CHAPTER 45: Peace
The boat had finally arrived back home. It'd been gently stopped at the direct side of New Berk where the manually controlled wooden platforms were, the ones used to get up and down from the island. As Hiccup stood on the platform, he was surrounded by Dagur, Mala, Alvin and Heather, alongside a mixture of their own vikings respectively who had joined them.
The obvious absence was Atali, who, at her request, had returned home to Wingmaiden Island. She was completely done with these other tribes and had no intention of making contact with them, any of them, ever again. Hiccup hated what happened on the boat before when she went physical, and as flustered and guilty as it made him feel, he had a triumph of a thought: when all was said and done, the assured peace would be worth it, not least with having Yurlin be a buffer tribe of sorts between the Hooligans and Warlords, a defender.
That was an arrangement, in Hiccup's view, which also greatly benefited the tribes of Dagur, Mala and Alvin, and all the others still on the Barbaric Archipelago. He never got a chance to apologize for Atali, and he wanted to stress to her that he absolutely was on her side. Peace was a desire that united them all, and with time, Hiccup thought that Atali would come back around.
"This is it fella," Alvin said, "your whole family and your tribe's gonna be waiting in anticipation up there, my lad."
"I think I can hear their voices already?" Hiccup said, looking up to the monstrous terrain that was New Berk.
None of the vikings on the platform, as it was manually being pulled up from the Hooligans at the top via wooden levers that had to be manually pulled, bothered to look down to the seas. Heights wasn't something you wanted to be afraid of when using the platform to get either up and down New Berk. But as the height increased as they got closer to reaching the forests of New Berk, the sound of approaching voices grew louder and louder.
"I can hear them too, how weird?" Dagur said, "they must all be waiting at the hut where the lever's being pulled."
None of this was easy for Hiccup, absolutely none of it. But he felt like, by getting the deal he got with Yurlin, an assurance of peace, it'd all be looked back on with dignity. He was ultimately taking the course of action he was for his children, Zephyr and Nuffink. The hurting, desperate desire to avoid them going through a conflict was all that ran through his head. As a dad, he'd feel like a complete failure of a parent if he'd allowed that.
The cold winds smashed against all of their bodies as the platform elevated higher and higher. The seas below became ever more silent as the distance between them and the water grew. Being directly besides New Berk's Hiccup was holding the exact bit of paper he'd signed with Yurlin at the conference, and it was his plan to show the paper to all of the tribe, as evidence that he'd secured an understanding with Yurlin, and a future with nothing but peace.
"What do you think of Atali, Hiccup?" Dagur asked, wanting to break the silence as they all eagerly awaited to get up to the top.
Hiccup sighed.
"I'll...we'll make it up to her. I never intended to...throw her under the bridge. I just felt like I had no other option."
"I personally think we should let her and her lot just get on with it. If she's so incensed as to say what she said about my island and Krogan and Johann all those years ago, then she's not worth the effort."
"I don't personally see it that way, I'm fully empathetic to the situation we've put her in. But again, what else am I supposed to do as a dad? I don't want to be fighting conflicts anymore, I'm past that point in my life, not least over an island that no tribe had ever lived on before, therefore rendering any claims to it false of any credibility."
Dagur nodded. For him personally, now was the time to give the Wingmaidens a 'time out', to let them reflect on their anger and, in his view, the overreaction she personally had. As Hiccup said just now, uttering pretty much what Yurlin kept saying at the conference, Dragon Island has never been an island that housed a tribe on it, never. It was always the home of the dragon nest that Stoick so desperately spent all those years looking for. There was no valid concern of sovereignty to be had over it as a result.
Nonetheless, Dagur wanted things to move forward, not backwards. He, much like Hiccup and the rest, hoped that this deal secured with Yurlin meant peace for their time, peace that'd be everlasting. Because prior to the conference, it felt like war had been coming down the road, the first conflict since the dragons left for The Hidden World. Luckily, it was all averted.
Eventually, the platform got to the very top, and as soon as Hiccup caught a glimpse of the greenery of New Berk, alongside the wooden huts to the side that housed the manually pulled wooden levers used to pull the platforms up and down, a huge cohort of Hooligans surrounded their space.
Hundreds and hundreds of Hooligans gathered right around the hut where the wooden lever was. Many grumpy looking vikings, fat and skinny, bearded and not bearded, helmets on and no helmets at all, had all been talking to each other in big groups - it was only when the emergence of their Chieftan from the platform came that they all shut up and turned directly to face the edge of New Berk where the platform was.
Running out from the anxiously awaiting crowd of Hooligans were the usuals - Snotlout, Fishlegs, Tuff and Ruffnut, Eret, and most importantly, Valka, Gobber, Astrid and the two kids. They were all awaiting with anxiety Hiccup's return.
"SON!" Valka said, rushing over to Hiccup as hundreds of Hooligans watched from behind her, "you're back, how'd it go?"
Astrid and Gobber, alongside Zephyr and Nuffink, all joined Valka by her side.
"DAD!" Zephyr said, to which Hiccup leaned down and hugged his two kids as they embraced their father with relief that he was back home, completely safe.
"Missed you guys," Hiccup whispered, as he hugged Zephyr and Nuffink.
"We missed you too, you didn't come back all night!" Zephyr said.
"I know Zeph, I know...but it was all worth it."
"All worth it?" Valka said, "why, what happened? what did you come out with, son?"
Hiccup, Dagur, Heather, Mala and Alvin all at the same time gently stepped off the platform and onto the grassy terrain of New Berk. The hundreds of Hooligans were clustered around numerous trees which were in uneven positions from the ground, all intertwining in some of the branches. Chirping birds were unable to be heard due to them flying away from the sheer presence of vikings.
Dagur, Heather, Mala and Alvin all remained put, whilst Hiccup walked a bit closer to the hundreds of Hooligans standing within the forest as they awaited his return even before he got back. He could tell from their expressions that what he was about to say would matter. Snotlout, Fishlegs, Tuff and Ruffnut and Eret, alongside Hiccup's family, all remained directly besides him.
"Everyone," Hiccup said, in a somewhat-yelling tone, "I know I've been gone all night, and trust me, I was tired and sleepy. But I think I've done it, I know ever since this started cropping up as a potential danger, we've been anxiously trying to figure out a solution, and I think I've found and done it."
Hiccup held up the bit of paper in his hand and waved it in the air, in front of all the Hooligans.
"Overnight, I, and the other Chieftans here, had a long thorough talk with the Ancient Chieftan, Alfa Yurlin. We all wanted to talk, because I, as a dad especially, didn't want this to evolve into something we'd all experienced back in the day the dragons were here with us, I'm obviously talking about what we experienced with Drago and Grimmel. I know I tried talking to Drago before he did what he did to my dad..." Hiccup gulped, just at the sheer mentioning of his dad's death, "but this time, I felt it was different."
Hiccup continued.
"I was talking to a Chieftan who was joking around, was jolly, and although he used pretty divisive language these past few days in his speeches, I didn't feel like I was talking to Drago version 2, and not even Grimmel version 2, I was just talking to another Chieftan on the archipelago. And in that spirit, something my dad would've wanted me to do, I hold up this paper...signed by the two of us, which also has his name on it, as well as mine."
Hiccup waved the paper around - it was the Ancient-Hooligan treaty of obligations that he and Yurlin signed together. The reaction in the crowd was a lot more mild and tame than Hiccup had expected - he was expecting an applause, or a cheer of sorts. The semi-silence seemed to put him off his game. After awkwardly waving the treaty in the wind with little to no reaction, he lowered it and started reading off of it.
"I'm just gonna...uh...read you all some of it. Some of the more important parts. In particular, the part about conduct of the conference, and this is what it said: we both recognize that the way in which this conference has been conducted is the way any such differences, should they arise, be addressed between our two tribes in the future. That's just one sentence alone and is just one of the many positive agreements we came to at the conference."
Again, the most Hiccup got insofar as a reaction to his words were hesitant groans. Some Berkians actually nodded, but the vast majority didn't seem to buy anything written on that paper.
"The Ancient Chieftan will have his troops march onto Dragon Island-"
At that, a massive groan broke out among the crowd, causing Hiccup to stop halfway through his sentence. This wasn't the sort of reaction Hiccup had expected to be getting.
"Why would you trust him after what he did to our old island?!" one big width Berkian said, his beard nearly touching the grassy ground it was that long.
Hiccup had no words. He cleared his throat, getting out of his briefly flustered state before carrying on.
"He will have his vikings march onto Dragon Island after the Wingmaidens withdraw. It'll be a week long process and it'll be peaceful, and I should know, because I had word from Yurlin himself. And he consistently promised not just me, but all of us. that he was going to turn his tribe into a buffer zone between ourselves and Drago, who we all know is still alive. Isn't that incredible?"
"NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT?!" yelled a second Berkian, "THAT FELLA STOLE OUR OLD ISLAND OF SEVEN GENERATIONS, HOW COULD YOU MAKE A DEAL WITH HIM ON THIS ESPECIALLY?!"
The Chieftans behind Hiccup were also surprised at the cold reaction the peace conference agreement was getting from Hiccup's tribe. Many of them were incredibly incensed at Yurlin for militarizing Old Berk. To them, Stoick never would've accepted that, so they had no idea why Hiccup was accepting it.
"Peace should come before anything, I know Berk was our home, but we had to leave it when we did, maybe I was naive to drag us all off it looking back...but look where we are now, we've just secured peace, New Berk is a LOT taller which deters any enemies...and we've just had a peaceful period since the dragons left for The Hidden World."
"That's not the point, 'Chief'," said another Berkian, "whatever you and that little twerp wrote on that paper, not your writing, but his, is worth as much as me getting a piece of charcoal and smudging it on my own bit of paper. We should've stood up to him when he sent his vikings onto OUR old home. Berk is and was Stoick's home."
"Okay okay," Valka said, joining Hiccup by his side, "I know we all feel strongly about this...but why not give it time to work? you've all gotta understand and remember exactly what we went through with Drago in the past, and what I went through with him. It's been ten years since our dragons left for The Hidden World, we've lived in peace over that decade. Hiccup's just wanting to make sure that prevails more than anything."
Nothing even Valka said seemed to persuade the Hooligans, who were chuntering and groaning and looking at each other with angry faces, angry at Hiccup for simply bowing down to Yurlin and his demands. Hiccup had no idea which way to take his speech next given the cold response the agreement was getting.
"Look guys...I know this is tough terrain to walk on, but my father left me a big goal...to defend our interests as a tribe. I genuinely believe this is in our interests. Do I want Yurlin to have sent vikings onto Berk? no, of course not. But...in this case, going to war over an island no tribe had ever lived on in its history, did we really all want war just because of that?"
"Speaking of which actually, where's Atali?" Astrid asked, as she joined Hiccup and Valka in front of the hundreds of gloomy looking Berkians.
"She uh...it's a long story, I'll tell you in a minute," Hiccup said, before looking back to all of the Hooligans, "listen guys, this is gonna be peace for many years to come, Yurlin wants to protect us from Drago, why don't we wait and see what happens?"
Rather than responding, the Berkians simply abandoned their formation and started walking away, like Hiccup wasn't even there. Their leaving was joined by groans. They couldn't believe how much Hiccup was giving Yurlin without a single crossbow being fired. Valka patted her son on the back as more Berkians, in groups and groups, started leaving the vicinity.
Eret, crossed arms and all, being the only one out of the 'gang' to stand with crossed arms, couldn't believe how right he seemingly was. He knew Alfa Yurlin for what he was, and the sort of monster Hiccup was dealing with, but it seemed like Hiccup didn't know the monster yet. A majority of the Hooligans seemed to know what Yurlin truly was given their cold reaction to the vast appeasement going on, but Eret was just standing there with a solemn face, not believing how much he was being proven right.
Time would tell as to whether his concerns about Yurlin were true. For now, 'peace in our time' was all Hiccup could say - at the moment, it was just words, but Hiccup genuinely felt like this could be a great deal, especially with the part about Yurlin protecting them from the Warlords.
Eret had no such thoughts.