The night seemed to darken, but the villagers were far from ready to settle down. Gobber gathered all of Lambie's dirtied fluff and placed him in wheelbarrow. He found a blanket in the smithy and covered the fluff.
"We'll have a funeral for him in the morning," he told Ingie. "Give him a proper sendoff to Valhalla."
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't encourage her!" her mother said.
"She should be in bed!" Her father added. "I'm sorry she bothered you, Hiccup."
"She didn't bother me." I broke away from Astrid to approach them. My voice became terse. "She saved my life with her stuffed lamb; he deserves a proper funeral."
Ingie's parents looked shocked. Perhaps no one had ever questioned their nurturing methods. Ingie remained impassive.
"It wasn't her fault or the lamb's that Alvin the Treacherous found you on the beach that night," I continued, "You know that she's had to live with that worry for weeks, all because you called her toy bad luck?"
Astrid reached out to grab my shoulder. "They get the message. Let's go."
Ingie's parents retreated with their girl in tow. They looked rebellious.
"You might want to get that frown off your face," Astrid said.
"What look?"
"The look like you're about to slice through a man's eyeball. It's not natural."
"Astrid-"
"She's right," Gobber piped up, coming to join us from the wheelbarrow. "If you weren't the shortest and skinniest Viking around, every Outcast would be fleeing in terror just by seeing your face."
"Yeah, just like they fled in terror right now."
"They ought to, the way you defended yourself without a dragon. Maybe we need to come up with a new style of fighting. 'Hiccup combat.'" Gobber gestured with his metal arm. He kept his voice cheerful, although his eyes darted to the bloodied arrows on the ground.
Astrid looked concerned. I turned away from her face. Toothless walked with us among the armed Vikings.
My father had hopped of Thornado, his dragon. He had restrained the two Outcasts who were alive. His muscles and beard were twitching.
"I thought I told you to stay in plain sight, Hiccup," he shouted. "Can't you follow the simplest orders?"
I flinched. Dad had once shouted those words the night I had caught Toothless with the automatic bola. We hadn't returned to those times, had we?
"It wasn't his fault, Stoick," Astrid said. She never challenged my father, not in such a calm voice. "No one was expecting the Outcast prisoners to escape."
"No, no one was." Fishlegs waddled towards us. "Logically speaking, men trussed up in an enemy village would not attempt to carry off the chief's son when they're outnumbered and lacking firepower."
Dad calmed down, but his eyes kept twitching. "Then those men weren't thinking logically."
"No, they weren't." At least we could agree on that. "The man who attacked me said that he needed the thirty sheep." An odd statement. Most families didn't need that much milk.
"We need to discuss this over mead and ale," Dad said. "That's the best way to exchange bad news. For now, we have to take care of the body and the other two men."
Spitelout had left the dead man under a moth-eaten sheet. He handed my father the hunting knife.
"That girl would make a good warrior," he said. "Clean blow between the eyes."
"Good," Stoick muttered. "That's one less worry."
