The Power of Gold Chapter 4
Two Viking longships full of Bog-Burglar warriors made their way steadily across the sea, propelled by eager oarswomen. They were on a mission to eject the men from another tribe, the Uglithugs, off an island that was claimed by both of them. The Bog-Burglars had at least a two-to-one advantage in numbers, they had the moral certainty that their cause was right, and they had one other huge advantage – they had a Night Fury.
Thing Two was circling them in the sky (because if she flew straight, she would leave them behind in a matter of minutes), keeping an eye out for anything unexpected. Her role was to fly top cover for the Bog-Burglars and to scout for them. Night-fury-six-shooter had laid down the rules for that role, and threatened the direst of consequences if Thing Two did anything more than that. Thing Two chafed under those restrictions; along with her twin sister Thing One, she had always loved adventure and she loved surprising people. Just watching, without joining the action, promised to be about as exciting as watching Gobber clean a Gronckle's teeth.
The peak of Kornfritter Island crept above the horizon. The island was mostly one tall hill, with a low extension to the northeast that would be an ideal place for a Viking village, except it was too small for more than a handful of buildings. The Uglithugs had sent an advance party to live there in tents, cut down trees, and ship the wood back to their home island. Because they were also removing the stumps of the trees they felled, it was clear that they intended to stay there permanently. As of today, that was going to end.
Chief Bertha of the Bog-Burglars didn't have a firm plan in mind, beyond "attack and win." She hadn't decided if the vanquished Uglithugs would be held for ransom, sold as slaves to other tribes, or put to the sword. Any of these would be a traditional Viking way of disposing of their enemies, but which of them would give her tribe the best value in return, while causing the least chance of massive retaliation from the Uglithugs? She would wait and see. If the intruders fought to the death, then it wouldn't even matter.
High above her, Thing Two had reached the limit of her patience. She had to do something! She decided to do some scouting, which was definitely allowed, according to her rules of engagement. She pointed her nose toward Kornfritter Island and accelerated. It would take her ten minutes, at most, to reach the island, overfly the Uglithug encampment, count the tents, make mental notes of anything else she saw, and fly back... and then she realized the first big problem with their grand plan. She had no way of communicating anything to the Bog-Burglars! She could write well enough, but there was no room on either of the ships for her to land so she could carve runes in the deck with her claws, even if the Vikings were willing to have their decks carved up. She couldn't write anything in the air because her fires burned too clean; they left no smoke trail. The only Bog-Burglar who spoke even a few words of Forge was Naginatta, and she wasn't on this raid (she was too young for raiding). Thing Two had no ideas. Well, she'd do her scouting mission and see what she saw. If there was nothing there worth reporting, then it wouldn't even matter.
She flew straight ahead and closed in on the island. The main hill was covered in evergreens, with occasional patches of bare rock. It was too steep for human habitation, although humans would probably want the trees for building ships, houses, and rudimentary furniture. The low extension had been halfway cleared of trees, and the Uglithug tents (all sixteen of them) were easy to see on the ground. Clearly, they weren't expecting to be overflown by dragons, or they would have hidden their tents under the trees that still stood. She could see a few men squatting on the ground around a campfire, and several stacks of timber. Careful not to let her shadow pass across them, she made a fast, silent circuit of the island. She saw nothing that the Bog-Burglar chief would want to know about... until she looked out to sea. Another ship was approaching the island. It would probably arrive at nearly the same time as the raiders from her own tribe.
She dropped to wave-top height to make herself harder to see, and flew out to examine the oncoming ship. The sailors spotted her anyway; every man who wasn't pulling an oar grabbed a weapon. She turned away sharply, unwilling to risk getting hurt for no reason, especially when she'd been ordered not to do any fighting. One quick firebolt, aimed as a near-miss, could have scared the willies out of those sailors... but no. It would have been fun, but she had her orders. She put a wing over and returned to the Bog-Burglar ships, trying to figure out how to tell Bertha what she'd seen. The ship's side shields gave no clue as to which tribe it was from, so she couldn't report much.
She circled the chief's ship, grunting and yowling until she was sure she had Bertha's attention. Then she flew as slowly as she could, and tapped the top of the mast with her forepaw.
"The mast?" Bertha asked out loud. "What about the mast?"
She tapped the masthead again, then gestured to the bow and stern simultaneously with a forepaw and a hindpaw.
"Mast... bow... stern..." Bertha was struggling to get it.
"Does she mean the whole ship?" Cami asked.
Thing Two roared and pointed at Cami.
"It means the whole ship," Bertha nodded, then looked back at the Night Fury. "What about the whole ship?"
She pointed to where the other ship would be; it couldn't be seen from here because it was on the other side of the island.
"You want us to sail in that direction?"
She shook her head "no." This was hard! She tried a different approach. First, she struck the masthead again; then she drifted sideways and hit the second ship's masthead; then she flew sideways some more and hit where a third ship's masthead would have been, if there had been three ships.
Bertha took a guess. "Are you saying we should have brought three ships?" Thing Two shook her head in frustration.
It was the second ship's captain, Average Chested Chelsea, Bertha's sister, who figured it out. "Are you saying that there is a third ship?" Thing Two nodded excitedly.
"Where is it?" Chelsea asked. For an answer, the Night Fury shot a firebolt toward roughly where the approaching ship was. Bertha couldn't hear the entire exchange, so Chelsea veered her ship closer to the chief's ship and repeated what she'd learned.
"Coming from that direction, that will be an Uglithug ship," Bertha decided. "They're probably picking up timber and dropping off supplies. That answers my question about what to do with the Uglithugs once we defeat them; we'll just send them home on their own ship, except for one or two hostages that we'll keep to ensure the good behavior of the others."
"Most of our warriors are feeling bloodthirsty today," Chelsea noted. "It may be hard to make them leave our victims alive."
"If the Uglithugs want to fight, then we'll fight," Bertha grinned. "But if they do the smart thing and surrender, then we'll send them home, minus all their belongings, and with a warning to never go near our islands again."
"Depending on how many belongings they've got," Cami chimed in, "this might be a very profitable little expedition. Can I have first dibs on their weapons?"
"First win, then plunder, my eager young daughter," Bertha smiled. "You know our proverb – 'Don't count your chickens before you've snatched them.'"
"Yes, Mother," Cami grumbled.
"Okay, Chel," the chief shouted to the other ship. "Fall back behind me and get into line-ahead formation. We're going to act like we're sailing right past this island... until we come about and run our bows onto the beach at the same time, so those Uglithugs have as little time as possible to prepare a hot welcome for us." Chelsea nodded and slowed the count that her oarswomen were rowing to, and the ships shifted from side-by-side to line-ahead.
Thing Two gained height effortlessly and angled over toward their intended victims. They were running out of their tents, carrying weapons and armor that they were donning in a hurry. Apparently, Bertha's deception tactics weren't fooling them for a moment. She could fly back to the ships and try to warn them, but by the time she figured out how to get the message across, the ships would be grounded and the battle would have begun. If it was going to be a close battle, she would feel very bad about that, but the Bog-Burglars had such an advantage in numbers that the lack of surprise wasn't going to make any difference to the outcome. But it might affect the casualties that her new Viking friends would take. She gained some height and tried to figure out how to influence the battle without breaking the rules that her big sister, the nest's Alpha, had laid down.
The longships made a hard turn to port and grounded themselves, almost simultaneously, on the pebbly shore. Viking women leaped off the ships with an assortment of battle cries, brandishing their weapons as they charged the short distance to the Uglithug encampment. The Uglithugs were waiting for them in a line, with the ends of the line anchored between two big rocks that reached the shoreline. Each of them was holding a spear at chest height, and they all had axes slung at their backs. Charging into that row of spears would cost the Bog-Burglars dearly, and they couldn't outflank them because of the rocks. The women stopped short, shouting and waving their weapons threateningly, but unwilling to get closer if it meant getting speared. The few women who had brought javelins threw them; the Uglithugs ducked and dodged them. The Bog-Burglars' numbers were no help now. The battle had become a stand-off.
Thing Two saw her opportunity.
She swooped down over the battlefield at full speed and minimum altitude, almost low enough to touch the Bog-Burglars. She gained some height in case the Uglithugs tried to spear her as she passed over them (and two Uglithugs tried and failed to do just that) and shot skyward. The wind of her rapid passage had three effects: it blew the surprised Bog-Burglars toward their foes, it knocked the foes slightly off balance, and it swirled clouds of dirt and sawdust into the Uglithugs' eyes. Some of them were quick enough to close their eyes and keep them closed until the Night Fury slipstream had passed; most of the others were desperately rubbing their eyes to get the grit out of them. Bertha hadn't been expecting this turn of events, but she was quick to take advantage of it. "Charge!" The "battle" was over in less than a minute. Two Uglithugs lay unconscious on the ground, felled by blows to the head because they'd tried to fight back. The others knelt in a row on the ground, hands raised, weapons discarded. The Bog-Burglars owned the island.
"Now what?" Chelsea asked.
"Now we wait until their ship grounds," Bertha answered grimly. "Then we put these thugs on board and send them all home, with a warning that if they even go near our island again, we'll strike them down without mercy."
But it looked like the Uglithugs on the ship weren't going to play by Bertha's rules. They saw the two ships from another tribe at their outpost, put their helm over, and began running away from what looked like Round Two of a losing battle. That lasted for about a minute. Then they spotted the Night Fury lurking at low altitude in front of them, held a quick conference on board, and decided that facing the Bog-Burglars would be safer than facing the dragon. They turned back, landed on the island, and were quickly subdued. Their hands were tied up and they were led to stand with the other captives.
"Wait a minute, Mother," Camicazi called. "I think their ship is nicer than Aunt Chelsea's ship, and I'm pretty sure it's bigger."
"An excellent point," Bertha nodded. "Chelsea, would you like to sail a bigger, newer ship than the one you've got?"
"Better than this leaky barge?" Chelsea nodded. "You'd better believe I would!"
"Good," the chief answered. "We'll trade ships with them."
"Hey, you can't do that to me!" the Uglithug captain protested. "I helped built that ship!"
"I'm the chief of the tribe that owns this island, so I can do just about anything I want," she smirked at him. "Now don't give me a hard time, unless you'd rather be a hostage than a sailor!" The captain swallowed his pride and said nothing.
In a few minutes, it was all arranged. The Uglithugs, minus two young men who would serve as hostages, were herded onto Chelsea's ship and sent home, minus the sail and half of the oars. Chelsea took possession of the Uglithug ship, which she examined from stem to stern and pronounced good. Bertha's warriors searched the encampment for loot, but found very little, aside from some fairly good logging tools. They took everything, from the tents to the dried food that the Uglithugs had been eating, and Bertha made a mental note to send some ships back to claim the timber.
It was Cami who spotted an unusual set of fresh footprints in the dirt. They were barefoot, and they were small for a man. Bertha sent Chelsea and three other women to follow the trail. They returned in about fifteen minutes, half-guiding, half-pushing a thin, frightened young woman of about nineteen years. Her face was dirty, her hair was unkempt, and her clothing was rough and filthy.
"We found her hiding in a tree," Chelsea reported. "We had to climb up and drag her down."
"Are you going to kill me?" the young woman quavered.
"Certainly not!" the chief answered. "We're here to chase all the men off of our island, and you're not a man. Who are you?"
"My name... is Alfrún," she said hesitantly. "I'm thrall to Dagstyrr, the man who bankrolled this outpost. What are you going to do to me?"
"For starters, I'm not going to call you 'thrall' to anybody," Bertha said decisively. "This Dagstyrr has gone home without you, and you'll never lay eyes on him again. We Bog-Burglars don't keep many thralls, and none of them are women. But you don't look like the tree-cutting type. What were you doing on this island?"
Alfrún looked miserable. "I was sent here by my owner. My jobs were keep the axes sharp, to cook the food if we found anything fresh, and to..." She paused, stared at the ground, and whispered, "...to keep the men happy."
The Bog-Burglar women gasped. Camicazi drew her blade angrily. "Mother, can we chase down their ship, so I can cut this Dagstyrr's ears off?"
Chelsea dropped her mace and pulled out her double-edged dagger. "I want to cut something else off of him!"
"He's not on the ship," Alfrún explained. "He wouldn't be caught dead getting his hands dirty in a project like this. He paid for the expedition, and he hired the working men and sent a couple of his thralls, but he was never here, except to check up on us now and then."
"He'll get what he deserves anyway," Bertha thought out loud. "He's lost his thrall, his expedition has failed, his men are going home in defeat, and that's punishment enough. The Uglithugs don't have much patience with men who get defeated by women. Now, Alfrún, if you like, you can come back to Bog-Burglar Island with us. If you already know how to sharpen axes, then you'll make a good apprentice to our blacksmith. You'll learn a trade, you'll earn your food and your rent, and you'll find a place among us as a first-class citizen."
Alfrún had trouble processing all this. "I've never been anything but a slave girl all my life!"
"Starting today, that's over," Chelsea encouraged her. "Like my sister said, the Bog-Burglars don't keep female thralls. You're a free woman now, and you're welcome to join us. Unless you'd rather stay here by yourself?"
"Never!" she almost shouted. "If I can be free, then I'll..." She paused and whispered to Bertha, "Don't look now, but there's a dragon circling over our heads!"
"I know about her," Bertha smiled. "She's on our side." At Alfrún's shocked expression, she went on, "We'll explain that on the way home. You'll adjust to the dragons, just like you'll adjust to freedom. But, speaking of that dragon..." She called up to Thing Two, "Can you make a quick sweep of the island and see if we missed any Uglithugs?"
Thing Two nodded "yes" and sped up as she followed the shoreline. She saw no Uglithugs, or any other signs of human habitation. But she did (unwittingly) find the second big problem with their grand plan. She spotted the opening of a good-sized cave.
Hiccup had visited the new nest a few days after it was founded, and had told Six about the cave and the gold and its potential for problems, because he thought those were things that she ought to know about. She'd mentioned them in passing to Faithful-brother, because she talked about everything with him. But neither Six nor Faithful-brother was accustomed to thinking of Thing Two as being a leader among the Night Furies. They hadn't warned her about the cave.
She flew back to the site of the encampment, landed, and wrote in the dirt,
I SAW NO UGLITHUGS, BUT
I FOUND A BIG CAVE.
"We've seen that cave entrance now and then as we sailed these waters," Chelsea commented. "But we never had the time to check it out."
"We've got the time now," Bertha decided. She gestured toward the two Uglithug hostages. "Once we've seen our guests safely on board, we'll sail over there and see if this cave is useful to us, then head for home. Sometimes caves have mushrooms growing in them that are good to eat." Suiting action to words, they pushed their ships off the beach, piled into them, and set about rowing toward the cave entrance. When they got there, Chelsea's ship anchored offshore while Bertha's ship pushed up against the rocky entrance. The oarswomen held her there while Bertha, Cami, and eight warriors stepped ashore.
"Thing Two!" Bertha called. "I hate to ask you to do a menial task when you're doing such good work for us. But we need torches to see in there, and we didn't bring a fire. Can you light these torches for us?" Thing Two was happy to land next to them and light the torches with her blowtorch-breath.
"That's the first time I ever saw dragon fire accomplish anything good," one of the women muttered. They stepped inside, and broke up into two parties of five. One group went left; the other group, led by Bertha, went right. Their eyes were soon drawn by the reflection of their torchlight. Something shiny was up ahead.
Bertha stared at the mound of gold in front of them. "Praise be to Thor, Odin, Freyja, Ægir, and all the other deities, including the ones I've forgotten about," she intoned softly.
"That is the biggest chunk of gold I've ever seen, and I've seen a few," Cami breathed. Even her ebullient personality was subdued at the sight. "How are we going to get it home with us?"
"In pieces," Bertha decided. "It's far too big and heavy for us to lift in one piece. We'll need both ships to handle all that weight, and we'll need Chelsea's crew to help carry it without exhausting us all." It took hours to cut up the soft metal with axes, pry it off of the rocky core it was attached to, and carry it back to the ships. The gold was heavy, the air in the cave was damp, and everyone was sweating and breathing hard within the first few minutes. But there were no complaints. They had been in good spirits after winning their battle and reclaiming their island. Now that the tribe was becoming richer than they'd ever dreamed, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. Even the newly-freed slave girl, Alfrún, took her turn helping to carry chunks of gold to the ships.
They sailed home in high spirits, expecting great things from their unexpected cargo.