Lightning and Death Itself
Finis Ludum Chapter 7
Two ships made their slow way upwind toward the tiny islet that the Vikings called Butterbar Island. One was the trireme of the Roman commanding general, along with dozens of Roman oarsmen and an unknown number of soldiers. The other was the Vikings' biggest longship, bearing Chief-night-fury, along with Rangi, Gobber, and Gunnarr Hofferson as witnesses.
Astrid flew alongside them for a moment. "I've already made my feelings clear about this one-sided duel," she began. "I already know that you're not going to listen to me, so I'm not going to waste any more breath trying to talk you out of it. Just explain to me why you're riding in a ship instead of flying."
"Simple," Hiccup answered. "None of these Romans have seen me fly yet. I'm going to keep it that way. I want them to think of me as a land-bound animal; I don't want them to take my flying ability into account when they make their plans against me."
"Even though they can plainly see your wings?" she asked.
"You know how stubborn the Vikings can be," he replied. "I think it's human nature, not just Viking nature, and I want to take advantage of that. If they don't see me fly, then part of their brains will be convinced that I'm a creature of the land. It's not much of an advantage, but I'll take any advantage I can get."
"I'm glad you're taking this seriously," Astrid said. "You realize that they're going to do their best to kill you, right?"
"Yes, I know," he nodded grimly. "But I'll repeat what I told you earlier – no matter what happens, do not intervene! These Romans are obsessed with honor, and one of the things they're watching me for is whether I'll cheat or not. If anyone else joins me in this duel, they'll probably call that cheating, and they'll end the negotiations. We'll get invaded and the results will be bloody."
"So I'm supposed to stand aside and let eight Roman soldiers kill you?" she demanded. "Do you seriously think I can do that?"
"Astrid," he said earnestly, "if anything happens to me, you'll need to take over for me. Our daughter makes a fine Alpha, but she's still inexperienced. When the Romans come, the dragons will need a veteran fighter to take command. If you get involved here, it won't just spoil the negotiations; they might take a shot at you as well. I need you to stay out of this, so you'll be ready if the dragons need you later." When she appeared unconvinced, he added, "You need to take care of our children."
Night-fury-mother-of-twins was conflicted. She wanted nothing more than to protect her mate by putting these arrogant Romans in their place (at the bottom of the sea), and she knew she could do it. But her mate had a plan and he needed her to cooperate, or all the dragons could suffer, including her own family. Very reluctantly, she nodded and soared upward to join the other Night Furies as they flew in high circles over the two slow-moving ships. She was by no means sure that she'd stay up there if she saw Hiccup in distress.
As they approached the islet, the Roman ship began to pull ahead. Hiccup grunted, and Rangi translated, "Let them be first, if that's what really matters to them. We aren't racing. Let them wear themselves out. They can't start the battle without us anyway." If anything, the Viking rowers slowed down slightly. When they arrived, the general, his nephew, and the eight soldiers were on the beach, waiting for them.
Hiccup climbed over the gunwale and thudded onto the sand. The moment he arrived, the general's nephew began speaking. "We will follow the usual rules for gladiator combat. Any blow is legal. No concealed weapons. Anyone who exits the island is disqualified. If your enemy is helpless before you, get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the spectators before you administer the killing blow. In this case, the spectators will be the soldiers and rowers on our ship. Any violation of the rules will result in the rule-breaker forfeiting his life. Any questions?"
"Minime!" said the eight soldiers in chorus. Hiccup guessed that this meant "no" in the Romans' language. He shook his head; he had no questions. He was trying to figure out how to fight this battle and win, preferably without needlessly killing the soldiers. He had no quarrel with them and he knew that they were only following orders. Of course, if the Romans decided to invade Berk, those soldiers would become his mortal enemies and he couldn't afford to show them mercy. But today, he wasn't going to take any lives if it could be avoided. That might not matter; if the Romans kept their rules literally, then the soldiers might lose their lives at their own officers' hands if they failed to kill him. If they did kill him... he refused to dwell on that possibility. For all his recent talk of surrender, he was still Hiccup, he was still a Night Fury, and he still had that innate drive to succeed against all odds.
"Very well," shouted Corpus. "When I drop my arm, the ship's drum will begin beating. You will have twenty beats of the drum to enter the forest and prepare for combat. Dragon, you will go to the left; soldiers of Rome, you will go right. When the drum stops, the battle will begin. If there is no winner by sunset, the battle will be declared over and whoever has struck the most blows will be deemed the winner." He raised his right hand and made a fist. "You who are about to die, Rome salutes you! Begin!" He dropped his arm. From the ship, a booming beat resounded. Two seconds later, another beat.
Hiccup was already at full gallop. He used his greater ground speed to get completely out of sight of all the Romans before he slowed down and began examining his surroundings. Butterbar Island was a little over an acre in size, mostly covered in pine trees, with a handful of hardwoods scattered here and there. There were some boulders and some rocky outcrops; the whole island rose from water level at the shore to a hilltop about eighty feet above sea level. There weren't any obvious places to set up an ambush. That suited Hiccup just fine, because it meant the Romans couldn't ambush him. His own plans involved some tactics that no human could match.
He searched, pausing now and then to listen, until he found a good-sized hardwood tree. Its branches started about twenty feet up; perfect. He jumped and flapped until he was perched on a solid branch. He wrapped his tail around his legs so it wouldn't dangle and give away his position. Then, he waited.
How would the Romans come for him? They almost certainly wouldn't stay in a group of eight. They would most likely split into two teams of four; that would be the smart play. Four pairs was possible if they were feeling very confident in themselves. Two groups of three and one pair? Unlikely; an organized army like Rome wouldn't have any rules or procedures for such an odd formation. Regardless, Hiccup's tactics relied on detecting the Romans before they found him. They would almost certainly give themselves away as they moved, no matter how quiet they were. He, of course, was perfectly silent except for his soft breathing. Would they see him in the tree? They might not even look that high if he had successfully planted the thought in their minds that he was a ground creature. If they did, he trusted to his dark coloring in the poorly-lit forest to camouflage him.
Would they come after him at all? The rules for a tie-breaker favored the side with more weapons. All they had to do was wait on the beach in a defensive formation. He would have to attack them on their terms and on their chosen terrain. If he didn't, then they could wait until sunset and probably be declared the winners by the general who was making up the rules to favor them. He hoped that their military mindset would impel them to seek battle instead of just waiting for victory to be handed to them.
Yes. They were coming. Their heavy hobnailed sandals weren't made for stealth, and their metal armor clinked from time to time. They were doing a good job of staying quiet, though; maybe they been trained for forest combat? They were to his right and headed in his general direction. He saw bits of motion through the trees as they approached. There were three of them. So they'd gone with a 3-3-2 grouping after all? He wondered how they had decided on that. Maybe the two trios were the hunters and the remaining pair would follow to finish him off? He couldn't hear any other groups approaching, so there was no teamwork between the three groups.
He waited until they were about seventy feet away. They were walking in line abreast with javelins in their hands, occasionally whispering to each other, when his firebolt hit at the feet of the middle one. He went flying, slammed into a tree, and was out for the count. The other two were knocked off their feet by the blast. They struggled to stand up again, drawing their swords to replace the javelins that they had dropped when they fell. They looked all around in panic, and one of them finally thought to look up. They pointed at Hiccup, but the weapons in their hands weren't made for ranged combat. He had already powered up another firebolt; his enemies scattered so he couldn't hit them both, which ensured that they wouldn't pick up their javelins to throw at him. He picked the better target and fired again. His second victim's feet went out from under him and he fell hard. His helmet protected him from a fractured skull, but he was still unconscious. The third one hid behind a tree.
First round goes to the Night Fury, Hiccup thought. Two down, six to go. He jumped off the branch and flew upwards. It was time to get a dragon's-eye view of this battlefield. As he expected, it was hard to see much through the trees. The two ships were easy enough to find. His Viking ship was grounded with the oarsmen at rest and the witnesses sitting in the middle of the ship, immersed in talking about something, their backs to their adversaries. The bigger Roman ship had grounded a few feet offshore; their boarding ramp was down... and six more soldiers were quietly marching down the ramp. Two of them took up guarding positions near their general. The other four took some orders from the general, and then set off into the forest, following the dragon footprints.
The Romans were openly cheating!
For a moment, he wondered, If this is Roman honor, then how much is Felix Natalis' word of honor worth? Then his rage at such a flagrant betrayal overcame him. He flew down, half-roared at his Viking witnesses to get their attention, then landed on the beach. Rangi and Gunnarr scrambled to join him, with Gobber following as quickly as his wooden leg allowed. General Emptor and Habeas Corpus strode over to them, but stopped when Hiccup snarled viciously at them. In Forge, he quickly described what he'd just seen.
"So yer breakin' yer own rules?" Gobber challenged the Romans. He sounded as outraged as Hiccup felt.
"Nothing of the kind!" Corpus retorted, offended. "We simply sent three of our soldiers back to the ship for some extra javelins. That's not against any of our rules."
Snarl-snap-snarl. "Three went in, four came back," Rangi translated. "We agreed on eight Roman soldiers. Now there are at least nine, and possibly more if you sneaked any other soldiers onto the island while we weren't watching. You've cheated, so you forfeit the battle! Hiccup wins!"
The general said something lengthy in Latin. His nephew translated, "No, Hiccup loses! He was the first to cheat and break the rules. We agreed that anyone who left the island was disqualified, and he left the island when he began flying. Dragon, your life is forfeit!"
"Wait a minute!" Gunnarr protested. "We agreed that anyone who exited the island was disqualified. Those were your exact words. Hiccup did not exit the island; he stayed over it the entire time. He didn't cheat and he isn't disqualified."
"Enough!" roared the Roman general. "The rules were clear, and the dragon broke them! Rome has passed judgment!" Without another word, he turned to the nearest Roman soldier and grabbed his javelin. He pulled his arm back to throw it at the Night Fury. At this range, he could hardly miss.
But he never got to throw it. A ball of fire lanced down, struck at his feet, and knocked him backwards. Sand flew into the eyes of the nearby Romans. The Vikings were far enough away not to be affected. They looked up, expecting to see Astrid, or perhaps one of the other Night Furies. Instead, they saw a bi-colored Snafflefang with a mark on her chest and a human rider.
If Tenax had kept flying, the situation might have turned out differently. With sand in their eyes, the Romans could not possibly tell who was riding her. But the Snafflefang circled back to make sure her strike had succeeded, and Habeas Corpus had cleared his eyes enough to see who had stopped his general from killing the dragon. "Felix Natalis?" he shouted. "Centurion, get down here at once! The General orders it!"
The centurion and his dragon friend landed lightly, not with the Romans, but next to Chief Night Fury. As soon as the general could see again, he and Natalis had a shouted conversation in Latin. "Soldier," the general bellowed, "what is the meaning of this?"
"Sir, in your desire for a victory, you're breaking our laws and traditions," the centurion replied from his dragon's back. "I stopped you from a totally shameful act that would have degraded us in the eyes of these barbarians. They would never trust you to keep an agreement if you did this. Does our honor mean nothing to you?"
The general ignored the question. "Centurion Natalis, I'm glad to see that you're still alive, but that is not the point. Get off that dragon and get onto the ship! I'll settle this issue with the barbarians first, and I'll decide your discipline for assaulting me later. If I get a good resolution to my Berk problem, then maybe you'll get a non-fatal punishment."
"Are you offering me a choice between scourging and crucifixion, sir?" Natalis shot back. "I respectfully decline them both. I have done nothing wrong and I deserve no punishment. As for getting onto the ship, I will do that if I can bring my dragon with me."
"Are you defying me, soldier?" Emptor demanded.
Natalis stiffened. "I am standing up for the values I was taught when I became a soldier in your army. One of those values was honor. I've staked my existence on living and fighting with honor. Seeing you abandon that honor just to score an easy victory... sir, it turns my stomach. We don't need to cheat in order to win!"
"I will say this one more time, centurion, and only once more," the general said tightly. "Rejoin your fellow-soldiers on the ship, now, or you will become an enemy of Rome. Do I have to tell you what that means?"
Felix Natalis, soldier of Rome, stared at his commanding general for long seconds. He slowly slid down off his dragon's back until his sandals crunched into the sand. He walked stiffly until he stood in front of the general. He struck a pose of attention and tapped his chest with his fist.
"Sir," he said formally, "abi in infernum."
He executed a smooth about-face, turning his back on the general, and marched back to Tenax with something like a spring in his step. One of the general's guards moved to strike him down with a javelin, but Emptor motioned for him to stop.
"Let him go," he growled, "He will not live long. We will take this island the Roman way, and Felix Natalis, former centurion of Rome, will be captured, scourged, crucified, and his remains left on Berk's lighthouse rock as a warning to all traitors." He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, "All Roman soldiers! Return to the ship! The battle is over! Rome declares a victory!"
"They can't hear him in that dense forest," Gunnarr Hofferson commented to Gobber. "It may take him an hour to get his soldiers back."
Hiccup turned to Rangi. "Ask Felix why he intervened. I had the situation under control. I was on my way to winning!"
Natalis heard Rangi's translation. In his Old Norse, he answered, "You would not win if the Romans kept cheating. If nine men could not defeat you, then they would try ten, then twelve, then sixteen. If I did not stop it, I am sure one of the other Night Furies would have stopped it. Someone had to stop it or you would have died. I do not want your death. You have shown me kindness, you helped me to befriend my dragon, and you exhibit more honor than my former commanding officer."
"That kind of logic is hard to argue with," Hiccup mused out loud, "and you're our authority on Roman tactics and intentions. Rangi, ask Natalis what his general wanted to accomplish here."
"He wanted to kill you, no matter what else happened. The decapitating stroke – kill the leader and leave the followers weaker. It is a standard tactic."
"So the entire premise of this battle was a lie?" Gunnarr asked him.
"I am ashamed of the man under whom I once served," Natalis said, hanging his head. "He was an honorable soldier before he became a general. I do not know what happened to him."
"Power corrupts," Rangi said softly.
Meanwhile, the general had been quietly conversing with his aide. They reached a decision. "Black dragon, I gave you a fair chance to prove that you can keep your promises," he announced. "You forfeited that chance, and you forfeited any chance of saving your people. When we meet again, it will be on the field of battle, and there won't be any rules or technicalities for you to hide behind! We are at war."
"I'm glad to hear it," Hiccup said brightly. He leaped into the air and met the other Night Furies, who wanted to know what was going on down there. "I'll explain later," he told them. "For now, they have officially declared war on us, so we need to oblige them. Everybody take some target practice on that ship of theirs! Aim for the waterline."
Less than a minute later, the Roman ship was settling to the bottom with multiple charred holes in her hull. (Some of those holes were eight or nine feet across.) The ship had grounded in the shallows; her bow stuck up out of the water, but the stern was beneath the waves. The crew scrambled ashore to save themselves. Some of them moved as if to take over the Viking longship, but a volley of Night Fury firebolts in the sand put a quick end to that. The Vikings got back into their ship and made a speedy exit from Butterbar Island. They left behind dozens of angry Roman soldiers and rowers with no way off, and no food.
"What are you going to do about them, Dad?" Thing One asked her father.
"They'll figure out how to catch fish in a day or two," Hiccup answered. "They'll be hungry, but they won't starve. In the meantime, I've got them right where I want them – out of the action."
Tenax joined them with Felix Natalis on her back. "You stranded the general on that useless little island! You did your own decapitating stroke!" he called. "You might be a better general than Caveat Emptor."
"I've been called worse," Hiccup grunted, knowing that the Roman couldn't understand him, but he wasn't really displeased. He had won his own private battle, he and the Night Furies had won the larger battle, and he had added Felix Natalis and Tenax to the warriors of Berk, or at least removed them from Rome's camp. Of course, the need for warriors might not happen right away. The enemy general was stuck on a tiny island, out of communication with the rest of his forces. Those other forces would not know about his declaration of war. It would take days, perhaps weeks, for the Romans to find and rescue their commander, and until that happened, he and Berk could rest easy. A daily patrol over Butterbar Island would tell him when the Roman general was back in the action and the dragons had to start worrying again.
When they returned to Berk, he asked Full-of-surprises to call a meeting of the dragons. "The rules have changed," he began. "The enemy commander has officially declared war on us."
"Does that mean we can start blasting them out of the water?" an eager young Nightmare asked.
"Yes and no," Full-of-surprises answered. "If you see a Viking ship, the plan is to shoot its rudder so they can't steer it easily. They'll have to break off what they're doing and return to their seaport for repairs. Don't sink them outright. We want to toy with them. We want to show them that we aren't afraid of them, and we can handle them without any effort."
"For them," Hiccup added, "it will be like playing a game where, every time they move, they land on 'Go back to Start.' The dragons with long-ranged fire should do this. I don't want any dragons getting close to those ships and taking crazy chances."
"If I understand the situation correctly," Tenax called, "then the Romans don't even know that we're at war with them! We can get right up close and they won't do anything."
"Incorrect," Astrid said. "They're human soldiers with weapons and they're nervous about dragons. If one of us gets up close and personal, one of them is sure to throw a spear at us, whether they think it's war or just self-preservation. Full-of-surprises is right; we want to take zero chances at this stage."
"Why not just sink them now, while their guard is down?" a Gronckle wondered.
"We're setting them up for a much bigger defeat," Hiccup replied. "We're conditioning them to think that we'll attack nothing but their rudders. As they adapt to our attacks, they'll position their heavy weapons to cover their sides. Then, when they come for us in great numbers, we'll fly down the length of each ship from front to back with impunity, and rain down death from above! That will do them a lot more harm than us sniping at random ships." That mental picture brought some ready snarls and some puffs of flame from the dragons.
"They'll probably adapt to that style of attack as well," Full-of-surprises added. "But then we'll come up with some new tricks that we can play on them. The grand plan is to keep them away from our island for as long as possible, so we Night Furies can decide what we ought to do in the long run."
"What does the long-term plan look like?" Thing One wanted to know.
Hiccup stepped forward. "At this time, here's what I'm planning. The dragons are going to transform every Viking who is willing into more dragons, and we're going to find ourselves a place to live that's good for us and far from the Romans. If the Romans try to invade us while the transformations are still taking place, we're going to defeat them with extreme prejudice. That way, when we leave here, we'll leave as winners and not like we're running away." The young dragons liked that part. "We'll only have to defeat them once. By the time they can create a new navy and bring up a new army, we'll be long gone."
"Do we have any idea where we're going to go?" Tenax asked.
"West," Full-of-surprises answered. "I've been talking to Chief-night-fury, who has been looking at the Vikings' maps. There is some kind of land far to the west of us. No one knows how big it is, but it's very big and there are no dragons there. We'll go there, and if it isn't big enough for all of us, then some of us will keep moving until we find our own place."
"What about my sister's nest?" Bang wondered.
"We'll keep them posted," the Alpha promised. "Likewise with the Dragon Island nest. If they want to go with us, then they're welcome to do so. If any of the Bog-burglars would rather turn into dragons than be subjugated by Roman men, then we'll include them in that part of our plan as well."
"My intention," Hiccup finished, "is to give the Roman invaders one really good smackdown. When they come back with an even bigger force, they'll find nothing but abandoned islands. All that preparation, all that military zeal... for nothing! Their disappointment will be our victory. Maybe I'll stick around and waggle my tongue at them from a safe distance before I leave for good."
"If you do," Astrid said, "then I'll be right beside you, waggling my own tongue. This island is the only home I've ever known, and if the Romans are going to chase me out of it, then the least I can do is to mock them on my way out." Most of the dragons roared and stomped their feet. This island was their home, too.
"But now comes the fun part," Hiccup said. "Now, I have to get the Vikings on board with our plan."