This is where I belong ||httyd fanfic||

63. Threat

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"Lads, we have much to discuss." Spitelout's muck-ladled voice dripped through his crooked teeth in the sincerest grin a Jorgenson could give. Or at least that's how a dark, torch-lit Great Hall behind closed doors where neither sunlight nor truth could peek through.

Even now, as opposed to weeks ago, no one guessed otherwise.

"Do we now, Spitelout?" Spoke a burly man with bits of meat caught in his black beard across the table.

"What, did you think I sent summons to your tribes all the way across the Archipelago fer a lunch invite!?"

"Might 'ave been the only way you could get us to come." He chortled taking a chomp out of his leg of mutton.

The alternate colors, cut of chain mail and small trails of furs from smaller animals showed he was not a man of Berk. Neither were any of the surrounding men, offered what little the Hooligan Tribe could spare of their rations and chewing greedily while staring beadily beneath their helmets. Though Berk was on the blink of collapse, there was still a range of meats and mead that could encompass the whole of their once plentiful forests and shores. Some foods had gone rancid with the stench of weeks' worth of death, but it was still likely better than these men had eaten in their lives.

Surrounding Berk and many of the greater tribes were lesser islands with infertile lands and the odd population. Some joined larger tribes while others waited for Hel's siren call. The common folk thought little of when their ships sailed to their shores, just more chaotic half-truths and secrets waiting in the shadows in the world turned upside-down. No secret that most only came for the free food and word of Spitelout's grand ideas.

"An' I've got proposals fer ye, now that I've got ya here." Spitelout slammed his palms and leveled with the man across from him. "Considerin' ye can spare the meat a few seconds."

"Proposals!" Another Viking guffawed, nearly bowling over and spilling his mead on the table. "Maybe ye haven't noticed, but yer tribe's hardly in any position ta be makin' treaties. At this point, ye'd practically be stealin!"

"So consider this a sign of generosity, that I'd be lettin' you all in on what Berk could take for itself. What if I told you of a way we could all make out like bandits, only to reign as kings in the end?"

The men laughed and continued to feed, like swine nearly devouring the plates their meals sat on. Though their shadows danced across the hall by the shifting flame, it exposed the tightening of their grips on their mugs and the glint of steel in their gazes. Much separated Spitelout from these men, from gold to bounty to the size and influence of their islands and everyone at that table knew it.

"We'd call ya daft and take our mead ta go," remarked a blond Viking. "Us chiefs of the lesser tribes know better than ta mess in the dealings of you and yers."

"So then consider how the tribe of Selardalr suddenly joined into the ranks of us and ours." Spitelout took a plate of a small speck of chicken that escaped the hungry Vikings grasp. It settled nicely next to the larger helpings of trout, sea bass and fruits. The scent of the foods mingled into one another. "They were not much different, weren't they?"

"Aye," the black-haired Viking chief spoke. "Word's traveled fast yer heir went an claimed it fer his own."

"Has it struck ye, how one runt that should have been fed to the sharks the day he was birthed, did that?"