"Here comes the general!"

"Ladies and Gentlemen!"

"Here comes the general!"

"The lady you've been waiting for!"

"Here comes the general!"

"The Chief's second-in-command!"

"Here comes the general!"

"ASTRID HOFFERSON!"

Hiccup had a headache.

Not a little headache either, a big one, pounding behind his eye-sockets, and no matter how much he squeezed his eyes shut, he couldn't get the feeling to go away. All stimuli made it worse – even the tiny chink of light coming through the cracks in the wood made him duck his head and close his eyes. It was the same feeling he'd had as a teenager that time he'd stolen his father's mead, lost all of his senses, and woken up in a meadow a day later, ashen-faced and swearing never again.

This time when he'd woken up, it had taken him a while to remember where he was: it seemed to take forever for the fog in front of his eyes to clear, and even when it did he hadn't recognized his surroundings. The rough burn of rope around his wrists and the gentle bobbing back and forth were clues, but it wasn't until he'd heard the scratchy voices in front of him that it all came back to him.

"You sure you got the right guy?" one of them said. "Looks far too scrawny to be a chief."

"Looks can be deceiving," the other said. "Trust me, this is him. He's going to make us millions."

Oh, Hiccup thought, as the haze in his brain began to clear, this again.

He shifted around on the floor, trying to get his hands in a more comfortable position, the movement alerting the brutes in front of him.

"Hey! Don't try and escape, runt!" the first guy snapped, slamming his axe down onto the wood floor.

"I'm not," Hiccup said, dryly. "I'm too scrawny."

"Don't listen to him. He knows his mind games."

"I'm too concussed to play mind games," Hiccup said, shifting back and resting his head against the wooden wall of the ship, closing his eyes. "Wake me when the general gets here."

The second guy put two meaty hands on Hiccup's shoulder, shoving him flat against the wall. "Whatever out you think you have, you don't. We took your dragon, we left a note, whoever's looking for you, will be looking fifty miles in the wrong direction," he snarled, spraying Hiccup with his spit. "You've got no hope, boy-Chief. You're done for."

Hiccup blinked, his expression unchanged. "I said—" his voice was much lower now— "wake. Me. When. The. General. Gets. Here."

He pulled himself from the man's grip, jerking back into his seat.

The two Vikings shuffled back over to the other end of the ship.

"Who's this general?" one of them said.

The other looked back at where Hiccup was calmly tapping his fingers together, his tied-up wrists resting on his knees. "His second-in-command. I've been hearing stories."

"What kind of stories?"

His eyes flickered nervously up deck. "They say he has the strength of ten men. Someone once saw him take down three dragons, twice his size. If he were here, there'd be no boat left, just wreckage and corpses bobbing about in the sea."

The other man scoffed. "Bullshit. Someone's spinning you silly stories."

In the corner, Hiccup snorted. Their eyes darted over towards him.

"It couldn't be true, could it?"

"'Course not," the other said, though with less conviction than before. "'Sides, we covered our tracks. There's no chance anyone knows where he is."

At that very moment, something crashed on the deck of the ship. The walls shook, the sound of splinters shattering and screams from up above, chilling the two sailors to their bones. The two made a mad dash for the stairs, leaving Hiccup alone in the dark.

The corners of his mouth stretched into a smile.

Above deck, it was pandemonium.

Sailors were quivering in corners, screaming and begging for their lives, shaking with fear as they looked upon a heaping mass of black scales, sharp teeth and green eyes in slits. The dragon moved forward, stamping holes in the deck. As he moved closer, the two Vikings from down below could see his rider properly now; the aforementioned general, not a he, but a her. She sat astride this killing machine like it was nothing, slipping from the saddle and landing on her feet in front of them.

Braided hair, muscles like a mountain, this girl slung an axe over her shoulder and grabbed the closest sailor by the scruff.

"Listen closely," she said, spitting her words out short and sharp. "I'm here for my chief. I'm going to free him from wherever you've got him stashed, I'm taking him back to Berk, and if I find out that there's even so much of a scratch on him, me and my Night Fury will make sure that you won't make it back to your master anything but a pile of ash. Understand me?"

The sailor in her hand quivered and nodded quickly, but the Viking from down below stepped in, drawing himself to full height, twice the size of the girl.

"We're Vikings," he spat. "We don't back down to petty threats."

The girl stopped for a moment and stared him down, blue eyes boring straight into his, before her mouth twitched into a smile. "I was really hoping you'd say that."

She slammed the handle of her axe into his nose, lifting up her knee to jam into his crotch. He stumbled onto the deck, moaning in pain and she raised her foot, clamping down on the man's neck. Her eyes flickered up and she addressed the crowd, "anyone else?"

Most of the sailors backed themselves against the wall, hands raised in the air. One screamed and jumped overboard, choosing the perils of the sea over trial by this woman.

"Good," she said. "Oh, and when you see your master, make sure you let him know that General Hofferson can't wait to put his head on a stick."

She disappeared below, leaving the crew at the mercy of the Night Fury.

Astrid Hofferson hopped below deck, finding Hiccup shaking with silent laughter in the corner.

"How's it going?" she said cheerfully, pulling out a knife and releasing him from the rope bonds.

"As well as to be expected," Hiccup said, his hands rubbing the welts on his wrists. "I have a thumping headache and they weren't gentle with the transportation. Did you know you're pretty when you're threatening murder?"

Astrid grinned. "You've told me," she said. "Three times this week, actually. Don't you think this is becoming a problem?"

"Nah, none of them have got close yet."

"Aren't you worried they might?"

Hiccup looked up and grinned, flicking his fringe out his face, his eyes sparkling. "What's there to worry about when I've got General Hofferson watching my back?"