CHAPTER 30: Indifference
Across New Berk, the atmosphere and vibe was largely unchanged from the previous week, which was surprising considering the very significant annexation that'd just taken place overseas on the Barbaric Archipelago.
At this point, Hiccup didn't even bother organizing tribe meetings in the great hall. He felt a sense of repetitiveness in doing it, but also he was just doing his complete best to look the other way in regards to the events unfolding. There was no way he was going to work up a fuss, not in this stage of his life.
The last time he'd organised a meeting of the tribe, it ended with him walking out of the hall under the pressure. Many of the Hooligans were dismayed that they'd simply allowed Yurlin to march his vikings onto their old island without any action taken. But Hiccup had a sole purpose, this far into his life post-dragons, and that was to live a comfortable father life with his kids.
The last thing he ever wanted was for them to experience the same sort of lifestyle he faced as a teenager. Endless battles, constant worries and apprehension, and conflict which ultimately creates a massive loss of vikings that could've otherwise been avoided. He was content with the peaceful life he'd been living with Astrid the past ten years too since the dragons had left, and he quite honestly felt indifferent about Alfa Yurlin the more he heard about his actions.
He wasn't going to bring his kids back to that lifestyle, and he didn't want to jeopardize the relatively peaceful and battle-free life he'd been living on New Berk up to this point with his family and tribe following Grimmel's defeat. Not a chance.
Hiccup was sat inside his house, with Astrid in the room with him. Valka was also in the room. The only ones who weren't in the room were Zephyr and Nuffink - Gobber had pledged to take care of them whilst Hiccup and his inner group had a conversation in regards to the topic at hand - the Ancients. As much as Hiccup wanted to avoid talking about Yurlin, he knew he couldn't avoid it verbally. After they'd militarized Old Berk, their name and Yurlin's name spread across the Hairy Hooligans like a poison that they wanted to cure.
"We haven't even seen those guys for a while have we son?" Valka said, sat on one of the wooden chairs in the house.
"You mean Dagur, Alvin, Heather and all the others? yeah, I've kinda just gone silent on them I suppose, I hope they don't think I've done it deliberately."
It was true. It'd been a good amount of time since Hiccup had last spoken to any of those. The last time he did was when they came onto New Berk to discuss Yurlin's ordered assassination of the Northern Market chieftan, Erick the Everlasting, in which Kurt the Kourageous replaced him only to fall victim to Yurlin's hunger for territory anyways. The Northern Markets had no longer existed having been absorbed into the Ancient Tribe.
"But I think if we'd have kept meeting up together," Astrid said, "what would we have achieved? the last few times didn't get us anywhere."
"It's still valuable to keep in contact with them for sure, Dagur especially has become a brilliant friend of mine despite our past...but mum, I don't know where to go from here. The tribe I feel already wants a noose around my neck from looking like I'd allowed Yurlin happily to take over our old island. I never wanted that to happen but I feel like that's the perspective of everyone."
Valka could empathize with her son's words. Neither she, Astrid nor Hiccup wanted to risk another conflict of the scale they'd faced with Drago Bludvist in particular. New Berk was a very mountainous island and as a result was naturally closed off to the seas below, meaning nobody could climb up and cause harm. That was also why they were heavily in favour of sitting back and not doing anything.
"Don't be tough on yourself son. You're doing the right thing not just for these vikings, but for the kids too."
As the conversation continued, a knock was heard on the door of Hiccup's house.
"Who is it?!"
"It's Eret, can I come in pal?" Eret asked from outside.
Astrid walked up to the door, saving Hiccup from getting up out his chair. She opened the door and Eret came in with a focused look at Hiccup. His eyes didn't leave Hiccup's direction at all.
"Have you heard about the rumours?" Eret asked Hiccup, planting his two palms on the wooden table.
"It's common knowledge across the island, even the birds in our dense forests know about it no doubt," replied Hiccup, "but yeah, we have."
"So what are we proposing to do about it, Chief?"
Hiccup was noticing this pattern with Eret lately ever since the Ancients had first come to prominence. He was obsessed in a solution to deal with them, but Hiccup was finding it gradually repetitive.
"What do you mean, what are we going to do about it?" Hiccup replied.
"Have you even heard about what they're doing to some of the local vikings from that island they've just annexed? they've absorbed the whole island into their tribe politically, I've never before seen something like this before Hiccup. An annexation with that much brutality inflicted upon the vikings who live there. I don't even recall Drago ever enacting a full annexation of anywhere."
"I know, Eret - it's a horrible situation. But again, what can we do about it?"
"We can be the beacon and defenders of free vikings and stand up to it. This is tyranny, Hiccup, and it's coming this way."
"How do you know that? how do any of us know that? Yurlin has proclaimed that he despises Drago just like we all do here."
Eret shook his head and aimed his face towards the brown wooden table, before looking back at Hiccup following a deep sigh.
"Hiccup, I've been around the likes of Drago long enough to know what's coming down our way if we don't stop Yurlin. You know what's going to happen? one by one, he'll take more islands and absorb them, with each excuse being precisely that he's doing it to protect this archipelago from Drago. Until suddenly, we're the only tribe left standing. And in that situation? a tribe that's ten+ plus islands big will surround us, a teeny small tribe in comparison, and we'll be isolated."
"Oh come on, Eret."
"Come on what? I mean it, Hiccup. What's gonna happen when he suddenly makes a demand of us, with that much land and territory, a demand which will definitely be unreasonable? we've just had a glimmer of that with the Northern Markets situation. For crying out loud mate, it's going to be one by one. First, they'll come for the Warlords, then, they'll come for the other tribes who Yurlin's always claimed were on his side more than Drago, and then they'll come for the rest of us, and we'll have nobody by our side because everyone else will have fallen victim to the Ancient tyranny."
Hiccup continued listening to Eret.
"You have a complete misunderstanding, if I may say so Chief, of Alfa Yurlin's goal. Yeah, he wants to destroy Drago Bludvist, but when and if he does, do you think he'll stop with them? this man has just annexed a whole tribe without any struggle, AND the Northern Markets had actually, from what I've gathered, AGREED to the demands Yurlin made in order to avoid an invasion, and they were annexed anyways. He says that we're a tribe he wants to ally with in the face of Drago, but again...how do we know he won't do to us what he did to the Northern Markets after he's picked off Drago in this great war he's planning with them, and ultimately the other tribes?"
Hiccup was refusing to concede that Yurlin had greater ambitions beyond destroying Drago Bludvist. Old Berk was a deserted island anyways and the Northern Markets were a tribe that Hiccup had more or less forgotten about over the past ten years up until now. He didn't see how this was a threat.
"So do you expect our tribe to once again put the helmets on and declare war or something? you'll know Eret that I've got two kids now, nothing is as black and white as that, and I refuse to do it. I don't want my kids to suffer that. I think because you're anxiously trying to give back to us for being apart of Drago's entourage all those years ago as a dragon hunter, you're looking at this in the wrong lens."
Eret felt like he wasn't getting the message through to Hiccup. He was genuinely worried about the continued aggression of Yurlin and the Ancients, precisely because it was the sort of aggression he'd never seen before, combined with the ideological goal of the Ancients to seemingly attack innocent vikings under the guise of 'unvikings'.
"Let me put it this way, Hiccup. You give a bully something he wants, because you want to avoid a fight. Fair enough. Then, he wants more. So you give him that extra thing. Fine. Then he decides he wants even more, so you give it to him. He promises that he won't ask for anymore. Until he does. Where do you draw the line? you can't reason with the unreasonable, and from the moment I met Alfa Yurlin a short while ago when you sent me and Gobber to their island, I detected a snake. He's not someone you can trust, Hiccup."
"I'm not dumb, Eret, it's bad enough I was treated as such when I was younger."
"No you weren't, son, I always made sure of that, you were an intelligent little baby! and no doubt in my head, despite me being taken away for those years after, you were an intelligent boy!" Valka said, looking to assure her son as she noticed he was sounding more and more pressured.
"We were kids, Hiccup, we'd all sort of do the same thing to each other, treat ourselves like we were dumb."
"Is nobody listening to me here?" Eret asked.
"I fully understand what you're saying, Eret, I do. But...I just don't think Yurlin will do anything beyond Drago, I really don't, and we're completely safe on this island, we have been for the past decade."
"Yeah, until suddenly we aren't. Look, I'm only saying this Hiccup because we're on a timer. If we act too late then we'll all be doomed."
"Okay then, tell me, what do you think Yurlin is going to do beyond Drago?" Hiccup asked, piping up a bit at Eret's relentless desire to go to war, that's what he was picking up anyways.
"I think Yurlin wants to build a vast viking empire with a ruthless political system, an empire which engulfs all the islands on the archipelago, eradicating sovereignty, and imprisons innocent vikings because they happen to, at their discretion, be classed as 'unvikings', and we're smart enough now to know what sort of treatment they'll face, any viking, if they're classed as an unviking in their eyes. Nobody will have any free rights, we'll become a barbaric era of vikings as public executions become the norm for anyone who remotely talks down Yurlin - heck, you think I'm exaggerating? I'm putting my whole head on the line here and saying that is precisely what Yurlin's working towards. He wants a different kind of world domination to what Drago wanted."
Hiccup still had that look of denial on his face. He was nodding ever so subtly left and right as he scratched his beard in frustration. Eret was completely exaggerating in his view.
"For crying out loud Hiccup, the Ancients have some sort of council law or decree in place which forbids MARRIAGE between the vikings they class as unvikings, and the women in their tribe are discriminated against and can't do anything but live in their huts and raise families. What more of a red flag do you need? we can't sit back and appease further."
Hiccup continued to nod in disagreement. He just refused flat out to believe any of this.
"I'm really sorry for being doom and gloom Hiccup mate, but surely you have to see where this all leads up? at the moment, Yurlin's portraying himself as the guy who's going to eradicate the archipelago of Drago and his irk, but you are vastly underestimating what he really wants. How long is it gonna be before he tries to make demands upon us before taking our island and invading?"
"Stop insulting my intelligence, Eret, please."
Hiccup stood up off his chair, looking right at Eret.
"I am NOT going to put the lives of this tribe and my family at risk over a conspiracy theory. You know what? if I could sail to The Hidden World and live there, I would. All I want right now is Toothless and the dragons."
Without a warning, Hiccup had collapsed into a waterfall of tears as he rushed towards the front door of his house. He was too emotional to hear all of this. Eret looked back at the door with concern as Hiccup rushed through it, with Valka swiftly rushing through to catch up to her son.
"Why are you doing this?" Astrid asked Eret, just before she left the house to catch up with Hiccup and Valka.
"Astrid, I honestly am just trying to look out for us all, and your kids-"
"We can look out for our own kids, Eret. As Hiccup said, your overly anxious desire to give yourself some sort of redemption when you've already done it, it's causing Hiccup to not feel right. He already misses our dragons more than ever, the last thing he needs is you saying we have to risk losing lives to stop a danger you've made up in your head."
With that, Astrid rushed out of the house to catch up to the commotion, leaving Eret isolated inside. He could only look at the table and sigh heavily.
"My god..." he whispered to himself.