You don’t have to read the Hiccup books in order.

But if you want to, this is the right order:

ABOUT HICCUP

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was

an awesome sword fighter, a dragon-whisperer,

and the greatest Viking Hero that ever lived.

But Hiccup’s memoirs look back to when

he was a very ordinary boy, and finding

it hard to be a Hero.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is

coincidental.

Text and illustrations copyright © 2013 by Cressida Cowell

Cover art © 2013 by Red Hansen

Cover design by Kristina Iulo

Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and

electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy

and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use materials from the book (other

than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at

permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

lb-kids.com

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First ebook edition: December 2013

eISBN 978-0-316-33373-3

We have not yet seen Tomorrow. We have not yet

dared go there.

There was once a thriving city on the island of

Tomorrow. The flags of the Wilderwest flew bravely

from the towers of its hundred splendid castles. It was

a city built on the enslavement of men and of dragons

but, like many a city before and after it, it was a

handsome and glorious city nonetheless.

But a century ago, Grimbeard the Ghastly, the

Last King of the Wilderwest, did a truly dreadful thing.

Grimbeard’s son Hiccup Horrendous Haddock

the Second, with his dragon the Dragon Furious, was

leading a peaceful Dragon Petition to plead with his

father to end the misery of slavery. Grimbeard mistook

the Petition for Rebellion. He killed his very own son

11

by his very own sword, the Stormblade, and the blood

of his son was spilt on the seat of his very own Throne.

That was the beginning of the Curse upon the

Throne and the island of Tomorrow. The city was

destroyed by the dragon forces that had come at first

in peaceful protest. The hundred splendid castles

were burnt to the ground, and the Dragon Furious

was captured and bound in inescapable chains, in the

depths of a forest prison.

Grimbeard the Ghastly repented of his terrible

crime. He swore that there would never be a King

of the Wilderwest again, unless that King could be

a better man than he was. So Grimbeard created an

Impossible Task. He scattered ten of the King’s Things

to all the four corners of the distant earth.

Those Things would be guarded by monsters and

dragons most terrible. Only a true Hero could gather

the Things together, and lift the Curse and become the

next King of the Wilderwest.

In the unlikely event that there would ever be a

Hero great enough to gather together those Ten Lost

Things, the Hero could then be crowned, but only on

the twelfth day of Doomsday, known as the Doomsday

of Yule, which comes but once a year, and only on

the island of Tomorrow, on the stumps of the Throne

12

where Grimbeard’s son had died.

In the meantime, Grimbeard appointed human

and dragon Warriors to be Guardians on the ruined

island fortress of Tomorrow, so fearsome and so

terrible that they can barely be imagined. All will kill on

sight anyone illegally entering their territory.

Now the Archipelago needs a King more than

ever before. For the Dragon Furious has escaped from

that forest prison where Grimbeard the Ghastly once

enslaved him, and the Dragon is carrying out his own

Curse on the humans that he now hates. His intention

is to extinguish the entire human race.

And the Dragon Furious is winning. He has

torched the whole north of the Archipelago. The

humans have been forced to live in hiding-places

underground, for fear of the Dragon.

Nothing can stop the Dragon Furious now.

Nothing except for a new King, for a new King will be

told the secret of the Tenth Lost Thing, the Dragon

Jewel, a jewel that has the power to destroy dragons

forever.

There is only one time in the year that a possible

King is allowed to enter the territory of Tomorrow.

It is on one of the twelve mornings of the Twelve

Days of Doomsday.

13

Today it is midwinter, and the morning of the

ninth day of Doomsday.

Here he is now, the extraordinarily tall figure of a

lone Ferryman, rowing across from the dreadful island

of Tomorrow, across the little Causeway of Hero’s

Gap, to the mainland of the Murderous Mountains.

The Ferryman is the Druid Guardian of the island

of Tomorrow. He is blindfolded, and cannot take off

this blindfold until a new King of the Wilderwest is

crowned. The blindfold signifies his role as an impartial

and implacable Judge, and his absolute commitment to

his role as a Druid Guardian. But by some supernatural

agency, he seems able to sense that there is a figure,

with a little band of followers, waiting for him on the

beach. The figure is UG the Uglithug. His hope rises.

At last… in the nick of time… a Hero come to

claim the Kingdom!

For the Druid Guardian fears that the Dragon

Furious is very close to extinguishing the human race.

The Druid Guardian brings the boat to a

sludgy halt on the Singing Sands of the Beach of the

Ferryman’s Gift, and spreads wide his arms, and makes

the declaration, as his father, and his father’s father,

and his father’s father’s father have done every year

before him.

14

‘He-Or-She-Who-Would-Be-King, approach

Tomorrow if you dare! Only the One with the King’s

Lost Things can be crowned the King and live…’

And then he turns to UG the Uglithug, and asks

these solemn words.

‘Are you He-Who-Would-Be-King?’

UG replies, ‘I am.’

‘Are you the chosen representative of all the

Tribes of the Archipelago?’ asked the Druid Guardian.

UG nods.

‘Have you brought a gift for the Ferryman?’ asks

the Druid Guardian.

‘I have,’ replies UG the Uglithug.

The Druid Guardian says solemnly, but with

eager hope, ‘Then show me the Things.’

UG the Uglithug snaps his fingers to his followers,

and one by one they bring forward the Things.

They are: a fang-free dragon, Grimbeard’s

second-best sword, the Roman shield, an

arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-exist, the heart’s

stone, the ticking-thing, the key, the Throne, the

Crown, the Dragon Jewel.

UG the Uglithug’s followers lay them out on the

beach before the Druid Guardian and retreat. The

Druid Guardian steps forward to examine the Things.

15

A long, long

time he spends,

picking up each Thing

with his long clever

fingers, taking care to

feel each individual

object from all angles, to

check whether it is right.

And then he steps

backwards. A grim note

enters his voice as he

declares: ‘These Things

are FAKES. The replica

of the toothless dragon is

particularly poor, and it

is unkind of you to

do such a thing to a

defenceless creature.

We will give it a

home on Tomorrow.’

(UG the Uglithug has

removed the teeth from a

poor little Trotterdragon in

order to pretend it is the real

toothless dragon from the Prophecy.)

UG the Uglithug turns as white

as a sheep’s fleece. ‘As for YOU, UG

the Uglithug,’ continues the Druid

Guardian, ‘know this. He who dares to

approach Tomorrow with a gift that is

unacceptable, dies a quick and horrible

death along with his followers.

‘ARISE, YOU GUARDIAN

PROTECTORS OF TOMORROW!

ARISE AND DO YOUR WORST!’

All around UG the Uglithug and his

followers on the beach, the sand begins to

bubble. And then the land gives birth to

creatures of unimaginable horror, huge and

terrible, screaming vengeance. There is no

time for reaction, no time for defence. UG

the Uglithug and his followers have no time

to see even what they are, whether they are

dragons or something worse.

These creatures take hold

of UG the Uglithug,

they take

hold of the followers, screaming and

struggling. They shoot upwards and

ever upwards, up into the sky, up and

up and up, into the clouds beyond, into

the choking freeze of ice and fire of the

upper atmosphere, and those people

are then no more. They will return to the

earth only as ash and purple rain.

Such is the vengeance of the

Guardians of Tomorrow on those who try

to approach their shore without the

correct Things.

The Druid Guardian sighs. He gently caresses the

head of the poor toothless Trotterdragon, reassuring it

softly that all will be well. He mutters to himself, ‘Two

more days… Only two more days for a Hero to arrive

and save us all.’

Wearily, he clambers back into his little boat. He

is not really expecting that right Hero to come, you

see. Why would he? This is a ritual that has taken place

every year for ninety-nine years and only the unworthy

have come. Wearily, the old man begins to row back to

Tomorrow.

He will call for a Hero to come and claim the

crown for two more days. If a Hero does not arrive on

the eleventh day, on Doomsday Eve, then it will be

too late. Grimbeard’s rules set down a century ago, are

inviolate. The borders of Tomorrow will close again,

until the following year.

And next year really WILL be too late. By then

the Dragon Furious will have grown too strong. This

year is their only chance.

A Hero must come to claim the Throne, with all

of the Lost Things, by the eleventh day of Doomsday…

… Or all is lost.

22

PROLOGUE BY HICCUP

HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III,

THE LAST OF THE GREAT

VIKING HEROES

These last two books of my memoirs take place over

only forty-eight hours, during the last two days of

Doomsday when I was fourteen years old, and I warn

you that they are the darkest and most terrifying, and

were the most difficult to write. For this was the time in

which I faced both Grimbeard the Ghastly’s Guardian

Protectors of Tomorrow, and the true might and anger

of the Dragon Furious.

This was the time in which the dragons faced

extinction.

At the beginning of this book, war has come to

the Archipelago, the dragons and the humans are trying

to obliterate each other, and I am being hunted down

by both the terrible dragons of the Dragon Rebellion,

and by the witch and Alvin the Treacherous.

I look back at that pale, skinny, fourteen-year-old

Boy-Who-Once-Was-Me, and I feel such anxiety for

him, for he does not yet know what is coming to him.

He is living through this dreadful war, so he has seen

25

death already, but he has not yet lost someone that he

loves. He is beginning to understand what it means to

bear the burden of the guilt and responsibility of being

a leader. But he has not yet accepted that burden as his

fate and his destiny.

Will he be able to save the dragons in the end?

I yearn to help him.

I want to reach out across the chasm of space and

stars and time and hold his hand to help him through

it. But of course he is living in the past, that distant

country, and however hard I shout, he will not hear me.

Now I am an old, old man, looking back on

my life, I can see the pattern and the reason for the

darkness of that time.

Great things are only made out of love and out of

pain.

A great sword must be made out of the very best

steel. But what truly makes the sword great, is what

happens to the sword after it is made.

We call this the ‘testing’ of the sword.

The sword is bashed and hammered and hollered

into shape by the bright hammer. It is thrust into the

fierce heat of the fire, where it softens, and then it is

quickly quenched in water, where it hardens again. The

higher the temperature, the fiercer the fire, the tougher

26

and the greater the sword eventually becomes.

The whole testing process can make a sword, or

break it.

The same could be said for the Making of a Hero.

1. YOUR MOTHER SAID NOT

TO LEAVE THE HIDEOUT

It was a chill and foggy night in the Murderous

Mountains.

A good night for treachery.

Humans should not have been out in the forests

of the Murderous Mountains in those times of war. If

the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion caught even one

hint that there were humans moving in the burnt trees

of those misty mountain passes, they would hunt them

down and kill them.

But somewhere deep in that forest, far away

from any aid, a terrified human voice was shrieking,

‘Help! Help! Help!’ and a little party of brave but

foolish humans and dragons had set out to offer their

assistance.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was

sitting on the back of a Deadly Shadow dragon, flying

so low over the treetops that every now and then the

slow downward beats of the dragon’s wings brushed

the scorched topmost twigs of the trees.

Deadly Shadow dragons are chameleons, and so

this beautiful three-headed dragon was exactly the

colour of the midnight sky, complete with stars slowly

shifting across its shining sides.

Hiccup’s knees were trembling with the effort to

keep a grip on the saddle.

Hiccup was a very

ordinary looking boy,

for one so sought after

by so many people. A

ragged little string-bean

of a teenager, his fire-suit

torn to ribbons, his face

bruised and scratched,

with the wild hair and

scared eyes of one

who had been

hunted by too

many for too long. War and exile hadturned him into a

scarecrow of a boy.

His sword was drawn, his ears ringing from the

piercing coldness of the biting wind – and he was

peering over the Deadly Shadow’s wing as it flew, his

heart beating horribly quick at the blackened wasteland

down below. He was trying to work out where that

piteously shrieking voice was coming from.

‘Help! Help! Help!’ screamed the voice, and

now they could see the little flaring light of a campfire,

burning deep in the woods, flickering

on and off like a firefly, or the

flickering of your curiosity.

No wonder Hiccup was nervous, for this was the

scorched, fire-ravaged territory of the Dragon Furious

and the Dragon Rebellion, and the Dragon Furious was

hunting more than anything for Hiccup, and Hiccup

alone. The Dragon Furious had made a solemn pledge

to turn this world to ashes looking for him.

34

He had sworn that no rock, no island, no cave nor

cliff would be a safe hiding-place for the boy. The

results of the Dragon Furious’s crazed lunatic hunt lay

in the melted, mutilated landscape around them, the

ragged corpses of the trees, the burnt remains of the

smashed-up cliffs.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake,’ whispered Hiccup’s best

friend Fishlegs, who was sitting behind him on the

Deadly Shadow.

Fishlegs was, if anything, even skinnier and more

ragged than Hiccup. His smashed glasses were perched

perilously on the end of his nose. ‘We could be torn

to pieces by the Dragon Rebellion! Your mother said

ON NO ACCOUNT TO LEAVE THE HIDEOUT,’

protested Fishlegs. ‘We just need to stay in hiding for

two more days, until Doomsday Eve, when we meet

the rest of the Dragonmarkers at the Singing Sands

of the Ferryman’s Gift. That’s ALL we need to do.

Your mother said she would take care of everything

else…’

‘But what if it were one of us

all alone out there in that forest?’

Hiccup argued.

‘You’re right,’ said Fishlegs, getting a good

trembling grip on his sword. ‘I know you’re right… It’s

just that it’s so scary…’

Hiccup and his two human friends were as white

as grubs, having not seen daylight for a month. This

was the first time they had been outside in all that time.

Their dragons had taken it in turns to venture out and

collect food and firewood. Now the Ten Companions

of the Dragonmark had crept out of the safety of their

hideout, at the sound of that distant, terrified human

voice.

As they swooped nearer to the little light, the

desperate sound of the human voice came closer and

closer, and it was impossible not to respond to the fear

in that voice. What could be happening to that human

to make them scream like that?

‘Help! Help! Help!’

A human calling out to another human cannot be

ignored.

Hiccup swallowed, looking down at the trees

below him. This was once a living breathing forest.

Now it was as still as death, scorched and burnt and

wasted by the intensity of the Dragon

Furious’s anger.

The third human on the Deadly Shadow’s back

was a small, fierce little Bog-Burglar called Camicazi.

Her hair looked like a family of over-excitable squirrels

had been having an all-night party in the back of it.

‘Oh come on, Fishlegs,’ whispered Camicazi,

whistling happily. ‘You know we have to do this.

Besides, I feel like a bit of exercise, we’ve been cooped

up in that hideout for way too long.’

Frankly, at this point, Camicazi had grown so fed

up that if Hiccup had suggested hang-gliding off the

toe-talons of the Dragon Furious she’d have been up

for it.

‘A bit of exercise?’

blustered Fishlegs. ‘A bit

of exercise? This is not

some kind of Viking

version of Girls Keep

Fit!’

Three little

hunting-dragons and

one riding-dragon

were flying just

above the Deadly

Shadow. Two of

the hunting-dragons

belonged to Hiccup: a

very old one, the Wodensfang,

with wings all tattered and torn, and a very young one,

Toothless, the smallest, naughtiest hunting-dragon

in the Archipelago. The third hunting-dragon was a

golden chameleon Mood-Dragon called Stormfly, and

she belonged to Camicazi.

The riding-dragon, the Windwalker, was a

long-limbed, gentle, raggedy creature. He wagged his

flag of a tail, hopefully waiting for everyone else to

decide what to do.

‘L-l-lets go home…’ wept Toothless, in

40

Dragonese, the language that dragons speak to one

another. Only Hiccup could understand him, for

Hiccup was a dragon-whisperer.

Toothless’s huge greengage eyes were

bulging wide in terror. He didn’t really care about

stranger-humans who didn’t belong to him. He just

wanted to go home, but he didn’t want to admit it in

front of Stormfly. Toothless was rather in love with

Stormfly, so tended to show off in her company.

‘Is too ch-ch-chilly to b-b-be outside…’ wept

Toothless.

Toothless had a stammer, but this was even more

pronounced because he was shivering so hard.

‘Well, I told you to wear your coat, Toothless,

didn’t I?’ Hiccup countered. ‘I told you, and told you!

But you said, oh no, you’d be too hot in your coat…’

‘That c-c-coat is s-s-sissy…’ Toothless objected.

‘And actually T-t-toothless n-n-not cold after all…

T-t-toothless very w-w-warm… but may be a little

t-t-too warm… Toothless needs to go back to the

hideout so he can c-c-cool down...’

The too-warm Toothless was in fact so cold he

had turned almost blue.

‘Is not because T-t-toothless scared of the

Dragon Rebellion dragons,’ huffed Toothless. ‘No

no NO. Toothless can fight Dragon Rebellion

dragons with one wing tied behind his back, yes I

can, Stormfly,’ he bragged. ‘Can’t I, Wodensfang?

And Toothless once b-b-bit the Dragon Furious SO

HARD on the bottom that he cried… But Toothless a

little bit hot and he’s got iffy wings… LOOK…’

Toothless held out his wing and made the end of

it go all floppy.

‘Flippy-floppy, flippy-floppy…’ cooed Toothless,

42

in a tone of tender self-consolation.

‘Yes, I’ve got a kind of tickly feeling in the back

of my throat myself,’ hissed Stormfly, batting her

naughty eyes. Stormfly spoke in Norse, for she was one

of the very rare dragons who could speak the human

tongue. ‘Maybe we should go back and have a little lie

down… maybe I should go back and get Toothless’s

coat… I think you look quite cute in your coat,

Toothless.’

‘Ooh, do you?’ said Toothless, re-thinking the

coat.

‘Nonsense, you’ll feel all the better for some nice

night air,’ scolded Camicazi. ‘It’s probably indigestion

in your case, Stormfly. You’ve got to stop swallowing

those squirrels whole.’

‘INDIGESTION?’ huffed Stormfly, outraged.

Her beautiful serpentine body was currently purple

(the colour she turned when she lied), but as she grew

43

angry, a haze of black mist fanned outwards from her

heart, like a cloud of ink slowly spreading through

water. ‘INDIGESTION? I am an artist, a free spirit…

I go where the wind takes me… Free spirits do not get

indigestion…’

‘I think I should warn you that this might be

a trap, set for you by Alvin and his followers the

Alvinsmen,’ warned the Wodensfang in a wheezy

whisper.

The Wodensfang was a wrinkled brown leaf of a

dragon who looked a little like a decrepit, droopy little

dachshund that had shrivelled like a raisin. His ears

had gone purple and were shivering, which was what

always happened when DANGER was near.

‘Take the advice of my

thousand years, Hiccup,’ said

Wodensfang. ‘That light is

behaving very strangely if it

is a campfire. I’ve never seen

a campfire that moves… not

in a thousand years

I haven’t.’

The Wodensfang was right.

The campfire was moving, slowly, slowly, down

the length of the valley. Sometimes it was extinguished

entirely by the heavy, shifting fog, or snuffed out by the

denseness of the thickets of trees. But then it would

flicker into life again, slow-ly and steadily, just a lit-tle

bit further down.

A campfire that moved?

Surely that was impossible!

The human voice had stopped shouting now.

Somehow that was even more petrifying. Had its owner

been snuffed out and swallowed by whatever terrors

might lurk in this still, scarred landscape?

They were catching up with the light; it was

bigger and brighter and stronger, and Hiccup could

catch that distinctive smell of campfire in his nostrils.

They were now following the river that wound its

way like a sinister sleeping snake through the centre of

the gorge.

The river turned a corner. And there it was…

A campfire, burning on an island of ice that was

moving swiftly in the current in the centre of the river.

Lying on his front on the island of ice was

a human, chained to a sleeping riding-dragon, a

Hurricane, with scars and whip marks all along its side.

45

Hiccup could see immediately why this human

had been screaming. Running along the riverbanks,

flitting through the trees, were the dark shapes of a

gigantic pack of Wolf-fangs. The human must have

been camping on some frozen lake upriver, and the

ice had broken up in the night, and carried him on

his little raft downstream, where his scent was picked

up by Wolf-fangs. Wolf-fangs were neutral dragons,

thank Thor, not part of the Rebellion. They

were wingless, but persistent killers

nonetheless.

Some of them were already in the water, silently

trying to climb on the raft, evil tongues hanging out,

and the human was desperately knocking them back

with his sword.

Well, that explained why the human had been

screaming.

But why had he stopped screaming?

And why were those Wolf-fangs, scrabbling to

get on board that ice-raft, pursuing their prey without

howling, without making a sound?

Oh for Thor’s sake, oh for Thor’s sake…

The human had stopped screaming because

there was Something Else camped out overnight along

the riverbank, a lot of Something Elses that were still

sleeping there, and these Something Elses were much

worse than the Wolf-fangs.

With a sort of horror, Hiccup realised that what

he thought had been fallen tree trunks lying just below

the waterline in the rushes, in the shallows, weren’t tree

trunks at all.

They were Razorwings and Tonguetwisters,

Brainpickers and Savagers, some of the scariest dragon

species of the Dragon Rebellion.

And there weren’t just a few of them, either.

There were Dragon Rebellion dragons submerged all

along the riverbanks as far as the eye could see.

48

All around, in the shallows, were the still,

sleeping, panther-like shapes of the dragons cooling

their furnace-like bodies in the ice-cold currents of the

river. A sickly, sulphurous yellowy-green mist curled its

way up from their bodies as the heat of their scales met

the chill of the water.

One huge Savager was gnawing at the ragged

remains of a gigantic tree in his sleep, a tree torn

violently and entirely out of the ground, its poor

tender roots spilled out like a desecration. Another, a

Brainpicker, was holding the pathetic remnants of a

bloodied human coat that Hiccup sincerely hoped did

not belong to a Dragonmarker.

Their dark sinister shapes oozed with menace and

fear.

Hiccup urged the Deadly Shadow downwards,

trying to catch up with the poor terrified human on the

ice-raft moving swiftly down the river below them.

Three pairs of human eyes and seven pairs of

dragon eyes squinted down through the mist to look

at the human laid out full length on his stomach on

the moving island of ice, bashing away at the noses of

Wolf-fangs trying to climb on board his raft and drag

him under.

It was a man. A young man.

49

A young man who had lost hope that anyone

would rescue him now, and you could see from his

defeated, terrified face that he thought he was about to

die.

Hiccup caught his breath in shock as he

recognised the human.

It was Snotlout.

2. ‘WE WERE JUST

WONDERING WHOSE SIDE

YOU ARE ON?’

Hiccup was as shocked to see Snotlout there as

if someone had hit him suddenly in the stomach.

Snotlout was Hiccup’s cousin, and he had been

Hiccup’s enemy ever since Hiccup had been born.

When they last saw Snotlout on the battlefield

back in the Amber Slavelands, Snotlout was trying to

decide whether to be on on their side, or the side of

Alvin and the witch. So which side had he chosen?

It appeared that Camicazi and Fishlegs thought

they knew the answer to that question already.

‘Let’s get back to the hideout,’ whispered

Camicazi in disgust.

Fishlegs sighed. ‘I’m afraid I agree.’

‘Hang on a second!’ whispered Hiccup. ‘We can’t

just GO HOME and leave Snotlout here!’

Fishlegs looked at Hiccup with the hollow eyes

of someone who has been on the run from the Dragon

Rebellion for too long.

‘Hiccup,’ said Fishlegs, ‘I don’t think that

Snotlout will have chosen to be on the Dragonmarker

51

side. He is a lying, two-faced, treacherous villain who

has betrayed you more times than I can remember, and

he is almost certainly working for the Alvinsmen.’

‘People can change!’ said Hiccup, his eyes lit up

with enthusiasm. ‘You have to believe in people and

then maybe they can change!’

Fishlegs kept count on his fingers. ‘Let’s see.

He tried to kill you back in that Swordfighting at Sea

lesson. He tried to kill you when we were on Hysteria

that time. He threw the stone that revealed you had

the Slavemark back in the School of Swordfighting…

He just keeps betraying you again and again.’

‘This time it’s going to be different,’ whispered

Hiccup optimistically. ‘This time I’m sure he’s

changed… I’m convinced of it.’

‘If you try and save Snotlout,’ warned the

Wodensfang, looking very nervous, ‘you will put us

all in peril. By being kind to Snotlout, you may be

endangering the lives of those who are loyal to you,

who have never betrayed you. Sometimes kindness

can be cruelty. These are the kind of difficult

decisions that a Leader has to make.’

Oh, thank you Wodensfang. Very helpful. I may

have mentioned this before, but: Most of us are lucky

not to be Kings and Heroes, because we do not have to

make the choices that Kings and Heroes have to make.

52

~ STATISTICS ~

FEAR FACTOR: ..................... 9

ATTACK: .............................. 8

SPEED: ................................ 8

SIZE: ................................... 7

DISOBEDIENCE: ................... 7

These are very unpleasant dragons with

wings so razor-sharp they can decapitate

their victims in a heartbeat. Razorwings can

turn themselves as flat as a spinning blade,

and for good measure, they are also armed

with darts that are mildly poisonous.

~ STATISTICS ~

FEAR FACTOR: ..................... 0

ATTACK: .............................. 1

SPEED: ................................ 2

SIZE: ................................... 2

DISOBEDIENCE: ................... 1

Hogflys are very gentle and eager to please,

however they are one of the stupidest

dragon species in the entire dragon world.

They do, however, have an extraordinary

sense of smell, so they can make very good

tracker or scent-dragons, if you can

overcome their profound stupidity.

The ice-raft creaked as one of the Wolf-fangs

tipped it. Was it Hiccup’s imagination, or did the

dragons submerged along the edges of the riverbanks

move too, at the sound of that groaning ice?

At that moment, Hiccup noticed a very small,

very ugly, miniature scent-dragon sleeping innocently

beside Snotlout and the Hurricane on the ice. It looked

like a happy little pig. It was called a Hogfly, and

Hogflys are the stupidest, most good-natured dragons

in the entire world.

Nine pairs of eyes, dragon and human, looked at

Hiccup anxiously. Hiccup loved his friends. It was his

responsibility to keep them safe. But he couldn’t leave

a fellow human being, even if he was on the other side,

let alone a poor scarred riding-dragon and a sweet,

stupid little Hogfly, to a horrible fate at the talons of

the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion.

‘Let’s save him,’ whispered Hiccup. ‘Let’s save

him!’

‘Oh brother,’ moaned Fishlegs. ‘I know you’re

right, but oh brother…’

‘We’ll have to try and rescue him from above,’

said Hiccup. ‘I’ll get the Deadly Shadow flying directly

above the ice-raft, and then Camicazi can let down a

rope for Snotlout to climb up.’

55

‘Let me just say that I completely disagree with

this decision!’ whispered Camicazi fiercely. ‘This is

MADNESS! This is CRAZY!

You’ve really lost the

plot now, Hiccup, you

Hooligan half-wit…’

In one of her

instant, bewildering

turns of mood, she

drew her sword.

‘I’d better

go down there,’

she resolved.

Before anyone could stop her, Camicazi tied

a rope to the Deadly Shadow’s saddle and lowered

herself until she was hovering above the ice-island like

a little black spider.

‘Was that part of the plan?’ Fishlegs asked.

‘Suffering scallops, no… Camicazi!’ Hiccup

hissed. ‘Get back up here!’

But Bog-Burglars can be surprisingly deaf when

they want to be.

‘Ask him whose side he’s on!’ Fishlegs whispered

down helpfully from above.

Camicazi dangled from the rope below the

Deadly Shadow dragon just above Snotlout’s head.

Holding on to the rope with one hand and stringing her

bow with the other, she shot a Wolf-fang one-handed

(one of Camicazi’s more show-offy moves).

‘Hello there,’ she said cheerily to Snotlout.

‘Hiccup thinks we should help you, but what Fishlegs

want to know is, whose side are you on? Because if

you’re on the side of the Alvinsmen, I just want to

leave you to it…’

Snotlout was busy fighting off the Wolf-fangs,

but he whipped round his head in amazement as he

heard this voice coming out of nowhere, and let out a

small, surprised noise of astonishment.

57

Camicazi gave Snotlout a little, soothing wave,

and her biggest, brightest smile. Snotlout goggled at

her, for she appeared to be dangling in mid-air, and for

a second he thought he was seeing things. But then,

pointing a shaking finger at the terrifying sight of the

dragons sleeping in the riverbanks, he mouthed

with dazed relief: ‘HELP ME… but be quiet…’

Camicazi ignored this, talking in

her perfectly normal voice. ‘Yes, that’s

interesting you should ask that, because

we were just wondering whether

to help you or not,’ explained

Camicazi, swaying chattily

above him.

‘For Thor’s sake,

you little Bog-Burglar

madwoman… those are

Dragon Rebellion dragons...

Have you seen what those

dragons have done to this

forest? And if they wake up they

could call the Dragon Furious…’

Camicazi dropped

down from the rope and landed

like a little cat on the ice-raft beside

Snotlout.

‘You haven’t answered the

question,’ said Camicazi. ‘Whose

side are you on?’

Snotlout made a frustrated inarticulate gurgling

noise, as he bashed away at the paw of a grinning

Wolf-fang who had nearly made it on to the raft.

‘OK,’ he rasped, ‘I’m on YOUR side! Most definitely on YOUR

side! Indisputably on YOUR side! I came up here to find you so I could take you

to the witch’s camp so that you can find the rest of the Lost Things…’

‘He says he’s on OUR side!’ Camicazi shouted

up. ‘But I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw

him.’

‘I told you!’ whispered Hiccup from above. ‘But

keep it down a bit, Camicazi…’

‘Are you quite sure that we should save him?’ said

Camicazi wistfully. ‘He really is not very nice.’

‘Can’t you speak quietly, you horrible little Bog-Burglar…’ hissed

Snotlout. ‘Uh-oh…’

‘Uh-oh…’ said Hiccup.

‘Uh-oh?’ groaned Fishlegs, who had covered his

face with his hands in his horror. ‘What do you mean,

uh-oh? UH-OH is never good. Please take back that

uh-oh, and give me, instead, a hearty, relieved hoorah.

I hardly dare ask, but what’s wrong?’

‘The Hogfly,’ Hiccup explained. ‘I think the

Hogfly is waking up…’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ Fishlegs

whispered back. ‘Hogflys aren’t dangerous.’

60

Too late.

The Hogfly woke up with three wet, splashing

sneezes. It bounced up from the stomach of the

sleeping Hurricane and shot out its wings so it hung

in the air, buzzing like a fat pink bumblebee, its curly

pink tail wagging vigorously as it looked to the left and

right.

‘Woof! Woof! WOOF!’ barked the happy Hogfly.

The Hogfly was so stupid it thought it was a dog.

Was there a stiffening of the Dragon Rebellion

dragons all along the riverbank at the sound of that

last, jolly little bark?

‘Hogfly!’ Hiccup whispered down to the Hogfly.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ the Hogfly called back, waving an

exuberant pink trotter.

‘I can se-e-e-e-ee you! Hello Grandma! Where’s

the toothbrush?’

It buzzed back and forth, its snout snuffling up

and down.

And this time there was a definite quiver from

the Dragon Rebellion dragons all along the riverbank,

limbs moving, eyes on the edge of opening.

‘OOOOOh!’ sang the Hogfly, its little snout

trembling in excitement as it recognised Hiccup’s

scent. ‘I KNOW THAT SMELL! I WAS LOOKING

FOR YOU! I WAS TRACKING YOU!’ shouted the

Hogfly, and to Hiccup’s anxious ears, that shout was

about as quiet and peaceful as the honking bellow

of his old teacher, Gobber the Belch, umpiring a

Bashyball game, or the love-call of a Giant Walrus-bog

calling out to another love-sick Walrus-bog across a

mile or two of ice floes.

‘Me and the Human-with-the-Big-Nose were

playing a game and I was looking for you, tracking

you all the way up the river! Look,

Human-with-the-Big-Nose!’ sang

the Hogfly triumphantly to Snotlout,

pointing at Hiccup with all four of its

trotters. ‘I’VE FOUND HIM! I’VE

FOUND HIM! I’D KNOW THAT

SMELL ANYWHERE!’

‘Can’t you shut that thing up?’ hissed

Snotlout, bug-eyed with terror.

‘Hogfly!’ Hiccup whispered

down from the Deadly Shadow’s

back. ‘Well done, clever you, but we’re

playing a DIFFERENT game now… a

very DIFFERENT game… The new game is the

“Being-as-Quiet-as-Possible” game… It’s a really fun

one. Will you play with us?’

‘OOoh, I’ll play!’ squeaked the Hogfly. ‘Let ME

play! Look at me playing!’

‘Quiet as possible… quiet as possible…’

reminded Hiccup, putting a finger up to his mouth.

‘Ssshhhh…’

The Hogfly concentrated very hard, clamped its

little mouth shut and held its breath, turning purple

until it had swelled to almost three times the size,

before deflating suddenly with a loud POP!

And opening its eyes again in surprise.

63

‘Pardon me… Is it your birthday? I WON!’

squealed the Hogfly.

‘Yes yes yes yes yes…’ whispered Hiccup, looking

nervously at the edge of the river. ‘But remember, quiet

as possible… quiet as possible…’

‘Quiet as possible…’ repeated the Hogfly

good-naturedly. ‘Tee hee hee… this is a very funny

game.’

It concentrated very hard again, holding its

breath, and hovering in the air, and swelling, two, three

times. Hiccup bent down from the back of the Deadly

Shadow, and tried to catch it, for it was floating within

arm’s reach, but just as he made a grab for it…

POP!

The Hogfly deflated again, zooming out of the

reach of Hiccup’s outstretched arm, and tumbling

around in circles in the air, shrieking with giggles.

‘PARDON ME! How’s your father! I WON!

I WON! I WON!’

The revolting

Dragon Rebellion

dragons were moving

restlessly in their sleep.

The Hogfly

fluttered innocently up

to one grisly little group:

64

a Tonguetwister with its giant hairy tongue hanging

out, a Brainpicker with its ‘pick’ fixed into the head

of a poor dead badger and a Razorwing sleeping low

and evil in the shallows like a lurking velociraptor, its

body submerged but its razorsharp wings skimming the

shallows.

Happy and giggly and bustly, the Hogfly ignored

Hiccup’s strangled cries of: ‘Hogfly!

Come back here, Hogfly!’

‘Ooh!’ it squeaked

in delighted confusion,

‘you all look so

lovely! How am I to

choose which one of

you to be my friend?’

It perched on

the sinister swoop of the

Razorwing’s nose.

‘Where’s my biscuit? Are you married? Be my

valentine… ’

‘I can’t bear to watch…’ groaned Fishlegs,

It was like seeing an enthusiastic bunny

rabbit trying to make friends with a heavily armed,

bunny-eating cobra.

65

The Razorwing did not open its eyes.

But slowly, slowly, slowly, its jaws opened a tiny,

tiny crack.

And out of the jagged crook of its mouth, like the

noise from a ventriloquist’s dummy, came a horrible,

screechy little croaking voice, speaking very, very softly:

‘Ooh that’s a nice song,’ said the Hogfly, ever

polite, but suddenly a little nervous and

confused,

for the

song of the

Red-Rage is

not a nice song

at all.

66

And all around the riverbanks, the other Dragon

Rebellion dragons did not open their eyes but their

mouths, and in similar croaky voices they joined in this

disgusting robotic chant.

‘Oh brother… oh brother…’ whispered Fishlegs.

‘Here we go… this is going to be bad…’

The dragons began the chant again, louder this

time.

And…

SNAP!

The eyelid of the Razorwing snapped open, and

the eyeball of the Razorwing fixed on the Hogfly with a

thoughtful gaze just about as kindly and as reasonable

as the stare of a great white shark.

The Tonguetwister dragon opened its eyes

simultaneously, and stretched out its long, repulsively

thick and hairy tongue towards the Hogfly’s frantically

blurring wings, hoping to twist one of them off. I am

sorry, but it’s true.

Slowly, slowly, the cavernous jaws of the

Razorwing opened to their widest extent, to reveal two

little poison darts lurking like little evil gnats in the

fire-holes at the back of its throat.

This time, when the chant got to the part about

‘torching the humans like a wood’, the poor stupid

little Hogfly finally realised what was happening. These

dragons were not friendly or nice dragons at all. In fact

they were quite the opposite.

His expression of

good-natured bewilderment

turned instantly to absurd alarm.

His jaunty little tail uncurled in

drooping dismay as he backed

away, whimpering, ‘Sorry,

uncle… Where’s the exit?

Did someone sneeze?

Bite the bullet!

ABANDON SHIP!’

Swooping

down invisibly

on the back

of the Deadly

Shadow, Hiccup

snatched the Hogfly out

of the air, put him in his

backpack and soared upwards

again immediately.

In the absolute nick of time, for:

ZING! ZING!

Little electric-yellow and ink-black darts

whizzed over their heads as the Razorwing exhaled

swiftly from his fire-holes.

70

The only good thing that happened

then, was that the Wolf-fangs stopped attacking the

ice-raft. At the first sign that the Rebellion had woken

up, the Wolf-fangs sprinted away and melted back

into the darkness of the mutilated forest, while the

ones that were in the river, with their snouts over the

edge of the raft, sank back down into the water and

scattered like fish. They knew trouble when they saw it.

Snotlout was not grateful to see the Wolf-fangs

disappearing. But then again, gratitude had never been

Snotlout’s strong point.

‘What are you doing, you jellyfish-brained

IDIOTS? Is this your idea of rescuing someone? You’ve

woken up the Dragon Rebellion dragons!’ he hissed

in horrified disbelief. ‘And they’re going to fetch the

Dragon Furious!’

The situation spiralled out of control with

terrifying rapidity.

The dragons came out of their frozen sleeping

stillness at the edges of the river into wild, frenzied life.

The hideous chant of the Dragon Rebellion exploded

around the young Vikings as the little ice-raft holding

71

Snotlout, Camicazi and the sleeping Hurricane dragon

sped downstream. The excruciating pitch and loudness

of their battle hymn became in itself, a form of attack.

Screeching like harpies, the dragons screamed at

decibel levels that were painful to the ears.

‘Rapids…’ breathed Hiccup in horror, looking

down at the churning, foaming water, and the sharp

evil-looking rocks ahead of Snotlout and Camicazi

pointing upwards like devil’s incisors.

And even worse, there was a distant booming,

roaring sound, clearly audible in the still night air. What

was that noise, that warning rumble like the beginning

of a thunderstorm?

Oh, for Thor’s sake.

Hiccup suddenly remembered that when this

particular river got to the ocean, it fell off the cliff in a

gigantic waterfall that was the largest in the

Archipelago.

‘The waterfall!’ yelled

Hiccup, because there was no

point trying to be quiet now.

‘YOU HAVE TO GET

OFF THAT ICE-RAFT

BEFORE YOU HIT THE

WATERFALL!’

3. PLAN GOING WRONG

The dragons of the Dragon Rebellion attacked with

full mind-numbing force, their chant at an unbearable

pitch, diving, swooping, shrieking, shooting poison

darts, and terrible fire, and shocking bolts of exploding

lightning.

Camicazi and Snotlout fired arrows at the

swooping horrors as they clung desperately to the tilting

island of ice, bucking and speeding madly down the

river like an out of control sleigh ride. Inexplicably,

Hurricane, the riding-dragon, was still fast asleep.

The roar of the waterfall downstream got louder

and louder, growing into a great watery din of noise,

and even in the night air they could see a billowing mist

of spray swelling up above the forest ahead, like clouds

from a smoking volcano.

The waterfall was very close now. One more bend

and they would be rocketing over the edge.

Hiccup and Fishlegs caused chaos and confusion

by shooting at the attacking dragons from the back of

the all-but-invisible Deadly Shadow. But the dragons

were attacking in such nightmare numbers that it would

be mere minutes before they overwhelmed the raft.

NE-OOOOW! Another Razorwing leapt from the

73

rocky riverbank, and landed with an evil vulture grin

and a scrape of razored wings on the other end of the

ice-island, tipping it downwards so violently that it was

practically submerged.

‘This plan’s going really wrong…’ whispered

Camicazi as the Razorwing prepared to leap and slice

and— BAM!

The bucking, jostling island of ice slammed into a

rock and shattered into pieces…

catapulting Camicazi, Snotlout, the Razorwing and the

Hurricane into the numbing cold of the river.

The freezing shock of the water woke the

Hurricane at last. With a screech of alarm the poor

creature started swimming, trying to disentangle its wet

wings in the chaos of the raging rapids.

Snotlout was still attached to

Hurricane by a long chain, and

so he was dragged behind the

panicking riding-dragon,

buffeted over and over, and

half-drowned by the water.

Like an untidy

scarecrow, Fishlegs

valiantly jumped from the

Deadly Shadow on to

Windwalker’s back so

that he could

help try and catch Camicazi. Hiccup urged the

Deadly Shadow on, and Fishlegs flew Windwalker

down through the hail of Razorwing darts towards the

blonde head of Camicazi bobbing in the river.

‘DOWN, SHADOW! DOWN!’ Hiccup shouted.

The triple-headed Deadly Shadow swooped…

… and missed, as a manic surge of water swept

Camicazi out of the dragon’s reaching talons.

ROOOOOOOARRR!

The sound of thousands and thousands of

tons of gushing river water tumbling into a

waterfall was absolutely terrifying, and it was

just below them now.

The river rushed over the edge in a

flooding, crashing tumult.

Just the second before she was

swept over, Camicazi got one little

monkey hand around the rope

dangling from the Deadly

Shadow above and was lifted

clear of the deluge.

But the Hurricane

went plunging

over, plummeting

downwards, and

Snotlout and Hurricane would have crashed

to their deaths on the rocks below if the

Hurricane had not dragged its wings out of

the water in the nick of time. Screaming, the

Hurricane soared upwards, yanking Snotlout

with him.

Fishlegs steered Windwalker beneath

the dangling Camicazi, and she dropped on

to Windwalker’s back in mid-air. He then flew

Windwalker alongside the Hurricane, and

Camicazi jumped across on to the Hurricane’s

back so that she could heave the dangling

Snotlout up on the chains and into the saddle.

The three dragons now wheeled about,

and the Deadly Shadow shot back upriver

towards the hideout

in the mountains,

closely followed by

Windwalker, and

the terrified snorting

Hurricane, and a pack of

howling, murderous Dragon

Rebellion dragons, driven

mad by the arrow attack and

sensing a meal on the horizon.

They didn’t have long to get back to safety.

And now Hiccup heard a sound that really chilled

his blood.

This was far worse than a mere waterfall. It was a

distant, screaming, baying bawl, the inevitable result of

the awful chant of the Red-Rage.

It was the roar of the Dragon Furious.

One of the Dragon Rebellion dragons must have

flown up to his stronghold in the north, and awoken

him. Even at this distance Hiccup could just make out

the words:

‘HE MUST NEVER GROW UP! I WILL

HUNT HIM DOWN! I WILL SWOOP FROM

THE HEAVENS AND OBLITERATE HIM!’

By ‘him’ the Dragon Furious was referring to

Hiccup.

Far away to the north, out of that ice and that

fire, those volcanic bubbling pools, there rose a dark

shape so unimaginably large that it blotted out the

moon. Each beat of its immense dark wings took it

across a vast extent of territory at astonishing speed

as it headed south, straight towards them in the

Murderous Mountains, its eyeballs leaking fire, and

its great mouth screaming murder and butchery and

everything awful.

79

‘We need to make it back to the hideout, now!’

Hiccup yelled hysterically.

There were so many dragons of the Dragon

Rebellion that they looked like a mass of

thunderclouds, or a plague of locusts, thousands

and thousands and thousands strong.

They were flying so close to one another

that every now and then the Razorwings

accidentally sliced the head off any

dragons flying next to them, and scaly

heads dropped randomly into the

gorge, still screaming and

shooting fire or lightning or

poison arrows.

Hiccup let the Deadly Shadow steer while he

lay backwards on his tummy like a rear-gunner, firing

arrows continuously at the pursuing Dragon Rebellion,

trying to make sure he didn’t accidentally hit Fishlegs

on Windwalker, or Snotlout and Camicazi on the

Hurricane.

The flying conditions were extraordinarily

difficult: the shifting fog, the zig-zagging, twisting

gorge, and spindly needle-like rock-formations looming

up unexpectedly out of the mist. It was a little like

shooting rapids in the air.

Luckily Windwalker, the Deadly Shadow and

the Hurricane were some of the fastest riding-dragons

in the Barbaric World – only a Silver Phantom flies

faster – so they just about kept ahead of the screaming,

spitting, howling horror of the Dragon Rebellion in

pursuit. Hiccup tried not to listen to the deeper, darker

threat in the background, the great winged shape of

the Dragon Furious, whose ferocious bellow was even

louder than the Red-Rage. Furious sailed nearer and

nearer, like a great hunting owl of the night-time,

swooping down on some little mice who have

incautiously left their mousehole for a second.

‘I WILL TEAR THE WORLD APART IN

THE HUNT FOR HIM! I WILL KILL

HIM MYSELF!’

82

Windwalker and the Deadly

Shadow rounded a corner and with

passionate relief, Hiccup saw a

gigantic spur of rock looming out of

the fog, right in front of them.

High up on a pointed pinnacle,

with a breathtaking view over the entire

surrounding landscape, there was a tree

balanced so precariously on a cliff-top

that it was almost in the act of falling

off. And beneath the tangled roots of this

tree, there was the underground treehouse

camp so secret, and so well hidden, there

were barely half a dozen beings alive in the

world that were aware of its existence.

Alvin the Treacherous would have

given his very best hook to know where that

underground treehouse was. The Dragon

Furious, too, had his dragons hunting high and

low for it, day and night.

It had once been the underground hideout

that Fishlegs’s mother, Termagant, had made long

ago when she was a little girl growing up in the

Murderous Mountains. The Deadly Shadow, who

had previously been Termagant’s dragon, had shown

83

it to them, and Hiccup and his friends had

been hiding there waiting to meet up with

the Dragonmarkers on Doomsday Eve.

Hiccup had never been so glad to

see the hideout.

He hauled on the reins and

brought the Deadly Shadow to a

sudden, plunging halt in the air.

‘Take the others to the

underground treehouse and I’ll hold

up the Dragon Rebellion!’ Hiccup

shouted to Fishlegs as he rocketed past on the back

of the Windwalker. Thor knows how much Fishlegs

heard at the speed he was going.

The Hurricane zoomed after Fishlegs on

Windwalker in a maddened stream of terror. Hiccup

braced himself. He had six arrows lined up on the

Deadly Shadow’s back, and he fixed one to his bow

with trembling fingers. Hiccup had the advantage of

the Deadly Shadow’s invisibility, so that the Dragon

Rebellion dragons would not know where his arrows

were coming from.

Timing was everything.

The first Dragon Rebellion dragons plunged

around the corner, and Hiccup let fly one, two, three,

84

four, five, six arrows.

With a shriek of shock, the first dragon, a

Razorwing, was hit. It went spiralling into the pack

behind, and then plummeted down into the gorge.

There was a brief, squalling moment of confusion.

But it was enough. By the time the pack had righted

themselves and recovered their concentration, their

prey had disappeared.

Windwalker, the Hurricane and their riders

had vanished down the entrance to the underground

treehouse, and the Dragon Rebellion, drooling and

enraged, could not see Hiccup hovering only twenty

feet away from them on the back of the Deadly

Shadow, which had reared up to conceal its rider. The

Razorwings swam in the air, barking at each other, and

eventually set off further down the gorge, where they

supposed the prey must have gone.

Hiccup breathed again.

And then it happened.

4. TWO RED EYES,

SUSPENDED IN THE AIR

There were two red eyes, suspended in the air, right in

front of where the Deadly Shadow was hovering.

Red eyes, narrowed to slits, with the pupils

slightly shivering.

Hiccup blinked, his brain unable to comprehend

the sight of two red eyes floating before him.

In the heat of the Dragon Rebellion chase he had

forgotten that the humans – Alvin the Treacherous and

his mother, Excellinor the witch – were also looking for

Hiccup, and the witch was using Vampire Spydragons

to hunt and spy for her.

Hiccup had never seen a Vampire Spydragon before,

but he knew they were chameleons that could turn

every part of themselves invisible – apart from their

glowing red eyes.

Slowly the rest of the Vampire Spydragon

materialised around those two red eyes hovering in

front of Hiccup.

It was a ghastly shrieking creature, with the head

of a vampire bat and the body of an enormous monkey.

For one second Hiccup saw this vision, and then

there was a searing pain in his left arm. He looked

down in confusion, as if it were happening to someone

else, to see the head of the Vampire Spydragon

attached to his arm.

The creature did not have time to latch on

properly with its clamping jaws before the Deadly

Shadow turned its head and tore the Vampire

Spydragon off Hiccup, throwing the bloodsucker into

the air like a dog tearing a rat off its back.

One second the screaming monster was visible

– the next it faded into invisibility again, red eyes

descending into the gorge.

Before Hiccup could move, or think, the flames

of the Dragon Furious reached the forest.

‘I WILL HUNT HIM DOOOOOOOWNNN!’

A great horizontal wall of fire blasted across

the night sky with such white-hot heat that it sheared

off the top of the mountain behind the underground

treehouse. The entire summit, tons and tons of rock

and boulders, plummeted into the gorge below.

The three mouths of the Deadly Shadow

screamed simultaneously as the fire poured on and

on over their heads, and in a few swift flaps it shot

through the ivy-draped entrance to the underground

treehouse.

Just in time.

‘He’s been hit… he’s been hit…’ Hiccup

heard a shaking Fishlegs say as he helped

Hiccup down from the Deadly Shadow's

back, and because Hiccup was nearly

fainting it sounded like Fishlegs

was talking from a long

distance away.

Outside,

the Dragon Furious, full

of vengeful hope, finally

reached the place where the

boy had last been seen. But his prey

had disappeared, and Furious had been

robbed of his victory once again.

The Dragon Furious exploded in an

Armageddon of anger, and as the Dragon

Rebellion’s fires of rage torched the battered

remains of the landscape below, a trembling

Toothless, Stormfly and Hogfly flattened

themselves against the walls of the hideout around

the entrance. Wodensfang popped his little ancient

head above the hole to peer out, and swiftly ducked

down again.

‘He won’t find us in here,’ wheezed

Wodensfang, trying to reassure himself as much as

anyone else. ‘He won’t find us… He’s hunted us

before and he won’t find us now…’

But it was difficult to stay calm as the Red-Rage

Rebellion struck, relentlessly terrible and unremitting.

They could hear the burning and the crackling and the

shrieking as the forest went up in flames again, and

the wood shrivelled up like paper, and the little forest

creatures screamed as they fled the inferno.

‘Camicazi…’ panted Hiccup. ‘Where is

Camicazi?’

‘Hang on, Hiccup, you’re wounded…’ Fishlegs

was winding something around Hiccup’s arm. ‘Hang

on…’

But Hiccup ignored him and staggered into the

underground treehouse’s second room. Camicazi was

not there.

Hiccup limped back through the rooms again

and tried to climb the ladder up to the hole of the

entrance, only to be blown back, almost like he had

been punched in the face by a fist of heat. The wall of

flame was so burning hot that it seared the skin, even a

few feet into the room.

The Wodensfang shook his head gently.

‘You can’t go out there, Hiccup, not at the

moment…’

‘But we have to go after her!’ panted Hiccup.

‘Not now, Hiccup…’

‘Where has she gone?’ asked Fishlegs with round,

95

solemn, horrified eyes.

‘She was taken,’ said a voice from behind them.

There on the floor, still attached to the Hurricane

by a long chain, lay Snotlout, his face hidden in

shadow. He repeated the same words, in the same

dead flat voice. ‘She was taken.’

‘What do you mean, “taken”?’ asked Fishlegs.

Hiccup already knew what Snotlout was going

to say.

A horrible lightning image of the Vampire

Spydragon with the red eyes flashed into Hiccup’s

mind. It seemed to be laughing

at him.

If there was one

Vampire Spydragon in

that gorge, maybe there

were more…

‘She was

taken alive,’ said

Snotlout, ‘by one

of the witch’s

Spydragons.’

5. THE BITE OF A VAMPIRE

SPYDRAGON

‘I saw it,’ said Snotlout, quietly. ‘She showed me

in here, but just before she climbed in after me, a

Vampire Spydragon swooped down out of nothing and

nowhere and it took her.’

‘Windwalker! Is this true?’ Hiccup turned to

the Windwalker, who was lying on the floor, his long

shaggy body riddled with Razorwing stings. Hiccup had

some vague desperate hope that Windwalker might

deny it, but Windwalker gave a miserable nod, and

continued that low, keening whining.

‘No…’ whispered Hiccup. ‘Oh no…’

He put his arms around his thin, white trembling

body, trying to comfort himself. His arm sang

with pain.

ALL MY FAULT.

Camicazi had trusted Hiccup's instinct over

her own. She hadn't agreed with his decision, but

trustingly, loyally, she had followed Hiccup into battle,

and now she had been lost.

What had the

Wodensfang said?

‘If you try and

save Snotlout,’ he

had warned, ‘you will

put us all in peril.

By being kind to

Snotlout, you may be

endangering the lives

of those who are loyal

to you, who never

betrayed you. Sometimes

kindness can be cruelty.

These are the kind of difficult decisions that a

Leader has to take.’

‘Well, what do you expect?’ said the cold, hard

voice of Snotlout contemptuously. ‘You made a

complete birds’ nest of the entire operation. You woke

up the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion. The noise

probably told the witch’s Vampire Spydragons that we

were there. What did you think was going to happen?’

Fishlegs was trembling with heaving anger, and

he turned on Snotlout.

‘We were only out there in the first place to save

your poxy little life! Why didn’t you at least try and go

after her, Snotlout? She risked her life for you, and you

98

couldn’t even be bothered to follow her?’

‘Of course, I was dying to go after the dear little

Bog-Burglar brat,’ drawled Snotlout, ‘and I’d have

jumped on my trusty steed like a shot, you know what

a gentleman I am, Fishlegs, but my own riding-dragon

has most unfortunately been hit by Razorwing stings,

and can hardly move his wings.’

‘How do we know that YOU didn’t hand over

Camicazi to the witch? Maybe this has all been a trick

to betray us to the Alvinsmen!’

Fishlegs’s hot angry words said aloud what

Hiccup was thinking.

‘Why did we listen to your cries for help? You

probably gave her to the witch’s Spydragon! And you,’

shouted Fishlegs, ‘are not worth even a tenth of that

girl!’

Snotlout said nothing. His face was in darkness,

but perhaps there was a quivering

in his fingers when Fishlegs said

he was not worth a tenth of

Camicazi.

But then again,

perhaps not.

‘That little

Bog-Burglar?’ he drawled.

99

‘Come on, she’s only a Bog-Burglar after all…’

It was as if Snotlout was deliberately trying to

provoke them.

That was when Fishlegs really lost his temper.

Snotlout had bullied Fishlegs all his life. Anybody

who has been bullied knows what that is like. Fishlegs

had spent all of his first ten years in pure fear, too

terrified to go out the door of his lonely little hut,

in case he got caught by Snotlout and his bullying

sidekick, Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, who would hit

him, and kick him, and take no notice if he pleaded or

cried.

And now they had saved Snotlout’s life, and

Snotlout had repaid them by betraying Camicazi, who

was one of the only two human friends Fishlegs had

ever had.

Fifteen years of being bullied, of hatred, of anger,

welled up in Fishlegs.

All of Fishlegs’s anxiety about where Camicazi

might be, the fear of what the Dragon Furious would

do if he found them in that hideout, all of his rage at

Snotlout came together in a white-hot rush.

‘We should throw you out of the hideout!’ roared

Fishlegs. ‘You are a LIAR! You are a TRAITOR! You

have betrayed Hiccup and us all, time and time again!’

100

The three heads of the Deadly Shadow let out a

simultaneous scream, and lightning ricocheted around

the inside of the cavern, and the three heads inhaled,

ready to strike, for Fishlegs was their Master now.

BAM! Fishlegs hit Snotlout, plumb on the nose.

Snotlout looked completely and totally

astonished. He had never really thought much about

that weed, Fishlegs, apart from thinking up clever ways

to humiliate him. Fishlegs had never dared so much as

to pinch Snotlout, let alone punch him. Snotlout raised

his arms to hit back, and then paused as the gigantic

Deadly Shadow’s three heads screamed a warning

BAM! Fishlegs hit him again.

Snotlout half laughed, because however hard

Fishlegs tried to hit, his scrawny weedy little arms were

not really going to do any damage. That enormous

three-headed monster of his, though… Well, that

could do Snotlout some real damage. Snotlout eyed it

fearfully.

‘How does it feel,’ said Fishlegs through gritted,

furious teeth, ‘to know you are completely at someone

else’s mercy?’

Not good, as it happened.

Snotlout looked at Fishlegs’s howling,

Berserk-like face, and at the dreadful roaring

101

three-headed nightmare of a Deadly Shadow beside

him. He paled a little. ‘Come on now, Fishlegs,’ he said

uneasily, ‘you can take a joke now, can’t you? I was

always only joking…’

‘Oh, it was a joke was it?’ spat Fishlegs. ‘Well

then I’m just joking too! How does it feel to know that

whatever you do, whatever you say, however you plead,

someone is NEVER… GOING… TO… STOP?’

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Fishlegs hit him again and again and again.

‘Stop!’ said Hiccup, grabbing Fishlegs’s arms.

‘STOP!’

Fishlegs finally stopped. The red rash of anger

disappeared from his face and he dropped his arms.

There is something truly dreadful about this war,

thought Hiccup, in weary horror. It had made even

gentle, un-warlike Fishlegs, who wanted to be a bard,

actually strike Snotlout in anger.

‘Snotlout would kill us, wouldn’t he? He

has tried to kill you, on many

occasions,’ said

Fishlegs flatly.

‘You can’t be

weak, Hiccup.

You can’t give

him so many

second chances.’

‘That is the way

that Alvin and the witch

talk,’ said Hiccup, flushed

because he felt so guilty

about Camicazi, and yet

with a horrible suspicion

that Fishlegs might be right. ‘You have

to give people a chance.’ He was still holding on to

Fishlegs’s arms. ‘You have to keep on giving people a

chance.’

Fishlegs looked at Hiccup, startled.

And then Fishlegs sighed, and pushed his

curly hair out of his eyes. The last peppery speck of

Berserk-anger faded from his cheeks, and he scratched

a little eczema patch inside his left elbow, and

whispered despairingly, ‘You’re right… It’s this war. It

does things to you after a while. ’

Snotlout was absolutely white, stiff with anger

and humiliation because he had been hit by that weed

104

Fishlegs, and the three-headed Deadly Shadow dragon

had actually scared him, and everyone in that cave had

seen that he was scared.

‘Talk about giving a Viking a bad name!’ he

jeered bitterly. ‘Talk about giving people a chance! I

know we’ve been enemies in the past, but I too have

risked my life to come up here to warn you, even to

help you…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But if you

don’t want to believe me, then don’t, see if I care!’

‘Let’s calm down,’ said Hiccup quietly. ‘We’re

not going anywhere at the moment. We can’t find

Camicazi until the Dragon Furious goes away…’

If the Dragon Furious ever DOES go away, for it is

sounding like he will not rest this time until he has fried us

in our beds…

‘… and lots of us are wounded,’ said Hiccup.

‘Let’s see to that, and then Snotlout can tell us his side

of the story.’

Most of the injuries were Razorwing poison darts,

which had to be removed, leaving a numbing pain that

hurt more than the sting of a bee or a hornet.

But more seriously, a great purple-black bruise,

like a spreading flower, was making its way up Hiccup’s

left arm where the Vampire Spydragon had bitten him.

And when Hiccup took away the rags that Fishlegs had

wrapped around the wound a couple of minutes ago so

105

that he could put some herbs on the injury to heal it, he

started in horror.

The bite was not deep.

But a single tooth from the Vampire Spydragon

was embedded inside his arm.

Hiccup was a dragon-watcher, so he knew a great

deal about the various dragon species, and the way

they hunt.

Vampire Spydragons catch their prey a little like

Komodo dragons. They bite their victim, leaving one of

their teeth in the wound, and let go. The poison in the

bite then slowly paralyses the prey, and the Vampire

Spydragon locates its dying and helpless victim by the

tracking device of its own tooth.

‘Don’t try and get the tooth out!’ warned the

Wodensfang. ‘Your body will work to reject it, and in

time it will fall out naturally. The tooth has serrated

edges, so if you try and dig it out in the meantime you

will just do yourself more damage.

‘There will be a lot of numbness, paralysis even,

for a bit, but it is not a deep bite, so you will not die.

The same applies to the Razorwing stings… the stings

are painful but not fatal…’

But in the meantime, that Vampire Spydragon will

be tracking me, thought Hiccup.

Toothless had no real idea what was going on, but

he understood that his Master was upset, and lovingly

he went and sat on Hiccup’s head. ‘D-d-don’t be sad,

Master, Toothless is here,’ Toothless reminded him,

sliding down to Hiccup’s shoulders, and he put his

wings around Hiccup’s neck with a tenderness that

nearly strangled him.

Toothless searched for something that might

cheer Hiccup up.

‘I’ll wear my c-c-coat if you like?’ said

Toothless. ‘Look! Toothless will wear his coat… That

will make you feel better…’

He fetched his coat, which was half charred

because Toothless had hidden it helpfully in the fire.

‘Does that make you feel better, Master?

Toothless is c-c-cute and he won’t catch cold now…

A-a-a-tishyoo!’

Toothless sneezed a large amount of dragon snot

right in Hiccup’s face.

‘W-w-whoops! Sorry…’

‘Thank you, Toothless,’ lied Hiccup

automatically, wiping his face and putting a hand out to

the little dragon. ‘That makes me feel much better.’

The Hogfly nestled under one

of Hiccup’s arms and squeaked

sympathetically: ‘Tickle my

birthdays… It’s bathtime… Hold

the peanut…’ It didn’t make

much sense, but Hiccup was

touched that both dragons,

in their different ways, were

trying to comfort him.

Snotlout watched

them all moving about,

quiet and sad, wounded

~ STATISTICS ~

FEAR FACTOR: ..................... 8

ATTACK: .............................. 9

SPEED: ................................ 7

SIZE: ................................... 5

DISOBEDIENCE: .................. 7

Vampire Spydragons are chameleons that can

turn invisible apart from their red eyes. They

have bodies of monkeys and heads of gigantic

vampire bats. There is nothing more terrifying

than being surrounded by floating red eyes in

the darkness of a forest – often the last thing

their victims see before they die.

and frightened, as the rage of the Dragon Rebellion

roared on outside. At least they had each other. He

was out of place and out of time, shut out from their

companionship; an interloper, watching them from the

shadows.

Snotlout had a deep cut on his right arm and one

or two on his face, both near misses with a Razorwing’s

wings, but nobody was going to help him clean or dress

his wounds. The hatred in the room towards Snotlout

was so thick and heavy that you could reach out and

touch it. Both dragons and humans avoided looking at

him, as if he had a nasty smell. Snotlout had to tear bits

off his own shirt and wind them round his gashes, and

his pride made him pretend they didn’t hurt too much.

It is only that wimp Hiccup who is giving me a

chance, thought Snotlout resentfully.

‘Does anybody feel like helping me finally unpick

the lock on my chain?’ he drawled. ‘And then I can tell

you my side of the story, and you may just find that I

was on your side all along…’

‘If you are on our side, where is your

Dragonmark?’ demanded Fishlegs, still very hostile.

‘Show it to us, you traitor!’

Snotlout coolly took off his helmet, to show a

forehead entirely free of any tattoos whatsoever.

‘I have no Slavemark,’ said Snotlout. ‘But I am still on

your side.’

‘HA!’ snorted Fishlegs and the dragons joined in

the disbelief with smoky sniggers of derision.

‘GIVE HIM A CHANCE TO EXPLAIN!’

shouted Hiccup.

‘Thank you,’ said Snotlout, bowing to

Hiccup ironically.

Your dragon can feel a little threatened when a new

dragon enters the household. Be patient and he

will get over it. Hopefully…

Toothless: Hogfly ne-ah com sweetie-giggly com

T-T-Toothless.

The Hogfly is NOT as cute as Toothless.

You: Simple ne-ah, Toothless. TOOTHLESS si la Mos

Xcellent Oos. May noos ava be keendlee a di fella.

Of course not, Toothless. TOOTHLESS is the Best One.

But we have to be nice to him.

Toothless: Simply, simply. Toothless willa be B-B-BIG-

TIME keendlee a di stupidissimo lacksmart greenblood.

Of course, of course. Toothless will be VERY nice.

Pause.

Toothless to Hogfly: H-H-Hogfly,

pishyou, yow goggle com un squeal-

munch plus yow est plusdim com un

snot-trailer.

Hogfly, please, you look like a pig, and you

are more stupid than a snail.

You: TOOTHLESS!

TOOTHLESS!

Toothless (whining): May Toothless speekee pishyou!

But Toothless said please!

Another pause.

Toothless: Hogfly, yow wantee a

play Hidey-plus-Looky? Y-y-yow

hide oppsthere wi di keendlee ickle

Wettingsgreenblood, undi Nod-

dle-Scratchers, plus me adda a pon-

der o marvels und cum opps und loc

yow…

Hogfly, do you want to play Hide-

and-Seek? You hide out there and

play with the sweet little Seadragon

and the Brainpickers, and I’ll count

to a hundred million and then I’ll

come out and find you…

Hogfly (tail wagging happily):

Woof! Woof!

6. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE

STORY

‘The Doomsday of Yule is in three days’ time,’ said

Snotlout. ‘And you are running out of time. I am

presuming you have an agreement with Valhallarama

that she will steal the nine Lost Things off Alvin, and

then she will meet you on the Singing Sands of the

Ferryman’s Gift on Doomsday Eve and hand them

over?’

‘That’s a very clever guess of yours, Snotlout,’

said Hiccup quietly. ‘My mother said all we had to do

was stay in hiding, and meet her there on Doomsday

Eve.’

‘Well,’ said Snotlout, ‘Alvin’s underground war

bunker is hidden somewhere so clever, so secret,

that Valhallarama and Stoick will never find it even

if they search for a hundred years. So your mother

Valhallarama and the Dragonmarkers have failed in

their Quest to steal the other nine Lost Things from

Alvin.’

There was a short, depressed silence.

‘Why should we believe you, Snotlout?’ asked

Fishlegs. ‘You could be lying. Valhallarama could

already have the other nine Things, and you could

115

be sent here by the witch. If you joined our side, why

didn’t you get the Dragonmark?’

‘Hiccup isn’t the only one who uses his head, you

know, Fish-eggs,’ replied Snotlout. ‘I thought I might

be more use to the Company of the Dragonmark if I

appeared to be working for the other side.’

Stormfly gave a quick soft hiss of reluctant

approval. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Cunning and Trickery. Good

thinking.’ And then, remembering it was Snotlout

speaking, she frowned again. ‘If it’s true, of course.’

‘So I pretended to be on the witch and Alvin’s

side,’ said Snotlout.

‘I let them take me to their hideout. I found out

where they were keeping the Things, and ran away

to find you guys. I used this ridiculous Hogfly dragon

here to help me track you down. Hogflys may be

unbelievably stupid, but they are the best scent-dragons

in the world. I camped on a frozen lake upriver, the

lake must have unfrozen in the night, the Wolf-fangs

chased me… And that’s when you found me.’

‘If you know where the Lost Things are,’ asked

Fishlegs suspiciously, ‘why didn’t you steal them

yourself, when you escaped from Alvin’s war bunker?’

‘I couldn’t do it on my own,’ explained Snotlout.

‘The Things are guarded, and the Throne is heavy.

116

You lot are useless, of course, but I have to admit,

your camouflaged-so-it-is-invisible and humungously

enormous three-headed Deadly Shadow Dragon will

come in useful in a burglary situation.

‘Together we can steal back the Things,’

continued Snotlout, ‘and even rescue that horrible

little Bog-Burglar Camicazi. We can be at the beach

at Hero’s Gap on Doomsday Eve, with all the Things,

and then the Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow will

make Hiccup the next King of the Wilderwest, and

humanity will be saved.’

‘How do we know we can trust you?’ asked

Hiccup. ‘How do we know you’re not going to betray

us, and deliver us straight into Alvin and the witch’s

hands?’

‘I suppose,’ said Snotlout, ‘you don’t. You’ll just

have to take my word for it. It’s up to you. I don’t really

care what you believe any more. If you want to think

the worst of me, go ahead! I’m going to sleep now, if

you don’t mind. It’s been a long couple of days.’

Snotlout’s clothes had dried entirely now, in

the steamy warmth of that dragon-and-fire-warmed

hideout. He yawned, wrapped himself up in one of

Fishlegs’s mother’s old blankets, closed his eyes and

pretended to go to sleep.

117

But inside the blanket, his eyes were wide open.

‘C-c-can Toothless bite him?’ asked Toothless

hopefully. ‘Or would that be rude? Does it matter

being rude to a rude person? Or does it n-n-not

count?’

‘Yes that would be rude, Toothless, so you can’t

bite him, although I’m feeling a bit tempted myself, I

have to confess,’ admitted Hiccup.

‘Suffering scallops,’ said Fishlegs in disgust.

‘What do we do now? Do we trust Snotlout or not? I

still don’t see why, if he’s on our side, he doesn’t have

the Dragonmark.’

‘The Dragonmark is a symbol of SLAVERY!’

said the muffled voice of Snotlout. ‘I’m on your

side, but I don’t want to be marked with a symbol of

slavery!’

They all lay down to try and sleep, but this was

difficult when they were all so angry, confused and

frightened.

‘Did I make a mistake in rescuing Snotlout?’

Hiccup asked the Wodensfang. ‘Is that why Camicazi

was captured?’

The Wodensfang answered that question with

another question.

‘Can it ever be a mistake,’ replied the

Wodensfang, ‘for a human to answer the cry for help

118

of another human?’

‘Even if Snotlout is lying,’ said Hiccup in Norse,

‘he’s the only one who knows where the witch’s camp

is. So we have to trust him anyway, because he’s the

only one who can lead us to Camicazi. Oh I do hope

she is all right…’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Fishlegs miserably. ‘I’m really

worried about her too. I keep trying to tell myself that

she’s going to be all right… Look how many times she

has escaped from prisons. She is an Escape Artist, after

all…’

‘Yes, but the witch and Alvin are getting worse,’

said Hiccup anxiously. ‘They’ve been killing people.

I’ve seen Dragonmarker helmets hung from the trees

of the forest outside as a warning that they are trying to

claim this territory for the Alvinsmen…’

It was true.

Out in the forest there were long stakes,

driven into the ground, and hanging on the end of

each stake were either the heads of dragon rebels

or Dragonmarker helmets that had been taken as

trophies, and put there to warn other Dragonmarkers

that this land was claimed by Alvinsmen.

Quite apart from all these worries, the sound of

the Dragon Furious and the Rebellion outside wasn’t

119

exactly a lullaby: that noise of the blackened remains

of the forest being torched once again, the flickering

of flames, the roar as they turned from flickers into a

great storming, roaring conflagration, burning so hot

and high that the firelight from down below poured

upwards and inwards, through the window of their

hideout, to dance wickedly on the ceiling.

‘I will HUNT you down, boy!’ thundered the

Dragon Furious. ‘I smell your rotten human blood!

NOWHERE is safe for you! No cave, no rock, no

island. I shall turn this whole world into ashes thrice

over in the hunt for you… You can hide all you like,

you cannot hide forever… All it takes is one mistake

and…

… I SHALL HUNT YOU

DOWN IN THE END!’

Oh yes, it was hard not to remain wakeful while

that destructive roar exploded in your ears like one

of Thor’s worst thunderstorms, and the world burned

outside.

How were they ever going to get out of there, to

find the rest of the Things and Camicazi?

From the sound of it, the Dragon Furious was

never going to give up.

120

After a while of everyone tossing

and turning, the Wodensfang’s wheezy

voice cut through the darkness and the

terrible noise.

‘As no one is sleeping,’ said the

Wodensfang, ‘allow me to tell you a

story about a boy from the past who

reminds me of this boy Snotlout here.’

‘Wodensfang!’ said Hiccup, sitting bolt upright

in surprise. ‘You’re speaking Norse! I didn’t know you

could speak Norse! I thought it was only Stormfly here

who had that gift.’

‘So did I,’ said Stormfly sadly. It was a bad night

for Stormfly. Her mistress had gone missing, and now

there was this revelation that somebody else shared her

unique gift.

‘Why have you never spoken Norse before,

Wodensfang?’ asked Hiccup.

‘Just because you have

a gift, it doesn’t mean you

need to tell everyone about

it,’ replied the Wodensfang

simply. ‘I think the

boy Snotlout might be

interested in this…’

121

And in the darkness, the Wodensfang told the

story of how the Dragonmark became the Slavemark.

‘Once upon a time,’ said the Wodensfang, ‘I was

not the wrinkled little thing that you see before you

now. You see,’ explained the Wodensfang, ‘I am a

Sea Dragon…’

Hiccup gasped. ‘YOU??? A Seadragonus

Giganticus Maximus???’

‘That’s s-s-silly!’ squeaked Toothless.

‘You’re even smaller than T-t-toothless! How can

you possibly be a Sea Dragon?’

‘There are many silly things that turn out to be

true, Toothless,’ said the Wodensfang, smiling.

‘Sea Dragons start out small,’ the Wodensfang

continued in Norse, ‘but they grow to immense

size, like the fat full moon. And then they wane

again…

‘Once upon a time, Hiccup, a thousand or so

years ago, when I was young and about the size of

a Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragon, I met your ancestor,

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the First, and I gave

him the Dragon Jewel and trusted him with the

Jewel’s Secret.’

‘You told me this,’ said Hiccup.

‘I did,’ said the Wodensfang. ‘I told you how

Hiccup the First used the Secret of the Jewel to

gain power over dragons, and train them.

‘But what I did not tell you was that in return

for the Secret, Hiccup the First put a Mark upon

himself.

‘He put a Mark upon himself on the side

of his forehead. It was a Mark in the shape of a

dragon made out of his blood and the blood of

his dragon-brother. My blood. The Mark was

the symbol of a promise, that the two of us were

brothers, that we thought as one, that we would die

for one another.

‘As symbols will, it also became the symbol of

the Kingdom of the Wilderwest. All the Warriors

wore the symbol, blazing on their foreheads, so they

were known as the Dragon-Riders.

‘The Mark was known as the Dragonmark.’

The young humans in the cave gasped in

amazement.

‘So the Mark was originally called the

Dragonmark in the first place!’ exclaimed Fishlegs.

Snotlout was very still, but his eyes were open.

He was listening.

Hiccup touched the Mark, blazing purple on

his forehead.

‘So the first Dragonmark,’ Hiccup whispered,

‘was made out of your blood, Wodensfang?’

The Wodensfang nodded.

‘For over a thousand years, it seemed like I had

made the right decision to entrust the Secret of the

Jewel to the humans. The Kingdom of the Wilderwest

was a place of peace and prosperity, in which dragons

and humans lived in harmony with one another. The

Secret was passed down from generation to generation,

and its power was not abused. I grew huge as a

mountainside, so large and splendid that I had to live

in the ocean for a while.

‘Ah… It was a golden age…’ sighed the

Wodensfang.

‘Even as I began to shrink into my old age, many

hundreds of years ago, I was still content that I had

founded a new dynasty, a dynasty of happiness that

would last forever… and then…’

‘And then?’ Hiccup whispered.

‘And then, it seemed like I might have made a

mistake in entrusting the Secret of the Dragon Jewel

to the humans after all. You see, not all humans are as

good as Hiccup the First.

‘About a century ago, when I had shrunk to the

size of a Viking hunting dog, a new King inherited the

Throne. He was too young really… about your age.

‘His name was Speedfast,’ said the Wodensfang.

‘Speedfast was not a bad character as a boy, but he

was quick of temper and he had a tendency to bully his

inferiors.

‘This is the boy that reminds me so much of

Snotlout here. He even looks like him. Like Snotlout,

this boy refused to take the Dragonmark when he came

of age.

‘ “A King is brother to no man or dragon,” said

the boy, arrogantly. “The dragons shall take the Mark,

to show loyalty to their King, but I shall not take it.”

‘That was all it took.

‘The Mark that had been the symbol of

brotherhood between man and dragon, became a

symbol of enslavement.

‘For where the King went, his followers went too.

The Boy-Warrior, the future of their Tribe, refused

to take the Mark, and in time the older generation

became ashamed of the tattoo that had been a source

of such pride, and wore their helmets low upon their

foreheads.

‘And so it was with everything else. One by one,

all the achievements of Hiccup the First were spoilt

and ruined.

‘And I… well, looking back, I do not think that I

helped matters.

‘For I did judge Speedfast harshly, then and now.

‘I nagged him constantly about what he was

doing. I told him he was betraying the memory of his

ancestors. I scolded him, morning, noon and night.

‘There is one particular time that I remember.

‘Speedfast was sleeping in the King’s bed. No

one was supposed to disturb him. But I did not follow

those rules. Why should I? I was his great-great-great-

great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s

blood-brother.

‘I flew in the window, perched on the bedhead,

and waited for him to wake.

‘He opened his eyes, and there I was, stern and

grave.

‘ “Why are you here?” said Speedfast, yawning,

his handsome face instantly resentful.

‘He spoke in Dragonese, the language he had

learnt since babyhood.

‘ “You know why I am here,” I said gravely.

“You refuse to take the Mark. You use the

Secret, entrusted to your father, to enslave my

dragon-brothers. You have just passed a Law

making slavery of humans legal again. You mark

them with the Mark, which you now call the

Slavemark.

‘ “Your ancestors spent their lives building

the Kingdom of the Wilderwest. Are you to

throw that all away? You are betraying the work

of men greater than you are…”

‘The boy’s face was as red as his hair.

‘ “And I shall be a greater man than my

ancestors ever were!” Speedfast shouted back

at me. “How dare you talk to me of betrayal! I

shall make this titchy Kingdom of the Wilderwest

a truly great empire, one that stretches to the

very edges of the Rus to the east, and down to

the borders of Rome in the south. I will re-take

the land that my ancestors lost when that cursed

Hiccup the First was born, the rich farmlands of

the east, rather than these rocky island nothings.

‘ “Even now I am building a great city on

the island of Tomorrow, a city that shall rival

Rome in glory and in power. But for that I need

slave-power, dragon slaves and human slaves. So

do not talk to me of betrayal! Tomorrow shall

prove what a truly great king I shall be.”

‘I scolded him again, too harshly perhaps.

I said that he would never be as great a man as

his ancestors, and a lot of other stern and severe

things.

‘Speedfast put his hands over his ears.

“Silence!” he screamed. “I am banning the

speaking of your devil language, Dragonese! Then

I will not have to hear your forked-tongue nagging

speech ever again!”

‘That was the last time I saw the boy cry.

‘He turned the Secret of the Jewel on me,

told me to be gone or he would destroy all the

dragons, banished me from his kingdom.

‘And he was true to his word.

‘The new Boy-King banned the speaking

of Dragonese. He shut up his ancestors’ library.

He built a great city on the island of Tomorrow, a

city of a hundred castles. The boy who was once

Speedfast became the most feared Viking of all

time, striking terror as far as the edges of the Rus

and the borders of Rome.’

Silence in the underground treehouse, as everyone

realised who this Speedfast must be.

‘The boy who was once Speedfast?’ asked

Hiccup. He knew the answer even as he asked the

question.

‘He changed his name,’ said the dragon. ‘He

changed his name to…’

‘Grimbeard the Ghastly,’ finished Hiccup.

There was a long, long pause.

Hiccup felt slightly sick.

‘Grimbeard the Ghastly. And as is often the way

of these things, the gods set out to punish Grimbeard.

Grimbeard had his own son, who was a runt, and also

called Hiccup, Hiccup the Second. Grimbeard learned

to love this son the best of all his children, but was

tricked into killing his son because he thought he was

stirring up a Dragon Rebellion against him. It was only

then that he realised what a terrible mistake he had

made, how he had betrayed both his own ancestors and

his own son.

‘That was why Grimbeard hid the Things. He

threw them to all quarters of the Archipelago so that

only a true Hero could find them. A new King must

be worthy. He set up a terrible bodyguard of almost

superhuman Warriors and otherworldly dragons, to

133

ensure that only a Hero with the ten Lost Things can

be crowned King, and these dreadful bodyguards are

known as the Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow.’

Hiccup shivered. ‘I have heard bad things about

those Guardians.’

The Wodensfang nodded. ‘Yes, they must be

terrible indeed, to have guarded Tomorrow for so

many years.

‘The Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow pass

the Secret of the Dragon Jewel on from generation

to generation.

‘Only the Hero with the ten Lost Things can

be crowned the King and live. Only he or she can

be told the Secret.

‘But that Hero must be worthy.’

‘Why are you telling us this?’ said Hiccup.

‘It’s just a story,’ said the Wodensfang. ‘So

that Snotlout can realise that the Slavemark was

not always the Slavemark.

‘And how quick good things can be lost.

‘And how a boy can change from being

Speedfast to being Grimbeard the Ghastly…

‘… and also the other way around.’

Silence.

134

‘Can somebody tell that ancient old dragon to

SHUT UP?’ said Snotlout rudely. ‘I’m TRYING to

sleep.’

Silence in the cave again.

One by one, the exhausted humans and dragons

fell asleep, despite the noise from outside, despite their

fears for Camicazi.

But Hiccup remained awake, tossing and turning

and worrying, about Camicazi, about the Rebellion,

about whether Snotlout was a traitor or not…

These were the last thoughts he had before he

drifted off to sleep.

Much, later, Snotlout awoke. He reached into his

ragged breast pocket, behind his armour, and drew out

a Black Star.

Snotlout had won that Star for outstanding

bravery in the Battle of Lucky Thirteen* years

ago, when Snotlout and Hiccup first met Alvin the

Treacherous. Gobber the Belch, his old teacher, had

told Snotlout it was one of the proudest days of his life,

to see a pupil of his win such an honour.

Snotlout’s face was expressionless as he looked

at the star.

The Deadly Shadow, who happened to be awake

at that hour, let out a small warning growl, just to let

* See How to Be a Pirate.

Snotlout know that he was being watched.

Snotlout put the Black Star back in his pocket,

and turned over so that the dragon could not see his

face.

Snotlout was crying.

7. TOOTHLESS’S DREAM

Much, MUCH later that night, Toothless had

a terrifying dream.

It was terrifying because it felt so real.

He dreamed he woke up, and in front of him

was the underground treehouse where they

were sleeping – but at the same time it was

not quite the treehouse. It merged

into somewhere else, in that

way of dreams, and that

somewhere was very cold.

The Wodensfang was awake too, and

staring straight in front of him. His eyes had

turned a very strange sort of purple colour. The

scar on his chest almost seemed to be glowing.

Toothless had a scar too, in almost exactly the

same place, and it suddenly itched and burned

as if he had received it yesterday.

And there, in the treehouse, very loud,

was the sound of a voice Toothless recognised.

It was the voice of the Dragon Furious.

Toothless lay still, trembling.

Toothless could hear the roaring of the

Dragon Rebellion outside, screaming and raging at

full catastrophic force. But, to Toothless’s absolute

terror, it sounded as if the voice of the Dragon

Furious was coming from inside the treehouse. But

how was that possible? The Dragon Furious wasn’t

there, and he was too big to fit inside.

Maybe he had lifted up the

mountaintop, and was looking down at

them from above?

Rigid with anxiety, Toothless slowly,

slowly tipped his head upwards.

No, the ceiling was still there. Phew.

So where on earth was the voice coming from?

It was a mystery.

‘TRAITOR!’ roared the Dragon Furious,

‘TRAITOR!’

For one heartstopping moment Toothless

feared the Dragon Furious was talking to him, and

he gave an unhappy whine and hid his head in his

paws. But no. The Dragon Furious was talking to

the Wodensfang.

‘Why are you letting my thoughts in now,

Wodensfang?’ screamed the Dragon Furious, in

an apocalyptic rage. ‘Have

you changed your mind

about your treacherous

behaviour? Are you

ashamed of betraying

your dragonhood for

the second time?’

The voice of the

Wodensfang replied. Both

Wodensfang and the Dragon Furious

were speaking in Norse, not Dragonese.

But the Wodensfang, though awake, did

not move his lips. How was that possible?

‘Now, now, Furious,’ replied the

Wodensfang. ‘Calm down. This anger is

exhausting you. And do not be so quick to

think I am betraying us.’

The Dragon Furious quietened

his rage for a moment, but his tone

was still bitterly resentful. ‘You are

a Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus,

Wodensfang, and a very old one. So you

can see into the future even better than

I can. You know that the boy will be the

end of us all, if we let him live.’

The Wodensfang sighed. He did

not contradict the Dragon Furious.

‘BUT I WILL NOT LET THAT

HAPPEN!’ roared the Dragon

Furious. ‘I have pledged that

Hiccup the Third shall not reach

Tomorrow. And he is near, I

sense it, I smell you both

in my heart, although you are

protecting him. I will not give up, I will

stay here until I hunt you out, however

long that takes.’

The dragon paused in his rage for

a moment, and tried to reason with the

Wodensfang.

‘There is no time any more for the

foolish hopes of a silly old dragon. Do you

think you are the only one who has ever

loved a human? I loved one once myself.

His name was Hiccup the Second. But

in the end, these Hiccup boys, wonderful

as they are, will not be able to defeat

the strength of the evil that runs through

humanity. Look how the kingdom of Hiccup

the First fell into the hands of the boy

who was once Speedfast, and ended up

Grimbeard the Ghastly? And see how

this boy, Hiccup the Third, finds the Lost

Things, and they fall again and again

into the hook of the evil one, Alvin the

Treacherous.’

The Wodensfang sighed. ‘That has

been worrying me, I confess.’

‘Fate is trying to tell you

something, Wodensfang. We have to

learn from the past, as well as the future.’

The Wodensfang sat still, looking into

the Future.

‘You are mistaken if you think this has

not occurred to me,’ said the Wodensfang,

almost as if he were talking to himself. ‘In

part, I am doing this because I want to believe

in the impossible, and young humans are so

touching in their belief in the impossible.’

‘When we are old we must be wise,

and give up what is unrealistic,’ said the

Dragon Furious. ‘You had the chance to kill

the boy in the Fire Cavern. You could not

do it, so bring the boy to someone who CAN

do it. I will kill him for the sake of all of us.

I am the King of the Dragons, and a King

has to act for the greater good.’

‘That is the way the witch talks,’ said

the Wodensfang softly.

‘You may love humans, but you

are, in the end, a dragon. You have to

put your dragonhood first. Bring the

boy to me, as you know you

must,’ said the Dragon Furious.

‘Furthermore, you know you will.’

The Wodensfang sat silent for a long

time. Toothless had the impression that

he was playing some game of chess with

the possibilities in his mind. Eventually

he said, ‘All right, Furious. I will betray

whoever is made King.’

Toothless stiffened in horror.

‘But not yet,’ said the Wodensfang.

‘I want this story to play out to the very

final moment. I want the boy to have the

chance to be the biggest Hero he can be

before the story ends where it

must…’

‘He is so close now, to being a Hero.

I do not want to bring him down before he

makes it there. Once I helped a boy become

a King. Let me do this one more time before

I die, for this one human, even if it ends in

the destruction of a species. I will make you a

bargain. Stop stalking us. Call off your hunt,

take your Dragon Rebellion north to prepare

for the War on Tomorrow…’

‘Why would I do that?’ scorned Furious.

‘I am close to you now, I feel it.’

‘But you are wasting your strength

in these angry attacks,’ the Wodensfang

pointed out, ‘and you need to save it for

the Final Battle. You are frightened of

Tomorrow; you fear it, Furious, do you not?

So go back north and prepare. The twelfth day

of Doomsday is only three days away, and you

need to be at full strength.

‘This way, you get a little breathing

space, and I get some last

precious hours with the boy,’ wheezed

the Wodensfang, with a deep and longing

melancholy.

The Dragon Furious considered this.

‘If I were to give you this time,’ growled

the Dragon Furious, ‘if I were to halt my

Rebellion, only to strike with greater strength on

the day of Doomsday of Yule itself, what would

you offer me in return?’

‘I would swear to you, by the word of a Sea

Dragon,’ said the Wodensfang, that if a King is

crowned on the Doomsday of Yule, on that very

same day, I will bring that King to meet you in

single combat.’

The Dragon Furious grunted. ‘That is no

use to me, if the King is carrying the Jewel.’

‘But before the King rides out to meet

you,’ said the Wodensfang, ‘I shall take the

Dragon Jewel from them, and bring it to you.’

The Dragon Furious growled in

satisfaction.

‘So this puny human King, will be forced

to meet me, the Dragon Furious, in single

combat with no Jewel to protect them?’

‘That is correct,’ said the Wodensfang.

‘I TAKE YOUR BARGAIN!’ cried the

Dragon Furious, and Toothless jumped to hear

the thunderclap of his jubilation.

‘Swear you will bring the Jewel to me, and

then the King,’ said the Dragon Furious sternly.

‘I swear on the word of a Sea Dragon

that I shall bring them both to you,’ said the

Wodensfang, sighing miserably. ‘But it is a bitter

bargain.’

‘No!’ shrieked Toothless in his thoughts.

‘The word of a Sea Dragon cannot be broken.

No! No! No! No! No!’

‘And I swear that I will call off the hunt

in return,’ said the Dragon Furious. ‘You are

right, I confess that this anger is exhausting. It

will be good to rest for the final conflict.

‘Dragons of the Rebellion!’ called the

mighty beast. ‘HALT THE RED-RAGE!’

And Toothless could hear the sound of the

Dragon Rebellion outside quietening down.

Then the Wodensfang smiled. ‘And now

at least you can stop tracking us, Furious,

through the thoughts of the gummy one, and

I can stop blocking you, which will be more

relaxing for both of us…’

The Dragon Furious laughed. ‘Such

thoughts as they are! I can’t believe he’s a

Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus, the little

stammering toothless one! He’s so stupid, and he

seems to think of nothing but food!’

‘He’s just young,’ scolded the Wodensfang,

‘he doesn’t yet know what he is…’

‘Here I s-s-say!’ protested Toothless, and

he was so distressed he spoke aloud. ‘You’re

n-n-not talking about Toothless are you? How

can Toothless be a Seadragon? That’s even

s-s-sillier than the Wodensfang being one!

Toothless doesn’t want d-d-dragons listening

into his thoughts! And Toothless does know

what he is! He’s a Common-or Gar– actually,

no, he’s a Toothless Daydream…

‘Well, whatever he is, Toothless N-N-NOT

a Seadragon, he’s far too small – this is a very

bad dream!’

The Wodensfang

turned his head

towards Toothless.

‘That’s right, it is

a very bad dream,

Toothless,’

said the

voice of the

Wodensfang,

still without

opening his mouth, but

looking straight at Toothless

with his hypnotic eyes. ‘But

you can go back to sleep now,

and when you wake up you will

have forgotten all about it…’

‘A very bad dream,’ said the

fading voice of the Dragon Furious.

Toothless yawned.

Slowly he closed his eyes and

went back to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, he shivered.

The sound of the Dragon Rebellion outside had

gone.

That was a VERY bad dream he’d had last night.

But what was it about?

He couldn’t remember for the life of him.

8. YOU WOULDN’T FIND

ALVIN’S SECRET CAMP EVEN

IF YOU SEARCHED FOR A

HUNDRED YEARS

The next morning, to Hiccup’s surprise, the dragons

of the Dragon Rebellion had vanished. Outside, the

landscape was a smoking, burning ruin, but there was

no sign of human or dragon life. The rain poured

down relentlessly.

‘They’ve gone…’ breathed Hiccup, unable to

believe their good fortune. ‘Now we can go and

rescue Camicazi.’

‘Do you think that this is a trick?’ whispered

Fishlegs. ‘Surely we will still be ambushed on our way

to Alvin’s camp?’

‘I have a sense that we will be fine,’ wheezed the

Wodensfang, in Norse. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, but

the Dragon Furious will not attack us… for now.’

But even with the Wodensfang’s reassurance,

it was terrifying to venture out of the hideout once

again, with the worry that at any moment they might

be attacked by the Dragon Furious, or by the witch’s

Spydragons.

The tree above the underground treehouse

was still burning when they left it, a blackened,

smouldering stump.

155

Snotlout, on the back of the Hurricane, led

them through the eerie landscape. Hiccup had seen

woods destroyed before, but this was ten times worse.

Everyone was silent, awed by the devastation.

What had once been the half-burnt remains

of a forest now looked like the smoking surface of

the moon. If it hadn’t been for the river, they would

never have found their way, for the landscape was

unrecognisable.

Whole mountains had been demolished, shaken

to rubble as if there had been an earthquake. Whole

forests reduced to little toasted sticks of kindling

and ash.

Every now and then the river itself was blocked,

and dammed, by gigantic torn-up rocks from an

obliterated hillside. Water spurted up and round the

obstructions like blood from a wound, before reverting

to its original course.

The bite in Hiccup’s arm was a constant reminder

of the Vampire Spydragon. It could track him down

through the tooth still buried in his flesh. It could

appear out of nowhere, out of nothing, so Hiccup was

constantly looking over his shoulder, feeling that at any

moment he could be attacked once again.

The bruise had spread so that the whole of the

left side of Hiccup’s body was purple in colour, right

down to his knee.

‘I look like a Mood-Dragon!’ Hiccup joked, but

that was to cover up how frightened he was.

All the discoloured areas were so numb that he

couldn’t feel or use his left arm at all. It was hard

to cling on to the Deadly

Shadow’s back. He told

himself that the Spydragon

had been scared off by the

scale of the Dragon Rebellion

attack last night, along with

everything else. They crept through the devastation,

scurrying, terrified, to hide behind the corpse of one

blasted tree, and then on to another, and even though

they were shaded by the wings of the Deadly Shadow,

they felt painfully visible – the only moving things in a

wasteland of nothing.

This must be what it is like at the end of the world,

thought Hiccup.

‘Wow,’ breathed Snotlout. ‘That Dragon really

does want to get you, doesn’t he, Useless? I wouldn’t

want to be in your shoes if he ever finds you…’

‘But why isn’t the Dragon Furious here?’

muttered Hiccup, the tic in his eye working as he

squinted all around them. ‘Why

isn’t he stalking us? He knows

we are in these mountains,

somewhere. Why is he not

hunting? That isn’t like a

dragon. It doesn’t feel right.

158

When a dragon has something trapped, it goes in for

the kill. Where has he gone?’

The Wodensfang fluttered innocently above

Hiccup’s head.

Out of nowhere, Toothless suddenly bit him.

‘OW! Toothless! That isn’t nice!’ said Hiccup.

‘Not good manners at all…’

‘S-s-sorry,’ whimpered Toothless, thoroughly

bewildered. ‘Not sure why Toothless did that… Is all

a bit scary for poor Toothless…’

159

Rattled and jumpy,

Toothless was indeed not

quite himself.

They made their way down

the river, and dismounted from their

dragons beside the gigantic sea-cliff

waterfall where Camicazi and Snotlout

had nearly fallen to their deaths the previous

night.

‘Alvin’s camp is right here,’ announced Snotlout

proudly. ‘It’s colossal. Hundreds and hundreds of

boats, and a whole floating town.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Fishlegs,

shielding his eyes and peering out to sea. ‘Is this camp

invisible, like the Vampire Spydragons?’

Fishlegs had a point. In front of them, as far as

the eye could see, was a desolate ocean wasteland,

punctuated by monumental icebergs in fantastical

ghost shapes.

There was no sign at all of an enormous hidden

camp.

‘I mean exactly what I say, Fish-eggs,’ said

Snotlout. ‘Here is Alvin’s camp.’

Hiccup and Fishlegs looked at Snotlout with

open mouths.

160

‘Are you mad? Or just

lying?’ asked Fishlegs. ‘A camp can’t

be invisible!’

‘That’s why you need me,’ said Snotlout

smugly. ‘It’s right underneath us.’

He paused for effect.

‘The camp is behind the waterfall.’

The humans and the dragons looked at him with

round, amazed eyes.

‘Behind this waterfall is a truly immense sea

cavern,’ boasted Snotlout. ‘Inside that cavern, on stilts

over the water, the witch and Alvin have built their war

bunker.’

Hiccup and Fishlegs looked in awe at the

tremendous cascade of water, falling down down down

into the sea below.

161

‘Well, I’ll be hornswoggled,’ breathed

Wodensfang. ‘No wonder Stoick and Valhallarama

haven’t found this camp…’

Hiccup swallowed. ‘So what’s the plan, Snotlout?

You know the territory. How do we get behind this

waterfall? And once we’re there, how do we steal the

Lost Things and rescue Camicazi?’

‘Nice to see you’re putting me in charge for

once, Useless,’ drawled Snotlout. ‘Listen and learn,

Hiccup, and you’ll see how a real leader plans a military

operation…

‘Now,’ he said briskly. ‘Flying behind the

waterfall is quite easy. In the centre of the waterfall,

the water is an impenetrable force that would sweep

you down and smash you on the rocks below. But at

the edges, the fall is quite light, and you can fly right

through it.’

‘Ingenious,’ said Hiccup, impressed at his

enemy’s cleverness in spite of himself.

‘But once we’re actually in the cavern, things get

dangerous.’

‘Oh, no…’ shivered Toothless. ‘Toothless

h-h-hates it when it’s dangerous.’

‘The cavern is patrolled day and night by

Alvinsmen sentries, on foot and on the back of

162

Bullguards. We’ll have to fly inside, in formation, with

the Windwalker and the Hurricane flying low under

the Deadly Shadow so that hopefully the sentries won’t

spot them…’

‘H-h-hopefully…’ groaned Toothless, ‘Toothless

hates “hopefully”…’

‘The underground village is built on wooden

platforms over the water. So we’ll head straight for

those wooden platforms, and fly underneath them.

‘There are hatches along the way, where the

Alvinsmen throw rubbish down and catch fish. I can

take us to the hatch which leads up into the room

where they are keeping the Lost Things. We’ll sneak

in, steal the Things, and load them on to the Deadly

Shadow’s back through the hatch.’

‘This is a ridiculous plan!’ howled Fishlegs. ‘I

can’t believe you’re even thinking about it, Hiccup!’

‘Your fishlegged friend is suspicious, Hiccup…’

said Snotlout, his eyes glinting. ‘The question, is, are

you?’

‘I’m going to trust you,’ said Hiccup.

‘Oh frizzling fuzzy fish-fingers of Loki,’ moaned

Fishlegs, to no one in particular. ‘All I wanted was a

nice quiet life as a bard. A little cottage. A nice lyre. It’s

not much to ask, is it? But what do the gods make me

163

instead? A major contestant in an inter-species WAR. I

mean, I ask you, talk about bad luck…’

Windwalker huddled next to Fishlegs and gave

him an affectionate and understanding lick on the face.

Fishlegs grinned, in spite of himself. ‘Dragon-slobber.

Always makes everything better.’

‘Excellent,’ said Snotlout, climbing astride the

Hurricane. ‘Follow closely behind me.’

Snotlout took off, but before the others could

follow, Hiccup motioned them into a huddle.

‘What are we doing?’ whispered Fishlegs.

‘I want to trust Snotlout,’ said Hiccup. ‘I really,

really want to trust him, but I am not quite sure that we

can. So in case he does happen to betray us after all,

here is Plan B.’

‘Ah,’ murmured the Wodensfang. ‘That is wise.

You are learning, Hiccup. Hope for the best, but at

the same time prepare for the worst. That is kingly

behaviour.’

Fishlegs agreed. ‘Oh phew, I’m so glad there is a

Plan B. I’m not very keen on Plan A.’

As quick as he could, Hiccup outlined Plan B to

everyone, and both dragons and humans nodded to say

they understood.

‘But Plan B is even more dangerous than Plan A!’

164

complained Fishlegs. ‘Well, I’m really hoping we won’t

have to put it into action,’ said Hiccup grimly.

‘Come on!’ Snotlout whispered from where he

was hovering about thirty feet below, at the edges of

the waterfall. ‘We haven’t got all night, scaredy-cats!

I’m the Leader now, and when I say go, GO! Honestly,

Hiccup, you and your sidekicks have no idea of military

obedience, no idea at all…’

‘I like this New Improved Snotlout, with Added

Old-Fashioned Charm,’ said Fishlegs, climbing aboard

the Deadly Shadow. ‘Don’t you?’

Hiccup rode Windwalker, and Fishlegs the

Deadly Shadow. They hovered for a moment or two on

the edge of the waterfall, getting into position.

Looking at the tumultuous cascade in front

of them, it seemed impossible that there could be

anything on the other side.

‘You have to fly through it quite fast, so get a bit

of speed up,’ advised Snotlout. ‘Ready? NOW!’

Fishlegs went first.

He gave a few gentle taps with his heels. The

Deadly Shadow reared upwards in alarm, for it was as

if Fishlegs was driving straight at a wall of water. But

the three heads put their mouths in a determined line,

and the great chameleon dragon turned itself exactly

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the colour of falling water and flew straight at the

cascade at considerable speed.

It was a peculiar feeling plunging through the

waterfall.

An instant’s soaking, chilling stun of water,

so cold that they nearly screamed – and Toothless,

flying above, did indeed let out an unhappy squeak

– and then they were out the other side, gasping

with the shock of it. Fishlegs braked the Deadly

Shadow sharply, and the dragon reared up to hide the

Windwalker and the Hurricane hurtling in after them.

WHAT a sight greeted their blinking,

drenched eyes.

9. INSIDE ALVIN’S WAR

BUNKER

It was a stupendous underground ice cavern, titanically

huge, and lit with millions and millions of Glow-worms

that sent the ice a-gleaming and a-dazzling as the

Glow-worms moved. There were vast icicles hanging

down from the ceiling, as if something had exploded

from above and frozen into great spikes of turquoise

ice.

The floor of the cavern was sea, and above it,

as Snotlout had said, the witch and Alvin had built

a Viking town on stilts. A crazy maze of wooden

platforms wound nearly from one side of the cavern

to the other, with houses and blacksmith’s forges and

armouries and even a crooked Great Hall standing in

the centre, made out of what looked like the jumbled

remains of ships, with the skull-and-crossbones

Treacherous flag flying from the top.

At the edges of this town there were at least a

hundred black ships, skulking like predatory black

widow spiders, torches and flares glowing along their

sides. And there was a melancholy, familiar sight of

gigantic dragon cages, with that terrible sound of

captured, terrified dragons, and the smell of chains

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being made out of molten metal, for Alvin and the

witch were using dragons as slaves again.

It was good for Hiccup to see this at this time, for

it was so easy, in the chaos and the horror of war, to

forget what they were fighting for. It reminded Hiccup

that though he had made mistakes – he had released

the Dragon Furious, he had lost Camicazi – he had

made those mistakes for a reason.

This must not happen.

This misery, this slavery, this must not happen in

the future.

A new world HAD to be born.

With a sick feeling in his stomach, Hiccup

recognised Dragonmarker helmets on long poles

sticking triumphantly above the town.

Poor Camicazi was in there somewhere.

Oh please let her be all right…

Ferocious-looking Alvinsmen Warriors hurried

along the wooden walkways, shouting at each other,

and lighting flares, and cooking food, and making

weapons.

Circling above were the Alvinsmen sentries,

riding Bullguard Slavedragons whose goggling eyes

sent out searchlight beams as they patrolled the camp,

guarding against intruders.

169

It was extraordinary to think that such a huge

gathering of houses and ships could have been hidden

from the Dragonmarkers and the Dragon Furious

for so long, but the roar of the waterfall had entirely

muffled the noises and the smells and the lights of this

busy underground town from outside.

Hiccup adjusted his sword.

‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.

The three-headed dragon swooped down

towards the wooden platforms of the bustling village,

Windwalker and the Hurricane flying low under

the Deadly Shadow’s wings, so that they would be

camouflaged as they passed through the circling

Bullguard sentries.

Snotlout’s eyes gleamed admiringly as the

beautiful Deadly Shadow Dragon plunged into a dive.

‘I have to admit, reluctantly, Useless,’ he

whispered, ‘that for a lot of runty little weeds, your

team do travel in style.’

Hiccup’s heart was beating so hard, it felt like

it might leap out of his chest at any moment as they

soared near the Bullguards. One of the Bullguards

whipped its head around, perhaps feeling the passing

wind from the Deadly Shadow’s wings or hearing the

little muffled whispers of the hunting-dragons…

170

Surely they must see us? thought Hiccup, petrified.

They swooped downwards, and Hiccup tipped

his face upwards, expecting at any minute a roar of

discovery, and then the whine of a full aerial pursuit.

But there was nothing, no suspicion in the faces of the

Alvinsmen sentries or the dragons they were riding.

The Bullguards continued their patrol, their eye-beams

flashing around the Bay in steady circles.

Down the Deadly Shadow swooped, and shot

underneath the nearest wooden platform, followed

by the Hurricane and Windwalker, and the Hogfly,

Stormfly, Wodensfang and Toothless.

Hiccup breathed a sigh of relief.

There was barely room for the Deadly Shadow

underneath the maze of wooden platforms. Its wings

dipped into the sea as it flew, swerving through the

stilts that stood in the water like legs.

It was bizarre to be flying underneath the streets

of a city. Looking up, in between the wooden boards,

Hiccup could see the shoes of people walking up and

down the walkways above. A hatch opened ahead of

them, and the Windwalker swerved just in time, for

someone chucked a bucket of fish guts through the

hatch before slamming it shut again.

Below them in the water were the rotting

171

carcasses of sunken ships. Snotlout landed the

Hurricane on the upturned hull of one of these

submerged wrecks and gestured upwards with his

thumb.

‘This is the hatch,’ he whispered. ‘Before the

witch caught us, the Hurricane and I went on loads of

spying operations searching for the Things. Look, I’ve

marked the hatch with an X, to be sure I’d get the right

one when I came back.’

Hiccup and Fishlegs landed their dragons beside

him, and the three dragons sat in a row on the hull of

the sunken ship, like three great cormorants roosting

on a rock.

‘And who is in there guarding them?’

Snotlout’s eyes gleamed.

‘Oh, a couple of dozy Alvinsmen guards. But we

can deal with them, can’t we?’

‘He lies…’ whispered Stormfly in Dragonese.

‘Trust a liar to know a liar…’

‘If all three of us climb up,’ said Snotlout, ‘we can

carry the Throne through the hatch and balance it on

the back of the Deadly Shadow. And then we’ll go on

to the prison and rescue Camicazi.’

Hiccup drew his sword, and swallowed hard.

‘OK,’ said Hiccup. ‘Wodensfang, Hogfly and

172

Stormfly, you stay here with Windwalker and the

Deadly Shadow.’

‘Woof, woof!’ said Hogfly obediently. ‘Keep to

the left! Marry me, sunshine! Where’s the exit?’

‘Toothless,’ said Hiccup, ‘you can come with me,

I don’t want to let you out of my sight…’

‘Because T-t-toothless is the Best Lost Thing?’

Toothless smiled radiantly. ‘See Stormfly… See

W-w-wodensfang… See very very stupid dragon

who looks like a pig… Toothless so important Hiccup

can’t let him out of his sight… Toothless V-V-VERY

VERY important…’

‘The Deadly Shadow can give all three of us a

lift up to the hatch. Windwalker, could you open it

for us please?’

A single breath from Windwalker incinerated the

bolts around the hatch, and it fell open.

Hiccup, sitting on the back of the Deadly Shadow

who was hovering just underneath the hatch, peered up

inside. It was completely dark, and completely quiet.

‘I’ll go in first,’ whispered Snotlout, ‘because I

know my way around…’

Snotlout’s eyes were curiously bright.

Was it excitement?

Or was it something more than that?

Snotlout laughed at Hiccup’s expression, which

173

was a little dubious. ‘You do trust me, don’t you,

Hiccup?’

‘T-t-toothless doesn’t trust him…’ said Toothless’s

deep little voice from down in Hiccup’s waistcoat. ‘Is

like trusting a s-s-snake not to bite you…’

‘I want to trust you,’ said Hiccup steadily. ‘I really

really want to trust you, Snotlout…’

Snotlout dropped his own gaze. Did he look

guilty, just for a fraction of a second?

Then he drew his dagger, and put it between his

teeth.

Snotlout stood up on the Deadly Shadow’s

back and hauled himself on to the ledge of the hatch,

where he swung for a moment before climbing into the

darkness above and disappearing.

‘Is m-m-madness,’ said the muffled voice of

Toothless.

It was madness.

Snotlout hadn’t really given Hiccup cause to trust

him in the past.

But barely had Snotlout’s feet disappeared

through the hatch and into the room, than Hiccup

scrambled up after him.

Hiccup swallowed hard, and got to his feet, and

tried to make out where Snotlout was.

174

‘Snotlout?’ he whispered nervously.

There was no answer.

The darkness was so absolute it muffled the

senses. Hiccup’s eyes peered desperately into the

blackness, but he could see nothing.

‘Snotlout?’ he whispered again, a little louder, but

again there was no reply; just a faint rustling.

Why was Snotlout being so silent? He must be in

the room somewhere… He had only climbed through

the hatch two seconds before Hiccup…

Hiccup automatically edged softly, softly

backwards, as he began to suspect what this silence

might mean. And then a familiar smell reached his

nostrils, a faint stink of rotting eggs…

Hiccup would have recognised that

stench anywhere.

That delicate little aroma was the

foul skunk smell of the Murderous

Tribe, and every single member

of the Murderous Tribe was a

loyal Alvinsman servant of

Alvin and the witch.

He could hear

a shuffling of

immense feet,

and a hoarse breathing of not just one great Warrior,

but many.

It only meant one thing.

BETRAYAL.

TREACHERY AND BETRAYAL.

Snotlout had betrayed him.

Down in the depths of Hiccup’s waistcoat,

Toothless was giving Hiccup gentle, desperate nips on

the tummy.

I should run! thought Hiccup. Drop back through

that hatch and fly away on the back of the Windwalker!

But if Snotlout had betrayed him, it meant that

Snotlout did not really know where the Lost Things

were hidden. So there was only one thing left to do.

It was time to put Plan B into action.

Hiccup thrust his head down through the hatch.

Fishlegs was already standing on the Deadly Shadow’s

back, screwing up his courage to squirm up behind

Hiccup.

‘Plan B!’ whispered Hiccup.

Fishlegs looked back at him with shocked eyes.

‘No… not Plan B… Has Snotlout betrayed us

already?’

‘Plan B!’ Hiccup repeated.

And then Hiccup ignored all those instincts

176

screaming at him to run away, and moved away from

the hatch, from escape and freedom, back into the

unknown of the darkened room.

Two more steps and Hiccup was grabbed by

rough hands.

‘GOT HIM!’ yelled the Alvinsman, and three

more Warriors seized Hiccup as well, punching him,

hitting him, even though Hiccup put up no resistance.

From darkness he was hauled into dazzling light,

into a room full of chattering people. The noise died

away as soon as he was dragged in.

Blinded by the light, Hiccup recognised the

person who spoke next from the sound of their voice.

It was strangely changed, that voice, muffled

and disfigured into a ghastly shrieking rasp. But

nonetheless, it was definitely the voice of Hiccup’s

greatest enemy, Alvin the

Treacherous.

‘Why, HICCUP

HORRENDOUS

HADDOCK THE THIRD,

as I live and breathe!

Thank you so much for

joining us…’

~ STATISTICS ~

FEAR FACTOR: ..................... 6

ATTACK: .............................. 7

SPEED: ................................ 5

SIZE: ................................... 2

DISOBEDIENCE: .................. 7

A Winterflesher is a small dragon and

with its mouth shut looks quite sweet,

but actually they are a little like piranhas.

When they attack in shoals they can strip a

deer down to its skeleton in precisely three

minutes.

10. TREACHERY AND

BETRAYAL

As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, Hiccup

realised he must be in the crooked Great Hall, right

in the centre of the floating town. This assembly room

was crudely fashioned out of the upturned hulls of

three ancient Viking ships that had once been sunk by

the reefs of Wrecker’s Bay.

Around the edges of the room were cages,

containing human and dragon prisoners, stacked on

top of one another, right up to the ceiling.

In the centre of the Hall stood the Alvinsmen.

The Alvinsmen were a grim, tattooed, unsightly

crew of vicious and murderous criminals, who had once

been the more unpleasant members of the Visithug,

Murderous, Outcast, Hysteric and Uglithug Tribes.

The nastier side of the Archipelago had all followed

Alvin and the witch, and had grown ghastlier as a

result. It had brought out the worst in them.

The Alvinsmen dragged Hiccup into the centre of

the Hall and pushed him forwards, in front of a man in

an iron mask.

Snotlout swaggered in afterwards.

It took a few seconds for Hiccup to recognise

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the man in the iron mask

as Alvin the Treacherous.

Alvin’s mother had

given Alvin a nasty case of

warts. As Alvin had gained

in power, so too had his warts:

multiplying, blossoming, and blooming in

mushrooming abundance. Big warts had given

birth to little warts, and those little warts in

their turn had grown and swelled and had

babies and burst across his face like joyful

volcanoes spewing pus, ripening and

germinating in such rosy profusion

that his face had swelled beyond all

recognition. What had begun as happy

additions, spotty little adornments to his

beauty, had ended finally in disfigurement.

So Alvin was wearing an iron mask, to

hide his swollen face. Beneath the mask,

the warts had swollen up his lips as

if they had been stung by bees.

That, and the grill across his mouth, gave his breathing

and his voice a dreadful rasping quality.

He was wearing none of the Lost Things… not

even the ruby heart’s stone bracelet.

Alvin was now a Man-of-War.

He was a Warrior made almost entirely out

of metal, from his gleaming hook to the spears and

swords and arrows hanging around his person. Even his

ivory leg was capped in steel. Along with many other

dreadful instruments of war suspended around his

waist, he had not only Dragonmarker helmets, but the

sad remnants of their beards.

On recognition of Hiccup, he let out a yell of

delight that was distorted by the grill of the mask into

a rasping animal screech.

The Witch Excellinor

bounded over on

all fours.

She was a long, lean wolf skeleton with a terrible

dead whiteness to her, bleached of all human kindness

and colour. She ought to have been a woman, but her

semi-baldness and her tattoos and the long white hairs

sprouting in a little beard on her jutting chin seemed to

suggest something else.

In one bound she pinned Hiccup to the floor,

a wild animal about to strike, and she opened up her

terrible jaws with those shark-like teeth, ground and

sharpened into points, and screamed so loudly that she

showered poor Hiccup with her horrible witch-spittle:

‘WE’VE GOT HIM! WE’VE GOT HIM, THE

LITTLE WRETCH! VICTORY IS OURS!’

Hiccup shrank away from her, for she was

terrifying, and whatever dead animal she had been

chewing on had stuck between her teeth and made her

breath stink.

Great cheers went up from the Alvinsmen.

Groans from the Dragonmarker prisoners, held

in the cages on the edges of the room.

The witch reared up on her hind legs,

dragging Hiccup to his feet.

‘Oh, well done, Snotlout, well

done!’ she carolled. ‘Well done,

my poisonous boy! Hiccup

believed you!’

‘He believed

every single subtle

word,’ smirked

Snotlout, high-fiving the

Alvinsmen and even Alvin

himself (which was actually

a slightly painful experience,

because Alvin had a hook rather

than a hand).

‘Oh, this is excellent news,’ sang

Alvin. ‘It means I shall be eating Hiccup’s

heart by this evening…’

‘You’re revolting!’ snapped a voice.

It was coming from inside a large box in the

corner of the room.

185

‘Camicazi!’

Oh thank Thor and Woden and pretty

much everybody. Hiccup was quite limp with relief.

‘Are you all right in there, Camicazi?’

‘I’m fine!’ said the voice from the box cheerfully.

‘I could not be finer. Don’t you worry about me,

Hiccup. I am absolutely OK…’

‘Why have you put Camicazi in a box?’ Hiccup

demanded of the witch.

‘I didn’t want the little Escape Artist to escape…’

purred the witch in reply.

The box was neatly wrapped up in heavy chains

and padlocks.

The witch was taking absolutely no chances.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Camicazi?’ Hiccup

shouted at the box. He hadn’t forgotten her for a

moment in all this time, how could he?

‘Oh yes,’ said the box, ‘it’s roomier in here than

it looks, quite comfy really, and there are plenty of

air holes. But “eating his heart” indeed! You should

be ashamed of yourself, Alvin! And you never learn,

Witch! Hiccup will trick you again, just like he always

does, and it’ll be you who is checkmated, just like all

the other times!’

‘Poor little Bog-Burglar,’ cooed the witch. ‘The

winds of war can change, my pretty love, the winds of

war can change. Your boyfriend has a weakness you

see…’

‘Hiccup is NOT my boyfriend!’ protested the box

furiously.

‘He wants to believe the best of people,’

continued the witch, ignoring her. ‘And as a result,

Snotlout seems to have tricked him pretty easily.’

‘That traitor!’ spat the box.

‘I expect you warned Hiccup not to trust

Snotlout, didn’t you, Camicazi?’ purred the witch.

By the silence from the box, the witch knew she

had scored a hit.

187

‘Tut tut,’ soothed the witch. ‘You see, my pretty

one? Kings must not be so easily tricked. Can you not

see that you have backed the wrong side? The boy’s

father has failed to find our hideout, the boy’s mother

has failed to steal the Lost Things. The boy himself is so

weak that he has walked straight into my trap. He isn’t

really the right stuff to be a King, is he?’

‘You are evil!’ shouted the voice of Camicazi from

inside the box.

‘Thank you,’ smiled the witch. ‘As I was saying,

the winds of war can change in a heartbeat. And you,

too, can change sides if you want. Everyone in this

room should know that it’s not too late to change your

loyalties and be on the winning side.’

‘NEVER!’ cried

Camicazi. ‘You can’t

see me, Hiccup, but

inside this box, I am

quite definitely NOT

Turning my Back!’

‘Why would

you want to follow

Hiccup? He’s a fool!’

screamed the witch.

‘The fool! The fool!

The fool! Believed the word of someone who has

betrayed him twice before? How could he be such an

idiot?’

‘Because I know there is good in Snotlout,’ said

Hiccup, stubbornly trying to cross his arms, but failing

to do so because one of his arms was sort of floppy.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake, Hiccup,’ snapped Snotlout.

‘Stop forgiving me. It’s really irritating.’

‘Snotlout, you are a TRAITOR!’ came a bellow

from a cage in the corner of the room.

It was Gobber the Belch, Hiccup’s old teacher,

who must have been

captured by the

Alvinsmen.

His magnificent

golden yellow beard,

a sign of his proud

Warriorhood, had been

hacked off at the roots.

It was hard to look

at his face now it was

edged with that rough,

ragged desecration.

That was the worst

thing you could do to a

189

Viking Warrior. It was like hacking off a

lion’s mane.

Gobber’s ex-beard was now hanging

like a scalp from Alvin’s waist, and Alvin

ran it jeeringly through his fingers, and

shook it at Gobber tauntingly.

‘I have your beard, old man,’ he chanted softly

through his mask. ‘I have your beard.’

But Gobber was alive, at least.

And still fighting.

‘SNOTLOUT!’ bellowed Gobber, ‘I offered you

the chance to change sides back in the Slavelands. I

said then that you would be an asset to the Company

of the Dragonmark. I withdraw that offer. You are a

disgrace to your name and your Tribe!’

Snotlout bit his lip. But he recovered to say

contemptuously: ‘Well, at least I’m not locked up in a

190

cage. Now that really would be a disgrace.’

The Alvinsmen soldiers laughed uproariously at

that.

‘Better a noble slave, than a free dog,’ shouted

Gobber.

Snotlout flushed.

‘You betrayed me,’ said Snotlout fiercely. ‘You

betrayed everything you ever taught me about life.

And look what has happened, look at the result of this

weakness!’ Snotlout gestured to the world outside.

‘The world at war! The dragons on the edge of

destroying us all! And still you are saying that it is I who

am the traitor? You are the traitor! You are all traitors

to the world that I loved!’

‘How dare you call me traitor!’ roared Gobber.

‘Do you think I find it any easier than you, you shrimp,

that the world has changed around me? But that world

has already vanished, and the choice we have to make

now is between Hiccup and Alvin, who even you must

be able to see is the essence of evil!’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Alvin, gratified.

‘We may be prisoners-of-war,’ bellowed Gobber,

‘but we can still Turn Our Backs on you, Snotlout!

Dragonmarkers! I invite you all to Turn Your Backs

on this dog, this turncoat, whose name shall be passed

191

down forever as a byword for treachery and deceit!’

Inside his cage, the old Warrior Turned His Back, and

all around him, the captured Dragonmarkers, Mogadon

the Meathead and his son Thuggory… Grabbit of

Grim… Sporta… Harriettahorse… did the same.

‘You can’t see me in my box,’ said Camicazi. ‘But

I am Turning My Back as well.’

Snotlout’s eyes were feverishly bright. He

pretended, with his usual bravado, that he really did

not care about his old teacher and comrades Turning

Their Backs on him. It didn’t bother him in the least.

‘Well, I would be more upset by you Turning

Your Backs on me,’ sneered Snotlout, ‘if it weren’t for

the fact that you are the same people who have chosen

Hiccup as your Leader. I mean, just look at him…’

The Dragonmarkers who had Turned Their

Backs looked over their shoulders a little thoughtfully

at Hiccup, and some of them were suddenly gripped

by doubt. Hiccup was a particularly pathetic sight at

that moment, half white, half purple, his left hand

side dragging like a bird with a broken wing, his arm

flopping at his side as if it were stuffed with rags, his

helmet loose on his head.

‘And Hiccup is so stupid,’ sneered Snotlout, ‘he

has even brought the Last Lost Thing with him…’

192

Almost unable to believe his luck, Alvin reached

inside Hiccup’s waistcoat with his hook, and drew out

a struggling, furious, wriggling, coatless little Toothless.

Hiccup looked at the floor, not quite able to bear

seeing the gaze of his followers turning from belief to

disappointment.

‘L-L-LET Toothless go!’ squealed Toothless. ‘I

told my mean Master this was a v-v-very bad idea!’

‘Oh,’ gasped the witch, in ecstasy, ‘oh this is too

good to be true. The Last Lost Thing as well…’

Gobber and the Dragonmarkers gasped in

horror.

Their last hope… gone.

‘This time we will keep

good care of the last Lost

Thing,’ grinned the witch,

‘and hide it immediately

with the others. Snotlout,

you have excelled

yourself!’

Snotlout bowed

low before the witch and

Alvin.

‘Will you do

me the honour

of entrusting me to carry the last Lost Thing to the

hiding-place where you keep the other Lost Things?’

said Snotlout.

His voice was light, casual.

The witch’s eyes narrowed.

‘That is a very great secret. Nobody knows where

we have hidden those Things.’

‘I have proved my loyalty to you both by betraying

my former Tribe and kinsmen,’ said Snotlout. ‘I am

now no longer a Hooligan, but Alvin’s loyal subject, an

Alvinsman of the Wilderwest.’

The witch thought a while, regarding the boy

in front of her with her acute serpent eyes, and then

she hissed softly, ‘We are of course full of gratitude to

you for your services to Alvin and to the Wilderwest,

Snotlout, and you shall receive your just reward.

‘However…’

The witch stood in front of Snotlout, her eyes

glittering with malice.

‘I am not sure that I am going to entrust you

with that secret…’ she sneered, and every word

was like the thrust of a thin, sharp, knife. ‘You have

brought me the Hiccup boy, the toothless dragon, sure

enough. But do you think that means that I will trust

you with the location of the Lost Things? You are a

195

turncoat, a weasel. You make a good minion, and you

are irrevocably bound to our side now that you have

betrayed your own forever.

‘They would never take you back. No, you are

ours now, Snotlout, ours forever.’

Snotlout flinched, as if realising for the first time

what being the witch and Alvin’s forever, really meant.

‘And you will have your little place in our new

Kingdom,’ continued the witch. ‘But I do not trust a

weasel, no. For I can see into the weasel’s mind.’

Now the witch’s voice was honey-sweet, and that

was always when she was being the most vicious.

‘You might be planning to steal those Things, in a

bid to become King yourself. You know, in your heart

of hearts, that you are not good enough, but against all

evidence you might have hoped, you poor boy…’

Something in Snotlout’s face, a twitch of his

mouth perhaps, betrayed that the witch might be right.

But proud as he was, Snotlout said nothing.

‘You might have thought to trick us all. But,’

and now the witch’s voice hardened, ‘Fate knows her

business, and she has always only picked two players as

possible Kings: Alvin or Hiccup. You were never good

enough, for all your fine Viking qualities.’ Sarcasm

dripped from her voice, and Snotlout flinched. ‘Fate

196

has shown you what you really are, and what you really

are, is a treacherous worm.’

There was a dreadful solemn silence in the Hall,

as if everyone was witnessing a bloodless death.

If you could kill a person with words, stab them

with the pure shock of your spite, why, that witch was

the person to do it.

Snotlout looked as if he

was about to throw up.

Even the Alvinsmen

were gazing at him with

contempt.

Nobody likes a traitor.

Snotlout opened his

mouth to speak.

No words came out, and

he closed it again.

He bowed his head,

and his shoulders sagged, and

he made himself take up as

little space as possible, as if

he wished for invisibility. He

stepped back into the shadows.

Having thus dispatched

Snotlout, the witch passed the

197

cage containing Toothless to Very Vicious the Visithug,

to whom she whispered the secret hiding place of the

Lost Things. The implication was clear. Very Vicious

was not as clever as Snotlout, but he was a lot more

trustworthy.

Toothless’s wailing cry was unbearable.

Hiccup could not look at him. He felt like he was

the traitor, and he had betrayed Toothless.

ALL MY FAULT, thought Hiccup. ALL MY

FAULT.

Inside the cage, Toothless’s spines were drooping

pathetically.

‘M-m-master! Don’t let them take me! Please

don’t let them take me! Toothless is yours… and I’m

the b-b-best Lost Thing…’

‘Trust me, Toothless! It will be fine… I’ll

rescue you, Toothless! Don’t worry, it’s all part of

Plan B!’ Hiccup called after him in Dragonese, so that

no one else could understand,

But he couldn’t be sure that Toothless heard, as

Very Vicious had already hurried out of the door.

‘Now we have all the Lost Things!’ the witch

cried to the captured Dragonmarkers. ‘Your cause

is hopeless! As soon as we turn up on the beach

tomorrow, Alvin will be accepted as the new King! It is

not too late to repent and turn to Alvin’s side!’

198

‘WE STILL STAND BY HICCUP!’ roared

Gobber the Belch.

The Dragonmarkers yelled their defiance, some

more certain than others.

‘HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP!’

‘HICCUP FOREVER!’

‘That’s very loyal of you,’ purred the witch

between gritted teeth, ‘very loyal indeed to stand by

Hiccup. But the question is, will the boy stand by you?

CHAIN THE BOY UP!’

11. THE TESTING OF

A HERO

Rough hands wound chains around Hiccup until he

was trussed up like a chicken.

‘Mother, what are you doing?’ said Alvin, uneasily

through his mask. ‘What did I tell you last time? I have

been dealing with this kid for quite a while and the

only thing to do with him is to kill him the second we

have him in our hook! We have all the Things now.

We should just kill him, and then we should kill all his

Dragonmarker followers.’

200

‘We can’t go around killing everybody, Alvin

sweetest,’ said the witch piously, ‘for if we did, we’d

have no subjects left. We need to change the minds

of his followers, turn them into Alvinsmen, and

then we won’t have to kill them. It’s politics, Alvin

darling. Leave the politics to me. OPEN UP THE

TRAPDOOR!’

CREEEAKKKKKK!

A huge trapdoor opened in the middle of the

room, directly on to the sea below.

‘Hiccup is going to break the

loyalty of these irritating followers of

his by telling us where Stoick and

Valhallarama and the rest of the

Dragonmarkers are hiding,’ said

the witch.

Stoick and Valhallarama’s secret underground

hideout was at Coral Beach, the other side of

Wrecker’s Bay. But neither the witch nor the Dragon

Furious had discovered this yet.

‘I most certainly am not,’

said Hiccup, as strongly and

as defiantly as he could,

given that he was almost

paralysed with fear.

‘I can assure you,

you most certainly are,’

said the witch.

‘You are going

to tell me where

your mother and

the rest of the

Dragonmarkers

are hiding,

or else I am

going to lower

you down into

this freezing

water, wrapped in chains, and leave you down there

until you see sense, or you drown, whichever is the

sooner.’

‘I will never betray my friends,’ said Hiccup,

really, really hoping that this was true.

‘You heard him, he said NEVER!’ said Alvin.

‘Never is a long word,’ replied the witch. ‘The

Winterfleshers have gathered, so Hiccup will not only

have freezing water to contend with, but the bite of

Winterfleshers. Winterfleshers are small but they are

deadly in packs, and they will certainly attack a chained

child.’

Winterfleshers were small but unpleasant

dragons, a little like piranhas. When they attacked in

shoals they could strip a deer down to its skeleton

in precisely three minutes.

‘SHAME ON YOU!’ cried

Gobber.

The Dragonmarkers howled

their disapproval and horror.

‘But he might get away!’

warned the strangled voice of Alvin

through the mask.

‘Pish posh,’ purred

the witch. ‘You worry

too much, Alvin, my

little lobster-pot. He’s

completely wrapped

in chains! How can he

possibly get away? The boy

is not superhuman! He’s

not even a Hero! He’s

just a perfectly ordinary

small boy. You will realise

this when he betrays his own

people, and you Dragonmarkers

will see that your so-called Leader is not worthy of your

loyalty…

‘LOWER HIM THROUGH THE TRAP DOOR!’

screamed the witch. ‘AND EVERYBODY, FEEL

ABSOLUTELY FREE TO CHANGE SIDES AT

ANY MOMENT!’

The witch’s plan was very simple. To lower

Hiccup down into the icy freezing water of the Bay,

water so mind-numbingly cold that it entered the very

soul and rendered it dead as an iceberg.

She would dip Hiccup in that water, like a sword

smith quenches a sword. Would it make Hiccup, or

204

break Hiccup?

Hiccup did not know.

He looked down into

the grim, soulless water,

and he was shaking already.

He had fallen into the sea in

winter before, and he knew

how it almost burned you

at first, and how quickly you

turned numb, as if you had

ceased to exist.

He also knew what a

surprisingly short time it took to

die in the winter sea – two, three

minutes, perhaps?

Please don’t let me give in…

thought Hiccup to himself. Please

let me be braver than I think I am…

Down.

Down.

Down.

Hiccup was lowered, by two

Alvinsmen Warriors, down, down

into the cold, cold sea.

Oh, it was so

cold.

It was so cold

that as it tightened

round his chest,

squeezing all the breath

out of him, it was as if

he were being crushed

in the fist of a Frost

Giant – or was it a Fire

Giant? At temperatures

that low, they are one

and the same.

The witch left

him under the water a

good minute before she

brought him up again.

It was a truly

terrifying minute for

Hiccup, trying to

hold his breath in the

freezing sea, trying to

deal with the panic, when

it seemed like he couldn’t

hold his breath any longer but

knew that if he opened his mouth he would not breathe

in sweet air but water.

When the witch drew him up, Hiccup was

frost-cold and limp, like a doll with all the stuffing

taken out of it. But there was not a mark on him.

The witch was puzzled.

‘I don’t understand…’ she hissed. ‘What about

the Winterfleshers? Are there none down there?’

‘There seem to be plenty,’ said Alvin. ‘But I told

you, Mother, he’s tricksy… very tricksy…’

The witch lifted up the visor on Hiccup’s helmet.

‘Well?’ said the witch. ‘Are you ready to tell me

where the Dragonmarkers hideout is?’

To Hiccup’s relief, he found that he had the

courage not to tell her, after all. He shook his head.

‘Put him down again! This time for two minutes!’

‘He’ll never betray them,’ said Alvin gloomily.

It seemed that Alvin might be right.

Twice the boy was lowered into the water, and

still he would not betray his friends.

‘Patience,’ purred the witch. ‘One more dunking

will do it. I can see it in the boy’s eyes. Not even a fully

grown adult can take that water more than twice… and

he is just a boy.’

The third time the Alvinsmen drew the boy out

he was a pathetic sight indeed.

The witch lifted the visor. ‘Well? Will you talk?’

Hiccup was a little woozy. The witch was

swimming in front of his eyes, and he was so cold his

brain had turned to ice. Every part of him shivered like

he had the fever.

He looked inside himself.

Although a part of him was shouting, ‘Not back

down there! Please, I never want to go back there!’…

the more important bit of him would never give in.

You find things out about yourself in these rather

extreme circumstances.

Hiccup could barely stand, and he was as

blue-white as if he were already dead… But still

he shook his head, and would not say where the

Dragonmarkers’ hideout was.

And still there was not a mark on him.

‘What are you doing, you horrible little boy?’

snapped the witch, quivering with temper. ‘Are you

using some fancy foreign breathing technique?’

All around the edges of the room, the

Dragonmarkers were crying: ‘HICC-UP! HICC-UP!

HIC-CUP!’

208

The admiration had begun to spread, so that

even the Alvinsmen were beginning to whisper among

themselves: ‘He’s very brave isn’t he? He’s small and

skinny, but he sure is brave…’

For there is nothing that Vikings admire more

than bravery, even in boys with arms like matchsticks.

And the fact that the Winterfleshers were not touching

him was giving Hiccup a supernatural quality that, at

that moment, the witch really could have done without.

‘How is he doing it?’ people whispered quietly

to one another. ‘The Winterfleshers aren’t touching

him… why do you think that is?’

‘Maybe there aren’t any down there!’ howled the

witch.

But the sea was so boiling with Winterfleshers

that, at that very moment, one of them jumped right up

through the trapdoor, and lay flapping, stranded on the

wooden floor, before Alvin angrily kicked it back down

through the hatch again.

‘I think your plan may be backfiring, Mother…

you’re turning him into even more of a Hero than he

was before…’

The exasperated witch ground her teeth. She

changed tactics.

‘In your heart of hearts you do not wish to

become King, Hiccup,’ she cooed. ‘For you know

that whoever does become King will have to make the

terrible decision to extinguish the dragons forever with

the Dragon Jewel… You don’t want to bear that guilt,

do you, Hiccup? For that guilt is the lot of a King…’

Hiccup’s heart nearly failed.

It was his darkest fear that he might have to do

that…

‘Well,’ purred the witch, ‘I can just take the

problem off your hands. We will let you and your

friends off the hook. We will give you and your

Dragonmarkers safe conduct. You can live free in the

Archipelago, anywhere you like. Berk, if you want…

imagine living a nice quiet peaceful life on Berk…’

Hiccup thought longingly of his childhood home.

Of the world before all this happened…

‘And the dragons…’ said Hiccup. ‘What

about the dragons?’

The witch’s voice hardened. ‘It is too late for the

dragons. The dragons will die anyway. But you have it

in your power to save the lives of all those you love…

Don’t let them die all THROUGH YOUR FAULT…’

This was the greatest trial of all.

It was far harder than withstanding the cold, the

lack of oxygen. For what the witch proposed was so

tempting.

Everything had gone very quiet and still. Hiccup

could barely hear the hubbub of stamping and

applauding Vikings in the background any more.

He was alone in the quietness of his own mind.

He did not want to be king. He did not want the

responsibility of it being all his fault when things went

wrong.

But then, his own voice spoke back to him, in

the quietness of his brain. If he was not the King,

Alvin would be the King. And Hiccup knew what that

meant now. That meant the horror of the dragons’

extinction. That meant the tyranny of evil dominating

the Archipelago and ruling over Tomorrow for this

generation and the next. He could not let that happen.

Even though he did not want it, he HAD to be

King now. He had to fight for it, not half-heartedly, but

with everything he had.

That was the moment Hiccup took on his destiny.

He lifted his drooping head.

‘I will NEVER give up fighting you even though it

is too late… Even though all is lost… Even though it is

impossible… Never never never…’

The witch had failed again.

212

‘Leave

him down even

longer!’ yelled the witch,

quivering with temper.

‘Leave him for eight minutes!’

‘Eight minutes is murder!’

bellowed the furious voice of Gobber

the Belch.

But the Alvinsmen lowered Hiccup

down into the sea, and left him down there

for five minutes, six minutes, eight minutes.

Gobber the Belch feared he must be dead.

No ordinary human being could survive

214

underwater for eight whole minutes. The Vikings held

diving competitions in the summertime, so they knew

that it was impossible.

But when the Alvinsmen pulled Hiccup up, and

heaved him out of the water, the boy was absolutely

blue, yet he moved inside his chains. He was still alive.

There was a silence of wonder and awed respect

in the Great Hall.

The witch pulled up Hiccup’s visor with a snap.

This had turned from a trial for Hiccup, to a

trial for herself. It was no longer a testing of a single

individual, but a duel of their two wills. And Hiccup

was winning.

She shook him.

‘Well, you horrible little Hiccup-y brat? Will you

215

tell us where the Dragonmarkers’ hideout is now, or

will I be reluctantly forced to leave you down there

forever?

‘I am trying my best not to kill you, you

ungrateful little so-and-so,’ grated the witch,

‘but if you remain so absurdly stubborn, I

shall have to go ahead and do that…’

‘There is nothing you can do to

me,’ panted Hiccup, ‘that will make

me change my mind.’

At that the witch’s eyes

gleamed. ‘AHA!’ she said

triumphantly. ‘Of course! Why

didn’t I think of this before? I

have been conducting this trial on

the wrong person. We all have

our little weaknesses, don’t

we, Hiccup?’ she gloated. ‘And

yours is soft-heartedness. You

care more about other people

than you do for your runty self.

So how about we throw this

box containing your dear little

Bog-Burglar friend into the

water instead of you?’

At last Alvin felt that his mother was thinking

along the right lines.

‘This is why you will always be weaker than I am,

Hiccup. Camicazi is a very good friend

of yours, isn’t she? And although she

is a great little Escape Artist, even she

will not be able to get out of a box,

wrapped in chains, and thrown into

the sea.

‘She is not a magician, after all.’

Six burly

Alvinsmen threw a

rope around the box, with

Camicazi’s voice shouting, ‘Stay

strong, Hiccup! Don’t worry, I can get out of

this! Don’t betray everyone on account of me!’

SPLASH!

The box went into the water.

‘Think of something clever, Hiccup,’ begged

Gobber.

‘I will haul up this box, Hiccup,’ said the witch,

very, very patiently, ‘the minute you tell me where the

Dragonmarkers’ hideout is. For the last time, will you

tell me where it is?’

Silence, while the Dragonmarkers

strained forward.

Don’t give in, Hiccup… Don’t give in…

Don’t give in….

Please don’t give in…

But Hiccup looked broken.

He nodded. Yes, he would tell her.

Perhaps we all have limits to our

endurance.

There was a groan of despair from the

Dragonmarkers in the cages.

Their Hero had been found wanting

after all.

‘It was too hard a test,’ murmured

Gobber forgivingly to himself. ‘Far too hard a

test for one young boy.’

‘You see…’ smiled the witch, faint with

relief that at last she had triumphed. ‘All it

took was a little bit of light persuasion…

‘YOU SEE!’ she glowed, holding wide

her victorious arms.

‘THE BOY IS HUMAN AFTER ALL! JUST

A POOR SQUIGGLY WORM LIKE THE REST OF

US!

‘Now talk! Talk! Talk!’ yelled the witch.

It appeared that Hiccup was coughing too much

to talk.

‘Show me on the map!’ yelled the witch. ‘Show

me on the map where the Dragonmarkers’ hideout

is…’

Hiccup tried to indicate with his head where the

hideout was on the map.

‘He’s too exhausted to talk… Untie his arms

from the chains so he can point!’ snapped the witch, in

a fever of impatience.

‘No!’ said Alvin.

The witch ignored her son. ‘Leave the chain

round his ankle… bar the doors… he’s only one boy…’

Hiccup’s arms and legs were untied.

He stumbled forward, his left-hand side trailing

behind him, a dead, unconscious weight.

220

And then he sprang.

To the witch’s

astonishment,

Hiccup suddenly

leapt into awkward,

limping life, like a

shaking ghost, and

used his good right

hand to slap the map

up into the witch’s face.

He dodged clumsily past two Alvinsmen,

and hauled himself up the Dragonmarkers’ cages with

one hand, one leg, and a reserve of strength he did not

know he had.

‘I knew it! CATCH HIM!’ bellowed Alvin in

horror as Hiccup climbed.

‘Don’t panic!’ shrieked the witch. ‘He can’t go

anywhere! He’s got a chain around his ankle!’

Hiccup hung off the top-most cage, a lopsided

scarecrow, his right fist clenched and defiant.

‘I will… NEVER… betray my friends, witch!

And the dragons must never be destroyed! NEVER!

NEVER! NEVER!’ shouted Hiccup.

All around the edges of the room, the

Dragonmarkers burst out cheering.

‘NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! HICCUP!

222

HICCUP! HICCUP!’

The witch gave a shriek of fury. ‘But we can

still kill him! Alvin, you were right! Forget about the

politics! Kill them all! Kill everybody! SHOOT! SHOOT

YOUR ARROWS! SHOOT HIM DOWN!’

With a cry of delight, Alvin gave the order, drew

out his own longbow, ready to shoot…

But he was too late.

Hiccup looked down at Snotlout.

‘I did not Turn My Back on you, Snotlout,’ he

said. ‘Remember that.’

And then Hiccup threw himself off the edge of

the cage, down through the trapdoor, and into the icy

sea below.

‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ screamed Alvin,

hurling himself at the chain still attached to Hiccup’s

ankle.

Alvin hauled on the chain, desperate to reel

Hiccup in, hand over hook, screaming for help. Three

burly Alvinsmen rushed to assist. The chain was coming

up easily, for after all, there was only one skinny young

boy on the end of it.

Beside them three more Alvinsmen were hauling

up the box that had Camicazi inside it.

‘Two more strong drags and we’ll have him!’

223

panted Alvin in relief.

But Camicazi’s box

came up first – or rather the

remains of Camicazi’s box.

The padlocks and chains were

broken, the dripping wood was

split open wide, smashed to

pieces by some great mystery

force, and there was no

Camicazi inside.

The little blonde Escape

Artist had made her most

daring escape.

‘Nooooooooooo!’

howled the witch. ‘Where has she gone?’

And then the chain that was supposed

to have Hiccup on the end of it jerked once,

twice…

It was as if Alvin and his Alvinsmen

were out in the Open Ocean, fishing for

mackerel, and the line was suddenly taken

by a gigantic shark. The chain was wrenched back with

such ferocity that it heaved all four Warriors off their

feet, and up into the air, and dragged them right to the

edge of the trapdoor.

224

‘Take the strain!’ screamed Alvin hysterically,

leaning so far backwards that he was practically

horizontal to the ground. More and more Alvinsmen

joined the end of the chain, heaving for all they were

worth.

To the onlookers, it seemed like an almost

mystical tug-of-war.

Red, gasping, his masked face bulging, Alvin’s

foot and helplessly scrabbling ivory leg could not get a

grip. He and his Warriors were towed inexorably nearer

and nearer to the open trapdoor.

‘PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT!’ screamed

the demented villain, and the room watched

open-mouthed, unable to believe what they were

seeing. Who was this boy, to drag so many mighty

Warriors across the floor?

‘It’s a miracle…’ breathed an Alvinsman,

mightily impressed despite himself, for one of the

ancient qualities of a Hero in the Viking Sagas was

superhuman strength.

One last colossal heave, and SNAP! The chain

broke. All ten of the Alvinsmen fell flat on their

backs with a suddenness that dragged Alvin’s brand

new cloak into the water, while Alvin screamed,

‘NOOOOOOOOOOOO!’

225

Crazed with disappointment, Alvin drew up what

was left of the chain. The broken remains were as light

as a crabcake. There was nothing on the end.

‘AAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’

screamed Alvin.

Killing Hiccup had

become his obsession; it

filled every waking and

dreaming moment. And was

the boy to be plucked from

his hook in the nick of time

once more?

It was too cruel.

The witch’s plan had backfired

most spectacularly.

‘He’s escaped! He’s escaped!’

‘HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP!’

‘Alvin, my sweetest… Alvin, my

darling… Alvin, my honeypot,’ said the

witch, trying to soothe herself as much as

her son. ‘He’s dead… he must be dead,

don’t you see? Some large underwater

sea creature must have got him,

that is what will have broken

that chain…’

‘Out! Out to the boats! Search every corner!

Launch the Bullguards!’ howled Alvin, shaking off

the witch’s arm, and leaping to his feet. ‘NO MORE

TALKING! SHOOT THE BOY ON SIGHT!’

The witch was quiet for

a second, crouched down low.

And then she exploded into action,

screaming.

‘WHAT ARE YOU

WAITING FOR, YOU IDIOTS?

SEARCH HIGH, SEARCH LOW,

SEARCH EVERYWHERE!

FIND THE HICCUP BOY!’

229

12. THAT TREASONOUS

TRAITOR OF TRAITORS

Alvin rushed out of the door in a demented frenzy,

followed by the witch and the Alvinsmen with drawn

swords.

Leaving the cages with the captured

Dragonmarkers openly whispering and then shouting

to each other: ‘What happened? They’ve got the last

Lost Thing? But is Hiccup still alive? Or did he die?

That treasonous traitor of traitors Snotface Snotlout

betrayed us all…’

That treasonous traitor of traitors, Snotface

Snotlout, had not left the room with the others. He was

still standing in the shadows. Even if you could have

seen his face, you would not be able to read it.

‘Boo!’

‘BOOOOOOO!’

The room reverberated with the sound of the

shouting, furious Dragonmarkers rattling their cages,

and it was dreadful indeed to hear their condemnation.

‘TURNCOAT! TRAITOR! LOWEST OF THE

LOW! DISGRACE TO YOUR TRIBE!’

There was shame in Snotlout’s flushed face as

all around him his former Companions cursed his

231

name and howled furious

contempt.

He would never

be trusted again. Not

even Alvin and the witch

trusted him. He had

nowhere to go.

It was a far greater

disgrace for a Viking to lose his

honour than to lose his beard.

A single tear rolled down Snotlout’s cheek.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Snotlout had been

Gobber the Belch’s favourite pupil. Now it was

Gobber the Belch’s powerful bellow that reverberated

around the room in rolling echoes, like the honk of an

outraged walrus.

‘YOU HAVE DISHONOURED THE NAME

OF HOOLIGAN! YOU HAVE SHAMED THE

GOOD NAME OF YOUR FATHER AND OF YOUR

FATHER’S FATHER’S FATHER! SAGAS WILL

BE TOLD OF YOUR IGNOMINY FOREVER!’

roared Gobber.

Snotlout stood perfectly still.

And then out loud, he said to himself: ‘Hiccup

knew that I was going to betray him. He knew.’

Only two Alvinsmen were left in the room. They

232

were kneeling around the trapdoor, peering down into

the sea, shivering and with swords drawn, as if that

magical Hero, Hiccup the Outcast, might in some final

act of superhuman sorcery rise up out of the sea and

strike them down.

With a quickness Gobber would have been proud

of in the old days, Snotlout walked up behind them,

removed the keys from their belts and shoved them

into the water.

The bellows from the cages of the Dragonmarkers

died down.

What was the traitor doing?

Why had he attacked

the Alvinsmen?

What in Valhalla was

going on?

Snotlout ran to

Gobber’s cage and put the

key in the lock.

‘What are you

doing, Snotlout, you

villain?’ cried Thuggory

the Meathead in

bewilderment.

‘What does it look

like, O Dumbo-brain Meathead?’ said Snotlout as the

door to Gobber’s cage swung open. ‘I’m helping you to

escape.’

There was a murmur of astonishment along the

cages.

Vikings were strong Warriors, tough soldiers.

But they were not all of them quick on the uptake.

They might have been taught Spying and Treachery in

their Pirate Classes, but most of them, to be honest,

were not very good at it. What they really liked was

to know exactly who their enemies were, preferably

colour-coded, with the same helmets, or a similar style

of furry cloak or something, to avoid confusion in

battle.

So this unexpected move on the part of Snotlout

really flummoxed them.

‘Hang on,’ said Thuggory the Meathead

plaintively, ‘I thought you were on the other side?’

‘Me too,’ complained Grabbit of Grim. ‘The

witch thanked you and everything… Why are you

freeing us? What’s going on?’

‘Look here, Snotlout,’ demanded Boily of

Bashem. ‘Let’s be absolutely clear. Are you on that

rotter Alvin’s side or not?’

‘You won’t believe me, whatever I say,’ replied

234

Snotlout. ‘You already told me I’m a double-crossing

worm.’

Gobber’s cage door was still hanging open. But

the great giant within, with his arms crossed, refused to

move.

‘I don’t accept help from Traitors, or disgraces to

their Tribe!’ roared Gobber furiously.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake, stay if you want to! You

always were a stubborn old warthog,’ muttered

Snotlout. He tossed the keys through the door of the

nearest cage so that the others could free themselves,

and ran out of the room.

The Dragonmarkers did not waste any further

time trying to work out Snotlout’s motivation, and

passed the keys along from cage to cage. Psychology

had never been their strong point.

Fighting, however, was their forte.

With cries of joy, the freed Dragonmarkers armed

themselves with swords, javelins, spears, whatever they

could find in the armoury.

Even Gobber realised it might be better to

swallow his pride and join the fray. He left his cage,

shaking his head in confusion.

235

13. MEANWHILE, UNDER THE

FLOORBOARDS…

How did Camicazi and Hiccup escape from the box

and the rope? Well, it wasn’t quite the miracle that the

watching Dragonmarkers and Alvinsmen thought it

was.

Let us go back to earlier on, under the

floorboards of the floating city, where a terrified

Hiccup had whispered ‘Plan B! Plan B!’ down to

Fishlegs and slammed down the hatch, leaving Fishlegs

sitting on the upturned hull of a boat in the darkness

with six dragons: the Deadly Shadow, Stormfly, the

Hogfly, Windwalker, the Hurricane and Wodensfang.

‘Oh, for Thor’s sake,’ moaned Fishlegs. ‘Plan B!

Plan B means that the Lost Things aren’t there!’

The ears of the Wodensfang were bright purple

and quivering as if electric currents were running

through them, which was always a sign that terrible

peril was near.

‘I told Hiccup,’ wheezed Wodensfang, ‘I’ve seen

the Lost Things in my dreams. They’re underwater

somewhere. But I admire Hiccup’s courage in trusting

Snotlout. It’s just a shame…’

236

Fishlegs swallowed and finished the sentence for

him.

‘It’s just a shame that Snotlout has betrayed him

again?’

As if to confirm this, Snotlout’s Hurricane dragon

took off from the submerged boat and flew off.

‘Where’s he going?’ asked Fishlegs.

And then he answered his own question.

‘He must be joining his treacherous master.

‘This is fine,’ said Fishlegs to himself. ‘I’m on my

own here, but it’s fine.’ He was trying not to panic.

His asthma often got worse in times of stress.

Luckily Deadly Shadows give off a calming

hormone in their smoke when they are in an action

situation, and breathing in the milky clouds of steam

drifting out of the three heads of the gentle giant

beneath him gave Fishlegs the strength to remain calm

and to focus.

Fishlegs pushed his broken glasses more firmly

on to his nose. He did not want to look like a coward

in front of his mother’s dragon. If his mother could be

brave, then so could he.

‘OK,’ said Fishlegs, making himself think

reasonably, ‘according to Plan B, we now have to

surreptitiously rescue Hiccup. But how do we rescue

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him if we have no idea where he is?’

Two hundred yards away, a hatch opened in

the long platform of the ceiling above them, letting

a brilliant shaft of light down into the dark sea. The

sound of the shouting and the stamping of feet became

so loud, Fishlegs shrank behind the Deadly Shadow’s

back spines, for fear they had been discovered.

‘HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP!’

And then the witch’s voice, clear and loud:

‘LOWER HIM THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR!’

Something was dumped through the trapdoor

and into the sea. With horror, Fishlegs recognised

Hiccup’s helmet.

‘O… K…’ said Fishlegs. ‘There he is… That’s

Hiccup… let’s rescue him…’

Windwalker had left Fishlegs’s side before

Fishlegs had even finished speaking, flying towards

the spot where Hiccup had been dumped. In two flaps

of his wings, Fishlegs could see from the bubbles that

Windwalker had reached Hiccup underwater, closely

followed by Wodensfang, Stormfly and the Hogfly.

Fishlegs hovered near the spot on the back of the

Deadly Shadow.

‘Get him up! What are you guys doing?’ he

whispered desperately from the shadows. ‘Why aren’t

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you getting him out of there? There are Winterfleshers

down there and everything…’

He could see the quick black silhouettes of the

heavily-fanged Winterfleshers being chased hither and

thither underwater by the hunting dragons.

The Alvinsmen pulled on the chain again. It drew

taut, and UP the blue dripping figure of Hiccup was

hauled, and Fishlegs watched, open-mouthed.

SPLASH!

Up rocketed Wodensfang, out of the water.

‘Why didn’t you rescue him?’ whispered an

agitated Fishlegs.

‘He didn’t want us to,’ replied Wodensfang. ‘He

kept on pointing up towards the Great Hall. I think he

doesn’t want us to rescue him until he can get Camicazi

out too.’

‘Oh thank Thor,’ breathed Fishlegs. ‘So Camicazi

is alive?’

‘We’re just trying to keep him warm and

alive,’ continued Wodensfang, ‘and scare away the

Winterfleshers. Windwalker is blowing air into him so

he doesn’t drown.*’

SPLASH!

Down Hiccup was thrown again, and Fishlegs

could see the large shadow of the Windwalker flying

* Windwalker was acting like a dragon aqualung. Hiccup first describes doing

this with Toothless in How to Be a Pirate when he was stuck in Grimbeard the

Ghastly’s underground cavern. Hiccup and Windwalker had practised this in

happier times and warmer waters, when they went diving together for crabs in

long ago summers in Hooligan Harbour.

underwater like a giant ray, sending the little dark

slivers of the Winterfleshers shooting off in all

directions in alarm. Again and again, Hiccup was

hauled back up through the trapdoor, again and

again he was thrown into the sea – and each time

he was left underwater for longer and longer.

‘Oh what shall I do?’ Fishlegs whimpered to

himself, ‘This can’t be good for him… Plan B was

always over-ambitious… How on earth is Hiccup

going to rescue Camicazi when he’s all tied up in

chains and everything?’

Fishlegs’s question was answered when

SPLASH! The large box crashed into the

water, and this time Windwalker attacked

the box, and to Fishlegs’s passionate relief,

Camicazi came gasping to the surface. He

reached out an arm to pick her out, and she climbed up

behind him on the Deadly Shadow, and sat shivering

on the dragon’s warm back, steaming lightly.

The fourth time, when Hiccup dived through the

trapdoor by himself, the Windwalker changed tactics.

Camicazi was safe, so it was time to rescue Hiccup

now.

Windwalker got a good grip on Hiccup’s collar

under the water, like a cat holding a kitten, and hauled

with all his strength on the chain attached around

Hiccup’s ankle, the one that Alvin and the Alvinsmen

were holding at the other end.

That was the mystical tug of war that had so

impressed the Alvinsmen and Dragonmarkers in the

Great Hall.

With a final HEAVE, the chain broke, and with

smooth powerful strokes of his wings, Windwalker

brought Hiccup, gasping, to the surface and deposited

him on the boat beside Camicazi.

‘Thank you, Camicazi,’ gasped Hiccup.

‘I told you,’ said Camicazi, ‘I would never Turn

My Back on you again.’

Hiccup grinned. ‘Windwalker, Hogfly, Wodensfang

and I will find Toothless and the Things… Fishlegs and

Camicazi and the others, cause a Diversion…’

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He had barely finished the sentence before

Windwalker flew off, carrying Hiccup like a limp doll in

his mouth, with Wodensfang and the Hogfly anxiously

following.

‘Excellent news!’ said Camicazi joyfully. ‘Apart

from Burgling and escaping from impossible prisons

and possibly surfing on dragonback, DIVERSIONS

are a Bog-Burglar’s favourite thing!’

She sat back on the Deadly Shadow, unpacked

her backpack and put on a large blond moustache.

‘Camicazi,’ said Fishlegs, ‘no one is going to

mistake you for a very small Alvinsman.’

Camicazi ignored him.

‘Now,’ she said, holding up a finger, ‘we’re going

to have to be a little bit careful because I reckon

there must be thousands and thousands

of Bullguards and Alvinsmen up

there…’

‘And there are four of us…’ bleated Fishlegs.

‘Six!’ corrected Camicazi optimistically. ‘Your Deadly

Shadow counts as three. Which is why I need my

super-dangerous secret weapon. Now, where did I put

it?’ Camicazi rummaged away at the bottom of her

Escape Artist backpack, pulling out ropes and keys and

all sorts of extraordinary equipment.

‘You have a super-dangerous secret weapon?’

Fishlegs clutched at the faint hope of what a

‘super-dangerous secret weapon’ offered.

Ideas of battering rams, and spear launchers, and

those gigantic Roman catapults swam into his head,

and made him feel a little braver.

But no, it would have been hard to fit a battering

ram into that teeny weeny little backpack.

Camicazi whooped in triumph as she finally

located the super-dangerous secret weapon, and held it

up so that Fishlegs could see it.

There was a short silence.

‘Camicazi,’ said Fishlegs. ‘The four— no,

sorry, six of us are about to face Alvin’s entire

heavily-armed army, and that is a small glass

jar filled with pebbles.’

It was indeed a small glass jar filled

with pebbles.

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Small, grey, and very normal-looking pebbles.

‘Ah yes,’ said Camicazi craftily, ‘but these are

no ordinary pebbles. My mother burgled them off a

Chinese ship she raided when she was out east a while

back, and I sort of borrowed them. Trust me, Fishlegs,

these things are quite something.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Fishlegs sarcastically, ‘those little

pebbly souvenirs that your mother got on her holidays

are really going to make the difference…’

‘Now, we are a little outnumbered, I have to

admit,’ said Camicazi, frowning, and pulling out

her lassos and her ropes, and borrowing some of

Fishlegs’s bow and arrows, ‘so we have to seem like

there are more of us. We need to make those rotten,

haddock-stinking, twister-evil Alvinsmen think they’re

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being attacked by Valhallarama’s whole Dragonmarker

army. Can I borrow your helmet a second, Fishlegs?’

Without waiting for an answer, Camicazi

whipped it off his head.

‘Watch this, Fishlegs, I think you’re going to like

it…

‘Who do you think this is, then?’

Camicazi sang the Hooligan national anthem

into Fishlegs’s helmet, in an uncanny impression of

Valhallarama’s booming, magnificent tones. The helmet

gave her voice the necessary deep, echoing quality:

‘Up with your SWORD and strike at the GALE…

‘RIDE the rough SEAS for those WAVES

are your HOME…’

Fishlegs looked at her with his mouth hanging

open. ‘You sound exactly like Valhallarama…’

‘Good, isn’t it?’ grinned Camicazi, ‘I’ve been

practising for ages…

‘WINTERS may FREEZE but our HEARTS do

not FAIL—’

Yes, it’s great, Camicazi, absolutely spooky, but

this is no time for doing impressions,’ said Fishlegs,

terrified.

Again, Camicazi ignored him. ‘So, Fishlegs, get

out your weapons, put on your hood, and I want you to

imagine you’re an army…’

‘Imagine I’m an army,’ said Fishlegs, getting out

his bow and arrows and pulling up the hood of his

fire-suit. ‘Imagine I’m an army… this is crazy…’

Camicazi kicked her heels, and the Deadly

Shadow swooped out from under the wooden platform

and into the open air of the cavern.

Fishlegs’s eyes were shut, and he was whispering

over and over again to himself, ‘I’m an army… I’m

an army… I’m an entire super-scary Dragonmarker

army…’

Camicazi urged the Deadly Shadow higher and

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higher, until it was hovering just below the icy ceiling of

the cavern.

Beneath them, the crazy twisted streets of Alvin’s

town were curiously beautiful, with flares lighting up

the edges of that maze of wooden platforms and the

dark shapes of the floating armada.

Little figures were shouting at one another, flares

in their hands, peering over the sides of the wooden

streets beside the Great Hall, looking into the sea.

‘FIND THE HICCUP BOY!’ the witch was

screaming, and the Bullguards shot out random

lightning bolts that formed a hissing, spitting, live maze

of death in the air to match the mazy streets below.

‘Calmly,’ whispered Camicazi, keeping Deadly

Shadow circling. ‘We have to wait for exactly the right

moment…

‘Now dive!’ ordered Camicazi. ‘Dive, Deadly

Shadow, dive!’

‘Hang on!’ panicked Fishlegs, ‘You can’t dive

now! There’s no way you’ll get through those random

lightning bolts! You can’t do it!’

‘ATTACK!’ ordered Camicazi, more

magnificently Valhallarama-ish than ever, shouting

into Fishlegs’s helmet in Valhallarama’s deepest

most commanding voice. Even the moustache had a

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jaunty Valhallarama effect. ‘DRAGONMARKERS,

ATTACK!’

‘Oh brother,’ whispered Fishlegs, putting his

hands over his eyes.

The Deadly Shadow dived.

14. A LITTLE LESSON FROM

CAMICAZI IN CAUSING

CHAOS AND CONFUSION

A few minutes earlier, the Alvinsmen had run out on to

the platform above the icy sea and scanned the waters

below for any sign of Hiccup.

‘He won’t be able to hold his breath for long!’

shrieked Alvin. ‘Get the Bullguards’ searchlights steady

on the water!’

Hundreds of hovering Bullguards illuminated the

sea around the Great Hall, revealing a heaving mass of

Winterfleshers in a feeding frenzy.

‘Look, Alvin, my darling! They’re eating

something!’ sang the witch happily. ‘It must be the boy!’

‘I want evidence!’ shrieked Alvin. ‘I want a body!

Anyway, that’s not Hiccup, that’s my new cloak, it fell

off earlier…’

Recently freed by Snotlout, Gobber and the

Dragonmarkers peered out the Great Hall door,

uncertain whether to attack or escape. There were

twenty-two of them, which wasn’t really enough to put

up a good fight in a straight battle with thousands and

thousands of Alvinsmen.

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‘Wait…’ hissed the witch, stiffening as if

something had stung her. ‘What’s that?’

From nowhere at all came the disembodied

sound of somebody singing the Hooligan National

Anthem.

‘Up with your SWORD and strike at the GALE…

‘RIDE the rough SEAS for those WAVES

are your HOME…’

‘I know that voice!’ spat the witch. ‘Surely it can’t

be… Surely it can’t be Valhallarama???’

On the song went, as jolly and as happy and

unconcerned as if the singer were singing round the

campfire on Berk.

‘WINTERS may FREEZE but our HEARTS

do not FAIL…

‘…HOOLIGAN… HEARTS…

FOREVER!’

Alvin, too, had frozen. ‘But… that means the

Dragonmarkers have found our war bunker!’

‘Impossible!’ screeched the witch. ‘Unbelievable!

Inconceivable!’

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But the next words were shouted, and to

everyone’s ears they were clearly the booming, clear,

distinctive tones of VALHALLARAMA the Mighty,

Valhallarama the Terrible, Valhallarama the Great and

Magnificent Warrior.

‘ATTTACCCCKKKKKKKKK!’ roared the

voice of Valhallarama. ‘DRAGONMARKERS

ATTAACCKKKKKKKK!’

Down swooped the Deadly Shadow in his

invisible dive.

Camicazi must have had the luck of a drunk or

foolish person, for how the Deadly Shadow made it

through that complicated mess of Bullguard lightning

bolts without being struck was an absolute miracle.

The witch went even whiter than normal.

‘Valhallarama’s forces…’ she whispered.

‘Quick… Counter-attack! Man the barricades!’

Pandemonium ensued, with the Alvinsmen

rushing for their weapons and firing randomly in the air

as something enormous and invisible swooped down,

sank a couple of lightning bolts into the Great Hall,

and soared upwards again.

Fishlegs opened his eyes shakily.

‘OK, Camicazi, I have to admit, that was kind

of brilliant.’

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‘You see,’ grinned Camicazi, ‘we’re an army!

We’re an entire Dragonmarker army…’

She winked at him cheekily.

‘Watch this…’

Camicazi took out a handful of little grey pebbles

and flung them in six different directions. They sailed

through the air, just normal little grey pebbles… but

when they landed… BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The little

pebbles exploded, creating the impression that the

town was being attacked in six different places, by six

different dragons, all at the same time.

BOOOOOOOOOM!

The sixth pebble caused a very large explosion

indeed, as it scored a direct hit on Alvin’s armoury and

hit the blacksmith’s fire burning merrily away in the

middle.

‘HOOOLIGANS FOREVER!’ bellowed Camicazi,

in what was supposed to be an impression of Stoick the

Vast. Even with the help of the helmet, it came out a

bit squeaky.

‘Your Stoick impression isn’t as good as

your Valhallarama,’ advised Fishlegs. ‘It’s about as

convincing as your blond moustache.’

Blind panic came over the Alvinsmen.

‘They’re using Stealth Dragons!’ roared Alvin

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the Treacherous. ‘Fire randomly in the air because we

won’t be able to see them coming! They’re coming

from the air you fools, the air!’

But it appeared these Dragonmarkers were

attacking from the land as well.

‘ATTTACCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!’ yelled

Gobber the Belch.

And the Dragonmarkers that Snotlout had

released leapt from the Great Hall and began to fight

the Alvinsmen.

They were massively outnumbered of course, but

fortunately most of the Alvinsmen army had already

launched into the air on dragonback to counter an

entirely imaginary Stealth Dragon assault.

They shot randomly in the air, mostly hitting

Bullguards, who then thought they had been hit by

Dragonmarkers and started shooting back.

So began the Battle Underneath the Waterfall,

which, thanks to Camicazi’s brilliance at causing chaos

and confusion, mostly consisted of Alvinsmen and

Bullguards fighting each other rather than the enemy.

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15. ‘YOU RANG, MADAM?’

Windwalker swam at immense speed through the

cavern’s inner sea. With intense precision, he broke the

surface for a few moments so that Hiccup could take

huge, coughing, gasping relieved breaths.

In the moment that they surfaced, Hiccup heard

Camicazi’s excellent impression of Valhallarama.

What is happening? thought Hiccup, confused and

disorientated. Surely that can’t be my mother?

And then Windwalker took him underwater

again, and Hiccup nearly passed out with the cold and

the lack of air.

Beside them swam the little pink Hogfly, like an

underwater bumblebee, and the Wodensfang.

When at last Windwalker re-surfaced, the floating

town was some distance away and they were alongside

the Barbarian Armada, quietly rocking in the icy water.

Windwalker gently spat Hiccup on to the nearest ship,

and there he lay like a baby, flat on his front, panting

on the deck, shivering uncontrollably, too cold to

move.

‘Thanks, Windwalker…’ whispered Hiccup,

closing his eyes. He was sleepy… too tired to take this

in, and shivering too much.

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‘Wake up, Master,’ whispered Windwalker

urgently. ‘Wake up! You can’t sleep now...’

A rush of hot air over Hiccup’s shaking body

made him open his eyes again. Blinking in the warm

breeze, he realised that the Windwalker was blowing

hot air over him to warm him. The steamy breath of

the dragon gradually heated his shaking limbs into

stillness, and he climbed to his feet, horribly lopsided

and as weak as a fawn finding its feet for the first time.

His left side was almost completely numb, and even his

thoughts seemed sluggish.

He looked back at the Great Hall, now a

confused mass of shouting, screaming Alvinsmen

Warriors fighting Dragonmarker Warriors and shooting

randomly into the air.

Excellent. Fishlegs and Camicazi had gone ahead

with their Diversion. And it sounded like Hiccup’s

mother and the Dragonmarker army might have joined

them.

The second part of Plan B was going to be a little

trickier.

Because the success of the second part of Plan B

relied on the Hogfly.

Hiccup looked dubiously at the Hogfly hovering

eagerly before him, spraying Hiccup with water as he

256

shook himself dry.

‘Hogfly?’ said Hiccup.

‘You rang, Madam?’ said the Hogfly.

‘Hogfly, we really need you now. Everything

depends on you.’

‘Woof woof!’ squeaked the amiable little creature,

but he looked anxious. Even the Hogfly seemed to

realise that a Plan that relied on him might be a Plan in

jeopardy.

‘Hogfly, I need you to fetch,’ said Hiccup

solemnly.

He reached into his backpack, and pulled out the

sad remains of Toothless’s torn, burnt, coat. Hiccup

had hidden it for precisely this purpose, so the Hogfly

could follow Toothless’s smell, and find out where the

Alvinsmen had taken him.

‘That,’ said the Wodensfang admiringly, ‘is a

Clever Plan, Hiccup.’

The coat was sopping wet, of course, and Hiccup

had to hope that this wouldn’t affect the scent. ‘Give

it a good sniff, Hogfly. I need you to fetch Toothless.

Fetch Toothless, good Hogfly.’

The Hogfly gave a sigh of relief. His little piglet

tail wagged so fast it was nearly a blur. At last he could

be helpful! This was something he understood! This

was something he could do!

257

The Hogfly snuffled the

coat all over.

‘Hmmm…’ sneezed

the Hogfly in a deep little

voice. ‘Fruity…’

His sniffer nose

sniffed up and down,

taking in great, woofing

breaths, as if it had a life of its own.

A couple of years ago, Hiccup had

taught this particular Hogfly how to ‘fetch’. It had

taken a long time, for Hogflys are not bred for their

intelligence. Their minds hop from subject to subject

like butterflies.

But once they have learnt the skill of ‘fetching’,

they are, quite simply, the best scent and tracker

dragons in the entire world.

The piggy snout of the Hogfly, snuffling away,

could smell smells that you and I cannot even imagine

smelling. He could smell the shoal of Winterfleshers,

currently passing underneath the boat they were

standing on. He could smell the birds sleeping in the

pine trees, way, way in the distance on the faraway

shoreline.

His extraordinary little sniffing nose could sort

out those smells like an experienced gambler sorting

through a deck of cards. And somewhere in among

those smells, in between the smell of a spider scuttling

up the mast of one of the ships one hundred feet away,

and the twenty-four slightly different smells of the

twenty-four slightly different nanodragons currently

hibernating in one of the same ship’s biscuit barrels, he

caught a tiny little whiff of something that smelled a lot

like Toothless.

‘Fetch Toothless!’ trumpeted the Hogfly, and

zoomed after that smell as if he were being dragged

through the air by a Silver Phantom.

The Windwalker and Wodensfang

could barely keep up.

The little speeding

Hogfly, like a jet

propelled piglet, flew

above the boats that

were moored at

the edges of this

floating city.

‘FetchToothless-

fetchToothlessfetch-

ToothlessfetchToothless… Sorry

Grandma!’ This last remark was addressed

to a ship’s mast that the Hogfly dodged in his

single-minded quest. ‘FetchToothlessfetchToothless-

fetchToothlessfetchToothless…’

There must have been at least a hundred of those

Viking war ships, rocking dark and ghostly on the black

water, as lifeless and silent as death boats.

But right at the end, so near to the edge of

the cavern that it was right next to the waterfall…

were there dim signs of life? Were there tiny moving

260

shadows that might have been people, and a

faint flicker of light that could have been the

light of a torch?

The Hogfly was heading straight for

this boat.

OK, thought Hiccup. So that must be

where the Alvinsmen have taken Toothless…

and if Toothless is there… it will also be where

they have hidden the other nine Lost Things…

Hiccup had to stop the Hogfly now. The Hogfly

would not understand about being quiet, and sneaking

up on this boat. He would give them all away.

Hiccup kicked his heels gently on the

Windwalker’s sides. Windwalker leapt forward and

drew alongside the little speeding Hogfly.

261

The Hogfly was muttering ‘FetchToothlessfetch-

ToothlessfetchToothlessfetchToothless…’ to himself

with impressive determination.

Hiccup leaned down, grabbed the Hogfly

under one arm, and put his hand over the Hogfly’s

nose. Hiccup’s hand got in the way of the smell

track the Hogfly was following, and once a Hogfly’s

concentration was broken it could be easily distracted.

After a few squeals of reproach and ‘Woah, that

tickles!’ the Hogfly forgot about Toothless and licked

Hiccup’s hand, nuzzling it affectionately.

‘Bedtime, now, Hogfly,’ said Hiccup.

‘Oooo bedtime! Is it my bedtime?’

‘Yes we’re going to bed now, Hogfly…’

Hiccup took off his backpack, and the Hogfly

hopped in, wedging his fat little bottom inside and

woofing enthusiastically.

‘Night, night, Hogfly…’ whispered Hiccup. ‘And

well done! You were very useful there…’

Hogflys love to be helpful. This Hogfly

was so pleased to be praised, he blew

himself up into a balloon again,

and POP! He burst with pride,

even though he had already

forgotten what Hiccup was

262

thanking him for.

‘Sleep tight!’ yawned the Hogfly. ‘Anchors

aweigh! Happy holidays! Good night, sweet ladies,

good night…’

The instant Hiccup put the lid on the backpack,

deep, snuffling, catarrh-filled snores rumbled from

within.

Quiet as shadows, Hiccup and

Windwalker and Wodensfang flew

towards the moving light. They

landed on a boat nearby, and

leapt like cats from deck to deck,

keeping well in the shadows.

Suddenly there was a sound

of running footsteps. Hiccup and

the two dragons dived behind

a boathouse to hide. The metal

boots of Very Vicious ran past them,

hastening back towards the pitched battle

taking place around and above the Great Hall, which

was now burning as merrily as a gigantic bonfire…

Heart thumping, Hiccup waited until Very

Vicious had disappeared.

A ladder rested against one side of the final boat.

Quiet as a ghost, Hiccup climbed that ladder, and

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peered over the edge.

There were two Alvinsmen guards on deck,

talking in whispers to each other. They were so

engrossed in their conversation that they did not see

Hiccup and the two dragons slip over the side and hide

behind the tent-house in the middle of the deck.

The first guard was sucking his finger.

‘That wretched little dragon BIT me!’ he

grumbled. He looked thoroughly harassed. ‘For a

dragon with no teeth, it HURT! If I’d known this job

included dragon-sitting I’d never have volunteered…

That horrible little creature blew a rude raspberry right

in my face!’

They could only have been talking about

Toothless.

‘Oh, well done, Toothless,’ breathed Wodensfang,

even though he was

normally so keen

on teaching the little

dragon some manners.

Heart lifting,

Hiccup recognised

the voice of Toothless

singing to himself,

down in the depths of

the ship somewhere.

Toothless, thought Hiccup. Thank goodness you’re

all right.

‘One hundred and thirty-three thousand four

hundred and eighty-nine b-b-bottles hanging on

a wall…’ sang the little dragon sadly, for Toothless

was feeling very sorry for himself. ‘One hundred and

thirty-three thousand four hundred and eighty-nine

bottles hanging on a wall… and if ONE green

bottle should accidentally f-f-fall… there’ll be one

hundred and thirty-three thousand four hundred and

eighty-eight bottles hanging on a wall…’

Toothless had recently learnt to count, and

singing this particular song was his way of keeping his

265

spirits up until Hiccup rescued him. Toothless was

convinced, of course, that Hiccup was going to rescue

him.

The second Alvinsman had his hands over his

ears.

‘SHURRUP you revolting little tone-deaf frog!

BE QUIET!’

For one moment Toothless stopped. And then

he began again, in that same, maddening lugubrious

drone:

‘One hundred and thirty-three thousand four

hundred and eighty-eight bottles h-h-hanging on a

wall… one hundred and thirty-three thousand, four

hundred and eighty-eight bottles h-h-hanging on a

wall…’

‘Go down and get him to stop!’ said the second

Alvinsman.

‘Why me?’ begged the first Alvinsman. ‘He’s

already bitten me, done the rude raspberry, eaten half

my lunch and the end of my favourite scabbard, and

we’ve only had him for five minutes! Why don’t you go

down and get him to stop?’

‘OK, OK… you have to be firm with these little

pests, you’re too soft,’ grumbled the second Alvinsman,

and he climbed down a hatch in the middle of the

deck. ‘It’s all in your tone of voice. Watch me. Now

266

look here, you horrible little reptile, pipe down or—

OW! He bit me too!’

‘Don’t for Thor’s sake spank him!’ begged the

first Alvinsman. ‘The witch said he was the Last Lost

Thing, and it was very important that he was kept in

peak physical condition…’

‘That’s r-r-right, you ignorant Alvinsmen!

Toothless is the Last Lost Thing, and he’s the

B-B-BEST ONE!’ Toothless shouted up from

below. ‘One hundred and thirty three thousand, four

hundred and eighty-SEVEN bottles… h-h-hanging on

a wall…’

‘I’m very tempted to lose him again right now,’

said the second Alvinsman climbing up out of the

hatch. ‘He threw up that lunch of yours down my

waistcoat and he bit me right on the nose…’ The

Second Alvinsman had never been attractive, but he

was even less pretty now with his nose swelling up to

twice its normal size.

Well, you shouldn’t go around kidnapping other

people’s dragons, should you? thought Hiccup with

satisfaction.

BANG! One of Camicazi’s pebbles hit something

explosive in the distance, as the sound of the Hooligan

National Anthem rang around the cavern.

‘Do you think that’s the Dragonmarkers attacking

267

us?’ said the

first Alvinsman.

‘It must

be,’ replied the second

Alvinsman. ‘I’d recognise

Valhallarama’s singing voice anywhere.

Very Vicious better hurry back with reinforcements. If

we get attacked by Dragonmarkers, we can’t defend

the Things all on our own…’

The Things.

So it was just as Hiccup hoped. They had hidden

Toothless with the other Lost Things!

A ship was the obvious place to hide them, so

that if they were attacked they could quickly carry them

to a new hiding place.

The Things must be right here on this ship…

There was a clatter of feet on the platform behind

them, and a third Alvinsman came climbing up the

268

ladder, a burly man with a large yellow

moustache.

‘Message from the witch,’ panted the third

Alvinsman. ‘You need to get the Things ready so that

she can move them to a safer location.’

‘Are you sure we should get them out of the

hiding-place?’ said the first Alvinsman. ‘Was that

exactly what the witch said? You know how cross she

gets if we do things without being told…’

They were terrified of the Witch Excellinor. She

had that effect on people.

Oh please… begged the watching Hiccup in his

mind. Please get the Things out of their hiding-place…

‘Well what the witch said exactly was: “If they

don’t get the Things out of their hiding place quickly,

I will personally remove their backbones with my

fingernails,” ’ said the third Alvinsman.

269

This had the ring of truth to it, and the two

Alvinsmen began to twist the pulley that hauled up the

anchor-rope. It took all their strength to turn the pulley

round in great grunting heaves.

And as they drew the anchor rope in, they also

drew in the Things, one by one.

‘Aah…’ sighed the Wodensfang in Hiccup’s

ear. ‘That was why I kept seeing them floating

underwater in my dreams…’

The witch had attached the Things, you see, to

long ropes tied to the anchor rope. And that was why

Snotlout had never found them. He must have hunted

through these boats so many times, in the secrecy and

darkness of night-time. But he never thought to look

underwater.

She was a very nasty woman, that witch, but you

had to admit that she was rather clever at hiding things.

First the crown came over the side. Then the

Roman shield, the arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-

exist, the bracelet that contained the heart’s stone, the

key-that-opens-all-locks, the ticking-thing (smashed but

still ticking), the Dragon Jewel, the second-best sword

and, last of all (and this took a great deal of grunting

and straining on the part of the Alvinsmen), the Lost

Throne of the Wilderwest… followed by the anchor.

270

The Throne was covered with seaweed, and

as they heaved it over the side, little jewel-like crabs

scuttled out of its crevices and scattered all over the

deck.

THE THINGS! thought Hiccup exultantly, as a

crab pattered across his foot. We’ve found the

Things! Now all that we have to do is steal

them…

‘OK,’ said the first

Alvinsman nervously, ‘let’s

stash the Things down in

the hold so we’re ready to

move them when the witch

gives the order.’

The three Alvinsmen

hastily untied the Things from the

anchor-rope and carried them down an

open hatch.

‘Ow!’ came the muffled voice of the first

Alvinsman. ‘That horrible little dragon bit me again!’

The three Alvinsmen re-emerged and the first

Alvinsman slammed down the hatch, bolting and

padlocking it.

Hiccup drew a little pouch of hazelnuts out

from his pocket. (He always kept little treats for

Toothless in his pocket.)

271

He threw one of the hazelnuts as far as he could

on to a neighbouring boat, and then ducked behind the

shadows of the tent-house.

CLANG!

‘What was that?’ bleated the first Alvinsman.

‘You two go and investigate, and I’ll look after

the Things…’ panted the third Alvinsman. ‘We’re

obviously under some sort of attack.’

The first and the second Alvinsmen climbed

down the ladder on to the next boat, swords drawn, to

investigate the noise.

The third Alvinsman was leaning way over the

side of the boat, flare held up high, watching them.

Hiccup tiptoed up and gave him a big shove.

The third Alvinsman gave a small, muffled

scream, and with a satisfying

SPLASH!

landed in the water below and…

CREAK!

Hiccup pushed the ladder down so that there was

no way the third Alvinsman could climb back on to the

boat again. Then he grabbed the boathook, and pushed

off.

He had the Things! He had the Things!

Hiccup’s heart was doing a happy little jig.

272

He hadn’t had a great deal of hope for Plan B,

but so far, it was working unexpectedly well.

What Hiccup did not realise, at the time, was that

the third Alvinsman was not, in fact, an Alvinsman at

all.

It was his own mother, Valhallarama.

You see, Camicazi wasn’t the only one who liked

to dress up in big blond moustaches.

Valhallarama had crept into Alvin’s war bunker

dressed as an Alvinsman, intending to steal the Nine

Lost Things in time to meet Hiccup back on the beach

on Doomsday Eve.

And she would have done it too, if her son had

not unfortunately mistaken her for a real Alvinsman

(the blond-moustache disguise in her case was rather

good, much better than Camicazi’s, because she had

the acreage to carry it off) and given her a big shove in

the back that had thrown her into the water.

‘Oh, Hiccup,’ sighed Valhallarama to herself, as

she trod water and ‘accidentally’ let off an arrow in the

direction of the second Alvinsman, who was firing at

the deck of the departing boat. ‘I told you not to leave

the underground hideout. I told you to trust me, and I

would take care of everything…’

Valhallarama shook her head forgivingly.

273

‘But then,’ she mused, ‘maybe I have to learn to

stand back and let the boy do it his way, make his own

mistakes.’ She sighed. ‘It is harder to do that than I

thought.’

But Hiccup knew nothing of this until much,

much later.

He was busy concentrating on the immediate

problem before him.

He had to row the boat out of the cavern before

those Alvinsmen could raise the alarm. Luckily the

boat was very close to the waterfall. You could hear the

roaring of the water, like the bellow of a Seadragonus

Giganticus Maximus…

Once he was out of the cavern, he would be fine,

the wind would take the sails.

… But even though it was such a short distance,

and not a particularly large boat, how was he to row it

all on his own?

Hiccup ran across the deck, towards the oars,

and peered swiftly into the hatch just to check that

Toothless was in there.

‘Toothless?’ he whispered.

‘Master!’ the joyful voice of Toothless

squeaked back.

Oh, thank Thor!

274

‘Don’t worry, Toothless!’ Hiccup yelled through

the hatch. ‘I haven’t got time to unlock this hatch

now but I’m going to save you!’

275

16. ‘MY TOOTH…WHERE IS

MY TOOTH?’

And then Hiccup stiffened.

All the hairs on the back of his neck rose like the

quills on a fretful porcupine. Not two yards in front of

him, hovering in mid-air, floating in the atmosphere as

if they were being dangled by a malevolent god…

… was a pair of evil red eyes.

And out of airy nothing there came a nasty

whining wisp of a whisper: ‘My tooth… Whe-e-e-ere is

my tooth?’

As soon as Hiccup saw those red eyes, he was

conscious that his arm had been singing in agony

around that horrible tooth for the last hour or so. There

had been so much going on, he had ignored the pain.

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Slowly, slowly, around those evil red eyes with

two little slits for pupils, there materialised the body of

a Vampire Spydragon, crouching on the hatch as if it

was guarding it.

The Vampire Spydragon was a revolting sight,

enough to give you nightmares for years.

Its head was that of a gigantic bat, with one huge

cruel-looking vampire tooth protruding from the side

of its slobbering mouth.

Its horrible little nose was snuffling as the saliva

dripped down its vampire fangs.

That pain in Hiccup’s arm must have been a sign

that the Vampire Spydragon was using the tooth to

track him down.

‘My tooth…’ whined the Vampire Spydragon,

‘Whe-e-ere is my tooth? For I need to eat what I have

bit…Whe-e-ere is my tooth????’

Hiccup said nothing, just backed away in terror,

his left arm hidden behind him.

‘Aha!’ rasped the Vampire Spydragon, its wicked

red eyes lighting up in cruel triumph.

‘You are trying to hide it, you nasty little

burglar, but you cannot conceal it from me… I think

I spy it… I think I have found it… You stole my

tooth, you horrible little thief…’

‘I didn’t mean to…’ stammered the petrified

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Hiccup, taking a

couple of steps backwards.

‘You can have it back if you

like… I don’t want it…’

‘You stole my tooth,’

spat the Vampire Spydragon

savagely, ‘and now I have

found it, I shall finish the

meal that I began…’

It crouched for a second,

bat wings stretched out. And

then it sprang, and sank its

vampire jaws deep into Hiccup’s

left arm, exactly where it had

bitten him only twenty-four hours

earlier.

Hiccup screamed, and

desperately hit the Vampire

Spydragon around its ghastly head.

Windwalker attacked it too, raking

at its thick hairy hide.

But the Vampire Spydragon

would not let go.

Ironically, Hiccup’s

whole left side – arm,

shoulder, leg and

everything – had just

begun to feel slightly

better. Now he could

feel the paralysis creeping

back, a deadening

numbness, and as he

looked down, he saw the

black-purple stain

flowering again.

Vampire Spydragons don’t let go, thought Hiccup.

They have jaws like bear-traps and they never let go…

Hiccup tried to remember all that he knew about

Vampire Spydragons, whether they had any weak

points, but his mind was so confused by the pain in his

arm he could not remember anything at all.

He desperately punched at the Spydragon’s head

with his right fist, but the Spydragon merely gripped

tighter.

Hiccup was aware that he was screaming, but he

couldn’t really hear the noise he was making.

What could he use that was around him on the

boat?

A confused mess of rope lay on the deck, from

where the Alvinsmen had hauled up the Lost Things

and the anchor.

Trying to ignore the pain, Hiccup pulled the

Spydragon forward so that it stepped into the rope

coils, then wriggled and threw himself around in the

creature’s grip.

Iron jaws still holding tight, the Spydragon

thrashed about, trying to keep hold of him, each

maddened lunge getting its legs more thoroughly

entangled with the rope.

And then came Hiccup’s chance.

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Windwalker leapt in and attacked the softer

underside of the Spydragon’s stomach, which was the

rather repellent white of a maggot and provided little

defence.

At the same time, Wodensfang, little old limbs

creaking, launched himself at the Vampire Spydragon’s

head.

The double attack worked.

The Vampire Spydragon screamed in agony

and dropped Hiccup for a second, turning to strike

at Windwalker. Windwalker lunged back and the two

dragons locked jaws.

Hiccup limped to the anchor, which was

balancing on the side of the boat.

With all the strength he had left, he h-e-e-e-eaved

it over the side.

SPLASH!

The anchor landed in the sea below, narrowly

missing the head of Valhallarama, still swimming in

the water just beside the boat, and swamping her so

thoroughly that it removed her blond moustache.

There was an intervening pause, where the weight

of the sinking anchor pulled on the rope, which then

whipped around the deck as if it were a live serpent.

The Spydragon shook off Windwalker, and

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turned again to face Hiccup, jaws wide in an avenging

scream… Its red eyes fixed on Hiccup. It crouched

down to pounce, and this time it would aim for

Hiccup’s heart with its one remaining vampire tooth.

The Death Strike.

But just as it leapt, the whirling, spinning rope

of the anchor pulled tight around the Spydragon’s leg,

and an expression of comical surprise came over the

Spydragon’s face (if anything that terrifying could ever

really look comical) as it was dragged violently across

the deck, and over the side, and into the water, this

time with a really resounding…

SPLASSSHHHH!

Hiccup clasped his hand to his arm, which was

bleeding profusely.

Sticking out of the wound was another Vampire

Spydragon tooth.

Now I have a pair! thought Hiccup, a little

hysterically.

He tried to pull it out, but like the first one, it was

in too deep. So he tore a strip from his shirt to bind up

the wound.

CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

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There was a slow, derisive clapping of hands

behind him.

Hiccup straightened, and turned around

unsteadily…

And there, leaning against the mast of the ship,

one leg elegantly crossed over another, was Snotlout.

17. THE SWORDFIGHT

‘Well done, Useless, well done,’ drawled Snotlout.

‘Very neat dealing with the Spydragon there. I really

thought you were a goner.’

The Hurricane sloped out from behind the mast,

growling warningly. Windwalker snarled in response,

and the two riding-dragons paced warily around each

other on the deck, their spines pointing upwards as if

they were about to fight.

Hiccup caught his breath.

It was impossible to read the expression on

Snotlout’s face

‘Snotlout…’ he said slowly.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Snotlout, waving his hand

dismissively. ‘I know, I’m a villain, and a rogue, and a

Very Naughty Boy and everything, and I betrayed all

you goody-goodies, and aren’t I terrible, tut tut TUT,

but let’s get this ship sailing and out of the cavern first,

and then we can argue to our heart’s content…’

Hiccup and Snotlout took up an oar each, and

rowed towards the waterfall.

Soft as a shadow, and unoticed in that

lightning-lit cavern with the Battle Under the Waterfall

raging at its height, the ship carrying the Lost Things

285

slipped out from under the waterfall and into

Wrecker’s Bay.

Snotlout put away his oar, and took out his

sword.

‘Fight me,’ said Snotlout.

‘But I don’t want to fight you,’ said Hiccup.

‘FIGHT ME!’ roared Snotlout.

‘I haven’t got a sword,’ said Hiccup.

Snotlout always carried two swords, and he threw

Hiccup his second-best one. With the other, he made

furious imaginary passes in the air.

‘Why don’t you want to fight me? Is it because

you are scared?’

‘Not really,’ admitted Hiccup, and that seemed

to enrage Snotlout even further. ‘I’m a little scared, but

mostly I just don’t want to fight you.’

‘You ought to be scared,’ said Snotlout. ‘That bite

from the Vampire Spydragon means you won’t be able

to use your left hand. FIGHT ME! I have betrayed you

yet again… Why won’t you hate me?’

Snotlout was so flushed with anger, in such a

state of emotion, that the words came tumbling out as

if they were beyond his control. ‘HATE ME!’

‘Snotlout, I don’t hate you… and I forgive you

for betraying me again… I understand why you keep

doing it…’

‘Oooh, you are so irritating. You keep being so

heroic all the time. Stop forgiving me. Stop it! You

don’t understand anything! I DON’T WANT TO BE

FORGIVEN!’

‘Snotlout, I don’t want to fight you because I

think we should be trying to get these Lost Things out

of here…’

‘But I’m NOT ON YOUR SIDE!’ howled

Snotlout. ‘IF YOU WON’T FIGHT ME NOW, I

SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU!’

Hiccup shrugged off his backpack with the

sleeping Hogfly in it, and put it carefully down in a coil

of rope so the little dragon wouldn’t get hurt. Hiccup’s

eyes never left Snotlout’s face.

287

‘All right, then,’

said Hiccup, ‘if you insist.’

Snotlout lunged at him.

Automatically (and clumsily, for it

was with his right hand), Hiccup parried the

lunge.

‘Oh dear,’ sighed the Wodensfang,

sadly fluttering down to perch on the tiller.

288

‘Some humans… always fighting… if only it didn’t

have to be this way…’

With a cry of horror, Windwalker dived down to

protect his Master… but was attacked in mid-air by the

Hurricane who brought him rolling down into the sea.

Snotlout slashed forward with a Flashburn Fancy

that overwhelmed Hiccup’s guard and gave him a nasty

gash on the shoulder that stung like a viper’s bite.

Hiccup only just managed to throw the larger boy

off, and roll out of the way, before clumsily ducking

behind the masthead. His left side was so numb now it

was like dragging a great dead weight.

‘All right,’ screamed Snotlout, beside himself

with rage, ‘Mr Smarty-Pants, I’m-Such-A-Hero,

I’m-So-Good-at-Putting-Myself-in-Other-People’s-

Shoes, you tell me, Hiccup. You tell me why I keep

betraying you all the time!’

He lunged forward, trying to reach Hiccup with

his sword around the mast.

‘I think it’s because you could have been a King

yourself,’ said Hiccup.

This was like adding another log on to a fire.

‘YOU BET I COULD HAVE!’ screamed

Snotlout, attacking Hiccup with every single sword

thrust he knew. ‘I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE

HERO! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! I have

everything! The physique, the intelligence, the

ruthlessness, the charm. All I ever wanted was to be a

Chief, a leader. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? But

it was denied to me, just because I was the son of the

second son, not the first.

‘Is that not unfair?’

‘It is very unfair,’ admitted Hiccup.

290

‘Until I was three years old, I was the Heir to the

Hooligan Tribe!’ roared Snotlout. ‘I still remember

the respect in everyone’s eyes when they looked at

me. Their eyes followed my every movement. And you

know what, Hiccup? I would have made a great Chief,

a grand Chief. Being a Chief would have brought out

the best in me…

‘And then,’ Snotlout’s voice darkened, ‘and then

you were born. A weak little mewling mistake of a

RUNT… and everything changed…’ He spat out each

word as if it were bitter as poison. ‘Suddenly you were

the centre of attention. Suddenly you were going to be

the next Chief… and then you were going to be the

Hero… and then you were going to be the King…’

Snotlout lunged forward, breaking through

Hiccup’s feeble guard, and Hiccup dodged out of the

way in the nick of time.

‘Do you want to know why I call you Useless?’

yelled Snotlout bitterly. ‘Because that is what YOU

made ME, just by being born. However hard I try, I

will only be the spare and not the Heir.

‘You made me useless, not needed any more.

‘Before YOU came along I had never been

jealous of anyone. YOU brought that out of me. You

made me pinch you, hit you when no one else was

291

looking…

and then afterwards,

in secret, I despised myself for

acting in such an un-Heroic

fashion. Look what you brought

me to!’

‘I’m sorry…’ said Hiccup,

nearly losing his footing. ‘I didn’t

mean to…’

‘And then you release

the Dragon Furious from

Berserk…’

‘I didn’t mean to…’

said Hiccup. ‘It was an

accident…’

‘You never mean

to! It’s always an

accident! You

take my whole

world from

me, and it’s

all just an

accident!’ said

Snotlout savagely.

‘There was

absolutely nothing

wrong with the world

that YOU have just

wrecked. I loved that

world and everything

about it. I loved the

danger of riding on a

dragon’s back, the hunting,

the storms and the shipwrecks,

stealing dragons’ eggs from the dragon

hatching-grounds, swordfighting, Bashyball,

my whole lost life on the Isle of Berk, I loved

absolutely everything about it…

‘And then it was gone…’

293

The ache in Snotlout’s voice was unbearable. He

fought in earnest, with wild, plunging lashes, Hiccup

dodging this way and that, handicapped as he was

by the weak awkwardness of his right arm and his

ridiculous numb leg which made him hop around like a

poor broken seabird.

‘ALL… YOUR… FAULT…’

As Snotlout pressed the advantage, Hiccup could

feel himself tiring. The ache in his left shoulder was

becoming unmanageable.

‘And then you keep on saving my life, and

forgiving me for it, and it just makes you look like this

big Hero, and I’m supposed to be grateful…

‘Well I’m NOT grateful!

‘Because you have taken away everything about

my life that is worth living for!’

Snotlout kept ranting between ferocious lunges,

either at the gods above or at himself.

‘Look, gods, see how good I am!’ he shouted.

He plunged forward in a flurry of ferocious

lunges.

He made a Flashburn Flunge (a very fancy lunge

accompanied by a leap through the air), a Baggybum

Balletic (one of his own father’s moves, a jump and

a stamp, followed by an aggressive launch at the

294

opponent, simultaneously running very quickly past in

case you missed them) and five Cunning Remises in a

row, as if he were showing those deaf old gods Woden

and Thor exactly how wrong they were in not choosing

him to be the finder of the Lost Things in the first

place.

Snotlout’s last sword thrust sent Hiccup’s own

sword spinning out of his hand, and Hiccup’s left side

gave way beneath him, and he knelt before his cousin,

with Snotlout’s victorious face right above him.

‘Look!’ panted Snotlout. ‘I AM NOT

USELESS, I AM THE BEST! I AM BETTER

THAN HICCUP IN EVERY WAY!’

His face contorted with emotion. Snotlout stood

there, the sword pointing at Hiccup’s chest, his arm

shaking.

‘I could kill you now,’ said Snotlout.

‘But even if I kill you now,’ he raged, ‘even if I

kill you now, and take the Things for myself, even if I

do that…’

And then he paused, a long time, before he spoke

the truth.

‘No one will follow me.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry, Snotlout…’ said Hiccup, although

the words seemed inadequate.

295

‘HATE ME, for Thor’s sake, you horrible little

cousin!’ Snotlout shouted. ‘Why won’t you hate

me?’

‘I am so sorry, Snotlout,’ said Hiccup, and

he really did mean it. ‘I just genuinely can’t hate

you…’

‘You feel sorry for me, don’t you?’ said

Snotlout fiercely. ‘You PITY me. Don’t you?’

Hiccup said nothing, because they both knew it

was true.

‘How dare you pity me!’ roared Snotlout. ‘How

dare you!

‘STOP FORGIVING ME! STOP IT! Why can’t

you understand? I need to be angry! I have to keep

being angry! Because if I slow down and I stop being

angry, I have to look at where I am now…’

Snotlout’s sword was trembling. Something in his

voice changed, from anger to absolute despair.

‘If I stop being angry, then I have to look back at

what I have been fighting for all these years, and it has

all been for nothing.

‘If I stop being angry it bursts on me, like a kind

of horror, that perhaps my hatred of you has led me to

fight for the wrong side.

‘My hatred of you crept in like a green poison and

296

twisted my judgement, clouded my sight and led me to

follow Alvin, that evil thing, and there I lost my way.

‘Now I have seen what Alvin is, and that devil, his

mother, and I know that he is worse than I ever dreamt

evil could be.

‘My jealousy has made me destroy all the

things that in my heart of hearts I value…’

‘My honour. The respect of

Gobber. The respect of my father.

My whole world, the world of

dragons, dragons that I love.

‘If I stop being angry, I

have to see what I am, and

what I am now is what

the witch said. I am a

treacherous worm. I

am worthless, useless,

nothing of value. I am

not surprised that all

those people Turned

Their Backs on me.

‘I have Turned My Back on me.

‘I have Turned My Back on myself.’

Snotlout dropped his sword to the deck, where

it fell on the wood with an ugly clang. He put his face

in his elbow. His shoulders heaved with uncontainable

sobs.

There was a long and terrible silence.

Hiccup struggled to find the right words, for

it was truly awful and piteous to see a person in the

miserable state of having Turned Their Back on

themselves.

But somehow he found the words of a person

who was meant to be a King.

‘You are being too hard on yourself, Snotlout,’

said Hiccup at last. ‘A weaker person than you would

have killed me just now. You could have done that.

You won the swordfight, you disarmed me. But you

knew that the plight of the world was more important

than your own personal feelings. You put your honour

before your pride, and that is what Heroes do.

‘Do not take this all on yourself. This is not all

your fault. Fate and the stars have put us in a difficult

situation.

‘I know I am not what you wanted in a King,’

said Hiccup. ‘I know that it is hard for you to follow

298

someone who is physically weaker than you are and,

what is more, your younger cousin. And it is not

surprising that it is hard. How can you follow someone

that in your heart you do not respect?

‘I wish I could offer you a King who is greater

than I am. I can’t turn into someone else, I can only be

me. But I have discovered that I too, am stronger than

I thought I was. I think I can do this. I think I can be

this King that the Dragonmarkers want me to be.’

‘What are you saying?’ said Snotlout.

‘I am asking you, once again, whether you will

join the Dragonmarker side,’ said Hiccup.

Another long pause.

Snotlout wasn’t expecting this at all.

It took him completely by surprise.

‘If you put your faith in me, I will try not to

disappoint you,’ added Hiccup.

‘Are you saying,’ said Snotlout, wonderingly

taking his face out of his elbow, ‘that you are still

prepared to take the risk and trust me, after I have

betrayed you again and again and again?’

‘I know in my heart that you are a Hero in the

making,’ said Hiccup. ‘We all make mistakes. We all

need second chances and even third, fourth and fifth

chances. Maybe you just needed to have that one last

fight with me, and then you’d be able to join our side.’

Another long, long pause.

It was like a door had suddenly opened in the

very dark and tiny room which Snotlout’s life had

become, a room in which he had been so trapped and

cramped and contorted, and he had not seen light for

such a very long time that he had almost forgotten light

existed.

At last Snotlout took his face out of his elbow

entirely and wiped it with his waistcoat. His face had

lost its ill, green colour, and he looked better than he

had in ages.

300

‘You,’ said Snotlout, ‘are a very unusual person,

Hiccup.’

Well, it was better than ‘You are a little weirdo,

Hiccup,’ which was what Snotlout normally said.

‘I haven’t really allowed myself to think this until

now…’ Snotlout said awkwardly, and it was obviously

hard for him to get out these words, ‘but maybe you

might not be quite such a disastrous King as I used to

think you’d be. You were quite brave back there in the

witch’s camp, I thought.’

‘Thank you,’ said Hiccup.

‘And perhaps,’ said Snotlout, ‘perhaps Fate does

know her business after all. You aren’t the King that we

wanted, but maybe you are the King that we need.’

He bent down to pick up his sword, slowly, as if

he were beginning to recover from a long, long illness.

‘I guess I could be helpful to you, couldn’t I?’ said

Snotlout thoughtfully. ‘After all, you would only have

one paltry little Thing if it wasn’t for me. Not much

hope of being crowned King with one measly little

Thing. And now, thanks to me, you have all of them.’

‘Yes, it’s brilliant, Snotlout, I have to say, you’ve

done the most magnificent job,’ admitted Hiccup.

‘We’d never have got all the Things without your

help… My parents are going to be so pleased… We’re

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in with a real chance now.’

Snotlout drew himself up to his full dignified

height.

He turned to Hiccup, and bowed, like a Warrior

of old, following the ancient code of the Kings of the

Wilderwest, when they invited their greatest Heroes to

join them at High Table.

‘My sword is at your service, King,’ said Snotlout

to Hiccup.

Hiccup bowed formally back.

‘I am honoured to accept it,’ said Hiccup, in the

traditional time-honoured fashion.

‘Shake hands?’ said Snotlout, almost shyly.

Hiccup grinned.

Snotlout and Hiccup shook hands.

‘Oh that was well done, Hiccup,’ whispered

Wodensfang admiringly. ‘You could give that witch a

lesson or two in changing hearts and minds.’

‘Are you all r-r-right up there, Master?’ came

poor Toothless’s terrified voice floating up through

the floor-boards of the deck. ‘And wossit he talking

about, the One-With-the-Nose-So-Big-You-could-

Nest-in-There? Doesn’t he know Toothless is the

BEST ONE?’

Hiccup knelt down, and he could actually see

Toothless directly below him, through a crack in the

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deck. He was locked in a cage, poor Toothless, his

spines drooping, his eyes large and terrified.

‘I’m fine,’ Hiccup reassured him. ‘We haven’t

got time to break into the hold yet, we’re just going

to sail to a safe place and then we’ll get you out of

there, I promise, Toothless.’

‘Toothless not like being t-t-trapped!’ squeaked

poor Toothless.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake,’ said Snotlout wryly, ‘nothing

changes. Stop whispering and blowing kisses to your

cute ickle dragon and help me get this ship out of here.’

In all the drama of their swordfight, they had

forgotten that they were supposed to be running away.

‘Where are we going?’ said Hiccup, scrambling to

his feet again.

‘Across Wrecker’s Bay to the Dragonmarker

hideout,’ said Snotlout. ‘I’m presuming you do actually

know where that is, after the witch spent so much

trouble trying to get the information out of you?’

‘The hideout is in Coral Beach,’ said Hiccup with

a grin. ‘My mother told me that just before we split up

in the Amber Slavelands.’

‘OK,’ said Snotlout. ‘We’ll get there just in time

for you to sail across to Hero’s Gap for Doomsday Eve.

You really like to cut it fine, don’t you, Hiccup?’

Snotlout rubbed his hands together. He was

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cheering up in front of Hiccup’s very eyes.

‘OPERATION MAKE HICCUP KING is on its

way!’

‘We’ll have to be really lucky for this to work…’

said Hiccup.

‘You got any better Plans, O Brilliant One?’

snorted Snotlout. ‘Why don’t you just concentrate

on sailing this boat, and try not to sink it, eh, like you

always did with The Hopeful Puffin…’

It was as good a plan as any under the

circumstances.

18. A VERY SHORT CHAPTER

IN WHICH IT LOOKS LIKE

EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TO

GO RIGHT FOR FIVE MINUTES

The boys went to work, getting the ship sailing as fast

as possible, expertly handling the ropes like the young

Vikings they were. They had done this a thousand

times in Viking Sailing Practice. But never together.

They worked in surprising unison, for two boys who

had loathed each other all their lives.

Hiccup felt a weird sense of elation, for the first

time in his life to be working side-by-side with Snotlout

for a common aim.

They were not out of danger. No. But,

unbelievably, they had all the Things, every single one,

safely locked in the hold. If they could just get them to

Tomorrow… so close now that they could actually see

it, a dark shadow in the mist, tantalisingly within reach.

They had finally laid to rest their old quarrel, they

had got all the Things, there was a clear wind taking

them across Wrecker’s Bay, and for five whole minutes

it looked like everything was going to be all right.

It would have been even more inspiring if it

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hadn’t been for the sound of Toothless howling. Still

locked in his cage, Toothless had decided he was going

to die, so he had stopped singing the song about the

thousands of bottles, and he was now singing an even

sadder song, which went something like this:

‘Toothless is dy-y-y-ying… Poor Toothless is

dy-y-ying…’

‘Can’t you shut the gummy one up,’ said Snotlout

through gritted teeth. ‘It’s making me feel like throwing

myself off the ship or giving myself up to the witch.’

As they slipped out of the witch’s harbour, flocks

of dragons and seagulls flew screeching overhead,

screaming cries of warning, swarming in numbers like a

plague of locusts from the direction of the Open Sea.

An extraordinary noise followed them, a noise

unlike anything Hiccup had ever heard before, a deep

and elemental howl. For one second, Hiccup thought it

was the Dragon Furious, before realising that no living

creature could make that noise – not even a mighty Sea

Dragon the size of a mountain.

Only a true apocalyptic power could make that

noise. Like volcanoes and earthquakes and hurricanes,

that noise is one that tells the human being how small

and insignificant a pinprick is mankind, for all his

cleverness and ingenuity, in the face of the awesome

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power of Nature itself.

‘What is that?’ shouted Snotlout, his face turning

a little green.

‘That,’ said Hiccup swallowing, ‘is the Winter

Wind of Woden.’

Just to make their escape a little more interesting

than it was already, the Winter Wind of Woden was

starting to blow. What were the chances?

Hiccup made some calculations. They might

avoid the Winter Wind of Woden if they were fast –

and lucky.

Doggedly, quietly, the two boys set the ship

in the direction of the Dragonmarkers’ hideout and

moved out of the Harbour, streams of dragons and

birds shrieking above them like shooting stars, and the

clamour and explosions and fireworks of the Battle

going on behind them.

19. EVERYTHING GOES

WRONG AGAIN, VERY

RAPIDLY

While Hiccup and Snotlout were fighting, everything

else had fallen away. They had been so focused on each

other and their ancient quarrel that they had forgotten

about the peril they were in, their flight from the witch

and Alvin.

But now the outside world forced itself on their

attention once again.

Just as they had got the ship on course, sailing

towards the Dragonmarker hideout, Snotlout stared

with an arrested expression at something back at the

waterfall, on the shore they had just left, and nudged

Hiccup.

They were half way across Wrecker’s Bay.

Halfway to Coral Beach and safety.

But a little group of black specks had crawled out

of the calm, distant waterfall like bluebottles creeping

out of a crack in the wall.

Tense with anxiety, Snotlout and Hiccup stared

at the distant land, hoping against hope that they were

mistaken, that the little black specks were just tricks of

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the light

and the wind.

But as the specks flew nearer,

there was a hollow feeling in Hiccup’s heart.

He knew what they were.

Ravenhunters.

A flock of the witch’s

Ravenhunters, pursuing

them like an inescapable,

unwearying Fate.

Ravenhunters

were too small

for riders,

but they acted as spies for the

witch. On they came, with remorseless flaps.

Flying dragons can easily outpace a ship.

Nearer… nearer… nearer…

‘SHOOT THEM!’ yelled Snotlout, grabbing his

bow.

Windwalker and the Hurricane leapt bravely

from the deck of the ship to confront the Ravenhunters

mid-air as they flew overhead.

Snotlout shot five of them – even

Hiccup, with one dead hand, shot one.

Windwalker and the Hurricane took out even more,

diving after them as the remainder flapped back to the

witch, squawking. But there were too many to catch.

‘They’ll fetch reinforcements,’ shouted Snotlout.

‘And this time they will bring Bullguards with riders.

Those Bullguards are quick. They’ll catch us before we

get to the Dragonmarker hideout, if it’s where you say

it is.’

It was too cruel.

Even half an hour later, and they might have got

to safety.

They were so close, SO close to getting

away with it, sneaking those Things

away from underneath

the very noses of Alvin and the witch…

Hiccup scanned the horizon.

The Winter Wind of Woden, blowing like an

angry god, was closer than the Dragonmarker hideout.

‘Could we steer the ship into the Winter Wind?’

asked Hiccup. ‘They’d never follow us in there.’

‘There’s a reason for that,’ said Snotlout, with

a hollow laugh. ‘It’s a guaranteed death sentence.

Besides, I don’t think there’s time. Look! I can see the

Bullguards coming out already. They’ll reach us before

we get to the Wind.’

The two boys looked at Windwalker and the

Hurricane.

The Things were trapped. They were locked in

the hold.

But the boys themselves did have a choice.

They could climb on to the riding-dragons’ backs

and fly themselves to safety. Both Windwalker and the

Hurricane were faster than Bullguards.

But that would mean abandoning all of the Lost

Things to Alvin and the witch. Including Toothless.

What else could they do? Stay here and die?

‘W-w-wossgoingon?’ came the voice of

Toothless, floating up from the hold of the boat.

‘It’s OK, Toothless,’ Hiccup shouted down.

‘We’ve just hit a little hitch… nothing to worry

about.’

Hurricane gave an unhappy whine, his spines

drooping, his tail between his legs. Automatically,

Snotlout put out a hand and soothed the Hurricane’s

splendid, drooping head.

‘It’ll be all right, boy,’ he said. ‘It’s all going to be

all right.’

Snotlout stared into the distance, thinking.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake,’ he swore, bending down,

picking up his sword and putting it back in his

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scabbard. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this…

‘Swap clothes with me, and give me your

helmet!’ Snotlout ordered Hiccup, taking off his own

helmet and shrugging off his waistcoat.

‘Why?’ shouted Hiccup, taking off his own

waistcoat.

‘I don’t believe this… I don’t believe this…’

snorted Snotlout to himself. And then to Hiccup:

‘They’re after YOU, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Hiccup, slowly.

‘So I’ll dress up as you, O Lightning-Brain,’ said

Snotlout. ‘I’ll put on your helmet, and I’ll get on your

Windwalker, and I’ll ride out to meet those Bullguards

and their riders, and that’ll distract them for a bit…’

‘But that’s crazy!’ spluttered Hiccup. ‘If you go

out there to meet them, all on your own, you’ll get

yourself killed!’

Snotlout grinned. ‘Oh, you think my job is crazy?

While I’m distracting them, you get to steer this ship

into the Winter Wind of Woden, and if that isn’t crazy,

then I don’t know what is…’

Snotlout yanked on Hiccup’s waistcoat and held

out his hand for Hiccup’s fire-suit.

‘Are you sure about this?’ whispered Hiccup,

putting on Snotlout’s helmet.

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‘Listen,’ said Snotlout, struggling to fit into

Hiccup’s fire-suit and putting his great galumphing foot

through the knee before he got it on, ‘you’re always

hogging the limelight, Hiccup, but you know what? It’s

my turn to be the Hero.’

Snotlout laughed out loud.

‘I’m on your side now, aren’t I? I’m a

Dragonmarker. We’re going to make it out of here

with all of the Lost Things, and we’re going to get you

crowned King.

‘So the next time I see Gobber,’ said Snotlout,

standing up straight and proud, and speaking in

passionate earnest, ‘he will know that I am a Hero

after all. My father will be proud of me. They will all

be proud of me. They will Turn Their Backs round

again and look me in the eye, not with disgust but

admiration. The Sagas will sing my name, and they will

never forget me.’

Hiccup was now wearing Snotlout’s helmet and

body armour.

As a final touch, Snotlout hung his Black Star

around Hiccup’s neck.

‘There,’ Snotlout said, with satisfaction. ‘X marks

the spot. It looks good on you, Hiccup. It’ll give those

Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow something to aim

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at. You are only borrowing this, mind,’ he warned.

‘Don’t you dare lose it, however scary those Guardians

are. Look after it until we meet again. That Star is very

important to me.’

‘Hang on, Snotlout…’ said Hiccup wildly. ‘You

don’t have to do this. I’ll think of something…’

‘But I’ve thought of something,’ said Snotlout,

‘You’re not the only one who can make plans, Hiccup.

Let me do this!’

Hiccup had an appalling premonition of disaster.

‘Windwalker! Don’t take him!’ cried Hiccup.

Windwalker was an obedient dragon, and in

normal circumstances he would have obeyed Hiccup.

But Windwalker had followed enough of what was

going on to know that this was their only chance. He

gave his master an apologetic, slobbery nuzzle, and

knelt down so that Snotlout could climb on his back.

‘Why you have to have such a mess of a

riding-dragon, Hiccup, I really do not know,’ scolded

Snotlout. ‘You’re the son of a Chief, for Thor’s sake…’

Snotlout reached out and gave Hurricane a last

sweeping pat on one regal, shining side. He rested his

head briefly on the Hurricane’s flank and whispered,

‘You’re a good dragon, Hurricane.’

Before Snotlout climbed on to Windwalker’s

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back, he remembered something.

‘Give me the Dragonmark before I go,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, give you the Dragonmark?’

asked Hiccup.

‘I don’t want to be like that young Grimbeard the

Ghastly in the Wodensfang’s story,’ said Snotlout. ‘Too

proud to take the Dragonmark. I’m a Dragonmarker.

So give me the Dragonmark.’

‘How can I give you the Dragonmark?’

stammered Hiccup. ‘You have to have the brand…

That long thin thingummy that ends in an S.’

‘Improvise!’ said Snotlout impatiently. ‘You’re a

King, aren’t you? Do your King thing…’

Snotlout knelt in front of his cousin.

Hiccup put his finger in some charred charcoal

from a burnt bit on one of the masts. Solemnly, he

made an S shape on Snotlout’s forehead. Then he

searched for some suitably Kingly thing to say on such

an occasion.

‘You are, now and forever, a Companion of the

Dragonmark,’ he said at last.

Snotlout nodded shortly. ‘Of course, it’s only

temporary. Until I can get the real thing. But it’s

important that people know whose side I am on.’

Snotlout climbed on Windwalker’s back.

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Hiccup’s far-too-big helmet with the

far-too-big plume fitted Snotlout far better

than it had ever fitted Hiccup.

Snotlout pulled down the front of the helmet.

Suddenly he looked like a stranger.

Very noble.

A Hero of old.

Snotlout urged Windwalker upwards with his

knees, shouting at the top of his voice,

‘HEROES LIVE FOR EEEEEVERRRRRRRRR!’

20. THE LAST SONG OF

GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY

Neighing in terror, the valiant Windwalker leapt

into the sky, carrying his helmeted rider towards the

oncoming army of Alvinsmen.

For each Bullguard with a rider, there were five

more attached to the riders’ wrists by long chains, like

horses pulling racing chariots in the air. The Bullguards

halted, wings humming, not quite sure what to make of

a lone boy attacking them. Were there more invisible

Deadly Shadow dragons backing him up? Surely he

could not be alone? Did this impudent human not

know how terrifying they were?

Hiccup picked up the backpack with the still

sleeping Hogfly in it, and put it on his back.

‘Don’t worry, Toothless!’ he called through the

locked hatch to his little dragon. ‘It’s all perfectly

fine…’

Hiccup turned the ship straight south now, out

of the protection of Wrecker’s Bay, directing its furling

sails towards the screaming hurricane of the Wind.

Further back and invisible to all, Camicazi

and Fishlegs had just left Alvin’s underground war

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bunker and were urging the Deadly Shadow forward.

They weren’t quite within range of shooting at the

Bullguards yet.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake!’ moaned Fishlegs. ‘That’s

Hiccup! Why is he riding at Alvin’s army?’

The witch herself was seated on a Queen

Bullguard, a dragon rather larger than the rest of its

species. Her white cloak streamed out behind her.

Alvin was on a King Bullguard by her side.

She, too, thought she recognised Hiccup.

‘It’s him…’ she whispered. ‘The Hiccup boy… his

dragon must have saved him… But what is he doing

now? Has he turned mad?’

It was typical of Snotlout, somehow, that even

in a situation of desperate peril, he was still showing

off. For as he flew towards the swarm of hovering

Bullguards, Snotlout threw in an entirely unnecessary

somersault.

It was one of Flashburn’s favourites, a

Loop-de-Loop Special, and highly difficult to carry out

at the best of times. You had to grip very tightly indeed

on to the dragon’s back with your knees in order not to

fall off when the dragon was upside-down.

‘You see!’ Snotlout called over his shoulder for

Hiccup’s benefit, though Hiccup could hardly hear

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him. ‘I’M THE BEST DRAGON FLYER IN THE

WORLD!’

He then tried to get up on his feet, another

Flashburn trick, but the Windwalker was flying too fast

now for that one, and he hastily re-seated himself.

As Snotlout rode straight at the Bullguards,

Hiccup could hear him singing Grimbeard’s song, the

song that Grimbeard sang once, long ago, when he

sailed into the west on his ship The Endless Journey,

after he had killed his own son and broken up the

kingdom of the Wilderwest.

Here is that song that Snotlout sang:

I sailed so far to be a King but the time was never

right…

I lost my way on a stormy past, got wrecked

in starless night…

But let my heart be wrecked by hurricanes

and my ship by stormy weather

I know I am a Hero… and a Hero is…

FOREVER!

Hiccup could feel the sea beneath the ship

picking up more strongly as he sailed closer and closer,

nearer and nearer, to that howling hurricane din, the

Winter Wind of Woden.

In another time, another place, I could have been a

325

King

But in my castle’s ruined towers the lonely

seabirds sing

I burnt up my Tomorrows, I cannot go

back ever

But I am still a Hero… and a Hero is…

FOREVER!

The Bullguards hovered suspiciously. Their

whiskers were out, feeling the air.

‘What is he doing?’ hissed the witch suspiciously.

‘It could be a trick…’

But Alvin was sensing imminent triumph. He

screwed in his favourite hook.

‘No, he knows he’s trapped,’ Alvin gloated.

‘That’s Grimbeard the Ghastly’s Last Song he is singing

there… He knows he is trapped and he is going down

fighting… He is going down like a Hero, trying to

make us look bad, the little rat.’

For behind their leaders, Alvin was acutely aware

that the Alvinsmen were whispering to one another,

‘Wow, he’s still alive… and he’s singing that song….’

‘ATTACCKKKKKK!’ roared Alvin the

Treacherous.

The Bullguards let out a simultaneous scream,

terrible to hear. And the Bullguard and Alvinsman army

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shot after Snotlout and the Windwalker like a vast

swarm of hornets, with the witch still shrieking, ‘No…

Wait! It could be a trick! It could be a trick!’

Screaming like a madman, Windwalker beneath

him glazed with terror, Snotlout fled through the sky,

pursued by the Alvinsman army.

‘Oh, for Thor’s sake,’ whispered Hiccup,

petrified, scared to look over his shoulder but looking

nonetheless. ‘Oh for Thor’s sake…’

On Snotlout charged, howling joyful insults

over his shoulder and firing arrows at the pursuing

Bullguards.

‘Come and get me, you buck-toothed, pig-ugly

grandmas! Catch-me-if-you-can, you lickspittle,

worm-wriggling night-creatures!’

Hiccup was too far away to hear what the insults

were, but he almost grinned as he imagined them, for

Snotlout had always been brilliant at insults on the

Pirate Training Programme.

‘Take that, you mangy, hippo-slow

vipers-for-handbags! Can’t catch me, you vile,

rabbit-hearted loser-snakes!’

Hiccup was steering the boat very close to the

Wind now. Snotlout was sailing very close to the wind

himself, for though the Windwalker could fly much

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faster than the Bullguards, Snotlout was deliberately

flying the dragon slowly to make himself a more

tempting lure to chase.

The maddened swarm converged on Snotlout

so closely that Hiccup thought for one heartstopping

moment that they might have caught him.

And then Snotlout pulled out an impudent Death

Dive, steering Windwalker down, down, like he was a

peregrine falcon diving, at over one hundred and eighty

miles per hour, towards the sea.

The Bullguards followed, plunging after him like

arrows falling from the sky.

At the absolute last minute, Snotlout brought

Windwalker out of the dive, so late that the

Windwalker brushed the tops of the waves with the tips

of his wings.

A large number of Bullguards could not correct

themselves in time, and went plunging into the water.

Many others put the brakes on in the nick of time,

but were put off course, and went spiralling into other

Bullguards. When the swarm righted itself, squawking,

and set off in pursuit once more, they had lost about a

third of their number, who were picking themselves up

out of the sea.

‘Ha ha! You chocolate-coated pig-dragons! You

328

can’t even fly!’ jeered the distant Snotlout.

‘OK, now, Snotlout,’ whispered Hiccup to

himself, watching the tiny figure gesticulating rudely

on the back of the Windwalker. ‘I’m nearly there. You

need to get yourself to safety… Fly to Coral Beach and

the Dragonmarkers can defend you…’

It was almost as if Snotlout could hear him, for

he now crouched down low over Windwalker’s back,

and he whispered a word, and Hiccup could see the

Windwalker leaping forward.

The only dragon that could have beaten the

Windwalker now in a straight speed chase was the

Silver Phantom.

He streaked away in the direction of the Coral

Beach.

Hiccup heaved a sigh of relief.

And then it happened.

Almost leisurely, one of the Alvinsmen shot an

arrow.

It sang through the air…

… and Hiccup saw it clearly. Snotlout was

turning, to shout insults or to see how close his

pursuers were, and the arrow struck Snotlout full in

the chest.

329

Then

a burst

of flame

from one of the

Bullguards hit him,

and burnt through

the safety stirrup, and

Hiccup’s poor raggedy

fire-suit could not hold up

to the onslaught – the fur

underneath caught fire… the

boy went up like a candle… and

fell from Windwalker’s back.

Down he fell, flaming, like a

falling star…

Down into the cool sea

below…

… and Snotlout’s

light was quenched.

‘NOOOOOOOOOO!’

Hiccup shouted. ‘NO! NO! NO!

NO! NO! NO!’

Windwalker gave a shriek of horror.

He was going so fast that by the time he

had wheeled around in a screeching turn and

plunged towards the sea to look for Snotlout, the

entire pack of Bullguards was in his way.

They were no longer pursuing the Windwalker,

for the Boy-They-Thought-Was-Hiccup was the

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real prey, and they knew they had killed him. Now

they needed the body to prove it to the witch, so the

riderless Bullguards were let off their chains so they

could dive for the body.

‘YEEESSSSSSSS!’ screeched Alvin in victory.

‘Did you see that, Mother? We’ve got Hiccup at last!

We’ve GOT HIM!’

‘Very clever,’ hissed the witch. ‘Well done, my

boy…’

The Bullguards screamed too, gloating cackles of

victory and triumph and glee most dreadful to listen

to. They swarmed, curdling through the sky and diving

into the sea, looking for the body of their impudent boy

enemy.

So many, many times, when all seemed lost,

things had come back from the brink. Hiccup had

almost come to believe that he and his friends were

invulnerable.

But…

Sometimes time cannot tick backwards.

Sometimes you cannot put a dragon back in a

forest, nor a witch back in a tree-trunk, nor the breath

back into a friend when all the breath has gone.

War really does have terrible consequences.

DOWN to the ocean floor, Snotlout sank swiftly,

332

for he was weighed down by his sword and other

weapons.

His limbs spread out like a star, he was flying

through the sea, falling and ever falling, like soft snow

through the air, into another world.

‘Heroes who die in battle go straight to

Valhalla…’ whispered Hiccup.

Snotlout had taken many wrong turns and done

many bad things, for he was a boy who had been born

out of his time, caught in a world that was changing all

around him, and that is always hard.

But it is through our actions that we show who

we really are.

In the end Snotlout died nobly, trying to do the

right thing in difficult circumstances. And in some ways

he would never die, because his name would live on

forever.

Hiccup looked down for a moment at the Black

Star.

There was no time to think about it now.

His tears were blown away

instantly by the wind

hitting him full in

the face. He

struggled to

keep the ship on course.

‘I have to get to Tomorrow at all costs… I have to

get to Tomorrow… I’ll think about it tomorrow.’

A cold desperation settled on Hiccup as he

pointed the ship ever deeper into the storm.

Please don’t let the Alvinsmen remember the ship.

High among jubilant Bullguards and Alvinsmen,

the witch’s white head turned, like the tick of a clock.

‘The Things… the Lost Things…’ she hissed.

Far down in the Bay, unsteered by human hand

(or so the witch thought), the ship carrying the Lost

Things was sailing straight towards the Winter Wind.

‘The Things!’ screeched the witch. ‘The Things!

Fetch the boy’s body later! We need the Things!’

As one, the Bullguard army wheeled round and

made like daggers for the little ship, now

just a whisper away from

the Wind.

‘Stop that boat!’ screamed the witch. ‘Stop that

boat! If the Things go into the Winter Wind, we will

not find them again in time!’

‘Come ON!’ panted Hiccup, drenched to the

skin, a little drowned rat in Snotlout’s too-big clothes,

‘PLEASE let me get there… Don’t let Snotlout have

died for nothing… PLEASE Woden, great god of the

Wild Ride… let me get there… let me get there…’

Ah, you know you are in desperate circumstances

when your measure of success is casting your boat into

the full strength of the Winter Wind.

But as Doomsday Eve loomed, it was the only

hope now that Hiccup had of reaching the shores of

Tomorrow.

The swarm of Bullguards turned, and the

Alvinsmen shot fiery arrows towards the ship. Their

arrows lit the sails, which instantly burst

into flames.

Hiccup slammed the tiller to the left, swerving to

make himself more difficult to catch… the boat shifted

wildly underneath him, and hit a great wave that

slammed her up on her left-hand side.

One of the Alvinsmen generals was riding a

Gorebluffer. Gorebluffers swallow large stones, which

they can then use as projectiles.

The Gorebluffer swooped heavily

above the little

ship, just a whisper away from the Wind, and dropped

three large stones the size of cupboards, right on the

deck.

CRUUNNNNNNCH!

With a sickening sound of breaking wood, the

little ship split in two.

One half, the half containing the Lost Things,

sank instantly.

The other, with Hiccup still at the tiller, drifted

on towards the Wind.

DOWN the Lost Things fell, down to the ocean

floor.

‘We got them!’ shrieked the witch. ‘Dive for the

Lost Things, Bullguards!’

(Do not fear for Toothless, dear reader. Even

though he is inside a cage, Toothless is a dragon, so he

has gills and he can breathe underwater just as easily

as he can on land. And if the witch gets him – and she

may – she will not hurt him, because he is the last Lost

Thing. And he is the Best One.)

Hiccup had been hit by something, and the cut

was bleeding into his eyes so he could not see. He was

barely conscious, and mercifully unaware that he had

already lost the Things.

The half of the boat he was still steering had

almost completely sunk, but he hadn’t even realised.

He was still holding on to the tiller, the lower half of his

body submerged in the water.

He was muttering to himself: ‘Into the Wind…

into the Wind… I have to get into the Wind…

‘Don’t worry, Toothless…’ he said, in his

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delirium, ‘don’t worry… it’s fine… I’m going to get us

into the Wind… I’ll get us there…’

Way in the distance, Camicazi and Fishlegs,

seated on the back of the Deadly Shadow, had seen

the whole drama unfold, had seen what they thought

was Hiccup hit in the chest and fall to the sea, had seen

the boat with the Lost Things on it holed just before it

went into the Wind, and the witch’s Bullguards diving

in triumph.

‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!’ screamed

Fishlegs.

One of the Bullguards had already flown up to

give Alvin the key-that-opens-all-locks. It was only a

matter of time before they found the other Things.

‘No…’ wept Fishlegs in horror. ‘It’s not

possible…’

Camicazi was white.

‘No it isn’t possible, Fishlegs,’ muttered

Camicazi. ‘Hiccup is not dead. I would know it if he

were. I KNOW I would know it, if he were… I would

feel it in my soul…’

Hiccup was not dead, although neither his

friends nor his enemies could see him. He was blindly

struggling in the water, hanging on to the sad remnants

of the boat.

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And then Hiccup was swallowed up by the

Winter Wind of Woden. He and his pathetic broken

ship were whirled away on the force and rapidity of the

tempest, like a tiny piece of bark swept up by a tidal

wave.

Hiccup went into the Wind.

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21. DOOMSDAY EVE ON

TOMORROW

During the night, the Winter Wind of Woden wailed

like a banshee across Wrecker’s Bay and all the way

down towards the blasted, cursed island of Tomorrow.

Early the following morning, Doomsday Eve,

the witch and Alvin and all of their Alvinsmen were

gathered on the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift,

at the bottom of the Murderous Islands.

A light snow was falling.

The witch had also brought along Gobber and

those Dragonmarkers re-captured at the end of the

Battle Under the Waterfall the previous night.*

The witch wanted them to witness Alvin’s

triumph before they were executed, so they were

standing – sad, chained prisoners-of-war – at the back

of the crowd.

The Alvinsmen were excited but extremely

nervous.

Many men and women over the past hundred

years had come to the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s

Gift carrying false Things, hoping, like poor foolish

UG the Uglithug, that they might trick the Guardian

Protectors into crowning them King of the Wilderwest.

*It was twenty-six Dragonmarkers versus thousands of Alvinsmen, so the

outcome of the battle was not a surprise. Only Camicazi and Fishlegs had

got away, on the back of the invisible Deadly Shadow

All those would-be Kings, along with all of their foolish

followers, had died here on this spot, on this very

beach.

A place where so many unhappy things have

happened in the past seems to retain a memory of that

misery. The Singing Sands may have sung once, long

before the days of Grimbeard the Ghastly.

But now they sang no more.

Instead a Curse seemed to slouch about those

shores, as if it were a live thing looking for prey. An

overpowering sense of evil hung there like some dense

and heavy mist, and even the witch, an evil thing

herself, found the shivering terrors ripple through the

sparse hairs on her half-bald head as they waited where

so many would-be Kings had risked their lives and lost.

‘I can see the Ferryman! Check the Things…’

hissed Alvin, his eyes flicking nervously. ‘We have

got all ten of them, haven’t we?’

The witch checked the Things

once again with a shaking

chicken-bone finger.

Yes, there were still ten of them, just as there had

been when she had looked two minutes earlier.

‘Stop fidgeting, Alvin,’ scolded the witch. ‘And

let’s get your Crown straight.’

She adjusted the Crown so that it sat more

handsomely on Alvin’s head.

They had settled the Throne in the middle of the

empty beach and Alvin was sitting on it, adorned with

all of the other Lost Things, so he looked splendid – or

slightly ridiculous, depending on your point of view.

The witch bit her lip until it bled, for she knew

how crucial it was that they had got this right.

One single mistake meant death for

them all.

She

counted the Things

one more time,

ve-e-e-ery slowly, just to

make absolutely sure.

‘Hmmmff,’ said the sad little

voice of Toothless from his cage, which was

covered with a black cloth to drown out the noise

of his singing. ‘You have t-t-trouble counting to ten.

T-t-toothless can count to one hundred m-m-million.

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One hundred m-m-million bottles h-h-hanging on a

wall…’ Poor Toothless was just trying to cheer himself

up by being cheeky, for he was frightened, and tired.

‘Shurrup, you horrible little dragon!’ hissed the

witch, balling her clawed hands into fists. She was

absolutely dying to do something dreadful to him, but

of course she needed to keep the little toothless dragon

safe until Alvin was the King.

The Ferryman was approaching. The waiting

Alvinsmen could see a little speck of a boat setting

out from the distant shore of Tomorrow, moving

through the mist, climbing up and dropping down each

white-topped wave towards them, nearer… nearer…

NEARER…

But the Ferryman’s boat was not the only boat in

Hero’s Gap that day.

As the first rays of morning sun began to rise,

they dispersed the mists to reveal the ships of Stoick

and the other Dragonmarkers, sailing out from their

underground hideout in Coral Beach like enchanted

ghosts, and they too were heading towards the Singing

Sands.

The witch looked out to sea, and licked her

wicked gums in glee.

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‘You’re too late!’ she gloated. ‘Too late, Stoick,

you galumphing idiot. My Alvin will be the King

now…’

Slowly the Ferryman’s boat approached.

‘Faster!’ screamed the witch, casting a nervous

eye towards the approaching Dragonmarker ships.

A superstitious part of her still feared that the

Dragonmarkers might, in some last-minute battle, take

the Things.

The witch gave a shriek of joy as the blindfolded

Ferryman carefully placed his oars inside the boat,

drifted into shore and came to a stop on the sand.

His sixth sense told this Druid Guardian that

he had company on the beach. He climbed out of the

boat and strode towards the Alvinsmen waiting on the

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Singing Sands.

He stopped directly in front of Alvin cowering on

the Throne, so close that that Alvin had to tip his head

up to stare into the Druid Guardian’s blindfolded face,

which was alarming because of the Guardian’s pitiless

lack of expression.

The witch was desperate to tell the Druid

Guardian to hurry up, for she was worried about those

approaching ships of the Dragonmark. But something

about the Guardian stopped her from interrupting.

It was quite rare for the witch to meet something or

somebody who was more frightening than herself. So

she bit her bloodied lip and kept quiet, though it nearly

killed her to do so.

The Guardian stretched his arms up to the

heavens and cried:

‘He-or-She-Who-Would-Be-King, approach

Tomorrow if you dare!

‘Only the One with the King’s Lost Things can be

crowned the King and live…’

The Guardian slowly tipped his head downward

to Alvin.

‘Are you He-Who-Would-Be-King?’ he asked.

Alvin swallowed convulsively. He was regretting

having come here at all.

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‘I am,’ replied Alvin in a kingly squeak.

‘Are you the chosen representative of all the

Tribes of the Archipelago?’ asked the Druid Guardian.

‘HE IS!’ yelled the Alvinsmen, drowning out the

Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war, who of course were

shouting: ‘NO!’

‘We have a few little dissenters with us…’

explained the witch nervously.

The Druid Guardian inclined his head. ‘As long

as the candidate is elected by the majority, that is

sufficient.

‘Have you brought a Gift for the Ferryman?’

asked the Druid Guardian.

‘I have,’ gulped Alvin.

‘Then show me the Things,’ said the Guardian.

There was no change in the Guardian’s tone, but

something told Alvin that he had perhaps been a little

presumptuous to arrive wearing the Things, and sitting

on the Throne, when he hadn’t yet been accepted as

the future King.

So with cringing humility and whispered

apologies, Alvin took all the Things off. He laid them

on the beach in front of the Guardian, and backed

away from the Throne, babbling: ‘My mother assures

me that they are the correct Things, Your Worship, and

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I am taking her word for it, so I hope that if anything

by any chance happens to be wrong, or unacceptable

in any way, Your Honour will have mercy on me on

account of its being an honest mistake, and know that

the blame lies firmly at the feet of my mother who—’

The Guardian turned his blindfolded head

towards Alvin just a tiny bit.

‘If the gifts are unacceptable,’ said the Druid

Guardian, ‘the Guardian Protectors of Tomorrow will

rise and kill you all.’

‘Oh…’ said Alvin.

Alvin shut up.

One by one, the Druid Guardian ran his fingers

over the Things.

He passed his hand reverently over the seat of the

Throne with its bloodstain, Hiccup the Second’s blood,

dark brown now with age but still spreading there like a

flower.

He took up the smashed ticking-thing. He held

it to his ear. It was still ticking: a broken, tiny, valiant

tick.

He took the cover off the cage that contained

Toothless.

He took a struggling, weeping Toothless out of

his cage, and he examined him carefully, even gently

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putting his finger for a moment into Toothless’s mouth

to feel his gums. He did not jump or pull away when

Toothless bit him hard enough to cause a wound that

bled profusely.

‘T-T-Toothless not belong to Alvin,’ wept

Toothless. ‘Toothless is H-H-Hiccup’s dragon…’

‘It does not matter who you belong to,’ said

the Guardian, and the witch started, for the Druid

Guardian was speaking to the little dragon in

Dragonese. ‘All that matters is who has brought you

here.

‘Sleep now, little dragon,’ said the Druid

Guardian. Poor Toothless had been so upset and

hysterical about being kidnapped that he had not slept

at all that night, but when the Guardian spoke in that

calm, hypnotic tone, he yawned and fell instantly to

sleep, as suggestible as the Hogfly.

The Guardian draped the cloth back over the

cage.

The Druid Guardian took a very long time

examining the rest of the Things.

The witch was so consumed with anxiety that she

accidentally bit one of her own fingernails, which was a

mistake as they were poisoned, and so they gave her a

nasty burn and turned her lips blue.

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The Guardian inspected the last Thing, the

Dragon Jewel, at painstaking length and with reverent

care, before laying it back down on the Throne.

He raised his arms in the air.

The Vikings on the beach leaned in, eyes wide,

backs stiffened, in dread of the Druid Guardian’s

judgement. Unconsciously Alvin cringed backwards,

with his hook and arm protecting his face as if

expecting to be attacked.

There was a tense pause.

‘The Things are REAL!’ cried the Druid

Guardian.

The Guardian’s impassive face split with

emotion, like a stern stone cliff suddenly struck by an

earthquake.

‘After ninety-nine years of failure, ninety-nine

years of searching, ninety-nine years of guarding the isle

of Tomorrow, the Things are REAL! The Impossible

Task has been completed!’

The Alvinsmen on the beach erupted with

excitement.

The witch burst into tears.

She threw herself into Alvin’s arms, punching

the air with one emaciated skinny fist. ‘I knew it!’ she

screamed, beside herself with triumph. ‘I knew it!

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‘Twenty years…’ panted the witch, ‘twenty years

imprisoned inside that tree trunk, that little circle of

hell. Twenty years I sang my spells, I mixed my poisons,

I wove my tapestries of destiny out of rat guts and

mice bones. Twenty years of longing, dreaming and

murdering for you to be King… and you will be! MY

ALVIN IS THE KING!’

‘GUARDIAN PROTECTORS OF

TOMORROW!’ called the Guardian in a great

joyful bellow, addressing the Guardians, those

dragons-or-something-else lurking beneath the Singing

Sands.

‘In twenty-four hours, when this King is crowned,

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we shall be let loose from ninety-nine years of bondage!

We shall be free to roam the skies and seas of the

Archipelago, on airy careless wings and feet, with no

limit, no boundary, no limitation…

‘And I,’ and here the Guardian’s voice really did

crack, ‘I shall be able to take off this bandage that

lies across my eyes at last, and see the shining colours

of this Archipelago, as bright and new as if freshly

painted!’

Something extraordinary happened next.

All around the Guardian’s outstretched arms, the

sand began to sing.

The Alvinsmen were too busy celebrating to

notice, and the Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war too

depressed.

But the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift

were singing once again.

It was as if each little grain of sand were rubbing

against its neighbour, like a million happy crickets

singing a joyful hymn of praise.

There was an innocent longing to that sound that

brought tears to the eyes.

‘At last the Impossible Task has been

completed…’ cried the Druid Guardian.

‘At last our bondage ends…

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‘At last WE HAVE FOUND OUR HEIR!’

‘It’s going to be me!’ sang Alvin joyfully, as the

witch capered by his side. ‘It’s going to be ME! ME ME

ME ME! And what an excellent choice that is!’

‘He who gathered these Things together must be

a truly great Hero indeed,’ said the Druid Guardian.

‘But wait… I can hear other humans landing on the

beach…’

‘Wait?’ said the witch, instantly terrified. ‘What

do you mean, wait? We have all the Things, don’t we?’

‘HOLD ON THERE, MR DRUID

GUARDIAN!’

The Dragonmarker ships had indeed landed on

the beaches now. Hiccup’s father, Stoick the Vast,

great Chief of the Hooligan Tribe, vaulted over the

edge of his boat, The Blue Whale, and on to the Singing

Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift.

The Guardian turned as Stoick came running

forward, splashing through the shallows. Even in his

late middle age, Stoick was an impressive figure, built

in traditional Viking chieftain mould, with a belly like a

battleship and a beard like a flaming gorse bush.

Stoick was followed by thousands and

thousands of Dragonmarkers, including Bertha of the

Bog-Burglars, Humungously Hotshot the Hero, his

fellow Hero Tantrum O’UGerly and his eleven fiancées,

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Snotlout’s father Baggybum the Beerbelly, and Old

Wrinkly, Hiccup’s grandfather.

‘WAIT!’ cried Stoick the Vast, out of breath.

Running on sand is hard work, particularly once you

have reached a certain age.

355

‘Who are you?’ asked the Druid Guardian sternly.

‘We are the Dragonmarkers,’ Stoick puffed. ‘We

represent half the Tribes of the Archipelago… and this

man Alvin must never be our King!’

The arriving Dragonmarkers cheered

simultaneously, a great rousing shout from thousands

of throats, to show the Guardian how many of them

there were.

‘It sounds like you have more than a few little

dissenters,’ said the Guardian to Alvin. ‘If these are

half the Tribes of the Archipelago…’

‘But they are the less important half, Your

Honour…’ replied Alvin.

‘We, the Dragonmarkers,’ puffed Stoick, ‘have a

claim to the Throne. We maintain that my son Hiccup

Horrendous Haddock the Third is the true King of the

Wilderwest!’

‘You have a son called Hiccup?’ asked the Druid

Guardian with interest.

‘Don’t read anything into it!’ howled the witch,

forgetting to be polite to the Guardian. ‘Just because

he was called Hiccup, like Grimbeard the Ghastly’s

son, doesn’t mean anything at all!’

‘Hiccup actually found the Things,’ said Stoick,

‘every single one of them, and this thief Alvin here, and

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that devil his mother, stole them!’

‘Nonsense and cat-nerves!’ screeched the witch,

spitting like a cobra.

‘My wife Valhallarama set out to reclaim the

stolen Things from this horrible pair,’ explained Stoick,

‘and she will meet us here, along with Hiccup, whom

we put into hiding in case these Alvinsmen killed them.

Hiccup should be here any minute, along with the Last

Lost Thing, the toothless dragon…’

Stoick stopped.

He had been so busy explaining, that he had only

just noticed that the Things were already sitting there

on the beach.

‘The Things are already here!’ said Stoick in

astonishment.

‘Yes, they are, Stoick,’ smiled the witch

condescendingly. ‘Well spotted.’

Stoick was not the brightest barbarian in the

business, so it took a while for this to sink in. His brow

furrowed.

‘But where is my wife Valhallarama?’

‘Poor stupid Stoick…’ the witch said

contemptuously. ‘Always late, always slow on the

uptake. We caught your dear wife Valhallarama in the

act of burglary and revolution in the early hours of this

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morning, and I very kindly brought her along so she

could have the pleasure of witnessing Alvin’s triumph

before we executed her.’

The witch snapped her fingers, and her Alvinsmen

staggered over carrying a box on their shoulders. It was

the same broken box that Camicazi had been kept in

earlier, hastily mended, and wound round untidily with

chains, which one of the Alvinsmen unlocked.

Valhallarama exploded out of the box. She was

a little crumpled, for a middle-aged woman (even one

as fit as Valhallarama) is a little old for being folded up

into boxes, but she still had her Warrior dignity intact.

Stoick whitened. He saw for the first time, the

Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war standing dejectedly in

chains on the edges of the crowd.

‘Gobber… my dear fellow, what has happened

to your beard? Valhallarama… my love, I don’t

understand,’ said Stoick, bewildered. ‘Have you… have

you… failed?’ he asked wonderingly, for it was unlike

Valhallarama, that splendid Hero, to fail at anything.

‘Our son did not stay in the underground

treehouse. He raided the witch and Alvin’s war bunker

to retrieve the Things himself. He did not recognise

me in my Alvinsman disguise and he took the Things

from me just as I was in the act of reclaiming them,’

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explained Valhallarama.

Stoick beamed. ‘Oh well done, Hiccup! Very

rude and disobedient of him, but after all, if he’s going

to be a King, he can’t have his parents doing everything

for him. I’m proud of the boy—’ He stopped, and his

brow furrowed again, and he said:

‘But then… then why are the Things here? And

where is Hiccup?’

Valhallarama’s face was very, very grim.

She turned her face to the witch.

‘Perhaps the witch will be able to answer both

those questions,’ said Valhallarama, and her gaze was

as cold and as implacable as iron.

Yes,’ smiled the witch, purring with pleasure, ‘I

can answer both those questions. I fear you are a little

behind the times, Stoick. For you see, us Alvinsmen

have ALL the Things now.’

She whipped the black cloth from Toothless’s

cage.

Stoick recoiled as if he had been bitten, and the

Dragonmarker crowd gave a sigh of distress.

The exhausted little dragon was sleeping inside

the cage, a pathetic sight with his wings shivering

and dark circles under his eyes from the trauma of

separation from Hiccup.

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‘The Druid Guardian here has just examined all

the Things, he has found them to be correct, and he

has declared my Alvin to be Grimbeard the Ghastly’s

Heir. We will be crowning him tomorrow, on the

Doomsday of Yule.’

‘That is true,’ acknowledged the Druid Guardian.

‘NO!’ cried Stoick, eyes round with horror.

Howls and moans from the Dragonmarkers.

‘But, then… my Hiccup?’ said Stoick. ‘Where is

my Hiccup?’

The witch gave an infinitely nasty smile. ‘Your

Hiccup is not coming “any minute”. He will never be

coming back, I am afraid.’

Valhallarama, proud Valhallarama, dropped to

her knees. ‘No! Hiccup! No!’

She had never collapsed before. Stoick leant

down to support her…

… and Old Wrinkly, Hiccup’s grandfather,

looked thoroughly bewildered. ‘I don’t understand it,’

he said.

‘Your soothsaying was always a little suspect,

Wrinkly,’ sneered the witch rudely.

‘It was Snotlout,’ said Gobber flatly, standing

chained at the back of the crowd. ‘Snotlout betrayed

us all.’

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‘Traitor!’ cried Grabbit of Grim. Boos and

catcalls from the Dragonmarkers. ‘That treasonous

traitor of traitors!’

Baggybum the Beerbelly, Snotlout’s father, put

his head into his hands and whispered, ‘I’m sorry. I’m

so sorry. I’m ashamed to be his father.’

‘So you see how ridiculous it was of you

Dragonmarkers to come here trying to steal Alvin’s

Throne from him!’ sneered the witch. ‘You have

nothing, nothing! And the Hero you are waiting for is

dead.’

Valhallarama of the White Arms was whiter than

a corpse, her hands clasped together.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.

‘I saw the arrow hit him full in the chest myself,’

said the witch. ‘But as a precaution we have had our

Bullguards and Ravenhunters diving for his body in the

Bay ever since, so that we can prove that the runt is

finally dead. They have not recovered it yet, but what

they have found is this…’

She produced Hiccup’s helmet, like a conjuror,

from under her cloak.

‘No…’ begged Valhallarama and Stoick, and

Stoick dropped to his knees too.

The two great Warriors knelt together in the

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sand, as if they were getting married once

again, holding the helmet, silent tears creeping

down their old Warrior cheeks.

Valhallarama then jumped to her feet

and shook her fist fiercely.

‘YOU killed him!’ she roared at the

witch. ‘You fiend!’

‘All’s fair in love and war,

Valhallarama,’ cooed the witch. ‘Did you

not try and kill my own son Alvin with

your very own arrow back in the Amber

Slavelands? Perhaps you should have

given your son triple-depth chest

armour, and maybe he would be

alive today… but then maybe

you are more of a careless

mother than I am myself.

You were never around

much, were you?’

The witch

had much to pay

Valhallarama back

for, and that

particular poison

dart really hit

home. The poor crushed Warrior showed the hurt in

her wounded blue eyes.

Valhallarama whirled around, and in one flowing

movement, she swiped an axe from an Alvinsman

standing behind her.

She raised the axe above her head, and roared:

‘BLOOD FEUD!’

The massed crowds of Dragonmarkers drew their

own axes in sympathy. A battle between the Alvinsmen

and the Dragonmarkers was about to take place.

Until, with surprising agility and extraordinary

strength for one of his age, the Druid Guardian leapt

forward, removing Valhallarama’s axe from her hand

just before she could kill the witch.

He stretched to the height of his full seven feet

and spread wide his arms, bellowing in a voice of

electric command:

‘In the name of Tomorrow, STOP! OR SO

HELP ME THOR, I SHALL CALL UPON THE

GUARDIAN PROTECTORS OF TOMORROW

AND THEY SHALL CARRY YOU UP INTO

THE OUTERMOST REACHES OF OBLIVION

AND YOU SHALL NEVER SET FOOT ON THIS

SWEET EARTH AGAIN!’

A speech which in itself caught the attention,

even without the Guardian’s fingers twitching on the

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end of his outspread arms, and the sand underneath

the warring humans beginning to bubble and sink

beneath their feet as if something were happening

under there…

Anger turned to fear in an instant.

‘Put down your swords!’ ordered the Guardian.

‘This is sacred land! You are quarrelling on the Singing

Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift, and if you are not careful

I shall give you a gift that you most certainly haven’t

asked for and that you will never be able to return!’

Both sides grew quiet, mute with terror at this

invocation of the supernatural, and as they did, the

sinking sands fell silent and were still and firm beneath

their feet again.

‘That is better,’ said the Guardian.

‘I am in command here on these Sands and on

Tomorrow. Until such time as the King is crowned,

my word is absolute, and if my wishes are disobeyed,

my punishment is total. In my capacity as a private

individual, I can be very reasonable, but unfortunately

my role as Guardian takes me beyond the reach of

reason, and I act only as the Law.’

Everyone stayed very quiet.

‘Madam.’

The Guardian turned to Valhallarama.

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‘I understand the rage and fury of a mother’s grief,

but you must put this aside now. The Dragon Furious

has grown too strong, and the very existence of the

Archipelago is at stake.’

He did not speak loudly, but he spoke with

such authority that it seemed to come from the gods

themselves.

‘We Vikings are known for our proud

independence and our quarrelsome natures. It is the

very essence of our beings. But now the Dragon has

come, we must give up our personal sorrows, our petty

blood feuds, and stand together against a common

enemy. We can no longer be fighting each other when

the future of humanity itself is in peril.

‘The Dragon Rebellion has come! The Things

have been Found!

‘The gods have spoken!

‘There is a time to submit to Fate and the Will

of the gods, and the time is now. Madam, put your

personal sorrow aside, for the sake of us all.’

Valhallarama stood, like a great tree that has been

most suddenly struck by lightning, staring at her sword.

‘So many years,’ she said, bringing up her great

head, ‘so many, many lonely years I spent Questing

for these Things… giving up the warmth of home and

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husband and my child. What was it all for? A fruitless

Quest. And then it seemed that it all might have been

worth it. Sometimes you find that the Things you scour

the world for are right under your nose at home.

‘I thought that there might be a time, when this

dreadful War was past, a time for second chances.

That I could re-build my lost relationship with my son,

who would have the Kingdom that once I wanted for

myself…

‘… only for that hope to be taken away from me

again. This man,’ she spat in Alvin’s direction, ‘if this

man is Crowned, you will tell him the secret of the

Dragon Jewel. And he would use that power to destroy

the dragons forever.’

‘But the Dragon Furious would destroy the

whole of humanity,’ replied the Druid Guardian.

‘Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order

to protect those he has sworn to look after. When

the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be

taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that

burden, that guilt, and I know a little about that kind of

responsibility.

‘Forgive my rough words, Madam. I am not used

to speaking with strangers.’

The Druid Guardian spoke gently, for he was

367

aware he was talking to a woman who had lost her son.

‘There is a time when you have to give yourself

up to the will of the gods, and sometimes the will of

the gods is a mystery until we see the final pattern in

the end…’

Valhallarama tried to square her shoulders.

The true sign of a Hero is how they act when all is

against them.

Proudly, she took off her battle glove and gave it

to the Druid Guardian.

‘I will not swear fealty to this man Alvin,’ said

Valhallarama, stiffly. ‘But I will no longer fight him

either. The Company of the Dragonmark will bear

silent witness to the Crowning, if the Guardians of

Tomorrow feel that this is the will of the gods.’

Stoick the Vast, his head bowed like a broken

lion, nodded his head to give his assent.

‘So be it,’ said the Druid Guardian.

‘Hang on a second,’ spluttered the witch, feeling

that the situation, which she thought she had nicely in

hand, was suddenly getting out of control again. ‘This

is going to be a private party! My son is the King and

these people are traitors and uninvited guests! We

don’t want them at the Crowning!’

The Druid Guardian looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Your son is not the King yet,’ he said. ‘And the King

must be crowned in front of the united Tribes of the

Archipelago, as their chosen representative. Grimbeard

was quite clear about that. This lady has given her vow

as a Viking that she will put aside her personal sorrow,

and bear silent witness, and her vow is enough for me.

‘She has given her pledge, and now as a sign

of your good faith, you must set free these prisoners

369

of yours.’

The witch was left with no choice. She gave the

order for Gobber and the other prisoners to

be released.

The Druid Guardian banged his staff on the

beach: once, twice, thrice.

‘You have passed the first test. We will not

kill you… yet. We will proceed now to the Cursed

Lands of Tomorrow, for the coronation of the King.

One moment, please, while I address my fellow

Guardians…’

The Druid Guardian lifted up his head and arms

to the heavens one last time. He spoke with dreadful

finality.

‘It is the eleventh day of Doomsday, the Heir has

been found, and the last chance for any other person to

claim the Throne has passed.

‘COME, GREAT POWERS OF DEATH

AND DARKNESS! Arise, and protect the borders

of Tomorrow once again! Any man, woman, child or

dragon who dares to cross illegally into Tomorrow in

the next twenty-four hours will die by the dreadful

wrath of THE GUARDIAN PROTECTORS!’

All around the Vikings on the beach,

the sand began to bubble, and the land gave

birth again to those same ghastly nightmare

creatures that had carried UG and his

followers to their terrible airy doom seventy-two

hours earlier. This time, they left the Vikings

alone, and went shrieking over their heads like

shooting stars or asteroids, back to the island of

Tomorrow, to guard the borders there.

‘What in the name of Woden were they?’

gulped Alvin, turning to his mother with a green

and sickly face.

‘Death by airy oblivion,’ said the witch grimly.

‘We were lucky we had the Things…’

‘The King must be crowned on the stumps of

Grimbeard’s Throne,’ continued the Guardian, turning

back to the traumatised crowd on the beach as they

gazed after those terrifying apparitions. ‘And the

Throne is in the centre of Tomorrow. Follow me, all of

you, to TOMORROW.

‘You may find it harder there than you think…’

And as the sun rose higher on Doomsday Eve, the

old man in the blindfold rowed his boat, slowly, slowly

across the Hero’s Gap.

He was followed by hundreds and hundreds

of boats with tattered sails and burnt Vikings, weary

and homeless, drained of all hope and energy by this

dreadful war.

Far away in the distance, too afraid of Tomorrow

to approach any closer, the dragons of the Dragon

Rebellion watched them go, and flew to tell their

leader.

The Dragon Furious stretched out, victorious, in

the hot springs and deep snow of his icy stronghold to

the north, two trails of smoke leaking from his mighty

nostrils.

‘They have the Things, my lord, all of them…’

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said a Razorwing, its eyes dilated with anxiety. ‘The

little gummy toothless dragon, they’ve got that too.

‘And I saw…’ The Razorwing was panting with

horror. ‘I saw the Jewel... the Jewel that has the

power to destroy dragons forever.’

The Dragon Furious did not appear to be

frightened by this news. ‘Ah,’ mused the mighty

Dragon. ‘But you see, I have something greater than

the Jewel. I have the Wodensfang’s promise.’

22. HERO’S END AT THE

ELEVENTH HOUR

Camicazi and Fishlegs had followed the Alvinsmen

to the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift, invisibly

tracking them on the back of the Deadly Shadow. They

had hidden on the sandbanks directly above the beach,

and, protected by the over-arching wings of the great

camouflaged dragon, they watched this whole scene

being played out from the safety of their hiding-place.

They knew the significance of Hiccup’s helmet

being recovered by the Bullguards. Fishlegs and

Camicazi did not need to hide any more. They could

join up with the other Dragonmarkers now.

Red-eyed, wiping his nose against his sleeve,

Fishlegs was about to join the sad procession of boats

crossing Hero’s Gap towards the isle of Tomorrow

when Camicazi stopped him.

‘What on earth are you doing, Fishlegs?’ she said

briskly.

‘Um…’ said Fishlegs, hopelessly, ‘I’m following

the others… there’s no point doing anything else, is

there, now that we know Hiccup is dead.’

‘The more I think about it,’ said Camicazi, ‘the

less I think Hiccup is dead.’

377

‘But… but… the helmet… that was Hiccup’s

helmet…’ protested Fishlegs. ‘And they brought

it up from the sea… There isn’t really any other

explanation.’

‘Oh for Thor’s sake,’ said Camicazi in

exasperation. ‘Have you not hung around with him

for long enough to know that you never give up hope

until you are presented with an actual Hiccup skeleton,

solemnly registered and verified by the Valkyrie Death

Committee as completely authentic?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘We thought you were dead back there in the

Slavelands, remember, and look! You turned up again

large as life – or rather, skinny and asthmatic and

eczema-covered as life! What would have happened if

we stopped looking for you?’

‘But… but… but…’

spluttered Fishlegs. ‘But

sometimes people really

ARE dead, Camicazi! And

it’s Doomsday Eve… We

only have twenty-four

hours before the King

gets crowned, and Alvin

has all the Things…

We haven’t got a hope...’

‘It’s a tight deadline,’

admitted Camicazi. ‘But

then again Hiccup always

works best under tight

deadlines…’

‘I want to believe

you,’ said Fishlegs

longingly. ‘I really, really

want to believe you, but

where IS he, Camicazi?’

‘OH DO HURRY

UP!’ shouted Camicazi,

already on board the Deadly

Shadow. ‘We’ll just have to go and find him…’

‘Don’t you think you should at least tell your

mother we’re OK?’ asked Fishlegs, as he climbed up

after her. ‘I saw Bertha among that Dragonmarker

crowd… she might at least want to know you are still

alive. And maybe she might not give you permission to

go and look for Hiccup?’

‘I think,’ said Camicazi thoughtfully, ‘it might

be better not to ask. You’re right though, it would be

nice to let her know that we’re alive, so she doesn’t

worry…’

Two minutes later, Great Chief Bertha of the

379

Bog-Burglars, solemnly steering The Big

Momma, looked up as a great shadow passed

above her. She saw the underside of an enormous

three-headed dragon, briefly turning itself visible as it

sailed south in slow, graceful flaps.

On the dragon’s back were the two small figures

of Fishlegs and Camicazi, and Bertha just caught the

words of her daughter, shouted down from the back of

the dragon, before the words were tossed away on the

wind.

‘JUST OFF TO FIND HICCUP, MOTHER…

See you later… Don’t worry about me! Bog-Burglars

Fight forever!’

‘CAMICAZI!’ yelled Bertha of the Bog-Burglars.

380

‘HICCUP IS DEAD! CAMICAZI, WHERE ON

EARTH ARE YOU GOING? I’VE ONLY JUST

FOUND YOU AGAIN! YOU COME RIGHT BACK

DOWN THIS MINUTE OR YOU ARE IN BIG

TROUBLE, YOUNG LADY!

‘CAMICAAAAAAAZZZIIIIIIIIIII!’

But it was too late.

The beautiful three-headed Shadow Dragon had

already slowly faded into invisibility, like breath into

the wind.

382

23. ONE MORE DAY

Far away on the little isle of Hero’s End, a boy lay

stretched out unconscious on a beach.

Camicazi was right.

HICCUP WAS ALIVE.

He only had one day left now.

One day until a King would be crowned on the

Doomsday of Yule.

One day to persuade the Guardians that HE was

the King and not Alvin the Treacherous.

And he had no Things. Not a single one.

How would he ever get to Tomorrow?

384

For the Druid Guardian had closed up the

borders of Tomorrow. He had called up his Guardian

Protectors to defend the island of Tomorrow from any

being, human or dragon, who might dare to try and set

foot on the island now the Heir had been found, and

the Crowning of the King was about to commence.

And we have seen just how scary, just how

terrifying, those Guardian Protectors can be.

But at least Hiccup was ALIVE. Barely alive, but

ALIVE still.

Perched on his chest, his head tucked under

his wing with shame, was the little old dragon, the

Wodensfang, waiting for the boy to wake up.

386

EPILOGUE

I said, at the beginning of this episode of my memoirs,

that the making of a Hero is like the making of a

sword.

How the sword and the Hero must be tested time

and time again, and the more fearsome and dreadful

the test, the stronger the sword and the Hero, in the

end.

That Boy-That-Once-Was-Me who is lying back

there on the beach at Hero’s End, he seems to have

lost everything, doesn’t he?

He risked everything to get the Lost Things, and

then at the last minute, they slipped through his fingers.

He does not know this yet, poor boy, as he lies

there. He is still dreaming that he is driving the ship

with the Lost Things on it, safely through the Wind.

‘Don’t worry, Toothless,’ he is muttering to

himself, slightly delirious. ‘It will be all right…

everything will be all right…’ Little knowing that

poor Toothless has fallen into dark hands, and is not all

right at all.

It is pathetic, is it not, to see the boy’s delusion,

lying on that beach like a crumpled piece of driftwood

thrown up by the careless gods, as if he were nothing.

388

But now I am seventy-six years old, looking back,

I have to say that things are not quite as bleak as they

seem.

At last, for the first time in the boy’s life, he is

finally ready.

It may not look like it, as he lies there, broken

on the beach, having lost the Things, having lost

Toothless, having lost everything. But this was the

moment the Hero was made.

He is ready to take on his destiny now.

I meet him on Hero’s End, hovering over him as

he lies there, and I whisper:

You are ready now.

Know this, when you wake.

You are finally ready to take on Tomorrow.

You may look like a corpse, but you are in fact a

King.

He will need this knowledge when he wakes into

painful reality.

For it will be painful.

He will grieve for the loss of the Things, and

know that it is his fault. He will grieve for Snotlout. He

will feel that this is his fault too, even though Snotlout

chose to take that risk out of his own free will.

But Snotlout has taught him something.

Hiccup believed in Snotlout. He went on trying

389

to believe in Snotlout. And in the end Snotlout

believed in Hiccup, and that was one of the crucial,

final things that gave Hiccup belief in himself.

This was what mattered.

He has carried Snotlout with him ever after.

Snotlout and his Black Star are part of his Kingship.

Remember the Wodensfang’s wheezy voice,

whispering in the darkness of the underground hideout

high in the Murderous Mountains, about how a boy

can change from being Speedfast to being Grimbeard

the Ghastly…

‘… and also the other way around.’

Back on those ships crossing Hero’s Gap on

Doomsday Eve, Snotlout’s father, Baggybum the

Beerbelly, does not yet know that Snotlout has chosen

the right side. Gobber and the Dragonmarkers are

still cursing Snotlout’s name, still believing him to be

the most treacherous Traitor of Traitors, still shaking

their heads and their fists, and calling down dreadful

imprecations on his head.

But they will find out the truth, in the end.

Time will shake out the truth, as it always does.

Gobber and Baggybum will find out the truth,

just as Snotlout knew they would when he hung his

Black Star round my neck.

390

They will know that Snotlout was a Hero after

all…

Gobber and Baggybum will be proud of him at

last.

And long after Kings are forgotten, and their

names have fallen into dust, the good deeds and the

actions of the Heroes live on in glory.

Once I dreamed of castles and a crown upon my

head…

Now the night sky is my only roof and the sea my

rocking bed…

But let my heart be wrecked by hurricanes and

my ship by stormy weather

I know I am a Hero… and a Hero is FOREVER!

As I write, sixty-two years later, I am wearing

Snotlout’s Black Star on a chain around my neck, the

Black Star that in the Hooligan Tribe is the highest

honour that can be given for bravery in battle.

It looks a little incongruous on the chest of such

a very old man as myself, but I wear it with such pride,

and it makes me stand a little straighter, even though

I am bowled into a hoop by age and the Archipelago’s

howling winds, and I am not as steady on my legs as I

once was.

It is the Black Star that Snotlout gave me when

391

he exchanged his clothes for my clothes, and his destiny

for my destiny. A noble gift, do not you think, in the

end, from one cousin to another?

Here is the odd thing though.

Time has rubbed away at the black of the Star.

And underneath the black… there was just a glint

of something, over the years, and then I rubbed at it,

and rubbed at it, until the crusty dark surface crumbled

away from the heart of the star, and the star fell out,

the metal just as bright and brilliant as when it was first

dug from the ground.

Now the star doesn’t look black at all.

Just gold.

A HERO… IS… FOREVER.

Adieu, Snotlout.

I could not have done this without you.

I carry you with me, every step I take, every

decision I make. You are part of my blood, and I would

never have got this far without you.

We shall meet again, in a better world than

this one.

392

Even if Hiccup manages to fight those dreadful dragon

guardians of Tomorrow the Dragon Furious will be

waiting for him.

“The Dragontime is coming

And only a King can save you now.

The King shall be the

Champion of Champions.

You shall know the King

By the King’s Lost Things.

A fang-free dragon, my second-best sword,

My Roman shield,

An arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-exist,

The heart’s stone, the key-that-opens-all-locks,

The ticking-thing, the Throne, the Crown.

And last and best of all the ten,

The Dragon Jewel will save all men.”

www.cressidacowell.co.uk

This is Cressida, age 9, writing on the island.

SEE WHERE IT ALL BEGAN!

Join Hiccup and his dragons on

their original misadventures!

Find the adventures wherever books are sold, and play interactive games at

www.HowToTrainYourDragonSeries.com

Table of Contents

Copyright

Title

1. Your Mother Said Not to Leave the Hideout

2. ‘We Were Just Wondering Whose Side You Are On?’

3. Plan Going Wrong

4. Two Red Eyes, Suspended in the Air

5. The Bite of a Vampire Spydragon

6. The Other Side of the Story

7. Toothless’s Dream

8. You Wouldn’t Find Alvin’s Secret Camp Even If You Searched For a Hundred Years

9. Inside Alvin’s War Bunker

10. Treachery and Betrayal

11. The Testing of a Hero

12. That Treasonous Traitor of Traitors

13. Meanwhile, Under the Floorboards

14. A Little Lesson From Camicazi In Causing Chaos and Confusion

15. You Rang, Madam?

16. ‘My Tooth… Where is My Tooth?’

17. The Swordfight

18. A Very Short Chapter in which It Looks Like Everything is About to Go Right for Five Minutes

19. Everything Goes Wrong Again, VeryRapidly

20. The Last Song of Grimbeard the Ghastly

21. Doomsday Eve on Tomorrow

22. Hero’s End at the Eleventh Hour

23. One More Day