Freefall

Le'letha

Summary: ["Nightfall", Part 3] Once upon a time, a baby named Hiccup was taken from Berk and raised entirely as a dragon. Years later, he and Toothless brought war to the Queen of the Nest and peace to Berk, and took down Drago Bludvist as an encore. …This matters to Grimmel the Grisly. A lot.

Author's Note: Ideally, Freefall should be read after Nightfall and Stormfall.

Updates weekly.

Freefall, Part One

He rolls the vial across his fingers, spinning it slowly, watching the clear, thick liquid within slosh against the sides.

It catches the light from the candle sharing the table with him, sending slow flashes across the much-scarred wood, lighting up the worn, stained surface far more than flatters it. Through the liquid, as it flows, Grimmel can see the fire blazing in the hearth at the opposite end of the tavern's big common room, and a glimpse of the kitchen hearth-fire through the single inner door. Though many bodies stand between him and the flames, somehow every man and rough woman of them is a safe distance away.

Fools and barbarians all, but perhaps not quite that foolish, and their caution pleases him.

There's a slick muddiness to the liquid that betrays its true nature – not water, but venom powerful enough to kill every man in this room, held harmless behind glass as thin as a whisper, rare and valuable. Rarer still, with so much of it in his hands. He has tried many ways to keep this poison, but leather rots and metal wears. Left to sit, it rusts away all but dragon iron, turning the liquid an evil, bloody red. Poured away, it leaves behind a surface as bubbled as boiling stew.

And yet, the fragile glass remains untouched. Fascinating.

He uncorks the small vial, no longer than his shortest finger, and tips three drops – no more, just yet – into the mug of ale before him. Though long separated from its dragon, the vapors from the open vial still sting his nose, even beneath the rank stink of tired fishermen and hard-worked ships' crews. It winds its way under the sharp bite of charred meat left too long on the spit by the little tavern boy not tending it. It even cuts through the unwashed reek of the clump of yelling, mocking young barbarians shoving each other over the table one of them has just jumped up on, kicking out at noses and ears and horned helmets as he yells at them all to shut up and listen to his story, it's his turn.

Grimmel carefully replaces the heavily-waxed cork and tucks it away into his belt-pouch. More fool the light-fingered thief who tries to steal it from him, and he wishes them all the best as they die horribly.

He lifts the mug, and swirls the poisoned ale around three times one way, and three times another, waits for a count of three more, and then he drinks it down without hesitation.

He doesn't taste the poison. He doesn't have time. As the ale washes over it, his tongue goes numb, as if it were another creature sharing his jaw like a worm rooted in a fish's mouth. He feels it flow down his throat leaving locked-tight nothingness in its wake, and takes a deep breath on reflex and long habit. He must breathe, hard enough so that his body remembers what to do, or he will choke as his throat freezes.

It doesn't. Perhaps another drop of color leaches from his hair and his face, but he breathes. He lives another day to feel tendrils of cold ice thread their way through his chest, reaching for his lungs that fight against it and his heart that beats regardless. A shudder, so strong even his iron will cannot control it, rolls through his bones as if a dagger had struck deep into his chest.

Against it, Grimmel sets the memory of just that. Well, almost.

Once, and only once, he'd had a dragon had turn on him, its stinger raised and a snarl in its throat. Grimmel hadn't felt the bite of its needle-thin sting plunging beneath his breastbone so much as the impact of it, a dull blow as tail-tip and deadly venom had sunk into his flesh.

He remembers the way his breath had rushed out of him, a death-rattle he'd had no will to utter nor strength to stop. He remembers how slowly it had happened, as he'd looked from the thick muscle of the dragon's tail to the torn threads of his tunic shredding, and how he'd had time to not only consider the flaws in his armor but design a new set that would protect him better.

He remembers the shouts and the scrambles of the few men he'd bothered to keep with him at the time. All in an instant, or so they'd said it had been later, he'd made a note of every face and plotted a course to the nearest port where he could get rid of them all, for they'd scrambled not to his defense, or to avenge him, but away.

And he'd looked up into the dragon's eyes, and seen the blind animal rage in a creature that had always bent its head and done his bidding before.

He sometimes likes to imagine its surprise when he'd fallen back from its sting, his body sliding to the deck, and stood back up with a sword in hand. Grimmel's strike had been truer, and the creature had died on his blade probably still wondering why its poison had failed it and its rebellion come to naught, even as its fellows had watched it die from behind glazed eyes.

Grimmel believes in knowing his enemy, even when that enemy stands at his side and pledges their alliance, or crouches at his feet and believes itself his servant.

Years ago, he'd heard a story of a king who feared poison, and who had turned his fear into a shield. Just as a child who feared water might wade into the ocean a step at a time, running from the big waves but returning again and again, until he no longer saw its dangers or felt its cold, the king had learned all he could of the poisons his treacherous court might use to kill him. He had taken sips from each every day, mixed them together and taught his body to bear them, until he could lace every meal with poison and eat it with a laugh as his enemies choked on the same meat.

Now that, Grimmel had thought with satisfaction as the tale-teller had moved on to wilder tales and newer songs, had been a man determined to die old and clever.

That night, he had set aside a single vial of venom from the dragons he'd hunted to capture rather than kill, even as he fed their own venom back to them. Alone in his cabin, locked away from any who might try to learn his secrets, he'd touched a single drop to the very tip of his tongue, a barrel of salt water at the ready to wash it from his mouth.

He'd nearly drowned himself in that barrel, the first time, first in his haste to rinse the dreadful killing numbness away, and then as his arms shook and threatened to drop him into that water, with his lungs seizing away all their air.

But he'd spat salt onto the deck of his cabin, and resolved that he, too, would die old and clever, laughing at his baffled foes.

Some things can be borne, with practice.

Others cannot.

Grimmel knows all too well that poison is always poison, no matter how long you must drink it, even when you know nothing else, no matter how numb you get.

But the day you get to spit it all back out, right in the faces of the ones who told you poison was water, and watch them choke on what they'd forced on you – that is worth it all.

This is an old lesson, and one that brings a taste far fouler than the venom's aftertaste to his throat – the sour ale does nothing at all to sweeten it. Through the ale, he can still somehow taste sodden marshes, ever-changing but always the same. He can taste the smoke of slow-burning peat, cut through and by no means improved by the goats that ate everything, got everywhere, and smelled like it.

He can almost hear the whisper of the swamplands, how the reeds and swamp grasses and rushes had rubbed together under the wind and the scythes of the people who waded through the brackish surface of the far-flung marsh, chopping down reeds that always grew back.

He no longer dreams of the birds' calls that came back from every backwater and trailing tree, screaming at each other and the dragonets no bigger than they were. It has been a lifetime since he heard those oily-feathered, sad little knots of claw and flesh shriek, diving to the attack upon the muddy children who scooped eggs from their nests to suck. Not even the night had silenced them, or the frogs that took up the chorus until long after the moon had set.

The people who lived in the marsh and on it, who had become part of it, had claimed not to hear them anymore.

His name had been something else then, something he no longer claims as his own and that no living throat has spoken since he was a boy.

The boy who would one day be Grimmel had always heard them.

He had known there had to be something more. He had known he wasn't, that he couldn't be, one of the shuffling reedmen who'd lived all their lives looking down.

Dull people, in a wet, slow world, never looking beyond their own slowly moss-greening toes, not even when ships would sail into the delta where brackish marsh met clean salt sea to trade for bushel upon bushel upon bushel of rushes and reeds. Never asking where the ships came from, or where they went, or what stories the people who sailed them might have to tell.

Every day like the next, and no one else but him to scream.

His father – Grimmel can no longer remember the man's face, and is glad of it – had struck him once, not so much for asking questions of adults who had real work to do and no time for curious children, but for pushing the other children to ask too.

"Why? Why? Why?" that boy had demanded, and "What if?" He'd spun tales wilder than that young barbarian in the brighter-lit center of the tavern could ever have dreamed of, desperately inventing flesh and bright skin onto the bones of his narrow, damp world. He'd only been trying to get the other children to wonder what else the world might have to offer them, even as their necks began to bend.

His father's blow had landed so hard that he'd heard his jaw shatter, silencing him for so long that all his stories and all his questions were forgotten, all the sparks he'd tried to light drowned out. And from that day forward, while he sipped the dregs of cooling, thin broth and dreamed of the day he could unbind his face and speak again, he'd vowed to run, run, run and never return.

Nothing, it seemed, could drive those people – they were never his people – to look up. Not even dragons.

They wouldn't even fight.

Even Grimmel couldn't have found anything interesting in the little marsh dragonets, no bigger than his father's fist, their scales the dull mud-and-moss of the swamp they fluttered and leaped through and dived into. They peeped like frogs and shrieked like birds, and ate both, and stole everything their little claws could grab, from a set-down scrap of bread to a dropped reed longer than their own wingspans.

The people of the marsh swatted them aside and ignored their screams of outrage, and barely had to tell their children not to follow the dancing lights they saw over the brackish water at night. There was no mystery there: no mischievous imps, no beckoning trolls promising treasure for the daring child to find. There was only the flickering flash of the lights the little dragonets held in their jaws to lure fish.

But the ones that came from the sky – oh, those were another creature entirely.

…or were they?

Beasts that breathed flame hotter than the forge-fire as their smith pounded out bog-iron into kettles. All power and menace as one banked in mid-air and dived at a stray goat that had ventured beyond the tree-cover. Its claws and fangs had gleamed sharper than any scythe, until it had been knocked aside by another racing it to the kill. They'd tumbled together, writhing and shoving, as Grimmel watched, mouth open without a thought for the missing child's tooth that, moments before, had been his proudest story.

Somehow both beasts had pulled out of their fall, only instants before they'd both struck the ground, and soared away. He still believes he'd felt his hair, already losing its color, ruffle as they'd split the air right over his head.

He'd been close enough to touch, and if he had only reached out –! Ah, he'd felt as if he could have grabbed one by a wingtip and pulled it from the sky.

And he'd turned to follow them, and seen the air filled with wings that seemed to blot out the sun, glaring eyes and flashing scales, descending upon the village to take anything they could grab – no different from the little dragonets after all!

He still remembers the way the thought had hit him, a thud no different from the Deathgripper's needle-sharp stinger striking into his chest so many years later. For a moment, he'd understood something.

Something new.

Something he could tell everyone.

Something that would change the world.

And in response? In the face of the most interesting thing to happen in that gap-toothed boy's entire life?

Why, the village chief – no warrior, no wise man, no singer, no hunter, no more than the oldest man to still possess his wits – had simply ordered everyone to their dugout huts and bid them slam the door. Turn their backs. Close their eyes. Wait for the dragons to tire of sod that would not burn and herds they could not get to, for the goats – the goats! – had the wit and the favor to hide themselves in the only stone building not yet sunk into the marsh.

The boy who was not yet Grimmel had crouched there in damp darkness, bursting with the new thing he had to say. He'd listened to the beasts roar their hunger, as their heavy paws beat a strange new rhythm into the trodden-down earth and the forever-sinking boards laid down to bridge the wettest corners of the village. He'd listened to a couple of the interchangeable, short-lived, fast-fading babies whimper, not even enough spirit to work up a decent wail, and heard them be hushed regardless.

And yet he'd opened his mouth anyway, again and again, and each time the most important thing he'd ever had to say had been knocked back down into his chest with a backhanded blow and a growl of shush!

In the last light before the single candle was snuffed out to save the thickening air, he'd seen his father staring at him, cold and flat and judging, daring him to say a word, and he'd felt a roar and rage of his own burning deep in his gut.

"Might as well shout at the thunderstorm," dull-eyed men and beaten-flat women had told him, when he'd said that big dragons were no different from little dragons, and they'd never sat still to be pestered by those, had they?

He'd demanded to know why they didn't do something, all of them. Why couldn't they take up their scythes and kitchen knives and demand swords in trade instead of apples? Why couldn't they lie in wait and drive the dragons away when they returned? Weren't all these so-called older and wiser adults telling him that the dragons always did?

"Might as well fight the sun," he'd been told.

And one day, when he'd been no more than a boy of fourteen or so, full of frustration and anger and the need to do something, anything, more than only what everyone else did, what he'd done all his life and would have to do forever, he'd looked around and seen only dead people.

Corpses, walking: pale as death as the marsh rotted them, empty eyes and blank minds, backs bent and hands in the wet earth, fingers twisted as woven sedge-cord.

He'd tasted the poison that was killing him too, and he'd spat it out, and he'd run.

And as the last of the Deathgripper venom seeps through his body, finally reaching and numbing the wounds he couldn't be happier to bear, that he would have willingly inflicted on himself for the joy they've brought him, Grimmel savors every step he's taken since.

The dregs of the ale linger in the bottle of his rough wood-and-leather mug, and for a moment Grimmel contemplates leaving them there for some unwary scavenger to lap up thinking himself very fortunate, or casting them aside. The clotted rushes beneath his feet would sop it up and never notice – they've clearly done just that many times before.

But no. If he means to master four drops someday – so that he might laugh in the face of the next dragon to harden itself to its own venom and turn on him, or the next lackey of Svanhild's to think to earn her favor by poisoning the hunter who walks among armies and scoffs at them, and is not only tolerated anyway but listened to – then he must drink it all.

Grimmel picks up the mug again, and drinks the poison gladly.

Darkness pours over his vision for a moment, or perhaps it's only the candle guttering, blown into a stagger by the plate that's just soared over his head and smashed into the wall beyond. Scraps of what might have been cabbage, long ago, splatter and drip towards the ground. As Grimmel fights through the full-body tremble that it's a blessing to feel – if he's not strong enough to bear it, he'll never feel the venom kill him – he wrenches himself around to see where it came from, and possibly introduce the fool who dares throw something at Grimmel the Grisly to a better-aimed crossbow quarrel.

"Shut up!" the young barbarian with the close-cropped red hair is still shouting, pushing another young hothead onto the floor with a sneer, practically dancing on the table as he stomps a boot down hard on reaching fingers. "I'm telling it now! You want a story, huh? I've got one, and it's true, every word!"

The nearest exhausted drinker to Grimmel, who doubtless thinks himself very hidden and entirely alone in the shadows in the back of the room, sighs deeply and takes a deep draught from his own ale mug as if he doubts the table-climber's story already.

"Get off the table, kid," someone else, safely concealed in the crowd, jeers at him.

The barbarian turns as red as his hair, or at least what's left of it. Grimmel, no stranger to dragonfire, suspects the man had run afoul of an angry dragon at some point. No great surprise, as he understands that the Vikings of the north practically live for any fight they can get into. The redhead, now balling his hands into fists in a way that overemphasizes muscles he's clearly worked quite hard on, sounds like he belongs north of here.

"Who are you callin' kid?!" he demands. "Come out here and say that to my face if you dare! I'm the Chief of the Berserkers! I fight dragons with my bare hands! I can lift a yak over my head! I once caught a Skrill!"

"Come off it, Dagur," an equally young barbarian, but with tattoos across his cheeks that mark him as a herd-raider from the endless tundra, weeks east of here, calls over from the bar. His tone is amiable enough. "You did not."

"I did so!" apparently-Dagur declares gleefully, and launches into the story he'd been intending to tell all along. Or at least, there's probably a story under all the boasting about how great and clever and deranged he is.

Grimmel mostly believes that last bit.

The tale, however entertaining in its way, brings him no closer to the riddle he's come north to solve, even in the face of the greatest stroke of fortune he's had since the first time he'd met someone who was willing to teach a moss-fingered boy to slip a knife between a dragon's scales.

But he had spent the winter wondering, as baffled men and defeated soldiers and once-fierce warriors drifted back to the crossroads fortress, with wilder stories on their tongues than the one Dagur is spinning now. They spoke of gods and demons and monsters as tall and mighty as mountains. They babbled of curses and creatures out of legend and impossible things. They stared into their cups and muttered of nightmares and Valkyries on dragonback. They swore bloody vengeance – on what, never clear – even as their knees trembled and their fists faltered. They looked away and begged not to speak of what they'd seen.

There must be thousands more out there, scattered to the edges of the earth. Without their warlord to bind them into his crusade, to terrify them into obedience – they're gone, and Grimmel for one does not miss any of them.

Or their master.

If there's one thing that all the stories have in common, it's that Drago Bludvist is dead.

Grimmel could barely believe it, when he'd heard. A single battered iron ship had dragged itself into the harbor where dozens like it had once passed through, cycling in close to shore and anchoring further out to sea in turn. Almost at once the whispers had sprung up, passing from man to man in mutters and gasps.

What no one seems to know is how.

What – or who – brought down the Beast from the Sea, as some had called him, is a question Grimmel would dearly like answered.

It's not that he was particularly fond of Drago. As far as he could tell, not even Drago had liked Drago very much. The man had seemed half a berserk dragon himself, like one of his whipped-up armored attack creatures, save only that Drago could speak, though seemingly never without a snarl.

Even among his allies, the consensus had always been that it was safer and better to keep Drago Bludvist supplied, his ships repaired, his worn-out dragons disposed of, his men fed or replaced when they finally came to their senses and were smart enough to run when they might have a chance of getting away, and his fleet aimed, above all, somewhere else. He'd been a weapon, but a damned effective one.

To know Drago Bludvist, all wild hair and brutish face and stolen cloak, would never return to stalk like creeping, savage darkness down the corridors of the crossroad fortress?

To know the Beast from the Sea would never again demand more, more, more and growl at them when cooler-headed, wiser leaders didn't hop to do his bidding?

It had been a relief, honestly. And if only Grimmel had been sure that one of their own had gotten clever and stuck a knife in the man's back, he could have slept easily and dreamed pleasant dreams of long-ago hunts.

Instead he has a riddle without a reply, a game board with half its pieces missing, a trail with most of its pawprints wiped out, and a mystery he cannot leave alone.

The Beast from the Sea dead, and no one's hand to clasp for doing it.

He needs to know what happened, or he'll never get any rest. Not that there was much rest to be had back at the crossroad fortress where he'd wintered, listening to Svanhild scream at her supposed fellows until the old stones trembled in their ever-rotting mortar. He's grown tired of hearing common soldiers trade increasingly horrific tales of Drago's bloodlust and the dragon army he'd commanded, for all the good it had eventually done him. Grimmel has heard enough of the things the Beast had done to the settlements that had dared to cross him, those who'd simply denied him whatever he'd decided to take, and any man who'd happened to be standing near him when he lost his elusive temper.

Well, let them quarrel and tremble and make up tales of gods of endless ice and demons that came to reclaim one of their own. Either none of the supposed brave warriors had the wits to actually go and find out what had destroyed their alliance's deadliest weapon, or none of them had the nerve.

Grimmel has always known himself the proud possessor of both.

And then – the wounds beneath his cloak tug at him, and Grimmel smiles, slow and hungry, savoring the thought – then he'll put his Ghost through her paces, and see what sort of hunt she'll offer him. He'll let her slip her bonds, and bring her down again just when she thinks she's lost him…

If there's anything sweeter than that moment, when his prey knows it's caught, Grimmel's never found it.

He's had to leave his ship and walk away into this reeking fishermen's tavern just to keep from staring at his prize. To put distance between himself and his wild white beauty, just to prove to himself that he could. He'd been down there so long, counting her drugged-down breaths and feasting on the sight of her, that his knees had trembled beneath him when he'd stood, threatening to pitch him back to the deck.

No. He must have patience. He must be in control. Ghost will still be there for him when he returns.

"– and it shrieked," the redheaded barbarian is still telling his story, stalking up and down the table and jabbing a finger at his audience, "so loud all the ice trembled, but not me! I roared right back at it, even louder, and it fled from me! Turned its tail and ran, its spikes shaking so hard it rattled against the ice with fear!"

The man who'd sighed earlier now drops his head into one hand; the other is locked firmly around his ale mug as if he might squeeze the last few drops from it.

Dagur's voice drops. "But I wasn't going to let it get away, oh no… I had a dream, and the gods told me the Skrill was destined to be mine, that I would be the one to capture it, and even halfway to the frozen hells, I wasn't afraid!"

Grimmel's only been half-listening. Any story about dragon hunting is one he's at least remotely interested in, and the addition of a Skrill is a novel attempt, but so many would-be dragon hunters think that a good hunt just means running around in the forest waving a crossbow. Dagur happens to be wearing one slung over his shoulder, which Grimmel has professionally evaluated as not as good as his.

"Even though all my men were cowering on the floor, quaking like idiots –"

Under his breath, the tired man mutters into his ale mug. The faint echo is distinctive enough for Grimmel to know that it's empty, and he's just loud enough for Grimmel alone to hear, "It called down lightning on us, you daft boy, and after you said it needed the sky to do that."

Grimmel smiles. He's never hunted a Skrill, but he's heard from others like him, others who…specialize…that it's a fearsome foe.

He turns his attention back to his bowl of stew as Dagur goes off on a long rant on the uselessness of his own crew. Brat child, for all he calls himself a chief – Grimmel knows all too well that most people are fools who rarely think beyond the reach of their own hands, but he's smart enough not to tell them so to their face. Much better to let them think that they're useful and clever, and never let them see that Grimmel has been guiding them down the pathways he prefers they take all along.

The mutton's grown quite cold, but he eats it anyway, letting juice and char alike scrub the last taste of Deathgripper venom and old ale from his tongue. The numbness recedes from the tips of his fingers, and the deep bruise on his calf from where Ghost had failed to bite through his leather armor resumes its usual ache. She'd have put her fangs straight through the bone, no doubt, and the thought fills him with delight.

To have his life's work, the only hunt that's ever truly challenged him, restored to him after all this time! After resigning himself to the knowledge that he'd never again face a foe truly worthy of him, no matter how far he sailed…

The thought is warm enough to burn back even four drops.

"– but it flew down and down, and in the depths of the iceberg, the frozen hells opened up, and it begged for protection against me," Dagur goes on as Grimmel eats and wonders just how long a lead he can give Ghost, once he's solved this riddle. He'll have to let her wake, soon enough, or risk losing her to sleep she'll never rise from.

Grimmel will not let her go that easily.

"And down in the darkness where demons and ghosts dwell and hunger and hate us, something answered."

He lowers his voice dramatically, crouching down on his heels so that his audience has to lean in to listen.

"Black as nightmares! Deadly as fate! Hel's own dragon heard the Skrill's plea and knew only it stood the slightest chance against such a great warrior, and step by step it came. Up through the ice, from shadow to shadow, like the night that drives men mad – but not I!"

The barbarian slams a fist into his chest with a thud, and declares, "I stood between it and the sky, ready to face my Skrill in a fair fight. Treacherous thing," Dagur sneers. "It was afraid! It cowered. And into its place, with its fangs bared and screaming flame in its jaws, it came – the Night Fury!"

That, Grimmel hears.

He looks up reflexively, treading heavily on the flare of bloody hunger and breath-catching hope almost as soon as it lights within him.

The young barbarian's a liar, of course – there are no more Night Furies, not anywhere Grimmel might sail, or even fly, in all his remaining days. Perhaps if he'd picked a direction and never turned from it, as Furies are rumored to unless brought down, he might some day have reached another land where the black dragons still fly on their endless journeys.

He has long since resigned himself to the knowledge that he will never face another Fury – or he had, until Ghost had all but fallen into his hands, strange new-familiar thing that she is. She'd sliced them half to maidens' ribbons in her landing, to be sure, but landed she had, and brought him back to life as surely as if he'd taken flight when she'd fallen.

There is no god good enough to bring him both Ghost and true word of a living Night Fury, not both inside half a year. Grimmel would have sliced his own face to shreds and worn a mask to hide it, as the men far south are said to do to atone for failures, if he thought it would bring such a tide of good fortune back towards him.

He doesn't like to believe in fortune – he works for a living – but he wouldn't push it away if it came to him. What he doesn't believe in is a rumor this good.

He wants to. He knows better.

Lying little barbarian, how dare he speak of Night Furies with Grimmel Dragonsbane within earshot – and Grimmel looks over at the tired, shadowed man, waiting for the rolled eyes or deep sigh or muffled groan, any of the signs of well-deserved disbelief that have spiced up Dagur's tale without the redhead knowing it, and amused his unseen listener greatly in the process.

The man is looking into his ale mug again, held tightly in both hands, and his face is pale, drawn tight, as if he is remembering something he would much prefer to forget.

As if Dagur's words might be – impossibly – true.

It seems Dagur's audience shares Grimmel's disbelief, though – if they were jeering earlier, they've found their voices again now. "Shut up!" one of the fishermen yells. "No such thing!"

"Yeah, right!" another young barbarian shouts. "As if!"

"This all ends with your precious Skrill gettin' away, don't it?" someone else joins in, over the disapproving hisses and a rattle of mugs knocked against the table to drown out any more of Dagur's story. "No shame in that, boy – fine tale as it was, 'til you threw that in there!"

"How drunk are you?" yet another voice calls out. "Where you gettin' the good ale from, then?"

"Yeah, I want some of that!" agrees someone in a metal cap that's somewhat too large on him, not much helped by the deep dent in one side.

Shouts of "Beer!" quickly replace "Liar!", and the room sways over to the bar with their mugs raised high like the tide's changed. They leave Dagur high and dry and fuming hot enough to boil seawater into steam, abandoned atop the table and the wreckage of his story.

Fists clenched, the redheaded young barbarian mutters curses at their retreating backs and kicks every abandoned trencher from the table, scattering scraps of meat and fish and turnip porridge across the long benches and the rushes below. He stomps a boot down as if he means to put it straight through the wood of the table, and seems offended when it doesn't break. He clenches his jaw until Grimmel can almost hear his teeth grinding, even over the clamor for more and stronger ale, and lifts one fist as if he might consider drawing the crossbow from his back and demanding they listen to him.

He doesn't. Instead, he leaps down from the table and stalks out of the tavern, head down not in shame but in the manner of a bull that doesn't much care whether there's a door in his path or not.

The skeptical, exhausted-looking warrior lurches to his feet, grabs his horned helmet from the table, gets it onto his head on the second attempt, and follows his chief somewhat unsteadily.

Much more surefootedly, so does Grimmel.

The trading port – barely more than alleyways between stone strongholds, guarded by would-be warriors paid to stand and snarl – is very far from the wild places and deep valleys and barren stones where Grimmel prefers to hunt. Give him the long channel of a fjord without so much of the scent of a cookfire, no humans for days of travel save himself and the few crew he can tolerate to tend his ship while he works, and he's happy enough. Give him the track of a dragon to set his fingers to, the scrapes of shedding scales against the rough bark of a shaken fir, the out-of-place splotch of ashes from fire hurriedly snuffed beneath a pounce to claim its prey – ah, Grimmel could spend months stalking his prey thus.

Following the young redhead as he stalks back towards the waterfront, his plodding man in his wake, is no challenge whatsoever. With his cloak wrapped around his dark leathers, tight against the grumbling summer sky as the last light fades, there's nothing to set Grimmel apart from anyone else hustling from ship to tavern to whatever shelter they prefer from there.

Before long, the two Vikings board a somewhat battered longship, wide-beamed and sturdy but riding higher in the water than suits it. Little aboard, then, and its crew hungry. The ship seems to have fallen on hard times along with its crew. The wood of its hull is weathered and faded, and barnacles cling below the waterline, visible only when a sailor lifts a lamp to guide his chief back to the deck. A crack shivering through the prow has been patched roughly, but with enthusiasm. Far more nails have been pounded through the wood than it truly needs, enough that for a moment Grimmel wonders if some half-mad ship's smith has decided to keep all his spare nails on the outside of the ship rather than in its belly.

Even half-furled, and badly done at that, Grimmel can recognize the stylized shape of a Skrill painted across the sail's canvas. Equally ragged stitches trace their way along the trailing edge of it, but the Skrill is as bright as if it's been recently painted.

That shows determination, to Grimmel, and no little pride. Perhaps that much of Dagur's story, at least, had been true. Almost against his will, Grimmel begins to wonder in earnest about the remainder…

Raised voices carry over from the ship's deck, and Grimmel paces closer to listen, quieting his breathing and commanding his too-eager heart to be patient.

"– laughed at me!" Dagur is snarling. "Again! We should have stayed in the Archipelago – at least people there know how to fight! How far do I have to go to find actual warriors?"

"Perhaps if you chose a different tale to draw them –" a new voice offers hesitantly.

Dagur cuts him off like he's swinging an axe. A faint hissss-thunk! suggests he may be. "No way! Real fighters will recognize what a chance I'm offering them! Only the best for a battle like they've never seen before, one they're going to be singing about forever, and I'll dragnet every tavern and hall in the North if I have to!"

Someone sighs as the lantern-holder turns away from the water, and Grimmel pads closer to the ship where it rocks against its moorings. "Maybe, sir," says an older voice, "we should focus on finding that girl first."

Grimmel is mildly impressed with Dagur's growl, even as he tugs on one of the ropes and judges the leap. "That girl? That little common thief? Oh, I'll find her all right. I'll show up on her doorstep with a Night Fury in her face, and then we'll see who's the better chieftain!"

The Berserker grumbles to himself, and Grimmel leaps lightly from dock to rope to a shadowed corner of the deck. Years of flight have given him steady feet and excellent balance, and the few steps are easy.

"…teach Astrid to laugh at me," Dagur is muttering, too caught up in his own grievances to notice the intruder on his ship. "Her and her stupid friends and their stupid pet dragons, slinkin' around behind my back while I'm off on a perfectly good quest – they've got their heads together and no mistake, that stuck-up little blond minx and her black-haired wench, think they're so clever…"

The redhead kicks at the deck and the axe indeed embedded in it. Grimmel is mildly disappointed when the toe of his boot clangs off the flat of the blade rather than the sharp edge.

"Gonna get my Berserkers back, and Berk too, and then she'll have to trade me her spies if she wants her precious island back. How by all mad gods did she get that dragon-rider and his Fury to work for her?"

"So it's real," says Grimmel, from the darkness, and smiles like the scythe moon at the weapons thrust into his face almost before he finishes speaking.

"Better," he says idly, nodding as if he might be awarding the Berserker crew points. "Very quick responses, once you knew I was there, of course." He taps a finger against a sword blade hovering around his chin and tches at the faint line of blood that springs up across the pad. "Quite sharp. Clean iron. Well done, that man. Mind the hilt, the leather's fraying. Sea air will do that."

Viking faces blink at him, about half from beneath heavy helmets, the remainder fumbling for lanterns as Dagur wrenches the axe from the deck and snaps, "What, are you blind? Spread out!" at them. They do, possibly before their chief throws something at them.

"Get off my ship, old man!" Dagur snarls instead, elbowing his men aside, probably hoping to stare Grimmel down. The redhead's a full head shorter, it turns out, so the attempt doesn't quite work. Dagur's built heavier, though. And has an axe.

Grimmel truly doesn't care. He has no intention of wrestling the young chief. He prefers a more…entertaining approach.

After all, if the world were truly run by muscles, Drago would still be alive, and Grimmel might just have to drink off the rest of his vial in despair without even poor ale to sweeten his own death.

"Now, that you do not want," Grimmel declares, raising his cut finger as if lecturing a moody child. Well. He is.

"Yeah?" the young Berserker chief challenges, setting his feet and squaring his shoulders, knuckles popping as he grips the axe tighter. "Gimme one reason I don't pick you up by your neck and toss you in the harbor right godsdamned now. Reason one for is, it'll be funny. Your go."

Grimmel smiles, meeting Dagur's gaze and holding it without blinking, counting somewhere in the back of his mind. Three…four…five…six… and he sees uncertainty spark to life in the other man's eyes, behind the anger and the smoldering humiliation left over from Dagur's failed tavern tale.

That's it. He's got them. The battle-scarred and storm-weathered warriors all around him now, the hustling sailors scouring the ship for allies he hasn't brought with him – they don't matter.

He's got their leader, so he wins.

Now, what to do with him…

"Because I believe you," says Grimmel, and smiles even wider as desperate hope blazes bright enough in Dagur's eyes. As he'd suspected. No one else has believed the redhead's story, not beyond his own men who may have stories of their own to tell, and he doesn't have enough to wage whatever battle he's recruiting for.

Who else would believe him?

But even as Dagur blinks, and his scowl becomes a grin, and he steps back and punches a fist in the air with a cry of "Yes! Finally! You get to stay dry, good ol' whatsyourface!" – the whispers start, as they always do.

Somewhere in the shadows, behind the far-from-home warriors now more curious than defensive, someone whispers draugr.

Already, someone has looked at him and named him a corpse that walks, and Grimmel the Grisly feels the aftertaste of old poison in his throat.

He is many, many things. He is a hunter and slayer of the wiliest dragon to ever spread its wings above land or water. He has built things no one else has even imagined in their maddest dreams. He is the master of a dragon breed most men dare not even look upon, and spit upon the beasts' shadows as they lumber past. He is a strategist to make any experienced tafl or Maces and Talons player smash his board and scatter the pieces to the waves. He has commanded armies not his own with nothing to enforce his orders, save his wits and the respect he has earned for them.

Well. And his dragons.

He may wear their features still, but he left the true walking corpses behind long ago.

"So tell me about this Night Fury you faced," he orders, just flattering enough that Dagur might not notice, if the boy's the headstrong fool Grimmel thinks he is. "I want to hear everything. …And what exactly did you mean, dragon-rider?"

To be continued.