The sun was out, the birds were singing, and on a distant rooftop a Monstrous Nightmare roared merrily, scaring the birds into silence. One of those things was not like the others, but times had changed and old instincts needed to change with them. Gobber was just thankful the gut-curdling sound echoing across the village didn't need his attention. He had much more important things to attend to this morning. His forge was still the heart of the village, after all!
"Eh…" he mused as he looked around the empty building, and then glanced out the shop front to see absolutely no Vikings lined up waiting for his services. "Mebbe not the heart. The stomach?" They'd be back once they needed their axes sharpened or their hammers mended, and that was only a matter of time.
"Definitely the stomach," he concluded, stomping over to one corner to pull out a rack of spear shafts that were missing their heads. He'd always meant to get around to forging replacements, but spears were out of fashion on Berk so he'd put them off. Today was the day he cleared out his backlog. Also like a stomach. On second thought, he didn't like where this comparison was going.
"Morning, Gobber!" Hiccup came in through the side of the forge.
"Hiccup! Good to see ya, lad." Skinny as a twig, and now as pale as a ghost, Hiccup still stood tall and after the Winter he'd had – after the Winter they'd all had – that was all Gobber could ask for. Battered but unbroken. A welcome sight.
The dark shadow lurking outside the forge was less welcome, but Gobber had worked hard to stamp down the old twitch-to-kill reflexes, and he figured that was all that could be asked of him. "What brings you here today?" he asked. "Not here to help me with real work, are ya? 'Cause I'm fresh out!"
"I see that…" Hiccup cast a skeptical side-eye at the rack of wooden shafts. "Are you really going to make spearheads all day?"
"Gotta do it some day. Wha' about you?"
"Mildew," Hiccup sighed. "He's got a Terrible Terror that's refusing to leave his hut, or so he says."
A cold bead of sweat ran down Gobber's otherwise dry forehead. "Eh?"
"Yeah, apparently it's been stealing his roast boar and creeping around in the dark," Hiccup said absently. He had gone to his little corner of the forge while he spoke, and was in the process of digging something out of a pile of old parchments. A little metal spring contraption. "I'm going to relocate the Terror. Should be easy enough, but I'm bringing the parts for a little cage trap just in case. I hate to think of what Mildew will do if I don't solve the problem right away."
Another bead of cold sweat joined the first. "Hiccup, ye'd better be very careful," he said seriously.
"About Mildew?" Hiccup asked.
"Wit' the Terrror," Gobber whispered. Old memories were coming back to him, ones he'd done his best to drown with time and copious amounts of mead. "They can be dangerous."
Hiccup stared at him.
"I mean it!" Gobber insisted.
"Gobber." Hiccup pointed at the front of his forge. A large, black, demonic shape bigger than Gobber himself peered into the forge where honest, straightforward Viking customers usually waited. Not that there were any at the moment. "Night Fury."
"Yes, I know," everyone in the village knew. "That's not – Ye gotta understand." He was going to have to tell the story, wasn't he? Hiccup had no reason to believe him. He hadn't seen what Gobber had seen. "Listen, there was this one time–"
"Hammerhead Terrible Terror?" Hiccup asked, deadpan.
"Jus' listen! I'm only gonna tell this once. Long ago, back when you were nothin' but a baby, or maybe even before then, it's fuzzy…"
Many years ago, back when Gobber was a young man, Berk was a warzone. Sometimes. But the dragons only came at night, and then only once or twice a month. The rest of the time, there were no dragons on Berk at all. In between the raids there was time for recovery, rebuilding, and the occasional bit of fun.
"Come on in, the wife's out with the ladies at the Great Hall and won't be back until late," Spitelout announced. Gobber tromped into the Jorgenson family hut, wiping both his boots on the hand-woven welcome mat inside. Spitelout wouldn't care if he tracked mud into the hut, but his wife would, and Gobber had once seen her drink an entire mug of mead in one gulp before shattering the wooden mug upside Spitelout's head. His skull took enough bashing from the dragons!
"Budge over, Gobber!" Gobber followed Spitelout into his family hut, leaving Alvin to wipe his own boots. He dropped his short sword off on the weapon rack by the fireplace. "Stoick coming?"
"Not this month," Spitelout answered. "Busy."
"Chief in training's always got something to do," Gobber opined.
"Could make time for the old group," Alvin retorted. "He's already gettin' too big for his boots, you ask me. Woodcarvin' again this month?"
"Aye, unless you've got something better?" There was only so much smithing, fishing, axe-throwing, and mead-drinking a Viking could do. Carving was good for a laugh, at least. Alvin could never get proportions right. Last time they'd done Viking figures, Alvin's had almost lost its head. The skinny neck was so small that the head bobbed back and forth…
Gobber smiled to himself as he and Alvin sat down around Spitelout's big oaken table in the main room of the hut. Across the room, on a shelf just underneath two hanging shields, that very same wobbly-headed abomination of a carving stood by three other lumpy messes of wood. The fire was roaring in the hearth, the entire hut was warmly lit with an orange glow, and he could smell something cooking. "Yer wife make you somethin'?" he asked.
"Better," Spitelout declared. "I'm cooking a dozen chickens in the backyard. Put 'em in a pit with coals and covered 'em."
"Chickens?" Gobber asked. "Cooking? You?" Was this the same Spitelout who once accidentally burned water when left to fend for himself for lunch? Marriage really did change a man.
"There's nothing more Vikingly than burning a hunk of meat to perfection," Spitelout insisted. "Also," he added, "the wife's been on me about dealing with all the chickens we got as wedding gifts."
"Ah." That was more like the Spitelout he knew. Kill and burn the problems away. Eating them after was more of an excuse than anything, though he certainly wouldn't complain if he got to have some. "Are they done?" He could smell the distant aroma of scorched chicken whenever the wind brushed through the open back door, even from Spitelout's big table. He and Alvin both pulled out chairs. Alvin had retrieved a few chunks of wood from Spitelout's woodpile, and they both had knives on them, so they were ready to start carving.
"Soon," Spitelout promised. "I've gotta dig 'em up once night falls. Then we'll have all the roast chicken we can eat."
"We'll carve until then," Alvin declared. That decided, Spitelout came in and pulled up a chair, and they all got to work. It wasn't technically a competition, but they were Vikings, so it might as well have been. Idle talk fell to the wayside as they focused on not utterly mangling their creations. Gobber, for his part, was having a hard time getting the outer layer of his firewood to peel off without ripping out entire chunks. The hulking hammerhead boar he was trying to create was in constant danger of losing a leg before he could even start on them. From what he saw of his friends, neither Alvin nor Spitelout was doing any better. Alvin at one point stabbed his log through the middle. It split, lengthwise, and he dropped his carving knife on top of it with a disgusted grunt.
"Making a pair o' something?" Spitelout chortled. "Can't wait to see that!"
"Mebbe I will, did ya think of that?" Alvin groused.
"Two mistakes for the cost of one," Gobber joked.
"Ye wanna talk mistakes, Spitelout here's wood looks like a Gronckle smashed a tree and picked out the ugliest splinter. Also," Alvin added, "his chicken's probably burnin'."
"Nah, you'd smell it from here if it were." Spitelout brought his wood and his knife up close to his face, taking great care to try and shave off a single splinter. He nicked his thumb. Hopefully, whatever he was trying to carve would benefit from a red stain.
"I don' smell anything," Gobber noted. He had smelled the roasting chicken earlier, so why couldn't he smell it now?
"Yer daft, Gobber," Spitelout said. Gobber could have hit him for the insult, but with Spitelout it was sometimes more entertaining to let his brain catch up to his mouth. That could take a while, but it was usually worth doing. "Ye can smell… hang on."
There it was. "I'm daft?" Gobber asked. Alvin snorted. "At least my nose works!"
Spitelout stood up. "Right, I'll check on the chicken. None o' you lot mess with my carving while I'm gone." He backed toward the back door, then turned around to hurry outside.
"Wouldn' dream of it," Gobber drawled. He had his hands full with his own mess in the making.
Alvin, on the other hand, immediately started eyeing Spitelout's hunk of wood. "Mock me carving, will you?" he muttered.
"Come on Alvin, it was just a joke," Gobber said.
"It'll be a joke when his falls apart the moment he picks it up." Alvin reached out toward Spitelout's carving-in-progress. "A right funny joke…"
"Oy!" Spitelout's ear-splitting yell pulled them both up and out of their chairs in an instant. "Who in Odin's name dug up my chicken!"
Gobber abandoned his knife and carving on the table, headed out Spitelout's back door. It was dark out, the sun having set while they were carving, and the moon was partially hidden behind a few big clouds. Spitelout was right by the back doorstep, staring down at a small pit lined with smoldering coals. A very conspicuously dug-up pit.
"I take it the chickens were in here?" Gobber asked, looking around. His first thought was that some village teen must have stolen them, but the land behind Spitelout's hut was… awkward. A tiny spit of grass five paces across, ending in a sheer cliff, running full-tilt out the back door might send an unwary Viking into the ocean far below. The neighboring huts both butted right up against the receding coastline, with no space between them for a Viking to sneak.
In short, the only obvious way onto this particular patch of dirt was through Spitelout's hut. For a Viking, at least.
"Aye," Spitelout said. "Bu' where could they've gone? How'd they get taken?"
"Dragons?" Alvin asked warily.
"The village'd be on fire by now," Gobber answered, standing up. "This ain't a raid. So it'd have to be a Viking."
"Not necessarily." Alvin stepped out into the dirt and looked up at the sky, then back at Spitelout's hut. "Bu' you might be right. Think someone climbed over the hut to get here?"
"Then climbed back over again, with a half-dozen cooked chickens?" Spitelout asked incredulously.
It did seem incredibly unlikely. But Gobber had done stupider things for less worthy rewards. That was the Viking way. "Think we could track 'em down?"
"You can bet your beard we're tracking them down!" Spitelout stomped back into his hut. "I'll get my sword, and we'll go."
"Looks like we're not finishing our carvings tonight," Alvin remarked. "A shame, that."
He sounded much too smug. Gobber glanced at Spitelout's wooden chunk as he passed the table. There were some gouges he didn't remember seeing before. "Ye didn't," he sighed.
Alvin ignored him. "Who'd steal Spitelout's chicken?" he asked as he picked up his mace. "I wouldn't."
He would, if he was doing it to get back at Spitelout for something. "Dunno," Gobber said as Spitelout went upstairs. The hut was a large one, by Viking standards. There were a few extra rooms, for future children, and a boarded-over rafters area where Spitelout kept his junk from their years of wandering the archipelago taking whatever wasn't nailed down. Good times, those.
Something thumped in the rafters. "What're you doing?" Gobber demanded. "They're gettin' away while you dig through your junk!" He'd assumed Spitelout kept his sword close to hand, like any sane Viking. Why would he store it up there?
"I'm not digging through my junk." Spitelout came down the stairs, his sword in hand.
"Then wha' –"
Something thumped again, above their heads.
Gobber looked at Spitelout. Alvin looked at Spitelout.
Spitelout frowned for a long moment, then grinned. "I bet you," he whispered, "the thief is hidin' in my rafters. Waitin' for us to go out and hunt for 'em."
There were some big holes in that explanation, not the least of which how the thief got in there to begin with, but Gobber was all for investigating the odd noises first and putting the pieces together later. Or never. "Saved us a lot of wanderin' the village looking for clues," he murmured. "How do we get up there?"
Spitelout waved them up the stairs. "Ladder in the bedroom," he hissed.
That made Gobber even more confused, because he'd been sitting facing the stairs and he was sure nobody had gone up them while he was carving. He and Alvin followed Spitelout up, to the base of the sturdy ladder ending in a trapdoor.
"Is there any other way out?" Alvin asked.
"Nope." Spitelout reached up for the topmost rung. "I'm gonna give 'em a scare. You two come up after." He slowly, ponderously clambered up the ladder, taking great pains to avoid making any noise, and pushed the flat of his ax up against the bottom of the trapdoor.
"Three, two, one," Alvin counted down.
"Thief!" Spitelout screamed, as he all but launched himself up through the trapdoor. "I've got you now – huh?"
Alvin was next up. "Spitelout?"
"He's hiding," Spitelout spat. "I know you're in here, thief. We heard you! Get up here, boys. We'll find him. Gobber–"
"I'll stand on the trapdoor." He was not going to be stuck guarding it from the bottom – what if the thief fell on him?
"Spitelout," he heard Alvin say as he came up, "you have a problem."
"Someone stole my chickens, I know," Spitelout complained.
"I think," Gobber chimed in, "he meant the hoarding."
He'd never been in the boarded-over rafters of Spitelout's hut before. Spitelout always brought things down and took them up himself. Now he knew why. When Spitelout said he kept some of the loot from their teenage days, Gobber was envisioning a small pile. Not many large piles so densely packed there was barely space for the three of them to stand around the open trapdoor. Spitelout's hut wasn't huge, but the rafters covered the entire hut and not a single plank was left unburdened by junk. Even worse, the only light they had away from the open trapdoor was the occasional shaft of moonlight coming through the walls. It was very dark, and very cluttered.
"I don' remember us taking so much stuff," Alvin remarked.
"Some of it's mine, some's the wife's, can we get to tracking down this thief? I can smell my chickens!" And indeed, the scent of slightly burnt chicken was thick in the air.
Helga had gone adventuring, Gobber knew, but clearly he'd underestimate her sticky fingers. "You married out o' your league," he told Spitelout. Even if it was all worthless, it was impressive.
"Don' I know it. Spread out. The floorboards are sturdy, but be careful where ya step. Hear that, thief!" he called out. "We're comin' for you!"
Some poor fool was about to have the worst night of their lives. Hunted down in a cluttered attic, thrown out of Spitelout's hut, and drubbed all the way to the Great Hall for the Chief to render judgment, all over some partially burnt chickens. They'd deserve it, for crossing a fellow Berkian, but still. Gobber resolved not to be too harsh, if he was the one who nabbed the thief. "I'm gonna stay right here, actually," he told Spitelout, flipping the trapdoor down and planting one boot to either side of it. The rafters fell even further into murky darkness.
"Aye, good plan. Be ready! We're gonna flush 'im out." Spitelout stepped over a waist-high pile of throwing axes and disappeared into the darkness. Alvin went the other direction, toward the back of the hut.
The junk hoard was big. It wasn't that big, though. As the minutes passed, Spitelout and Alvin made good progress toward their respective edges of the rafters. "Nothin' here," they called back at regular intervals. Spitelout also randomly yelled and tossed things around, presumably to spook the thief, but nothing came of it. Not even Gobber flinched after the fifth time. He couldn't see either of them, not in the darkness, but he knew exactly where they were by the sounds.
The smell of roast chicken was starting to get to him. He was hungry. This was taking too long. Even Spitelout's screams and thumping had stopped, which Gobber took to mean he was getting frustrated. Hunting a thief down in a righteous fury was only fun so long as it was done quickly.
"I'm at the wall, I'd swear to Odin himself there's nobody this side o' the rafters," Alvin called out. "Spitelout?"
Silence.
Gobber shifted uneasily. "Spitelout?" he echoed.
No one answered.
That last yell and thump had sounded particularly genuine, now that he thought about it.
Suddenly, this wasn't fun at all. This was deadly serious. He hefted his sword and ventured out into the junk, in search of Spitelout. It was dark, away from the firelight shining up through the cracks in the trapdoor. The scattered fragments of moonlight weren't doing him any good, and he tripped over what looked and felt like a solid wooden chair in the dark.
Maybe, just maybe, Spitelout had tripped and hit his head. Or maybe he'd been ambushed–
"Somethin's in here!" Alvin yelled.
Something. Not someone.
"What is it?" Nothing. "Alvin!"
Gobber kept moving forward, under the reasoning that a still target was a dead target. He couldn't leave Spitelout – or Alvin, now – in the rafters. Besides, he knew a pattern when he saw one. First Spitelout, now Alvin. He would be next, whether he made for the trapdoor or not.
He stepped on a thick rug – yak fur, no doubt – and stopped. Clear footing, so long as he stood in one place and didn't trod on the junk to all sides. Open air, or close enough. He was maybe ten paces from the trapdoor, though that might as well be fifty with all the junk between him and it. He could see, sort of. The floorboard underneath him creaked ominously, but he wasn't going to find a better spot, so he ignored that.
He could also smell, and his nose was insisting that the chicken was all around him. Not helpful.
Something moved in the dark. A small shape fell off a pile. Gobber held perfectly still.
He saw it, then. Slinking over the top of an ornate shield, silhouetted against the light coming from the trapdoor. A tiny thing, little bigger than a chicken itself. Sinuous and sly. It had wings.
It lunged for him, and he swung, but it had gone low. He kicked out, expecting to make contact with its scaly midsection, and hit a solid object. Too solid. His toes hurt, but he kicked again anyway, lifting all of his weight to stomp on the fleeting dark patch–
The wooden plank beneath the rug gave way.
Some time later, Gobber came to in a pile of broken weapons, furniture, and decorative knicknacks. He was on his side, having landed on the rug, the piece of broken floorboard, and underneath those what looked to his addled mind like Spitelout's table on the ground floor. If it was that table, it had collapsed too. Junk piled all around and on top of him.
Gobber watched on, dazed and disarmed, as one of the little piles of fallen junk shifted. A golden cup toppled to one side as a green Terrible Terror slunk out, creeping low to the ground. It had, clutched tight in its mouth, a charred chicken breast.
The dragon turned, looked him directly in the eye, and then turned away to creep out the back door.
Gobber didn't have the strength or presence of mind to stop it.
"... and we never saw it again," Gobber concluded. "Spitelout had a concussion, Alvin said he did too, though he recovered a lot quicker. I broke my leg. Helga and her friends came home and found us a little while later. We threw axes at shadows for months afterward." He shuddered at the memory. He nearly took Mulch's head off one night, he was so twitchy! But that was partly Mulch's fault for coming around a dark corner like he had. Terrible Terrors could fly at head height, so without light Mulch and a tiny dragon were pretty much the same.
"...Right," Hiccup said. "So…"
"I know, ye'll be going off to do yer thing no matter what I say," Gobber admitted. "Just… be careful. Even with the small dragons. They can be vicious."
"Gobber." Hiccup looked him in the eye. "Dragons were like that, back in your day. They were like that last year, even! But things have changed. I appreciate the warning, but I don't think it's necessary."
"They've changed, yeh, but ye've missed me point if ye think that was all I was tryin' to say." Gobber shook his head. "I'm not sayin' they're all still bloodthirsty beasts, I'm sayin'... Eh." He sighed. "Spitelout, Stoick, and I, we grew up to be fierce warriors and now we're not killin' dragons, right?" He could get his point across better with a human example, maybe. "We're no more bloodthirsty than the dragons now."
"Right…" Hiccup said slowly.
"Alvin, though?" Gobber prompted. "Ye've not seen him around the village, 'ave you?"
"No?"
Gobber saw it, quite clearly, when Hiccup put two and two together. 'Alvin' wasn't that common of a name, after all.
"Always keep yer Night Fury close and yer wits about ye," Gobber said sternly. "Dragons'll have their Alvins too, and ye might not see it comin' if yer not careful." There might not be any warning signs. Or if there were, he might overlook them. He might overlook a lot of warnings, if he was sure the dragon was his friend.
Gobber made that mistake, that day and countless others far more severe, and Berk was still dealing with the consequences all these years later.