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The bounty hunter spat into the dirt, his teeth grinding against each other like millstones. His name was Bjarke Iron-Hand, though no one had called him that in years. These days, he answered to the clink of coins and the weight of a good axe—preferably one buried in something that deserved it. Right now, he was staring at a piece of parchment nailed to the side of a fishmonger’s stall, its edges curling in the damp harbor air.
“Two hundred and fifty silver coins,” Bjarke muttered, squinting at the smudged ink. The drawing was crude—a pair of grinning faces, one slightly dumber-looking than the other, beneath the words WANTED: TWINS. No names, no crimes listed. Just a bounty, unsigned. Most men would’ve dismissed it as a joke. Bjarke wasn’t most men.
Bjarke ripped the poster free with a grunt, sending splinters flying. The fishmonger yelped, but Bjarke was already striding away, rolling the parchment tight and shoving it into the money clip at his belt. His boots thudded against the wooden dock as he made for the tavern—the Bend Anchor—where the ale was cheap and tongues were looser.
The Bent Anchor smelled of sour mead and older regrets. Bjarke shouldered his way through the crowd, his shadow cutting across the uneven floorboards like a blade. He slapped the bounty poster onto the counter, making the barkeep flinch.
Bjarke’s knuckles rapped against the stained wood of the bar. “These two,” he growled, jabbing a thick finger at the smudged faces on the poster. “Where do I find ‘em?”
The barkeep’s eyes flickered down to the poster, then up to Bjarke’s scarred face. He swallowed once, hard, before nodding toward the far corner of the tavern where a pair of sailors sat hunched over a shared tankard. “They came in on the Sea Prowler last week,” the barkeep muttered, wiping his hands on his apron. “Said something about twins causing trouble up on Dragons’ Edge. Laughed about it, like it was some joke.”
Hiccup’s boot knocked against a loose floorboard in the clubhouse as he paced, the rhythmic creak-creak-creak underscoring his growing unease. Outside, Stormfly and Hookfang squabbled over a half-eaten fish, their squawks punctuating the otherwise quiet morning. “They were supposed to be back by dawn,” he muttered, running a hand through his already disheveled hair.
Astrid leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, her foot tapping against the frame. “They’re the twins, Hiccup. They probably got distracted by their own reflections again.” But the tightness in her voice betrayed her. Ruffnut and Tuffnut were idiots, sure, but they weren’t stupid—not when it came to survival. They always came back.
The ropes bit into Ruffnut’s wrists, but she’d had worse. Honestly, she’d had worse from Tuffnut during their last arm-wrestling match. The ship’s hold smelled like old fish and damp wood, which—all things considered—wasn’t the worst place they’d ever been tied up. Tuffnut, upside down beside her because he’d somehow managed to wiggle into that pisition, let out a thoughtful hum. “You think he knows we’re not actually wort two hundred and fifty silver coins?”
Ruffnut snorted, twisting her wrists experimentally against the rope. “Doubt it. Guy doesn’t seem like the ‘ask questions first’ type.” The ship lurched beneath them, and Tuffnut swung gently from his upside-down perch like some deranged pendulum.
Bjarke’s boots thudded against the deck of his longship, his fingers tightening around the axe at his belt. The twins had been surprisingly easy to catch—too easy, really. But silver was silver, and he wasn’t about the question good fortune. The wind shifted, carrying the stench of unwashed bodies and old rope up from below deck. He kicked open the hatch. “Still alive down there?”
The moment Bjarke’s shadow fell across the hatch, Ruffnut inhaled sharply—then launched into a horrifcally off-key rendition of The Ballad of Bjorn the Blood. Tuffnut, upside down and swaying, joined in a half-beat late, his voice cracking on the high notes like a pubescent yak. Their combined voices clashed in the crampled hold, bouncing off the wooden beams like a pair of drunken seagulls fighting over a rotten fish.
Hiccup’s fingers froze mid-sketch in the dirt when Fishlegs burst into the clubhouse, panting like Meatlug after a sprint. “The twins—” he gasped, clutching his side, “—they’ve been taken.”
Hiccup’s charcoal snapped between his fingers. The half-drawn map of Dragon’s Edge smeared into oblivion under his boot as he lunged upright. “Taken?” His voice cracked—just once, just enough for Astrid’s eyes to narrow. He cleared his throat. “By who? Why?”
Fishlegs thrust a crumpled scrap of parchment into Hiccup’s hands—a near-identical twin to the bounty poster Bjarke had torn from the fishmonger’s stall, escept this one had the unmistakable imprint of a mead-stained bootheel across the faces. “Some bounty hunter named Bjarke Iron-Hand,” Fishlegs wheezed, still bent double. “Snotlout overheard sailors at the docks saying he’s got a reputaion for—” he gulped, “—not asking questions after either.“
Hiccup stared at the crumpled poster in his hands, the twins’ smirking faces distorted under the boot print. His mind raced—this was their own damn bounty poster from the Midnight Scrum prank, the one they’d nailed up around the Edge to scare each other. Except someone had taken it seriously. Too seriously.
Hiccup crushed the bounty poster in his fist, the parchment crackling like dry leaves “Okay,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “Okay. We find Bjarke’s ship before he reaches whatever warlord actually pays for bounties.” He turned sharply to Fishlegs. “Did Snotlout get a heading?”
Fishlegs wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a smear of dirt across his brow. “North-northwest,” he panted. “But Hiccup—Bjarke’s got a head start. And that ship of his? It’s fast.”
Bjarke’s headache was blooming behind his left eye like a rotten tooth. The twins had been singing—if you could call it that—for the last three hours. Or maybe it had been three days. Time had lost meaning somewhere between Ruffnut’s fifth attempt at The Ballad of Bjorn the Bloody and Tuffnut’s improvised verse about a yak with digestive issues.
The Ballad of Bjorn the Bloody hit its seventh verses—or maybe its seventeenth, Bjarke couldn’t tell anymore—when the ship lurched violently to port. A splintering crack echoed from the hull, followed by the unmistakable screech of a Monstrous Nightmare. Bjarke barely had time to snarl before the deck exploded into chaos.
The screech tore through the air—not the guttural roar of Hookfang or the piercing shriek of Stormfly , but something sharper, cleaner. A sound like a blade slicing through the night. Bjarke’s head snapped up just as the first plasma blast hit the mast. The explosion of head and splintered wood sent him reeling backward, his boots skidding across the deck. His axe slipped from his grip, clattering against the planks.
Snotlout’s voice cut through the chaos like a rusty knife through rotten fish. “Will you two shut up and move?” He was dangling halfway through the shattered hull, one hand gripping Hookfang’s harness, the other waving wildly at the twins still trussed up in the hold. “We’re rescuing you, not auditioning for Berk’s worst choir!“
The ropes around Ruffnut’s wrists finally gave way—not because of any clever maneuvering on her part, but because Tuffnut had somehow managed to swing his entire upside-down body into a barrel of pickled herring. The barrel toppled, rolled, and smashed into the wall just above her head, splintering wood raining down in salty, fish-scented avalanche.
“Snotlout—grab them and go!” Hiccup’s voice tore through the smoke-choked air, raw with urgency. Below him, Toothless banked hard, his wings slicing through the chaos as another plasma blast seared past Bjarke’s shoulder—close enough to singe the fur on his cloak. The bounty hunter’s eyes locked onto the Night Fury, widening in something between disbelief and vicious hunger. No one tamed a Night Fury.
Snotlout didn’t grab so much as flail—Hookfang’s tail lashed out, knocking the barrel debris aside just as Tuffnut’s upside-down momentum sent him careening into Snotlout’s chest like a human battering ram. “Ow, my ribs—” Snotlout wheezed, but his arms clamped around Tuffnut’s waist on instinct, hauling him backward onto Hookfang’s saddle. Ruffnut, now half-buried in pickled herring, lunged for Stormfly’s extended talons just as Astrid swooped low enough to snag her by the collar.
The twins hit the ground with the grace of two sacks of wet flour. Ruffnut spat out a pickled herring—whole—and wiped her sleeve across her mouth as Tuffnut rolled onto his back, limbs splayed like a starfish. “That,” he declared to the sky, “was awsome.”
The lecture began before their feet even touched solid ground. Astrid’s voice hit Ruffnut’s ears like a well-aimed axe—sharp, precise, and impossible to ignore. “Of all the stupid—” Stormfly’s talons unceremoniously dumped Ruffnut onto the packed dirt of Dragon’s Edge, cutting off Astrid’s tirade for half a second before she rounded on them both, her braid whipping like a lash. “You printed a bounty poster with your faces on it!“
Ruffnut rolled onto her stomach, spitting out another rogue herring bone. “Technically,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows, “we didn’t print it. We drew it. With charcoal. And possibly some of Fishlegs’ beet juice for the, uh, dramatic effect.“
Snotlout’s voice cracked likea whip in the smoky aftermath. “Hiccup—get this absolute walnut off me right now—” His words dissolved into a strangled wheeze as Tuffnut’s elbow somehow found its way directly into his solar plexus. They were a tangle of limbs on Hookfang’s back, Tuffnut still upside-down and grinning like a lunatic, one foot hooked under Snotlout’s armpit, the other kicking wildly near Hookfang’s ear spikes.
Hiccup’s patience snapped like a frayed rope under too much weight. He pinched the bridge of his nose, inhaled sharply through his teeth, and pointed at the twins—now sprawled in a heap of pickled herring and self-satisfaction—with all the gravitas of a chieftain sentencing criminals to latrine duty. “You two,” he announced, voice dripping with the kind of exhausted finality taht suggested he’d aged a decade in the last five minutes, “are officially on watch duty. Indefinitely.”
Snotlout’s face twisted like he’d just bitten into a lemon stuffed with rancid yak butter. “Me? Babysitting Them?” He jabbed a finger toward the twins, who were currently attempting to stack pickled herring into a precarious tower on the clubhouse floor. “Hiccup, I’d rather wrestle a Gronckle with buttered hands.”
Fishlegs’ head whipped around so fast his braids smacked him in the face. “Don’t disrespect Meatlug like that,“ he snapped, jabbing a finger at Snotlout with uncharacteristic heat. The Gronckle in question let out a low, offended rumble from where she was sprawled in the sun, her belly rising and fally like a doughy boulder. ”She’d never dream of buttering her hands before wrestling. That’s barbaric.“
Snotlout blinked. “That’s—what? That’s not even the—” He threw his hands up, nearly losing his balance on Hookfang’s back as Tuffnut’s foot onnected with his kidney, as he climbed back onto Snotlout’s lap. “Hiccup, please tell me I don’t have to—“
The herring tower collapsed with a wet splorch as Ruffnut leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with the kind of mischief that usually preceded property damage. “Indefinite watch duty?” she echoed, nudging Tuffnut with her elbow, as she as well climbed onto Snotlout’s lap. “Sounds like a challenge.” Tuffnut, still sitting in Snotlout’s lap, grinned back.
Astrid’s boot connected with the clubhouse floorboards enough to rattle the half-built herring sculpture. “No,” she said, voice slicing through the twins’ grins like a whetstone on a dagger. “Indefinite means no loopholes. No creative interpretations.” She jabbed a finger at the smoldering wreckage of Bjarke’s ship visible on the horizon. “You two almost got sold to a warlord because you though fake bounties were funny.”
The clubhouse erupted into overlapping protests—Snotlout’s indignant squawk, Fishlegs’ earnst defense of Gronckle honor, Tuffnut’s delighted cackle as he crawled onto Snotlout’s back—until Hiccup slammed his fist against the wooden support beam. The entire structure shuddered, sending dust motes spiraling through shafts of afternoon light.
“Enough!” Hiccup’s voice didn’t rise so much as harden, the way molten metal suddenly seizes into unyielding shape. Even Toothless, usually unflappable, pricked his ears backward at the tone. “The twins are on watch duty. Snotlout, you’re supervising. Fishlegs, you’re on supply inventory. Astrid—” He shot her a look that was half plea, half command, “—you’re with me to scout Bjarke’s wrek before he washes ashore with a grudge.”
Snotlout’s groan echoed through the quiet watchtower as Ruffnut’s head lolled sideways, her mouth falling open against his shoulder with a wet plop. A thin strand of drool connected her lips to his leather vest like some unholy spiderweb. “Oh, come on—” he hissed, trying to shake her off without waking the human barnacle currently attached to his arm.
Tuffnut, sprawled across Snotlout’s other shoulder like a starfish with a concussion, responded by smacking his lips twice—smack, smack—before nestling deeper into the fur trim of Snotlout’s cloak. A second drool revulet joined the first, glistening under the moonlight filtering through the watchtower slats.
The wind howled through the watchtower slats, carrying the unmistakable whoosh of Night Fury wings slicing through the air. Ruffnut’s drool snapped mid-strand as Snotlout jerked his head up just in time to see Toothless barrel-roll past the tower, Hiccup’s laughter trailing behind them like a banner.
“How’s babysitting duty treating you, Snotlout?” Hiccup called, leaning sideways in the saddle as Toothless banked hard, their shadow flickering across Snotlout’s face. The twins stirred—Ruffnut smacking her lips like she’d just tasted something rancid, Tuffnut muttereing something about “vengeful herrings’—but didn’t wake.
Snotlout’s eyelid twitched as Ruffnut’s drool pooled on his vest. The third time her head lolled forward only to snap back against his shoulder, he finally hissed, “I swear to Thor, if you two don’t wake up—”
Snotlout’s protest died halfway up his throat as Toothless swooped low enough for Hiccup’s shadow to flicker across his face like a reproachful specter. “They almost got sold to a warlord, Snotlout,“ Hiccup called, his voice sharp enough to cut through the night air, Toothless’ wingbeats sent gusts of wind ruffling through Snotlout’s hair—mocking, almost. ”Let them sleep. And for Odin’s sake, don’t let them fall off the tower.“
Snotlout’s eyelid twitched again—this time hard enough to dislodge a crumb of dried fish from his brow. Ruffnut’s drool had now seeped through his vest and into his undershirt, leaving a damp patch that smelled faintly of pickled herring and bad decisions. Tuffnut, meanwhile, had begun snoring directly into his ear, each exhale carrying the pungent remnants of their fishy prison break.