Symphony of Shadows

11. Sour

Astrid had docked her boat and walked all the way to the main merchant tents. To track her mark, she needed to think like the dragon rider and where would a maniacal, nonsensical, violent person go first? To buy gruesome weaponry to stock his armory. So, she headed over to the weapons stalls and surveyed the myriad of maces, bludgeons, broadswords, nunchucks, throwing stars, daggers, and to Astrid's preference, an ornate set of Deadly Nadder themed throwing knives.

Turning her focus to the ongoers, she looked at the build of the bustling shoppers, scrutinizing their legs to see if she saw a tall, lean figure with a peg leg. After about an hour of leaning against the merchant's stall who had the throwing knife set for sale, she was told politely to buy something or get going as she was scaring costumers away. Astrid felt badly about loitering which was more so an excuse to go ahead and use what little coin she had to buy the knife set. When would she ever get the opportunity to acquire such a unique weapon? She repositioned herself in a grove of trees that faced the front of the merchant stalls so she could see everyone that went in and out.

Nothing would escape her watch...

Hiccup went straight to his usual section: the scrap metal and book shops. The merchants in that area usually had what he needed: scraps of leather, metal pieces, gears, metal piping, brass nails, and many other things. The book shops were usually always empty because what viking needs to read when they could just kill the stuff the book is telling them about, right? Conveniently, nearly all the book shops had squid ink and empty leather bound journals that he often bought to jot down ideas, make designs, and draw random things when he got bored. He eyed a stall who had a variety of tools including a medium sized hammer that he could use for his inventions. The older hammer he used had started to rust and the wooden handle was barely secured to the metal head.

"Hullo, how much for this hammer here?" Hiccup set down the empty baskets he was carrying and gestured towards his desired product.
The older, burly viking merchant had a wispy white beard and a brass helmet with what Hiccup guessed were yak horns.
"Well that fine piece of craftsmanship will cost you three gold coins, lad."
"Do you take dragon scales?"
"Course, couldn't be able to stay in the business without accepting scales. Hells, half the markets in the archipelago sell dragon everything. Dragon boots, dragon hats, dragon back scratchers, even dragon soup!"

Hiccup was perturbed by the man's rant and tried to steer him back on course gently.
"Wow, that's...a lot of dragon products...so how many dragon scales will that be?"
"And now with this Leader of Dragons flying about and raiding villages, what's gonna be left of  vikings? Well maybe it's Loki playing a sick joke on us all, Odin let it be so..."
The poor fellow looked away in a trance and the confused dragon rider considered walking away but he really needed a new hammer before the old one detached and ricocheted into his face.
Hiccup laughed awkwardly, "Yeah haha probably a giant prank...will ten scales do?"
The muddled merchant shook off his conflicted sentiments on the macroeconomic effect of using dragon scales instead of gold coin and took the young viking's offering.
"Here you go, boy-o! Happy shopping and beware of the Night Fury!"

What a strange man, Hiccup thought; yet he couldn't shake the feeling of fear the man expressed towards the 'leader of dragons'. He hadn't meant to become some sort of terrorist but the thought of innocent dragons being butchered just to become a pair of boots saddened and outraged him. His flock would not be sold, massacred, and turned into soup, no he wouldn't allow it. Fuming, he set out to the book shops to find himself some godsdamned squid ink.

Astrid officially decided that watching flies fight over yak dung would be more exciting than her current surveillance work. It had been over an hour of surveilling mill about and still nothing. There had been a couple of peg legs but she had ruled them out either due to their mountainous build or an accompanying missing arm. She was more than sure she would have been briefed if the dragon rider was missing more than his leg.

She passed time fiddling with her new set of knives and imagining in her mind nailing this asinine 'leader of dragons' to a tree for making her watch an unsettling amount of male vikings pick their wedgies while walking around. Seriously, did anyone have any self-respect anymore?

Anyways, she knew what she had signed up for by going in partly blind to do surveillance, the blasted dragon rider might not even be on the godsdamned island at all. She made up her mind that it would be more useful to see if any of the merchants had seen the description she was provided and go from there. Quitting her post, she walked over to a fierce-looking viking with a thick scar running all the way from his left eyebrow down to his chin that interestingly made Astrid envious, not that she didn't have her fair share of scars.

"Afternoon, would you happen to have seen a tall scrawny viking with a peg leg recently?"
The viking looked at her with a puzzled expression and squinted his beady eyes, "Not 'round these parts, lovely. But I know a fellow who knows the ins and outs of the Eastern Markets, let me take you to him."
Finally! A breakthrough in her search, just what she needed, maybe this mission wasn't going to be so long after all...
"I would like that very much."
She followed the viking over to a more deserted part of the market, the stalls now filled with papers and manuscripts instead of swords. Maybe the fellow was a master of secrets? That could be a useful ally to have on her side. She debated making small talk to evaporate the awkwardness of simply following the man. They had passed several more stalls and Astrid began to wonder what kind of master of secrets hides away from the main hub of the market.
"Are we getting close?"
The viking didn't turn around but answered, "Yes, almost there."

She continued to follow him and reasoned that if anything happened, she was fully armed and ready to take him on. The viking was about a sheep taller than her and built like a yak, but she could take him...right? Astrid willed herself to calm down, she was probably just overthinking again.

That was when the sizeable viking twisted back, grabbed her hand, and yanked her into a dark alcove and
Astrid
saw
red.