Chapter Text
Hiccup woke up as the soft morning light came in through the window. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and smiled when he saw Astrid’s sleeping face. They were both still wearing their pants and tunics, their current ages too strange for them to be comfortable with anything else. He stroked his fingers over her golden hair, and she shifted as she started to wake up.
She pressed her cold toes against his ankles in retaliation and Hiccup rolled his left foot around, still not used to its existence. Astrid jerked awake at that, blinking at him in confusion and poking his lower legs with her toes. Then she remembered their current situation and relaxed back against him with a chuckle.
“This is so weird,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. She tugged him against her chest and buried her face in his hair. Hiccup snorted in amusement. Usually he was the one wrapped around her, but with his current height he fit against her better like this.
Hiccup cuddled into her warmth and allowed himself to go limp. With the ongoing war against the dragon hunters there hadn’t been very many opportunities lately to sleep in. Between his responsibilities as chief and his place as leader of the dragon riders it had been a while since he could just lay abed in his wife’s arms and enjoy her presence. He began to rub her shoulders and she sighed happily and ran her fingers through his hair. He wasn’t sure how long they lay there before the noise of the village coming to life filtered in through their sleepy haze.
“We should get up,” Astrid said regretfully, not moving. Hiccup hummed in sad agreement. He pressed a kiss to her throat before pulling back out of her arms. Astrid pushed herself up to lean against the headboard, then pulled him into a proper kiss. Hiccup took her hand as she pulled away and shifted to sit beside her.
“Think it’s safe for me to go home yet?” He asked in exasperated amusement. Astrid snorted.
“You don’t think he’d stay out there all night, do you?” she shot back. Hiccup raised his eyebrows.
“It’s Gobber,” he said. Astrid hummed in acknowledgement.
Gobber had been waiting for him in front of his house when they had returned from the forest the night before. The blacksmith had concealed himself in the shadows of the porch, probably planning to make a dramatic appearance once Hiccup was too close to run off. It would have worked on his younger self, but his younger self hadn’t gone up against a forest full of Changewings.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” Hiccup said. “We’re meeting him for dragon training in an hour anyway.” With a final cuddle and a sigh of regret, he turned away and began to pull on his boots.
“I hope it doesn’t take too long to convince him we’re not crazy,” Astrid said as she slipped off the bed.
Hiccup nodded in agreement. While they couldn’t make any real progress to change the future until Berk accepted the dragons, there was a good deal the riders could do to prepare for the battles to come. Although he logically knew Berk was too isolated for their time-traveling to have already effected their enemies, he didn’t like that they were so vulnerable.
He stood up and shrugged his bearskin vest on. Astrid gave him a quick peck on the lips on her way to her chest of clothes. Hiccup smiled at her, then turned and slipped out the door. He immediately made his way towards the woods. Despite his blasé attitude about Gobber, he would like to get changed and pick up some maps and notebooks. Somehow, he doubted that Gobber would be willing to wait if he caught him, so the young Viking resigned himself to sneaking in through the back door.
Hiccup bumped into Fishlegs on his way to the arena. Much like Hiccup, he had a full basket slung across his back. He could hear the clinking of glassware as they fell in to walk together.
“So,” Fishlegs started, “I was thinking that the first thing we should worry about is supplies. We can’t actually do anything yet, so I figured it’s better to have things stockpiled so that we can get to work quickly once we know what we’re doing.” Hiccup raised an eyebrow, and Fishlegs huffed in annoyance, “I know, the Red Death comes first, but we have a plan for that, and everything should be ready for it by the end of the week anyway. You and I both know you aren’t planning to sit around playing fetch with Toothless for the next couple of weeks.”
“I was going to focus more on defenses myself,” Hiccup said, grinning in amusement. “We were constantly worried that they’d manage to take Berk. If we know the island’s secure, we’ll be able to focus more on offence once we start really changing things.”
“I think we should be more worried about contingencies,” Astrid said, slipping out of the shadows as Fishlegs was about to answer. Hiccup took her hand with a smile while she elaborated. “Even though we’ll be able to put it off for a while, you know everything’s going to go to Helheim sooner or later. We should use this time to prepare back-ups and fallbacks.”
Hiccup nodded thoughtfully to himself while Fishlegs shot Astrid a miffed look for cutting him off. His eyes narrowed as he realized he’d missed something important in his plans. “It’s a good point Astrid, but Fishlegs is right. We can’t start anything until we have supplies, even if we were to do it in secret. I’m not Chief anymore; we don’t have access to Berk’s storehouses like we used to. Still start making plans, I’ll want to hear what you come up with, but it’ll have to wait.” Astrid frowned, but they both nodded in agreement. Hiccup berated himself internally for forgetting something as crucial and obvious as their current lack of resources.
As they reached the edge of the village the twins tumbled down from their hiding places on the rooftops. Shoving his sister over so he could be the first one to his feet, Tuffnut bounced over to them, dodging a kick as he came.
“What are we talking about?” He asked with a grin. He quickly doubled over with an ‘oof’ as Ruffnut punched him in the stomach. She looked at them expectantly as she fell into step beside them, leaving Tuff to scramble to catch up.
“Our complete lack of supplies, gear, and funding,” Fishlegs answered while Hiccup eyed the twins suspiciously. They had dark circles under their eyes, as if they hadn’t slept, and yet they were bouncing around as energetically as ever. Their grins were just slightly too cheerful to be innocent, hiding an edge that brought to mind the stories of their patron god.
“It’s going to delay everything we wanted to get done. Fall-back shelters, defenses, saddles, armor, weapons…” Astrid trailed off with a huff of frustration, then eyed Hiccup hopefully. “Can we build a forge in the cove? That way you won’t have to try and smuggle things past Gobber.”
“Yeah,” Hiccup said, a bit distracted. Tuffnut had pieces of rope tucked into his belt and Ruffnut had twigs caught in her braids. They were both a bit more scuffed up and dirty than usual, and each had a knife in their boot. Any Viking who saw them would assume they’d been Loki’ing and causing mischief, especially at this age, but Hiccup had been to war with them and recognized the glint in their eyes.
A lot of people failed to realize how dangerous the twins could be. They saw the pranks and ridiculous shenanigans, the surface stupidity and the way they would occasionally hinder their own allies mid-battle with a gleeful cry of “Loki’ed!” In the face of the twins’ cheerful mischief it was easy to forget that the god they served was a being of chaos, the god of fire and trickery.
Catching his eye, Tuffnut let the edge show in his smile for a moment and gave a half-nod of acknowledgement. In the next instant his playful grin was back as he yanked on Ruffnut’s braids. Hiccup didn’t envy whichever enemy had caught the Thorston’s attention.
Hiccup forced his mind away from the twin and focused on Astrid’s suggestion. It was a really good idea after all, and needed to be properly thought out.
“It would probably work,” he said. “It will definitely be useful in the long run, especially if we end up staying on Berk for the next few years and need to work behind the tribe’s back. The only problem is tools. I’ll either have to make them myself without Gobber noticing, or we’ll have to sneak off to the Northern Markets to buy them.”
“The dragon hunters used the Northern Markets,” Fishlegs said. “We don’t want to let them find out about our dragons early.”
“Well there’s no need to worry about us,” Ruffnut cut in. “The plots of the Nut require no provisions aside from genius, cunning, and yak hair!”
“You are forgetting the aromatic grease of our elbows, dear sister,” Tuffnut said grandly, “and a good parfait is never a bad idea.”
“Very true, plus a pair of shovels and pinch of hoof jam would not be amiss.”
“Perhaps with a bit of caos y destrucción on the side.”
Astrid’s eyes narrowed in annoyance at the twins’ banter, then narrowed further when she finally realized that they were clearly up to something.
“Snotlout, my good man!” Tuffnut called, cutting off whatever Astrid was going to say just as she was opening her mouth to speak. She glowered at him while he skipped up to where Snotlout was waiting at the beginning of the arena bridge. Snotlout quickly shoved something into his pocket before turning to face the group.
“Hey guys,” he said. “How are things?”
“Oh, fine,” Hiccup said. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Snotlout asked evasively.
Hiccup raised an eyebrow and glanced down at where his gloved hands were still tucked fake-casually into his pockets.
“Nothing,” Snotlout said, moving quickly to cross his arms over his chest instead. Hiccup recognized the stubborn jut of his jaw. He thought of a few of the other times Snotlout decided to get stubborn, weighed it against his curiosity, and decided he was better off not knowing.
“Hey look, it’s Gobber,” a relieved Snotlout pointed out, sidestepping any further questions from his friends. Sure enough, the older Viking had thrown open the gates to the arena and was making his way across the bridge towards them. Hiccup mentally prepared himself for his mentor’s questions as he began to march across the bridge. His friends fell in behind him.
“There ye are!” Gobber said, giving his apprentice an annoyed look.
“Well, yeah,” Hiccup said, setting his face into an expression of confusion. “Dragon training’s at noon, isn’t it?”
Gobber growled in frustration but dropped the subject of his failed ambush in favor of waving the riders into the arena. Once they were all inside, he shifted to stand in front of the only conventional exit. Hiccup had to stop himself from looking at the loosely woven chain net and its multiple teenager-sized holes. Astrid, who scaled sheer ocean cliffs for fun, exchanged an amused look with the twins, masters of infiltration and self-taught escape artists.
“Where are the dragons?” Gobber demanded.
“Probably in the woods,” Tuffnut answered with a shrug.
“What do ye mean ‘probably’?” Gobber asked, alarmed.
“Well, they are dragons,” Ruffnut said. “They could just… you know…” She flapped her arms like wings.
“So ye just left them out there!” Gobber exclaimed in horrified disbelief.
“We figured they would be safe enough as long as they stayed away from the village,” Astrid said with a shrug.
“There’s nothin’ safe about dragons lass,” Gobber said. “They’re cold blooded monsters that would eat ya alive as soon as look at ya. Now I want ta know why ye six were plotting to let them go.”
“That’s not true!” Snotlout snapped. “They’re not monsters!”
“They burn down our village! They steal our food and attack our people,” Gobber retorted.
“They wouldn’t do it if they had a choice!” Snotlout said.
Hiccup’s eyes widened in alarm. They were not ready to tell Gobber the truth about the raids yet. They needed to get him used to dragons first so he wouldn’t do something stupid like declare them all traitors or gather up the village to attack dragon island.
“A choice? They’re beasts, bloodthirsty ones. It’s just what they do,” Gobber said.
Hiccup, just outside of Gobber’s sightline, waved his hand frantically back and forth in front of his throat as a signal to stop talking. The other riders also tried to catch Snotlout’s attention to no avail. Stress lines showed starkly on his reddening face. His jaw was clenched angrily, and his hands curled into fists as he lost his tenuous hold on his temper.
“It’s all the Queen’s fault! She’s making them do it!” Said Snotlout and his big mouth.
Hiccup pinched the bridge of his nose. Snotlout, realizing what he just said, made an expression that clearly said ‘oops’. Gobber’s eyes narrowed as he started to put the pieces together.
“What queen?” he asked, advancing on Snotlout. “Do ye mean to say you’ve been to the...”
“I read about it in a book!” Fishlegs blurted out, stepping in between Snotlout and Gobber.
Gobber, thrown off, gave Fishlegs a strange look. “Ye read about it?”
“Well I read about ants,” Fishlegs said, shifting nervously under Gobber’s intense and incredulous stare. “You see there’s this fungus, from the genus Ophiocordyceps, that takes over the minds of ants and makes them spread its spores. When they’re infected it just completely takes over their brains and makes them climb up to the top of a tree and latch on, then it kills them and release spores out of their dead bodies to infect other ants. Um… anyway, it kind of reminded me of the dragons and how they’re all acting weird. If something else is controlling them, it would explain why so many are acting uncharacteristically of their species.”
Fishlegs had started rubbing his arm anxiously about halfway through his explanation. The twins noticed and moved to flank him protectively. Gobber stared blankly ahead as he tried to process what Fishlegs had just said. A moment later he shook off his confusion as he decided to focus on the most relevant part.
“Actin’ weird? How do ye mean? Seems like they’ve been doin’ the same thing they’ve always been doin’ ta me,” Gobber said.
“Dragons eat fish,” Tuffnut said, pulling Gobber’s attention away from Fishlegs. “Well, I mean, not all of them. Nadders like chicken, Gronkles like rocks, Death Songs like other dragons…”
“Anyway,” Ruffnut said, cutting off her brother who had started counting on his fingers. “Most dragons eat fish. Nightmares and Zipplebacks definitely do. And even the ones that don’t, don’t eat sheep. So why do they keep stealing our livestock?”
“So you’re tellin’ me you saw that the beasties had a strange diet and decided it was a mind-controllin’ mushroom-queen?”
“There’s also the eyes,” Astrid said. “The arena dragons had big pupils, like cats. They’d narrow a bit in bright light and get wider in the dark. When dragons attack in raids their pupils are as narrow as knife blades. They don’t change at all, even if one comes right out of the shadows and you wave a torch in its face. The eyes are flat, lifeless, like a doll or a dead thing.”
“Ye studied the dragon’s eyes durin’ raids?” Gobber asked quietly.
“I always look my enemies in the eye,” she said, her own eyes sharp and beautiful and deadly. Gobber was the first to break eye contact. Hiccup shook himself and stopped staring at his wife so he could deliver the piece of evidence that would hit Gobber the hardest.
“It’s all in Bork’s papers,” Hiccup said. The mention of his ancestor immediately caught Gobber’s attention. The blacksmith had been entrusted with the artifacts of Bork, and it was something he took great pride in.
“When did ye read Bork’s papers? Yer father didn’t want ye to look at them until ye’d been properly trained. He was afraid they’d give ye ideas,” Gobber said.
“Gobber, I’ve been sneaking into the forge to work on my inventions since I was seven, and you and Dad would always lock me in your house during raids whenever ours got burned down. I’ve read them,” Hiccup said. While it wasn’t the whole truth, it wasn’t a lie either. Hiccup had stolen a peek or two of the papers in his childhood, although he was never able to read more than a page.
“Anyway, there’s no record of dragons being this aggressive anywhere other than Berk,” Hiccup said, ignoring Gobber’s sputtering. “They usually only attack Viking settlements like this if their territory is invaded or their food supply threatened. Even then, flocks of wild dragons are usually much smaller, and almost never have as many different species as we get in raids. Bork traveled the entire Barbaric Archipelago and never came across another island under siege the way Berk is.”
“But…” Gobber said weakly, but trailed off without an argument. Hiccup could see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to remember anything in his ancestor’s journals that would contradict Hiccup’s argument. He had read them several times after all, and was considered an expert on the subject.
“I have ta go check somethin’,” Gobber said, an absent look in his eyes.
“So does that mean no dragon training tomorrow?” Fishlegs asked.
Gobber nodded his acceptance without seeming to really process what had been asked. His focus had clearly already shifted off of the riders. He limped hurriedly out of the arena in the direction of the forge.
The riders listened quietly as Gobber left. No one moved until the sound of his peg-leg tapping against stone faded. Then five of them spun around to glare at the sixth.
“Snotlout!”
The Chief and his Marshal stood across from each other, using a cluster of large, flat boulders as tables. Several maps were spread out between them, weighed down by a haphazard collection of tools, scales, weapons, pebbles, and game pieces. The Marshal scowled as the Chief gingerly placed a particular game piece at the very edge of their largest and most general map. He reached out for a short knife sitting atop an island along with a set of cups and a particularly large and shiny dragon scale. Ignoring the Chief’s look of disapproval, he spun the knife so that it was pointed directly at Berk.
Hiccup broke the contemplative silence with a sigh. “We need more maps,” he said in resignation as he added another one of Meatlug’s scales to the large and unorganized piles of things clustered around the edges of the map. Snotlout grunted in agreement. Giving up on the largest map, which only showed the Barbaric Archipelago, he turned his attention to the smaller, more detailed map of only Berk.
Hiccup gave the map one last look of disappointment before moving to join his cousin. He had spent years exploring beyond the boundaries of the Archipelago. In the future he had access to maps that reliably showed five times the area of this one, and even more could be loosely estimated from detailed travel notes and quick sketches. Even as someone who enjoyed map-making, he was not looking forward to repeating a decade’s worth of work.
He placed a berry over a good location for an emergency supply cache that he’d overlooked earlier. A half-dozen similar berries were scattered across the island and the surrounding sea-stacks. Experience had proven that keeping all their eggs in one basket was a terrible idea.
Of course, in order to build emergency supply caches they had to actually have supplies. Astrid and Fishlegs were currently on Healer’s Island. While not a true healer like Gothi, Fishlegs’ immense knowledge, botany skills, and general kindness made him the de facto medic of the dragon riders. Having learned from the numerous incidents of being injured and stranded from their time on the Edge, Fishlegs had insisted on each rider carrying a basic medical kit. He was hoping to collect enough medicinal plants from Healer’s Island to recreate those kits.
Once that was done, he and Astrid were going to collect as many of the most vital herbs as they could without risking the current plentiful state of the island. They wanted insurance for when Johann was outed as a traitor. While the riders planned to sit on their secrets for a little while, there was no way they were going to let his deception go on for nearly as long as it did last time. As soon as they’d prepared as well as they could from Berk, Johann was going to go.
Hiccup let his eyes drift away from the map and wander over the cove. An area against one of the cliffs had been cleared and flattened. The outline for a small forge had been marked out. Several logs had been cut and abandoned nearby, as the riders didn’t have the tools to turn them into planks. On the other side of the marked area was a pile of limestone and a smaller mound of iron ore, courtesy of the twins. The two had disappeared a couple of hours ago, heading deeper into the woods.
Hiccup’s attention was pulled back to the map as Snotlout began to place arrowheads on some of the sea stacks around Berk’s main harbor. He chose stacks next to the best currents to reach the docks, with the points aimed toward the sailing route, but also slightly out to sea so that no two arrowheads were pointed at each other. Hiccup paled a bit as he recognized what Snotlout was setting up.
“What? No,” He protested. He went to grab one of the arrowheads, but his hand was shoved away by Snotlout, who scowled at him.
“What? It’s not like we’ve never copied a plan from the enemy before,” Snotlout said. “Where did you get the idea to put Zippleback gas in your sword?”
Hiccup glared at his cousin. “Viggo didn’t kill you with that sword!” Snotlout flinched and shuddered a bit, and Hiccup felt like he’d gone too far. He opened his mouth to apologize and reached over the map to pull his cousin into a hug. Snotlout, however, recovered almost immediately and quickly fell back into his usual argumentative state.
“Exactly,” Snotlout said, shrugging Hiccup’s hand off his shoulder. “It takes a lot to bring down the Snot. And if it worked so well against us, imagine how well it’ll work against slow, less maneuverable ships that can’t leave the water.”
Hiccup bit his lip and tried to look at it objectively. He had a tendency to think with his heart rather than with cold logic. While this was often a good thing, being the reason they were dragon riders in the first place, it could lead to bad decisions in a war. It was for this reason he relied so heavily on Astrid and Snotlout when planning for battle, despite being a better tactician than either of them. They understood the brutal nature of war in a way Hiccup never could.
It was a good plan. It was extremely difficult to hit a target that high with a catapult, especially from the deck of a ship. Bola and arrow launchers could do it easily, but neither of those could do much against the solid stone, metal, or even wood fortifications that could be built around a permanent, stationary weapon. With the dragons they could have people out there within minutes of an alarm being sounded without needing to risk passing through enemy infested waters. They wouldn’t even need to build stairs or ladders, which would make them very difficult for an enemy to take over.
It was a great defensive set-up. Astrid would use it in a heartbeat. The only reason he was against it was because it was based off the one that killed his cousin.
Hiccup sighed in defeat and nodded, then shifted one of the arrowheads over to a sturdier sea stack. “We can have the twins carve into the rock rather than just putting the ballistae on top. It’ll protect them from the elements and make them easier to hide.”
Snotlout nodded in agreement. “Not that we can actually do anything without tools,” he grumbled.
“Or the authority to modify Berk’s defenses,” Hiccup added. Snotlout got a constipated look on his face and made a noise of frustration. Just as Hiccup was no longer Chief, Snotlout was not Berk’s current Marshall, and Hiccup could tell that he was just now realizing what that meant.
Hiccup grabbed a charcoal stick and drew a small symbol under each arrowhead or berry while Snotlout scowled at the map. It was obvious that being reminded who the current Marshall was did not sit well with him. Even ignoring all the trouble Spitelout was going to cause for their plans, Snotlout’s relationship with his father was a can of worms that not even Hiccup with his own parental troubles felt up to opening.
“Come on,” Hiccup said, breaking Snotlout out of his brooding. He nodded at the lengthening shadows in response to his cousin’s questioning glance. “Fishlegs and Astrid should be back soon, and we want to get an early start tomorrow. It’s a six-hour flight each way.”
“I still don’t see why we all have to go,” Snotlout complained as he swept the arrow heads into a leather pouch. “It’s such a long flight for what, a half-hour errand? Besides, you know how much Hooky hates that island.”
“Everyone hates that island Snotlout,” Hiccup said with an eye roll. “Besides, would you rather stay here and play hide and seek with Gobber?”
“Ugh, fine, I’ll come,” Snotlout said, pretending he didn’t see Hiccup’s glare when he started to eat the berries rather than help clean up the other maps. “You don’t really think he’s onto us though, do you?”
Later that night, surrounded by books and charts in an already messy attic, Gobber sat back with a look of shock on his face. He’d scoured every bit of his ancestor’s research, unwilling to believe that the dragons were anything but the bloodthirsty beasts he knew so well. However, what Hiccup said was true; according to Bork’s Papers, Berk was the only island with such aggressive dragon raids.
Bork himself had never reached such a conclusion. However, if you were looking for it all his travel logs showed the same thing; individual dragons attacking when approached, small mismatched flocks working together, or large homogeneous flocks protecting their territory. No where other than Berk did Bork find a large, mismatched flock repeatedly raiding a settlement for food.
There were dozens of other inconsistencies that drove the point home. Zipplebacks almost exclusively ate fish. Gronkles rarely traveled over oceans, usually only doing so when searching out a mate or new food supply. Nadders migrated south every winter. Male Nightmares only ever flew together if they were related, seeing any unrelated males as rivals.
Each fact on its own was easily dismissed. Maybe Bork got something wrong, or maybe it was just a difference in diet or climate causing a couple of dragons to act weird. However, taken together there were too many irregularities to ignore.
Gobber’s eyes narrowed. While there was plenty of information here for someone as clever as Hiccup to figure out that there was something strange going on, nothing in the Papers suggested that dragons were trainable. It was an even more ridiculous leap of logic to an evil mushroom queen.
They knew something. Something they weren’t telling him. He started cursing when he realized that he’d almost gotten it out of the Jorgenson boy before Fishlegs had distracted him with his endless babble.
The cursing got louder when he remembered he’d given the kids the next day off from dragon training, meaning they’d have plenty of time to get their story straight before he could question them again.