CHAPTER 47: Night of the burning huts
Another day had passed on Ancient Island following the official ceding of Dragon Island. It was night time, and all the vikings in the tribe were readying to go to sleep. It'd been a long day of celebrations for the tribe as Dragon Island had been handed over to them. As night time broke over the island, it'd have made sense to expect nothing but sleep.
But something strange was happening in the middle of the village. Thousands and thousands of Ancient vikings were gathered in form, all standing shoulder to shoulder, where lit torches on top of wooden poles planted into the terrain had cast a beam of orange like a flashlight over their bodies and the grass below their boots. Up ahead in front of them was none other than the de-facto second in command of the Ancients, Herrick Herald. He looked deadly serious, and walked down towards the massive group of Ancients marched up in front of him.
Some Ancients secretly peeked out of the holes in their huts, noticing the strange commotion, particularly strange given it was now night time and for some of them, family members were among those gathered in the middle of the village. There'd been no announcement, no indication of anything, nothing. They'd all just been gathered out to the central village, stood surrounding one of the main wells as tons of lit up torches planted into the ground shone their flames.
For those who had husbands gathered strangely in the middle of the village, their husbands and family members made no hint at having to leave the huts at this time of the day, they'd just simply upped and walked out the huts without informing their own wives and children. It was like they were being magnetized towards Herald.
Herrick Herald stopped about ten meters away from the massive group. He'd been specifically authorized by Alfa Yurlin to come out here and to make a declaration of sorts, a declaration that'd up the ante in the way the tribe treated its...undesirables, for want of a better phrase at this point. He stood straight, looked to and studied the thousands of regular Ancients before him as the pitch black skies dominated above their heads.
"Fellow vikings, we gather tonight on orders from the leader, our dear Chieftan. The conspiracy from archipelago unvikings to destroy our tribe, to stop our liberation plans, culminated in the killing of Krimm Hiss shortly after we took Dragon Island into our hands. This is the biggest sign yet that the unvikings live around us, hidden in plain sight. The leader had authorized me to come out here to you all, selected for your proud dedication to our Chieftan, as he knows an outrage, a disruption, a protest of sorts will inevitably take place."
Herrick Herald cleared his throat as he slowly paced to the left and right, continuing to make his speech to the vikings in front of him.
"The planted unviking in question, under the guise of Krugg Kalvicious, was seized upon and roundly detained on our liberated Dragon Island after he committed the act. Rest assured that we will use his body, as he continues to live, as a prime example to show in the face of Drago Bludvist what happens when you try to destroy our tribe from within. This man was never an Ancient, but merely a plant, an unviking, a disgusting creature - his head doesn't deserve to remain on his torso, none of these unvikings deserve that. The precise opposite of mercy will be inflicted onto this animal who remained so hidden for so many years."
Herald's speech indicated that the Yurlin council had long been made aware of the assassination of Krimm Hiss. The news of the assassination hadn't yet reached all of the tribe, just the council, but that's all they needed. News of the assassination hadn't yet reached the wider archipelago, but after tonight, it was very likely that it'd be out there in the open, especially for Hiccup to hear about.
"You see, fellow vikings, an unviking isn't a human. These animals precisely led to the dire conditions which brought about the emergence of Drago Bludvist and subsequently Grimmel the Grisly, prompting those two dotards to cause conflicts that our ancestors would have despised. The unvikings carved the modernization of the viking style which'd fuel their rise. The unvikings don't care that they caused the death of the most respected Chieftan on these islands, Stoick the Vast. And they certainly don't care that they've caused a proud patriot of a viking, our brother, our savior in Krimm Hiss, to have been mercilessly executed."
Herald was coming to the end of his speech, but the end of his speech didn't mean anything when it came to what was going to happen after it.
"It is on this basis that we anticipate...a riot, a protest, a disruption. All of you are angry, shaking with hatred at the man who caused our loss. Not even a man, but an animal. Our council fully understands that, and inevitably you are all going to go on a massive demonstration. I have simply come to you all tonight to inform you of something in regards to your demonstration which'll be erupting spontaneously throughout tonight."
Herrick Herald was here to initiate what the council was calling 'Night of the burnt huts'. They were extremely careful to make this look like an unplanned outburst of violence across Ancient Island to the eyes of the outside tribes, but in reality, it was to be a state-sponsored, systematic council-orchestrated coordinated wave of violence against what the council deemed to be the unvikings hidden on their island, and it was set to take place tonight all the way to the early morning, and it was all in response to the assassination of Krimm Hiss.
Krugg Kalvicious, in assassinating Krimm Hiss as a way to expose the plight the vikings on Ancient Island were suffering under the archaic Yurlin regime, never thought for a moment that his actions would prompt what was coming.
"Alfa Yurlin, our great leader and Chieftan, has come to the conclusion that our council should not arrange these demonstrations nor should we endorse them. But inevitably they will erupt and you will all embark upon your own methods of showing that our tribe will not be brought down by the unvikings, and our council will respectively not interfere nor stop them."
The council had given the green light for what was effectively a night of lawless criminality against its own vikings in response to Krimm Hiss' assassination. Those vikings chosen to undertake the council-sponsored pogrom that was set to dominate the night were all told to do whatever they felt like they wanted to those they deemed to be unvikings. The council put an order in place that none of the targets of this incoming vandalism should be helped and should be left to suffer. Even if the victims were children, the council had no intention of helping them and ordered their vikings to avoid doing so.
Any of the victims who managed to get through the night, those deemed to be the unvikings, were going to be promptly detained by the council and sent to the political camps, either for execution or a very harsh routine of treatment. When it came to perceived 'unvikings', the Yurlin council had no moral compass, no care for how this would be perceived, because to the council it was a way of rooting out the unvikings from their own tribe, those associated with the likes of Drago Bludvist.
Krugg Kalvicious had no relation to the Warlords, he'd been an Ancient viking his whole life well before Yurlin came to power, but the propaganda of the council had made sure to portray him as a planted unviking working for the Warlords. Far from casting a plight on the danger his fellow vikings faced under Yurlin's dictatorship, Krugg had only initiated what was to be the escalation of the way the Ancients treated 'unvikings'. Tonight was the start.
The thousands of called Ancient vikings who had just stood in front of Herrick Herald for his speech had all wandered off to different parts of the island. Some remained in the central village, others walked up to the coastline, some walked to the outer villages and some walked to the forests of the island. With Ancient Island now being twice as big with its newly annexed land in the form of the Northern Markets and now Dragon Island, Old Berk remaining as a militarized island, some of the vikings felt like they'd easily be able to afford causing harm to some portions of their central island's forestry.
With double the territory acquired thanks to the annexations, they could afford to lose the forests. The night was going to be ablaze with ruthless fires not just rife through huts, but the forests, as the council-sponsored violence commenced.
In the central village, boots started kicking down against the doors of the many huts, those who they'd deemed to have unvikings inside of them. Two Ancients had rushed inside a hut with a husband and wife inside it.
"What are you doing?!" yelled the male viking, to which those who'd broken in responded with nothing but physical attacks.
They grabbed him by the throat, tossed him the ground, and the two of them started bouncing the tip of their boots off his ribs on the floor. The wife could only scream, yell, and cry, as horror broke her face upon the sight of two fellow vikings breaking into their hut and just committing aimless violence.
Yells and screams started emerging across the central village. A group of twenty Ancients who'd listened to Herald just now grabbed their battleaxe from their belt, and sent it into the body of one of the planted torches. They stopped the torch from dropping to the floor by grabbing it the second the sticks were cut in half. They then walked over to one of the other huts, and quickly pushed the flames on the torch against the structure.
The flame caught on. The fire had quickly built up, and it was engulfing the wood easily. The family living inside had ran out upon hearing the flames, and they looked to see the outburst of violence that was occurring before looking towards the group of Ancients who'd clearly orchestrated the fire to their huts.
"LET ME AT YOU, WHY WOULD YOU-" he didn't get a chance to finish.
Instantly, the group of Ancients grabbed their fellow viking, held him up by his armpits, threw off his helmet, and one by one they all took their turn to send their fists thumping into his chest directly. The viking on the receiving end of this group assault had a permanently blind eye, which under past precedent and the view of the council, classified him as an unviking.
The group kept the viking up on his feet. They dragged him over to the gradually blazing hut as heat started ascending from its structure as did the sight of black smoke, and sent his body crashing through the doorway onto the floor. They then proceeded to shut the door, deliberately leaving him to burn inside.
There were panicking vikings now all running across the village as some sort of violence had randomly burst into the open. The Yurlin council wasn't going to help these panicking vikings, they were instead going to let them suffer due to their genuine belief that the 'unvikings' were among their tribe. This needed to happen to root them out.
Another group of Ancients burst through the door of a hut nearer the outskirts of the island, with two parents and a child, to which the group rushed in and grabbed the father. Another half of the group grabbed the mother, and escorted them outside.
"GET OFF ME, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" yelled the woman, as the back of her neck became aggressively gripped by one viking of the group.
"GET OFF HER NOW!" yelled her husband, to which he managed to successfully throw up a fist to send it into the eye of one member of the attacking group.
But right away, the group had all bounced upon the husband and dragged him to the ground, kicking him in the ribs as hard as they could as he struggled on the cold dry muddy terrain. They were on the verge of breaking his ribs, and the group showed no mercy, nor any guilt, and they actually seemed to be relishing what they were doing.
Their kid, a young boy who was only seven years old, was left alone, but the group deliberately left the hut door open so he could see what was happening to their parents. The group saw this family as a bunch of unvikings, so as far as they were concerned, they didn't care that they were exposing their child to violence to his own parents. It needed to be done in their view.
"MUMMY, DADDY?!" cried the young boy, rushing back inside the hut as he was scared, panicked, and tearful.
Within the outskirts of the forest, heaps of flames had been lit on the trees, causing a gigantic buildup of orange in an otherwise contrasting environment of pitch black night. The group in the forest had deliberately set fire to the trees as apart of the council's state-sponsored pogrom in order to smoke out any hiding unvikings. The flames quickly caught their way up the trees, across the leaves, and the forest had become one big blaze of orange.
"OUR YURLIN!" yelled the group, "OUR YURLIN! OUR YURLIN! OUR YURLIN!"
Havoc broke across Ancient Island. Order was lost. Nowhere near all of the vikings on the island were targeted by the council's state-sponsored pogrom that they'd actively encouraged, beginning from Herald's speech, but enough were targeted, mercilessly, ruthlessly and in a cruel manner, in order to send a message on two fronts.
The first being that the unvikings, whoever the council considered them to be, were no longer safe on their island, and secondly, that the assassination of Krimm Hiss had allowed the Ancients to send a message to all the outside tribes that they were deadly serious about dealing with the unviking problem. They wanted Drago Bludvist to hear all the details about this night, the night of the burning huts, so they could get the message.
Screams could be heard rife across the island, as crying, violence, and chases had covered the island. The Ancient council simply sat back and allowed this wave of violence to break out.