, gestured for them to enter, and returned to his sharpening.

"Oh... my... goodness," Agnarr burst out. "Would you look at these drawings! These Berks have a real technician working for them!"

Agmundr picked up a sheaf of dusty drawings off the table. "I think this is... yes, it's a bola-throwing machine! It looks like it'll work, too. I like his trigger mechanism – it's simple, rugged, and foolproof."

"Foolproof? I bet Slobberguts could jam it!" They enjoyed a quick chuckle, then went back to the drawings.

"He drew a lot of pictures of those Night Furies," Agnarr noticed after a while.

"Actually, when he was drawing those pictures, there was only one Night Fury," Varinn called from the doorway. As they glanced up at him, the amount of daylight in the forge decreased; one of the Night Furies had stuck his huge head into the window opening to watch them.

"You said he was a hiccup?" Agmundr asked.

"His name was Hiccup," Varinn replied, "but that's also what he was. Small, thin, unappreciated, and very clever. You guys don't know anything about that, do you?"

Agnarr and Agmundr didn't even have to look at each other before they both nodded. They'd been branded as hiccups from the day they were born. "I'd like to meet this Hiccup," Agmundr decided.

The dragon laughed. Varinn cracked a bit of a smile.

"Okay, he obviously isn't dead, or you wouldn't be laughing," Agnarr said. "So what happened to him? Did he grow up and turn into a typical Viking warrior?" The dragon laughed again.

"I wish somebody would let us in on the joke," Agmundr muttered.

"Th' joke is, ye've already met 'im," Gobber announced from the front of the forge. "Perhaps, in a day or three, he'll introduce 'imself to ye, but 'e thinks ye've had enough surprises fer one day." The dragon winked at them, turned, and flapped away.

Agmundr looked out the window where the dragon had been. "Hey, wait a minute..." His brother joined him. "Do you see anything strange out there?"

"I don't see anything happening at all," Agnarr said.

"Exactly!" his brother exclaimed. "Where are the Vikings drilling and training for war? Where are the stockpiles of weapons and shields? Where's the chief, running around and giving orders? All I see is men and women going about their business. They're in the middle of a war, but they're living like they're at peace!" He turned to Gobber. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us what's going on around here? After all, our part in this war is over."

"Let's just say we've got some powerful allies who are doin' a fine job of keepin' your army away from us," Gobber smiled as he replaced his heavy-hammer arm with a lighter hammer.

"You mean... the dragons?" Agnarr marveled. Gobber nodded absently.

"But how do you make friends with a dragon?" Agmundr asked, perplexed. "I've never met a friendly dragon in my life. How would you start?"

"All I'll say fer now is, it takes one to know one." The smith clammed up after that; they couldn't get him to talk about anything but smithcraft for the rest of the day. They spent most of that day in the back room, poring over Hiccup's drawings, suggesting minor improvements here and there, and coming up with ideas of their own.

o

That evening, as Gobber was leading his apprentice and his not-quite-prisoners out of the Mead Hall, they stopped. Over near a tall, skeletal framework of a building, they could see six Night Furies in front of over a dozen Gronckles, who were standing in a line and listening intently to the growls and snarls of the black dragons.

"What's going on over there?" Agnarr asked.

"I dinna speak dragon," Gobber replied, "but it looks like they're gettin' ready fer another raid on Dagur's army."

Agmundr looked around. There were Deadly Nadders on the roofs of buildings, and Monstrous Nightmares and Hideous Zipplebacks lounging on the ground nearby, but none of them were taking part in whatever the Night Furies were planning. "Why aren't all the dragons involved?" he asked.

"Ye'll have to ask the Night Furies," the smith said. "They've got their own ideas about how to make war, and while I dinna understand 'em, I canna argue with results."

Meanwhile, the dragons' pre-raid briefing went on. "The enemy army is about a day's walk away from their nearest village," Hiccup was saying. "All we're going to do is overfly them at high altitude, and rain our fires down on them from above. I want us to stay far out of range of their weapons."

"But we can't hit a small target from that height," one of the Gronckles complained.

"That's okay," Astrid answered him. "In fact, we'd prefer near-misses to direct hits. A shot that spatters two or three men with hot lava will be better than a shot that just kills one man. Our goal is to make the entire army as miserable as possible, and we'll do a better job of that with a hundred wounded men than with fifty dead ones."

"Besides," Hiccup continued, "this is our 'welcome-back' raid for two of you, who haven't flown with us since you were wounded, and for Night-fury himself. Now that the three of you are fit to fight, we don't want to lose you again on your first chance at battle. We're just going to make the Berserkers hate their lives, show them that we still control the air and can hit them whenever we please, and then leave."

"Meanwhile, their troops are just a day away from a village and safety," a Gronckle fussed.

"Their troops are a day away from a village that Lady-night-fury and her team tore to pieces," Night-fury reminded them. "The Berserkers will get no help or rest there. They'll have to keep walking, and the next village will also be a charred wreck, and so will the one after that. Dagur is not going to get much of a homecoming!" They all laughed at the thought. "All right, team, let's do this! Fly fast and shoot straight! Let's go!" They took off into the darkening sky.

The twins watched them go. "They're probably going to kill some people we know," Agmundr said softly.

"If we're lucky, they might kill Dagur," Agnarr replied.