In Touch With Your Feminine Side

Part 4

One of the women, a berserker villager named Brune, approached Dagur, taking his hand and examining it with a frown. "I can bind this, but it'll need a proper brace at some point or it'll heal wrong." She tore long strips off the edge of her dress, and as she wrapped them around Dagur's hand and wrist she leaned close and whispered, "We all know who you really are, but you have our solemn promise that nobody will tell Suda, on pain of death." Dagur felt a wave of relief, helping him get past the panic to organize his thoughts as Brune tended to his head as well. "Thank you. I landed on this ship to look for Suda, but it didn't go well. Why is he capturing only women?"

Brune looked over her shoulder at the barred door, which was being peered through by another young woman. When she indicated that there was nobody listening in, Brune turned back to Dagur and explained, "Suda knows that he made you female, thinking it would make you easier to capture. However, he does not know what you look like as a woman. He is capturing every woman on the island that his men do not recognize from last night or the rest of the stay during the union of chiefs." She swallowed, gaze hardening. "He means to kill you and take our island for himself, then use this new leverage to bend all the other chiefs gathered here to his will."

Standing, Dagur looked out of one of the grimy portholes, groaning when he saw his home getting farther and farther away. "Suda's ships are retreating. Mala and the dragon riders must not know that he has captives, or they would be attempting to pursue instead of letting him fall back. They'll have to fly down and talk to everyone soon if they haven't already, so hopefully it won't be long until our absence is discovered."

Back on berserker island, the absence was very much noticed. An extremely angry Mala paced back in forth, the fury radiating from her making the soldiers shake in their boots. "You watched my husband be captured, and you did nothing?" Her voice shook as her thin veil of control wavered, but she managed not to cut off the men's heads where they stood.

"All of you are on flank guard until Dagur and the captured women are found." The flank guard was the most boring position guarding the back of the island where an attack was least likely, meaning that the men there would most likely be delegated to menial tasks like digging new latrines. Even so, this was a light punishment for losing the queen's husband and the soldiers retreated as quickly as they could while still being respectful, fearful that Mala would change her mind and order something far worse.

Mala knew that she should have followed the ships, the twisting in her gut had told her that. But the villages were on fire, injured and dead vikings lying in the streets, and the queen had thought she would find her husband there or with the dragon riders, not lying in some deep ship dungeon. So she had allowed Suda's ships to retreat, later finding Hiccup's riders exhausted, burned, and Dagerless, not knowing his fate. By the time she had found soldiers who witnessed his capture and dragged the truth out of them, the ships were far out of sight.

Heather entered, face tense with worry that reflected Mala's own. "I have a plan, and I'm going to need your help."