Time once again for A Thing of Vikings, the continuing sto~ry of a former blacksmith's apprentice who has gone to the dogs the adventures of the first Dragonlord when he was a boy!
Out on the great steppes, this principle is demonstrated, as a gathering of the Cuman and Kipchak chieftains gets an offer from Drago Bludvist, and one of the chieftains who first reject it gets to see the results. In the Icelandic village of Höfn, Mildew inspects a fresh batch of captives and finds one of them standing out from the rest. In Genoa, Viggo discusses future prospects with one of his newest employees. In his smithy on Berk, Gobber talks craft with his new apprentice, then business with Stoick. In Constantinople, Sigurd attends another boring party, which becomes significantly less boring when he gets away from his bodyguards. After a cutaway to Kyiv, where Tuffnut has to negotiate from a literal sickbed, Sigurd's situation is resolved by the same sort of politics that provoked it. Esther bat Rivkah arrives in Vedrarfjord with her brother and sister, and there gets a small but significant shot of Berk-induced culture shock. In the mire of Cors Fochno, Cami's duties to the Bog-Burglar village are interrupted by a sister with an unexpected offer. And we close back in Constantinople, where Dogsbreath and Inga have a heavy news dump for Snotlout Sigurd Snotlout...
https://archiveofourown.org/works/104089...s/41823959
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12639117/78...Of-Vikings
Once again, we are grateful to the Waterford University Archives for allowing us to quote from an undated draft of The Wing and the Ax, in which Queen Marshal Astrid Haddock I Wrote:One of the great advantages of dragon-mounted warfare is the freedom of movement it grants. Control of the air grants incredible supremacy over those below; a simple rock dropped from above becomes a deadly weapon, and the armory available to a dragon-rider is vaster than mere sticks and stones. But the weapons alone are only part of that supremacy. Ground-level enemy forces cannot stand in your way unless you choose to fight them. Enemy leaders become targets or traps, huddled under half of their army for fear of being plucked like ripe fruit.
For all of the peaceful uses of dragons and their abilities, in war, they make it so that the only thing that can fight or defend against a dragon-armed force on anything resembling equal footing is another dragon-armed force. And while exceptions abounded in those early years—at the First Battle of the Seine River, for example, or the New Year Fire-Rout—part of that was due to a lack of understanding in how to properly use dragons on the battlefield. But it swiftly became apparent to everyone in those early days that there were two options: Either one has dragons, or one is beholden to one who has dragons.
There was, and is, really no middle ground.
Out on the great steppes, this principle is demonstrated, as a gathering of the Cuman and Kipchak chieftains gets an offer from Drago Bludvist, and one of the chieftains who first reject it gets to see the results. In the Icelandic village of Höfn, Mildew inspects a fresh batch of captives and finds one of them standing out from the rest. In Genoa, Viggo discusses future prospects with one of his newest employees. In his smithy on Berk, Gobber talks craft with his new apprentice, then business with Stoick. In Constantinople, Sigurd attends another boring party, which becomes significantly less boring when he gets away from his bodyguards. After a cutaway to Kyiv, where Tuffnut has to negotiate from a literal sickbed, Sigurd's situation is resolved by the same sort of politics that provoked it. Esther bat Rivkah arrives in Vedrarfjord with her brother and sister, and there gets a small but significant shot of Berk-induced culture shock. In the mire of Cors Fochno, Cami's duties to the Bog-Burglar village are interrupted by a sister with an unexpected offer. And we close back in Constantinople, where Dogsbreath and Inga have a heavy news dump for Snotlout Sigurd Snotlout...
https://archiveofourown.org/works/104089...s/41823959
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12639117/78...Of-Vikings