Riders of B E R K

Part 15: Broken

It was a lot later when I found Hiccup in the IT lab, hunched over a screen, occasionally making a scrawled note on a scruffy pad with a pencil. His damaged left hand hadn't improved his writing any since that note in my apartment-which was folded and tucked safely in my laptop in my room here. He was more dishevelled than usual, his auburn mop wild and leather jacket slung askew over the back of his chair. His green check shirt was rumpled with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I knew he had scooted from the infirmary as soon as his cuts and bruises had been treated. Gothi had wanted to look at his leg but he had refused. And he hadn't visited the Mess Hall.

I walked up to him and quietly laid down a plate and a mug: shepherd's pie and coffee. He glanced up, surprised, as they hit the desk and I blinked. He must have been concentrating very hard to miss me wandering in with my gifts.

"Don't worry-I didn't cook it," I reassured him. He gave me a faint smile, his forest green eyes wide with gratitude then tucked in ravenously: he had to be starving after the battle but he had headed straight here, neglecting himself with impressive determination.

"Thanks," he mumbled. I perched on the seat next to him, sipping my own cup of coffee and watching him shovel the food down. I smiled as he paused to chew and took a long sip of his coffee. Then he sat back in his chair and stretched, his shoulders and neck audibly cracking. He must have been cramped over the screen for hours. I inspected him: he looked very tired, the ugly bump on his head steristripped only. He must have had a headache from that blow but he had just compounded it by staring at screens for hours on end. I stole a glance and saw three screens all displaying high definition scans of ancient papers, all covered in Norse runes and a few crude diagrams.

"What're you doing?" I asked him, frowning. He scraped the last mouthful from his plate and swallowed quickly.

"These are scans of the Bork papers, the ancient wisdom pertaining to dragons," he explained tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "The dragons went crazy today, just like Stormfly did in her pen. Then, the drug that hit her was an extract of Dragon Root-a plant that makes dragons hyper-aggressive and uncontrollable. I was just looking to see if he had anything about an antidote or some form of prevention..."

I stared at him. "What? You speak Ancient Viking?" I asked.

"Technically, it's referred to as Norse but yeah," he admitted. "Though it's more reading rather than speaking..."

"Wait-is this some qualification no one remembered to tell me about...along with a stupid name and dubious sanity?" I retorted. He gave a small smile.

"Well, Milady, I can't vouch for the sanity thing because I'm pretty sure that I am sane, but no, Norse is not required," he replied with gentle sarcasm. "Definitely hit the name qualification, though."

"Thank goodness," I murmured. "Dragon Root?"

"Dracoradix calamitosus," he explained. I frowned.

"Have you tried the World Botanical Database?" I asked him. He blinked at me and stared dumbly. "Well, I suspect botanical knowledge may have moved on in the past thousand years since this was written..." He stared at me. "You mean all you've been doing is reading ancient papers?"

He suddenly looked embarrassed and blushed. He buried his face in his hands.

"Gods," he murmured. "How much more useless could I be?" I grasped his arm, squeezing to reassure him.

"Hiccup-my room mate in first year was doing a Biology and Pharmacology degree and she used this thing all the time," I explained. "Apparently plants are the most promising source for all new drugs. So she was trawling through this damn thing for hours and she never shut up about it. I'd never heard of it because it doesn't come up in medicine. And I guess it's not big in the IT world either." He managed a wan smile.