Life with the Night Furies Chapter 13
"We'll start with the Uglithug tribe," Chief Night Fury decided. "They're close to us, so we can get in and out quickly, and they aren't so numerous that our own Vikings will be at a huge disadvantage. Once we've tried it and we know what we're doing, then we'll take on the bigger tribes. Now we need to talk about tactics."
"Can I suggest something, Dad?" Bang said. "Why don't we start by hitting their harbor again, as if we were finishing the job we started a few days ago? They'll expect that, they'll overreact to it because they're Vikings, and it will pull them out of position, which is exactly where we want them."
Hiccup smiled broadly. "Son, that is absolutely perfect! I couldn't have come up with anything better. Okay, team, those are our tactics. We'll start with a diversionary attack on their ships, and when the Uglithugs react to the diversion, that's when the real raid goes in. Mother-of-twins, I'll leave the assignments of the dragons to you. I've got to get the Vikings on board with our plan."
That turned out to be the easiest part of the entire plan. The Vikings of Berk had played little or no role in the Berserker War, and they were getting restless. Even the few who had flown on the first raid had done little more than shout insults at their enemies. Where was the glory? Where was the fame? Where was the plunder? Now, Chief Night Fury was offering them the prospect of a real, live, honest-to-goodness Viking raid with a solid chance of success, and they were ready to rumble, from the oldest to the youngest! Even the unconventional nature of the raid didn't dissuade them.
"We'll do it tonight," Hiccup decided.
Berk's dragons took flight shortly before sunset. If they all stayed together and flew at Gronckle speed, they'd arrive over the Uglithugs' main island about an hour before midnight. That was a non-traditional time for dragons to attack humans, and Chief Night Fury wanted every advantage he could get. He had to keep calling back the faster dragons, who were eager for action and had a hard time flying slowly; he finally had to resort to putting all the Night Furies to work as aerial sheepdogs to keep the flock together. Somehow, they all arrived at the Uglithugs' island in one group.
"Okay, the shipwreck group is with me!" Mother-of-twins called. The handful of dragons she'd chosen for the diversionary attack peeled off and headed for the harbor. Among them were Six and Chi-wen. Six had been teaching the ex-Asian dragon the art of firing multiple shots in a single attack, and Chi-wen was eager to try out his new skill on some inanimate, flammable targets.
As soon as the first ship went up in flames, the Uglithug night watchman spread the alarm, and Viking warriors came boiling out of their houses, armed for battle and hot for revenge. Some went straight to the harbor; others took up positions on the shore, in the hopes of catching a dragon on the end of its firing pass. They were all disappointed, though. As soon as the humans became a threat, most of the dragons gained altitude and stayed out of Viking weapons range. The exceptions were the Night Furies, who were close to invisible at night. There weren't many ships left to shoot at, and the multi-shot attacks of Six and Chi-wen made short work of all of them but one. They left one small longship afloat, on Hiccup's specific orders.
But while all this was going on in the harbor, the bulk of Berk's dragons quietly landed on the other side of the town. From each dragon's back, a silent Berk warrior jumped off and made his way into the town. They had firm orders from their chief: they could grab any plunder they could find, but anyone who returned with plunder, but without the main objective of the raid, would be shoveling up dragon droppings for a week. They fanned out without the usual Viking battle cries, entered any likely-looking house they could find, and soon emerged, dragging or carrying their main objective:
...the Uglithugs' women.
Making off with a tribe's women wasn't at all unusual in the Viking era; as Pugpoodle had alluded, it was a common tactic. Usually, those women were either kept as concubines by their captors, or sold as slaves. Chief Night Fury had no such vile objectives; these women would be housed, fed, and well-cared for. He just wanted them as another kind of leverage against the tribes that had gone to war against him. His ability to bring his Viking raiders in and out on dragonback, quickly and silently, was what made this raid unique.
Most of those women struggled, and some actually fought back. If a woman put up too much resistance, the men just let her go and carried someone else off. The women's screams and protests soon alerted the Uglithug men that something was going very wrong in the village. But they were completely out of position; only a handful could get back into the town in time, and that handful was much outnumbered. They watched helplessly as the Vikings and dragons of Berk flew away into the darkness with the Uglithugs' greatest treasure. Then they gathered around their tribe's second-in-command, Glug, desperate for a hint at what they should do next.
"We need to take that last ship and sail it to the Visithugs' island," Glug decided. "The Thing is still in session, but Chief Ug needs to know about this. We need to get him back here so he can take charge." That idea was immediately accepted; Glug chose a crew from among the men whose wives had been carried off, their town's Gothi sacrificed a pig to invoke the gods' favor, and the ship left harbor under full sail.
They arrived unmolested. The scene of devastation in the Visithug harbor was disheartening; only the Law-Speaker's ship and a handful of Visithug fishing boats were still seaworthy. Was this also the dragons' doing? Had they wiped out the ships of every tribe in the Archipelago? They quickly found their chief and informed him of the disaster that had befallen his tribe while he was away.
"Why have they gone to war against us?" his people begged.
"Actually, we declared war on them," Ug admitted. "I never thought they would dare to go on the offensive, seeing how they're so badly outnumbered. But don't worry. Berk is going to pay for this outrage. They are going to pay in blood!" His own wife was among the captives.
"How?" Nastinardle asked. "If they're holding your women, how can you hurt the captors without endangering the hostages?"
"Give me a minute, and I'll think of something." They waited for him to have an idea. After a while, Arngrim Dammen asked for a vote to put the Thing on hold until they could resolve this urgent war problem. Everyone voted 'yes' except Bertha, who voted 'yes, but what did you think was going to happen when you declared war on a tribe that has dragons?'
"Your day will come soon, Chief Bertha," Pugpoodle threatened. "Very soon." Warhamster returned to his tent; he suspected that the chiefs wouldn't need him for a few hours at the very least.
They were still deliberating the next morning when a delegation from the Bashem-Oiks trooped into the Thing. "Chief Kurlee!" they wailed. "The dragons have sunk all of our ships but one, and Berk's Vikings have carried off our women! We need you to lead us!"
"Another one," Arngrim muttered. "They're picking us off, one by one, just like Pugpoodle predicted. We need to get home and prepare our defenses."
"How are you going to get there, without ships?" Norbert retorted.
"We'll take the Bashem-Oiks' ship," Gumboil answered.
"No, you won't," Kurlee shot back. "I need that ship to get back to my tribe!"
"Well, can you drop us off on the way by?" Arngrim Dammen asked.
"That's totally in the wrong direction!" Kurlee said. "I can't waste that kind of time on a side trip; my tribe needs me right now!"
"Well, then how about your people's ship, Ug?"
The Uglithug chief shook his head. "Kurlee is right, just for once. I need to get home and take charge of my tribe, so we can stop Berk from dancing all over us, and start hitting them back! And your tribe is nowhere near mine, Arngrim. Sorry."
Now the other chiefs began to panic as they realized that their homes and their women might be next on Berk's list. Ug and Kurlee had suddenly become the most important chiefs at the Thing, because they each had a ship in the harbor and the others didn't. Every chief wanted a ride home, now! When begging and pleading didn't work on them, then the attempts at bribery began, and even those would only go so far, because the chiefs with the ships were desperate to get home as fast as they could. Kurlee finally agreed to bring Alvin home in exchange for a handful of silver and five barrels of fish, while Ug would make no deals with anyone. The other chiefs watched, envious, as the two ships spread their sails and took their chiefs home.
When they were gone, Madguts and Gumboil approached Bertha. "I hear you're having a little trouble with the Uglithugs on Kornfritter Island," Gumboil said casually. "Chief Madguts wants to know if you'd consider making a little deal?"
"What kind of deal did you have in mind?" the Bog-Burglar chief asked warily. Knowing the Murderous tribe, she probably wouldn't like it.
"If we help you chase the Uglithugs off of Kornfritter Island, then in return, you'll let us build a fish-drying station there. Nothing big, just a few hundred feet of beach on the sunny side of the island."
"Thanks, but we're not interested," Bertha answered. How would having the Murderous on her tribe's island be better than having the Uglithugs there? She didn't want anybody on a Bog-Burglar island except Bog-Burglars.
The chief's face clouded over and he mumbled something. Gumboil growled, "He says you're making a mistake, refusing our help."
"I'll take my chances," she replied. Stick to the middle ground, she reminded herself. Getting tangled up with other tribes never ends well for us. Besides, we'll probably get a better deal from Berk anyway.
"For all we know, the Berks have already raided my tribe's home island. It's not wise to antagonize a man who may have lost everything."
She casually assumed a defensive pose. "I antagonize all men, regardless of their condition. I don't play favorites."
That was Gumboil's cue to leap straight back, out of the danger zone. Madguts snarled, unslung his two-handed axe, and pulled it back for a decapitating blow. Bertha quickly drew her dragon-forged blade and swung, two-handed, to parry the blow. Her blade blocked the strike and sliced halfway through the axe's handle, just below the head. Just like that, the skirmish was over. Madguts didn't dare strike another blow with his axe; another parry from that sword would snap the axe-head right off and leave him defenseless. Bertha didn't want to fight at all; she was poised to block another attack, but the Murderous chief backed away, brandishing his axe as though it might still be an effective weapon. She backed off as well, relieved that she wouldn't have to fight him to the death. Cami met her after the two Murderous men had turned and left.
"Mother, are you all right?"
"Yes, Cami, but we definitely owe Berk a big one. This sword they gave me just saved my life. A regular blade wouldn't have done the job, and you'd be the new chief."
"I don't want the job, not yet," Cami said decisively. "But if the men are getting violent, then there's something you might want to know. On the morning Hiccup left, he wrote me a message in the dirt. He said, 'BURN A BLUE FIRE ON THE BEACH AND I'LL COME TO SEE YOU.' Then he wiped it out with his tail, so no one else saw it. These men are getting nastier with every little thing that goes wrong, and I was thinking... maybe we should ask Hiccup for a ride home, before anything really bad happens."
Bertha glanced toward the meeting area, where the remaining chiefs were beginning an unusually fierce argument with each other, and nodded. "Your friendship with that Berk dragon-chief may prove very, very useful, Cami. I've got some face-makeup powder that will make a fire burn blue. Pack your things and find some firewood. If we can get out of here tonight, then we should go, and the male chiefs probably won't even miss us."
That night, the dragons and Vikings of Berk launched their third raid, this one aimed at the Northlanders. They overflew the Uglithug ship on the way back, but they flew too high for Ug or his men to do anything to them except shake their fists and curse. Hiccup took a detour toward the Visithug island, saw a bluish fire burning on the beach, and swooped down for a landing. Bertha and Cami heard him land, but couldn't see him until he was barely ten feet away from their fire.
"Yikes! Hiccup, you scared me... a little," Cami burst out. "That's you, isn't it?" The black dragon nodded.
DO YOU NEED SOMETHING FROM ME?
Bertha stood up. "I need to know, are you taking away all the women from every Viking tribe?"
JUST THE ONES WHO VOTED FOR WAR.
DON'T WORRY, BERTHA; I HAVE NO
QUARREL WITH YOU, AND I'D BE CRAZY
TO KIDNAP BOG-BURGLAR WOMEN
"He knows us too well," Cami nodded. "What are you doing with all those women?"
THEY ARE HOUSED IN EMPTY WAREHOUSES
AND GIVEN FISH, BREAD, AND WATER. THEY
ARE CROWDED, BUT WARM AND WELL-FED
"All the comforts of home," Cami nodded sarcastically.
"Speaking of home, can you get us home somehow?" Bertha asked. "This Thing is turning ugly. The other chiefs are starting to realize that they've got a dragon by the tail, and they're just getting madder with every setback you deal to them. They've pretty well forgotten the law of peace; it's going to be the law of the jungle within a day or two. Cami and I are both good with our brand-new swords, but we can't match the men for brute strength, and we're very much outnumbered. We'd like to get out of here while the getting is good."
IF YOU BOTH RIDE MY BACK, I CAN
CARRY YOUR TENT AND GEAR, AND
HAVE YOU HOME BEFORE SUNRISE
"Ride on you?" Bertha was taken aback. "I thought you'd loan us one of your ships or something."
LIKE YOU SAID, THE CHIEFS ARE VERY
HOSTILE. BERK'S SHIPS ARE GOING
NOWHERE NEAR THIS ISLAND WHILE
WE'RE AT WAR. A DRAGONBACK RIDE
IS ALL I CAN OFFER YOU
"I... I don't know," the Bog-Burglar chief said hesitantly. "I'm sure you Berk folks ride on dragons all the time, but... oh, what am I saying? You are a dragon! But riding on a dragon? That's not something a good Viking ought to do, is it?"
YOU'D BE SURPRISED HOW MANY
GOOD VIKINGS HAVE RIDDEN ON
DRAGONS, INCLUDING MY FATHER
"Stoick rode a dragon?" Bertha was taken aback, but only for a moment. "Actually, that's very convenient. If he rode on one, then I won't be the first chief to do it. I wouldn't want to set a precedent like that... but I'm willing to take advantage of it. I won't fall off, will I?"
I'VE NEVER DROPPED ANYONE
"I suppose that's reassuring. Umm... how do I do this?" She stepped toward the Night Fury, looking for something to hold onto... and was startled to find Camicazi already astride Berk's reptilian chief.
"Just climb up behind me and hold on tight," Cami said matter-of-factly.
"Have you done this before?" Bertha asked suspiciously.
"No, but how hard can it be? If a man can do it, then you know we can do it!"
"True, but climb back down and help me fold up our tent first," her mother ordered. Cami did so; their other belongings were already packed, so the two women rolled everything up in the tent, tied it up, and pronounced the bundle ready for air travel. Cami bounded back up onto Hiccup's back and helped her mother climb aboard. "We're ready," Bertha said, and took a deep breath.
They weren't prepared for how quickly a Night Fury could take off; they nearly slid off his back, and only his short back spines saved them from a fall. Once they were settled and feeling a bit more secure, he swooped back and caught their bundle with his forepaws, gained some height, and treated the Bog-Burglar chief and princess to their first-ever dragon ride.
For a while, it was reminiscent of the romantic flight he'd taken with Astrid on Toothless' back (except that Hiccup didn't transform his passengers into Night Furies). The two women rode in silence, eyes and mouths wide open, taking in the sights. Eventually, Cami found her voice. "Mother, how fast do you think we're moving?"
"It's hard to tell from up here, but we must be going at least five times as fast as any longship I've ever been on. Are you thinking what I think you're thinking, Cami?"
Camicazi turned back to face Bertha. "I'm thinking that a dragon could be the ultimate get-away ride after a successful burgling expedition. Can you imagine flying to other islands instead of riding a slow, bouncy ship? And then flying home again afterwards? If I had a dragon of my own, she could make almost any burgling trip into a one-night job!" She faced forward again. "Hiccup, do the dragons on Berk let people ride them all the time?"
He couldn't talk to her because she didn't know Forge, and he couldn't write in the dirt when they were a thousand feet up, so he could only nod his head. He wanted to tell her how dragons and humans tended to pair off in lifetime bonds of friendship, and that most dragons had a conscience that would make them reluctant to become an accomplice to a burglar. But he had no way to tell her that. Not up here.
It would take several hours to fly from the Visithug island to the main Bog-Burglar island. After the chief and her daughter had had a few minutes to get used to the idea of flying, he began weaving and bobbing in his flight path, just to make things interesting. When they didn't complain, he stepped it up a notch and swung into some banked turns. When he dropped straight down for fifty feet, Bertha finally asked him, "Can you keep it straight and level, please? My stomach isn't used to this." He complied, while making a mental note that Camicazi hadn't complained.
When they sighted their destination, the women guided Hiccup so he could drop them off right in front of their own house. Chief Bertha was quick to slide off his back, stretch her legs, and thank him for a timely lift home. Cami was slower to dismount, and thanked him for the exciting ride.
YOU WANT EXCITING? I HAVE
NOT YET BEGUN TO DO FLIGHT
"It gets better?" she asked excitedly.
"Now, Cami, don't get any ideas," her mother warned her. "He's a chief, not a pony for you to ride."
IF SHE WANTS A QUICK
THRILL RIDE, I DON'T MIND
Camicazi didn't even ask her mother if it was okay; she just clambered back onto the Night Fury's shoulders and announced, "I'm ready!" He crouched quickly, exploded into the sky, and spent the next twenty minutes showing the heir of the Bog-Burglar tribe the glories of unfettered Night Fury aviation.
She wore no harness and he had no saddle, so he couldn't fly as wildly as he would have liked. That was the only thing that held him back. She held on to him tightly, trusting him to not let her fall. She didn't say a word, except at the end of a full-speed dive/climb combo when she asked, "Can you do that again?" He could, and did. But she did laugh out loud in delight several times.
When they landed, Chief Bertha took one look at her daughter and began to laugh herself. "Chief Hiccup, you've done something that no one else has ever done. You've made a bigger mess of her hair than she can make herself!"
IS THAT GOOD OR BAD?
"It's amazing," Cami answered. "Flying is amazing! Mother, we have to get dragons on this island, like Berk did!"
Bertha considered some of the possibilities. One of those possibilities was that an island full of dragons would be an unappetizing target for Viking raiders. Another would be the dragons' possible involvement in epic burglaries, as Cami had suggested. A third would be that riding a dragon might keep Cami (and her equally restless sisters) out of trouble for a while. What kind of a price would her tribe have to pay in exchange for those benefits?
"I'll think about it," she decided. "Chief Hiccup did offer to share his dragon secrets with all the tribes, and that includes us. But I need to talk it over with my advisors, and I think I'd be smart to talk about it with Chief Hiccup as well, to find out what kinds of changes we'd have to make. For one thing, can we get nothing but girl dragons to join us?"
THAT WOULD BE HARD, BUT MY OLDEST
DAUGHTER COULD RULE THE DRAGONS
FOR YOU. SHE'S A PROVEN WARRIOR
"I suppose that would be a good start," Bertha replied. "I have to think this whole thing over."
"You do that, Mother," Cami retorted. "I'm just giving you fair warning – you're going to get no peace from me until I get a dragon friend of my own!"
"Now just a moment, young lady! Are you forgetting who's the chief and who's the daughter around here?"
Hiccup knew that this particular issue wouldn't resolve itself anytime soon. So he wrote,
WE'LL TALK ABOUT KORNFRITTER
ISLAND LATER. I'LL BE BACK
"Hey, wait a second!" Bertha burst out. "We've got something else to talk about first, Chief Night Fury. Your dragons sank my longship in the Visithugs' harbor! Is that how you repay us for staying neutral? What are you planning to do about that?"
HOW BIG WAS IT?
"Fifty-two feet, and it was brand-new."
IF WE GAVE YOU A 55-FOOTER THAT'S
TWO YEARS OLD, WOULD YOU CALL IT EVEN?
"Umm... throw in another of those dragon-swords of yours, and we'll forget that the whole thing ever happened."
ONE SWORD IS WORTH ALMOST AS MUCH
AS THE LONGSHIP. HOW ABOUT A DAGGER?
"Single-edged or double-edged?"
DOUBLE
"Okay. Deal."
IT'S ALWAYS A PLEASURE DOING
BUSINESS WITH YOU, BERTHA.
CAMI, I'LL BE BACK IN A FEW WEEKS
The two women watched him fly away until he vanished in the darkness. "I just finished negotiating with a dragon," Bertha said thoughtfully, "and even though I practically picked his pocket on the deal, I don't feel like I won anything."
"I think that's because of the smile on his face," Cami responded. "He doesn't look like Hiccup anymore, but he still smiles like Hiccup when he's got something good on his mind. I think he just got an idea that was worth more to him than the longship and the dagger put together."
Astrid was waiting for him when he got back to Berk. "I was getting worried about you," she began. "I know you took a detour to talk to the Bog-Burglar chief, but that was hours ago. That must have been some talk!"
"Actually, there wasn't a lot of talking involved," Chief Night Fury replied with a huge smile. "But there was some action, we've got the Bog-Burglars pretty firmly on our side... and, thanks to an idea I got from Camicazi, we now have an end game to finish this war, once and for all!"