Urszula (A Hiccup Fanfiction)

Part 7

Yet again, this is not how Hiccup expected his day to go.

He was way out of his depth as the enemy continued to close in on them. Their formations were falling apart and they were completely unprepared. To make matters worse, Toothless decided now was was the perfect time to be stubborn. Hiccup was trying to get him to turn and duck away from the oncoming attacks, but he wasn't responding, which was not like him at all.

"Cmon bud..." Hiccup mumbled. "Work with me here." The boy tightened his grip on the edge of his saddle. But the dragon still would not budge.

Following the Toothless' gaze, through the chaos that ensued around him. He spotted a flash of curly auburn hair on the rigging of the closet approaching ship. Hiccup recognised her immediately, the smart-mouthed, incredibly annoying girl he had come across days before.

Hiccup watched her carefully, she seemed to be having difficulty climbing the ship's netting while juggling whatever she was holding. He also noticed her eyes continually looked downwards, for what was reason he could not tell.

The girls presence justified Toothless' strange behaviour. The last time Hiccup encountered her, his dragon refused to follow orders and at the time, he thought she and done something to him.

Thinking about it now, maybe Toothless was just as intrigued by her as he was.

He was forced to look away when a panicked Zippleback nearly flew into him, followed by an angry looking Flightmare. Hiccup had told the twins to lure the glowing beast away for from the island. He had been concerned they would eat the algae, but by the looks of it, they decided to smother the blue substance all over themselves instead.

"Not the way I would have done it, but that's one way to go." The boy said to no one in particular.

The riders continued to dodge rocks and arrows that came their way. The numbers of attacks seemed to be increasing and it was becoming more difficult to block them.

Looking behind them, Hiccup spotted more enemy ships coming from behind. Viggo had them totally surrounded. He realised in that moment he had severely underestimated this leader of the dragon hunters.

Suddenly, an immense pain blossomed in Hiccup left shoulder. He let out a cry of pain and grabbed his shoulder in agony. The pain seared down down his side and upper back, and he glanced down to see a well-made wooden arrow burrowed in his skin.

He had been shot by a dragon root arrow.

The boy removed his hand to see the tips of his fingers covered in his own fresh blood. The sight of it made the pain increase, he squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his lips together in an effort to repress the noises he so desperately wanted to make.

None of the other riders had noticed his whole bleeding shoulder situation, they were too focused to trying to not get shot themselves. Clearly doing a lot better job then Hiccup had. He broke off the tail end of the arrow, but not so much it would be impossible to remove later, only so it was less obvious.

Hiccup was angry, at himself more than the hunters. His guard had been dropped too many times recently for his liking.

Toothless could sense his friends discomfort and let out a low growl. He began to swerve past arrows without command while Hiccup recovered. With a small moment of rest bite, Hiccup observed the enemy, he found the mysterious girl where he saw her last, but now she was holding a bow like she was about to take a shot. But there was no arrow adorning her wooden bow. Then it clicked...

She had been the one who shot him.

At that moment, the boy caught her piercing gaze, her eyes were just as he remembered, hints of green shining in each of them. She unwaveringly stared back at him, and one side of her mouth lifted into a small menacing smirk when she looked at his injured shoulder and then back to his face. The girl then began to quickly climb down the rigging, not giving him another glance.