A Saga Of Ice And Fire

Chapter Thirty-Eight - The Uncertain Hour Before A Storm

Spring sunlight dappled the ground through soft-swaying branches, reflecting brightly from patches of rimed snow speckled across the landscape, winter’s last hoar-frost kiss on the high mountain woodland, north of Raven point. No human roamed the veil of green for miles except for a tiny Viking boy with reddish brown bell-shaped hair and his vast boulder-sized man of a father.

" Dad? Do I have to  ?"Hiccup whined.

Stoick eyed his son, a little surprised by such an unenthusiastic response.

Even though Hiccup's arm was drawn back, the iron tipped-arrow nestled tight into the bow string his small, white-knuckled fingers held onto and the spearhead aimed at the diredeer in front of them, he could see the hesitation in his son's eyes, in the set of his jaw.

He is too timid for this world of pain, Stoick thought, as he watched his four-year-old boy struggle with the bow.

Hiccup was to be fostered away from Berk, across the Sunset sea in Arendelle for the first time as per the agreement and Stoick had taken his son out to the Lok  Woods that sprawled out over the majority of the Isle of Berk. He'd hoped to introduce the boy to certain realities of the world before he was to be shipped off to the foreign land but found himself at a loss seeing the boy hesitant to even kill something as trivial as a diredeer—a worrying sign for any Viking parent.

Muscles bunched in Stoick's jaw, hard words already in his throat. Hard words are needed for this hard world. And Hiccup needed to be prepared.

“Aye,” Stoick whispered sternly, "Death es just another part of life, son. Ah was yeur age when my dad teuk me out here teh teach me teh take mah furust kell. "

Hiccup stared up at his father. " A-And did you ?"

Stoick studied his son's hesitant look. "Aye. Et was difficult doin et fer the furust teim but ah ded et. "

He ruffled the boy's hair with one giant hand. "And soe well yeu. Now come on."

Hiccup drew in a sharp breath after a silence. " Okay, dad. "

" Tell me when to shoot. " the four-year-old boy said. A hint of pride tugged the corners of Stoick's mouth beneath the bushy beard, having gone unseen by his son who had turned back to save the diredeer up ahead.

"Steady. Steady now." Stoick breathed, watching his son struggling to hold the bow properly with tiny fists. " Keep tha' string taut. Hold et teight. Thasset."

A shift in Hiccup's eyes, an indrawn breath that he held—

" Now." Stoick whispered through his braided beard, a cold misting of breath.

The arrow was let loose; the only thing impressive about it was the twang of the copper wire as it echoed through the air. The arrow itself had not even travelled halfway to it's now retreating target, having shot straight into the weed-laden forest floor.

The diredeer had long vanished.

"I missed. " Hiccup stated, his shoulders sagging.

" I-I'll go get it. " Hiccup mumbled and trudged forward, shoulders slumped as his father watched on, brows knit.

There was still time for the boy to bloom. He would learn to kill. And One day, he would mount his first dragon head on a spear and everyone would sing his name.  And that day couldn't come sooner for Stoick.

~~~

Despite the solemn note of the occasion, some excitement was weaving among the villagers—mostly the younger teenagers and children who were a bit insensitive to the occasion and had never seen a funeral pyre before—when a longship the size of a small longhouse painted with all the sigils and banners of the families of those that'd passed to Valhalla on its hull, pulled by a dozen or more domestic yaks slid down the streets from the boatbuilder's compound, mounted on a mud sleigh.