A girl's worth

Chapter 4

  In the silence that follows, Thyra quickly continues. "The only thing these Vikings are guilty of is being kind to me and my dragon. Something you never were."

The man's hand lashes out, striking her cheek which makes her stumble against the cage. "You will not speak to me in such a way," her father snaps. "You will be punished for your insubordination."

"Fine, but you have to let everyone go," Thyra stresses, not wanting anything bad to happen to her friends. They surely don't deserve that after all they did for her.

"Actually, before you so miraculously arrived, I had a talk with one of these precious dragon lovers of yours," the man says. "One chief to another, father to father. He denied knowing where you were." With a snap of his fingers, several men step forward, holding lit torches. "For that, I was thinking that we'd burn this whole place to the ground."

"You can't!" Thyra cries out, rushing to her father to attack him, only to be caught by two other men who hold her tightly while another binds her hands behind her back. "What you're doing is murder! Even you wouldn't go this far. This is crazy. Stop this! You've got what you came for, don't you?"

"I'm ridding this place of a disease," her father says, grabbing her chin tightly to make her watch while several houses are torched. "Soon all these silly ideas of dragons being equal to us will be forgotten again. After all, look what happened here. A vicious dragon attack by the very dragons who should have been their friends. We could only rescue you before you were consumed by the flames as well."

Thyra struggles to get free, not wanting the Berkians to have to suffer for her stupid actions. 'I should've left when I still had the chance,' she thinks to herself. 'This is all my fault. Please, Odin, save Berk, make sure they survive and I promise I won't escape my father again.'

"Please, father, stop this!" she cries out, trying to pull her arms free. "This is wrong. You can't do this. I promise, I'll do whatever you want. Just stop, extinguish the fires now you still can."

"I don't need your promise to make you do what I want. Let this be a lesson to you what happens when you don't do as you're told," the man says, waving a hand at the men holding her, who then start dragging her towards the harbor. "Time for you to go home again, dear daughter."

"Save them! You have to save them!" Thyra cries out all the way to the boats where she's tied to the main mast. Still she doesn't stop pleading with the men already at the harbor with her. She pleads her heart out until they get so fed up that they gag her. Every one of them knows that nothing can change their chief's mind once he's made it up. The Berkians are done for. She'll just have to accept it. It's the only way she's going to get through life.

Silent tears roll down her cheeks as Thyra can only watch black smoke starting to rise up from the village while her father's tribe just go about their business, taking weapons and food with them. Berk won't be needing it anymore anyway on their way to Valhalla.

All Thyra can do is hope that Astrid won't get caught. That Astrid will do what she couldn't and save the people of Berk.

Set sail, men!" Her father thunders as he gets onto the same ship as her. "We have what we came for. Let's go home!"

From all around her, cheers fill the air while Thyra just wants to curl up and disappear.