The Power of Gold Chapter 14

The whole tribe was waiting for news of the Viking raiders and the dragons' attacks on them. When the Night Furies reported the results of their battle to Chief Bertha, she was quietly pleased. "Three raids turned back, with no casualties, and the island didn't get overrun with prisoners this time," she nodded. "You Night Furies do good work, once you understand what I expect of you."

Six snarled, "We always do good work!" but she didn't translate it into Forge, so none of the humans could understand her.

"I'll take that to mean that you agree with us," Chelsea said.

The chief raised her voice so that all the Bog-Burglars could hear her. "Everyone, I have news to share! We have no more gold, which is bad news. There will be no more raiders and no more raids, which is good news!" she shouted. "Now we can go back to business as usual!" There were a few murmurs about the lost gold, but they all knew how much was at stake when three other tribes wanted to attack them at the same time, with others probably waiting in the wings. The gathering slowly broke up. It was well beyond suppertime, and they had to go home and eat the meals that their husbands had prepared hours ago.

After the group broke up, Chelsea walked over to Bertha. "How can you be so sure that there won't be any more raids?" she asked.

"Simple," smiled the chief. "The other tribes now know that we don't have any more gold to steal, and they also know that we have dragons on guard. They would have to be crazy to raid us now!"

"I've known a few crazy Vikings," Chelsea reminded her.

"So have I, but most of them don't become chiefs, and the ones that do, seldom last long. The sensible chiefs will find easier targets for their raids from now on. I think we're going to enjoy a season of peace. Now, hand it over."

"Hand what over?" Chelsea asked innocently.

"The gold, of course!" Bertha retorted. "The thumb-sized chunk that you sliced off of that last big lump, just before you handed it to the Night Fury for that final bombing run."

"Don't tell me you saw me do that!" Chelsea burst out, shocked. "Am I getting that sloppy?"

"No, I didn't see you do it," the chief replied with a hint of a smile. "You're a better burglar than that! But I saw the flattened, freshly-carved mark in that round lump, and it wasn't hard to figure out what had happened. To be honest, I thought you'd go for pieces of all three of the lumps that you handled. Now, the gold, please?" She held out her hand. Wordlessly, Chelsea picked up her shield, pried off the cast-iron center boss with her dagger, and removed the gold that was hidden in the hollow center of it. She gave it to her sister, who nodded.

"That's better," Bertha said. "Now, I'll put it with the piece I carved off of my lump, and –"

"You mean both pieces," Chelsea interrupted.

"What?! How did you know?" Bertha demanded.

"I didn't know for sure about the two pieces of gold," her sister grinned, "but I do know you! If you thought I'd taken one piece, then I'm positive that you'd take two, just because you won't let me outdo you. You thought you'd make it look like we were even, while you pocketed some shiny metal on the side, and no one would ever know. Well, guess what? I know! Or I took a very good guess, which is just as good sometimes."

"Fine, both pieces," Bertha sighed. "I'm getting too predictable! Anyway, all three of our pieces will go into the treasure house together. Secretly! We'll hide them under a dusty rag, and we'll save them for emergencies. No one except you and me will know that we have them. Maybe we'll tell Cami when she's older." Chelsea, slightly miffed at having been caught, but triumphant at having caught her sister in turn, nodded and strolled away.

Now Alfrún approached the chief. "Can I ask you something? Do the Bog-Burglars have a fish-sorting team?"

"Yes, of course we do," Bertha answered. "They keep pretty busy, too. Why do you ask?"

"When I was on Berk, they put me on their fish-sorting team, and I –"

"I'm sorry to hear that," Bertha said sympathetically. "Did you do something wrong, and they put you on the fish team as punishment? Or were they just punishing you for being a Bog-Burglar woman?"

"Neither. They put me on that team because I can count stuff in my head," Alfrún replied. "Yes, I agree, it's about as exciting as watching snails race. But I have a talent for doing numbers in my head, so Berk's chief let me keep track of counting the fish, and he said I was good at it. It felt good to earn a compliment. I liked having first choice of the fish for supper, too."

"You're not asking to do that kind of work here, are you?" the chief asked dubiously.

"Yes, I am, if that's all right. I'm not very good at being a smith's apprentice, but I'm a good fish counter, and I'd like to do something that I'm good at."

"That doesn't sound like a wise career move," Bertha warned her. "Being a smith is just about the most respected line of work a Viking can get into, aside from being a chief or a Law-Speaker. The fish team is a dead end; you'll never get anywhere that way."

"What good is a prestigious job if I hate the work?" Alfrún answered her. "Banging on metal all day just leaves me cold. It hurts my ears and it isn't my style at all. Besides, I don't have the muscles to do smith work. My apprenticeship is mostly about sharpening dull weapons and shoveling coal into the forge. Talk about a dead-end job! It could be years before I get out of work assignments like that; I might never get out. I'd rather use my talents to do something useful, and something that I don't loathe doing."

Bertha considered that. "Well, the girl who's counting the fish now can't wait to get out of that job. Maybe the two of you can swap work assignments; I don't object to that. The only problem is that I want a written report of the fish we've caught every week, and the last time I looked, you couldn't read or write."

"I can learn!" Alfrún said earnestly. "I've always wanted to learn how to read and write. Now I'll have a good reason to work at it. And if I ever get sick of counting fish, I'll be literate by then, so I'll be able to consider other ways of making a living."

"Okay, then! You've got a deal, fish-counter lady," the chief smiled, and put out her hand. They shook on it. Alfrún's life had just taken another turn for the better. As she walked away, Bertha called to her, "Alfrún, you've changed a lot from the scared, insecure girl we rescued from the Uglithugs."

"I think it's because, for the first time ever, I have a real friend," Alfrún decided. Bertha shrugged. Being close friends with a Night Fury didn't sound like a winning move in her book, but if it helped Alfrún become a productive member of the tribe, then more power to her.

Camicazi and Naginatta returned early the following day. They were disappointed that they had missed out on the battle, and that their Night Fury friends had flown without them. Cami was even more distressed when she learned that all the gold was gone.

"Mother, how could you? We'll never get our hands on a fortune like that again!"

"Good riddance to it," Bertha snapped. "Alfrún was right – that gold was nothing but trouble. If we ever find a lump of gold that big again..."

"We'll sink it into the sea?" Nagi suggested.

"No, we'll keep it," Bertha corrected her. "I'm not totally stupid! But it will be a closely guarded secret. No one except the tribe's leaders will know anything about it. We'll use it for emergencies and special occasions, not to put on a show of wealth for the whole tribe. Trader Johann, in particular, will never have any reason to think we'll ever be any richer than we are today, which is 'not much.' I learned a few things about chiefing from this whole episode. I hope I'll be a better chief as a result."

She turned to Night-fury-six-shooter, who was watching them from the Mead Hall roof. "I owe some of that to you, and I'm thankful. I still don't know what the future holds for your dragons and my people, but I do know that we make a good team. I'd like to keep it that way." Six nodded enthusiastically.

As the moon and the stars came out that night, Camicazi went for a walk around the village. She found herself at the Mead Hall, looking up at the Night Furies on the roof. "Hey, Six! Do you want to go burgling? I've got a good lead on where the Outcasts keep their goodies." Six shot a firebolt into the sky, waited until it went off, then used the moments of illumination to stick her tongue out at the chief's daughter.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Cami sighed. "Okay, how about we just go flying without the burgling?"

Six grunted a "yes," dropped to the ground, and the two of them were soon lost in the night sky.

A few minutes later, Nagi also went for a walk, and she also wound up at the Mead Hall. Night-fury-faithful-brother didn't bother asking her if she wanted to go flying. He glided down, waited until she was securely buckled to her saddle, and set off on a more sedate flight than Cami would have preferred.

Half an hour after that, Thing Two saw Alfrún making her way down the path. She jumped off the roof and met her rider at ground level. "You want fly?" she asked in Forge.

"Sure," Alfrún replied. "That sounds fun, especially if we aren't shooting at anybody tonight. But I was thinking..." She paused; Thing Two waited for her to go on.

"When I was a thrall," she finally said, "I never saw any gold at all, except as jewelry on the jarls and their wives. The only precious metal I usually saw was my owner's walking stick. It had an iron foot on one end and a solid silver knob on the other end, with runes carved into it. My owner said they were runes of power. He didn't really need the walking stick to walk with. He mostly used it to beat me if I didn't work fast enough. I can't tell you how much I hated that walking stick! I used to lie awake at night, wishing I could break it, or burn it, or just throw it into the deepest part of the ocean and watch it sink out of sight, or… well, anyway, that's what precious metal means to me. It doesn't make me think good thoughts. I'm very glad we got rid of that gold."

Thing Two considered that for a few seconds, cocking her head from side to side as she thought. Then she asked, "You want steal stick?"

"Steal Dagstyrr's walking stick?" Alfrún wasn't sure she understood what her dragon friend meant. "You mean, a burgling expedition? Like the Bog-Burglars do? You and me, together?"

"It be fun. I love pranks like that. It make you feel better."

Alfrún considered the pros and cons; it took her about one and a half seconds. "I know exactly where he keeps it at night," she said grimly as she sprang onto Thing Two's back. "I think I'm going to enjoy this. Let's go for it!"

"Not so fast," came a voice out of the darkness. It was Chief Bertha. "Where, exactly, do you think you're going?"

"I think I'm going to the Uglithugs' island," Alfrún replied hesitantly. "I'm going to steal – I mean, I'm going to burgle something of value."

"Not dressed like that, you aren't," the chief said sternly. "In that pale-colored dress, on a black night with a black dragon, you'll stand out like a lily on a coal pile! You'll get caught within five minutes of landing there, and that will reflect badly on this tribe, not to mention it will be bad for your health. No, you come with me. I think I've still got one of my all-black outfits from my younger days, when I was slimmer than I am now. It ought to fit you just about perfectly… except around the chest, and there's nothing we can do about that tonight. You can make some adjustments to the outfit later. For now, if you're going to act like a Bog-Burglar, then you need to look the part!"

Alfrún slid off her dragon friend's back and followed Chief Bertha inside her longhouse. She realized that she was trembling with anticipation. This would be one slice of the revenge that her former owner so richly deserved… and it would be her own initiation into the ways of her new tribe. It might also be a lot of fun – she agreed with Thing Two on that score. It would irritate Camicazi, who wanted to be the first in her tribe to go burgling on a dragon's back, but she knew she could ride out that storm.

As she tried on the black outfit, Thing Two was accosted by Night-fury-six-shooter outside. "Where, exactly, do you think you're going?" the older dragon demanded, not realizing that she was echoing Chief Bertha's words to Alfrún.

"I'm going on a burgling expedition with my friend," Thing Two answered proudly. "We're going to pay back her former owner by stealing his silver-handled walking stick."

"Oh, really?" Six asked. "Which part of 'don't get involved in the Vikings' affairs' didn't you understand?"

Thing Two wiped the grin off her face. "I think it was the part where you neglected to mention how everything changes when you find a human friend."

Six had to think about that for a second. There was truth in what her younger sister had just said. When her own human friend had contracted dragon's-blood poisoning, she had defied both her father and her mother in her desire to help him. True, her father and mother had ultimately given their blessing to her desperate flight into the East, but it was with real regret. That human/dragon bond really did change things. And Thing Two certainly had a long history of taking things and playing practical jokes on people! In a way, this would just be stepping her game up a bit. In the past, she'd played her pranks on her own tribe. This time, she would bring her own kind of chaos to some other tribe, where the consequences to the dragons would be marginal to nonexistent.

If Thing Two became a burglar's accomplice, what might go wrong? Their neighbors might think that dragons were still dangerous... but the chances of them even seeing Thing Two in the dark were slim to none. It would surely embolden Camicazi in her own efforts to make an accomplice out of Six... but she was so bold in those efforts already, she could hardly get much worse. The other dragons might sense weakness in her leadership, if her own sister could defy her "stay out of the Vikings' affairs" edict. That might be a problem. But she had never claimed to be perfect, in leadership or in any other way. If another dragon challenged her on this someday, she would just say, "If you bond with a human who wants to do this kind of thing, and if you can guarantee that you won't turn our neighbors against us, then I'll make an exception for you, too."

Six made her decision. "All right. Just don't let them see you."

Thing Two grinned again. "They'll never even know we were there!"

Alfrún came out of the chief's house, looking like a natural Bog-Burglar in her all-black outfit. She climbed into Thing Two's saddle, clipped herself in, and the two of them flapped away on their mission of larceny and vengeance. Six watched them go.

As they disappeared into the darkness, Six finally thought of a good reason to approve of their adventure. This might permanently cement the ties between the Bog-Burglars and the dragons, she decided. As of tonight, both Alfrún and Thing Two have officially joined the tribe.

The End
(of this story arc)