No, Hiccup was not concentrating on this story,
funnily enough.
He was thinking about the rather more urgent
problem of staying alive.
The Wodensfang was still awake, which suggested
that it would take at least five or six of those darts to
put a sizeable creature like himself to sleep. A little
way away there was the broken hull of a wrecked
boat, within rolling distance. If he could just get to the
shelter of that boat without being hit by too many of
the darts, then it would give him some time to figure
out what to do…
But the Hogfly had other ideas.
‘Oh look, those dragons are playing Fetch!’
squealed the Hogfly in excitement. ‘Fetch is my
favourite game! Much better than Hide-and-Go-Seek!
And I’m SO good at it!’
Before Hiccup could stop him, the Hogfly dashed
out from behind the rock and flew hither and thither,
trying to catch the darts in his mouth.
‘No!’ warned Hiccup in frantic exasperation.
‘No, Hogfly, no! Don’t try and catch the darts!
They’re drugged!’
But the Hogfly
didn’t listen. ‘Lovely
darts!’ sang the Hogfly, his
curly tail wagging in an absolute blur of pleasure.
‘Pretty little darts! COME to the Hogfly!’
‘The darts are BAD, Hogfly, they’re BAD!’
screamed Hiccup, as the Hogfly launched himself
at three or four more. Excitement always made the
Hogfly buzz louder than normal, and he was so thrilled
by this new game that he could not hear Hiccup over
the sound of his own buzzing.
‘Bother!’ squealed the Hogfly, as he narrowly
missed another dart.
‘Nearly!’ screamed the Hogfly, as his little piggy
jaws snapped on thin air once more.
Luckily, not only was the Hogfly not as good at
the fetching game as he thought he was, he was in fact
supremely hopeless at it. But there were so many darts
flying around that it was really only a question of time
before he got hit by one.
‘Ooh, I really am going to get this one…’ said
the Hogfly to himself, narrowing his eyes as he spotted
a dart coming right at him, and positioning himself
cunningly so that he was right bang on target.
Hiccup transferred his weight on to his right
51
foot, and with all his strength he launched himself in
a Heroic HOP towards the Hogfly, flinging up his left
arm in the nick of time so the dart landed in his floppy
forearm rather than in the Hogfly, and then landing
face down in the sand again.
‘Mother’s playing too!’ squawked the Hogfly.
‘Good catch, Mother!’
The little dragon was so wild with excitement that
he blew himself up and floated within an arm’s length
of where Hiccup was lying. Hiccup reached up, caught
the passing Hogfly by his curly tail, and half hopped,
half rolled his way forward, taking himself, the drowsy
Wodensfang, and the inflated, over-excited little
Hogfly, into the shelter of the broken boat in a hail of
arrows.
Z-I-N-G! Z-I-N-G! Z-I-N-G!
Three darts buried themselves into the shell of
the boat as Hiccup ducked inside it.
BONG!
One dart landed on the Hogfly just before
Hiccup got him into the broken boat but in his
puffed-up, inflated state, it just bounced off harmlessly.
The boat offered a bit more protection, but
when Hiccup put his eye up to a small knot-hole in
the hull, he could see the fins of the Sand-Sharks
already beginning to circle the shipwrecked boat. Was
it Hiccup’s imagination, or did they seem closer than
before?
Panting with fear, Hiccup checked the Hogfly
anxiously. ‘Are you OK, Hogfly?’
‘I’m fine!’ squeaked the Hogfly happily. ‘One did
hit me but I was UP so it just went BONG right off
me! Did you hear it? Did you hear it? BONG!’
Reassured, Hiccup turned his attention to the
dart in his forearm. His whole left hand side was so
numb already that it wouldn’t make much difference.
Rather disgustingly, when he pulled the dart out,
he noticed a couple of things already embedded in his
arm. The things were white, and looked horribly like
teeth. YUCKY.
‘Wodensfang, do you know why I have two
TEETH in my arm?’ asked Hiccup, staring at the
teeth in horrified fascination.
‘Oh yes,’ said the Wodensfang soothingly.
54
‘I forgot to mention, a tiny extra problem: you got
bitten by a Vampire Spydragon.’
A VAMPIRE SPYDRAGON? For Thor’s
sake… Hiccup put his swollen eye up to the knot-hole
again. More and more Sand-Sharks were slinking
out of the grass on the bluff and sinking down into
the sand, their fins creeping nearer, nearer to the
shipwrecked boat…
Hang on a second! What was that, just to the
edge of the group? That wasn’t a Sand-Shark!
Two red eyes were glowing in the grass, almost
like they were levitating, and around the two red eyes
there slowly materialised a far scarier animal than a
Sand-Shark, a chameleon dragon with the head of a bat
and the body of a monkey…
Vampire Spydragon, said Hiccup’s brain.
That would explain why this hunting party had
found him so easily. Vampire Spydragons hunt in quite
a similar way to Sand-Sharks.
But instead of using darts, they bite their victims
with their teeth, leaving one or both of the teeth in
the wound before letting them go. The poison in the
bite then slowly paralyses the prey, and the Vampire
Spydragon locates its lame and helpless target by the
tracking device of its own teeth, which tick like clocks
inside the bitten body of the victim.
I’m sorry. It’s yucky, but it’s true.
‘Oh for Thor’s sake, oh for Thor’s sake, this just
gets worse and worse…’
‘Back to the story,’ squeaked the Wodensfang,
bug-eyed with alarm. ‘YOU have to get to the Island
of Tomorrow, Hiccup, and be crowned King instead
of Alvin!’
‘Forget about the story!’ snapped Hiccup. ‘The
story isn’t important right now! You can tell me the
story later—’
‘Stories are always important!’ shrieked the
Wodensfang. ‘These dragons right here right now are
just a minor problem, I’m trying to fill you in on the
big picture here—’
‘These minor problems are going to kill us!’
panicked Hiccup.
With shaking hands, Hiccup picked up a couple
of stones that were lying underneath the boat, and
threw them as far as he could in the direction of the
attacking dragons. He could hear the dull thump as the
stones landed uselessly in the sand.
‘YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME, HICCUP!’
begged the Wodensfang, so d
esperate now, that with
an immense effort he dragged himself up Hiccup’s
56
waistcoat and planted himself on Hiccup’s face, putting
his wings on either side of Hiccup’s cheeks, and staring
into Hiccup’s eyes.
Now he had Hiccup’s attention. Something about
looking into the hypnotic yellow eyes of a Seadragon
always commands attention.
‘If Alvin the Treacherous is made King,
he will use the power of the Jewel to
destroy dragons FOREVER!’ shrieked
the little brown dragon, in a frenzy
of anxiety. ‘So YOU have to stop
Alvin! YOU have to go over to
the Island of Tomorrow, and
YOU have to be made King
instead of him! And then
YOU can ride out and
meet the Dragon Furious
and try to persuade
him to call off the
Rebellion!
That’s why it’s so urgent! That’s why we’re in a hurry!’
‘OK, OK…’ said Hiccup, stroking the little brown
dragon’s back because he seemed so very upset. ‘I’ll do
it, I’ll do it…’
‘And it’s QUITE TRICKY!’ shrieked the
Wodensfang. ‘Because you haven’t got a BOAT, or
any of the LOST THINGS, or any WEAPONS...’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hiccup, ‘I’ll do it…’
‘The fact that Fate has led us to Hero’s End is
important, Hiccup. I can’t tell you exactly why, but
this is where Grimbeard the Ghastly was buried. The
humans don’t know you’re alive yet, because Alvin
killed your cousin Snotlout yesterday and everybody
thought it was you...’
The Wodensfang was sounding very tired now,
and he was gabbling away as fast as he could, aware
that he was about to fall asleep. ‘In a nutshell, trust
NOBODY. They all want to kill you. The Dragon
Furious, Alvin, EVERYBODY’S TRYING TO KILL
YOU...’
‘I won’t trust anybody,’ said Hiccup soothingly.
‘And finally, Hiccup, when you get to
Tomorrow you mustn’t la—’
But the Wodensfang couldn’t say any more. The
sleepy substance in the Sand-Shark’s dart was making
the Wodensfang’s eyelids droop, and his forked tongue
flop in his mouth.
He tried again. ‘You mustn’t la—’
But it was too late.
The Wodensfang collapsed with his eyes closed
before he could finish the sentence.
Which was unfortunate, to say the least, because
the sentence he was trying to say was: ‘When you get
to Tomorrow you mustn’t land on the beach, because
the Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow are guarding it.’
And that was quite an important sentence.
The Wodensfang was quite right.
However bad things seem to be, they
can always get worse.
3. THE MINOR PROBLEM
Five minutes earlier, the Wodensfang had been trying
to wake up the unconscious boy.
Now the positions were reversed.
‘Wake up!’ whispered Hiccup, gently shaking
the Wodensfang and tickling him behind the ears.
‘Please… wake up! I don’t know what to do!’
The drug in that dart hadn’t killed the
Wodensfang, but it was strong enough to send the
little dragon very soundly to sleep, and he snored on,
surprisingly loudly and snortily for such a small dragon,
happily oblivious to the impending dragon attack.
Think POSITIVE, think POSITIVE.
On the enemy side: thirty Sand-Sharks and one
really creepy Vampire Spydragon.
On Hiccup’s side: an unconscious Wodensfang, a
half-numb Hero who could only hop or crawl and who
was embedded with a rather revolting tracking device,
and one very sweet but extremely stupid little Hogfly
panting expectantly in front of him with his tongue
hanging out.
Closer and closer crept the Sand-Sharks.
Closer and closer crept the Vampire Spydragon.
The nearer the Vampire Spydragon got, the more
Hiccup’s forearm burned with pain, as if the teeth
could sense the presence of their owner. They quivered
inside Hiccup’s arm, and their little serrated edges
made this agony for Hiccup.
And then he could hear horrible sniffing noises
on the other side of the boat’s wooden hull. Oh for
Thor’s sake, they were so close now he could hear the
dragons panting. He had to take one more look.
Just in the nick of time, Hiccup drew back
from the knot hole, for to his absolute horror, the
gigantic eye of the Spydragon was peering
into the boat from the other side.
Trembling, Hiccup waited for the eye to
disappear, and then he looked through the knot hole
himself.
The Vampire Spydragon was right in front of the
boat, so close that Hiccup could see its nose snuffling
as the saliva dripped down its vampire fangs. It was
making that dangerous chuck-chuck noise that a dragon
makes deep in its throat when it is about to pounce…
Its long curling tail was wound with some kind of rope,
and that rope was trailing behind it in the sand.*
Hiccup had to do something, anything, or they
were doomed.
He had a sudden desperate idea. Those darts
hadn’t worked on the Hogfly when he was inflated…
He could get the Hogfly to distract the Sand-Sharks
while he dealt with the Spydragon.
‘Hogfly, I need your help here,’ whispered
Hiccup urgently. ‘I want you to play a game of “it”…’
‘Oh I LOVE playing “it”!’ squeaked the Hogfly
enthusiastically. ‘Who’s “it”? Is it me or you?’
‘The Sand-Sharks are “it”,’ whispered Hiccup.
‘Are they the ones singing that pretty song?’
asked the Hogfly.
‘That’s them,’ said Hiccup. ‘But you must puff
yourself UP, Hogfly…’
*The rope was left over from Hiccup’s battle with the Spydragon in the
previous book.
‘Like this?’ squeaked the Hogfly, concentrating
very hard and swelling up like a balloon.
‘Like that,’ said Hiccup. ‘And then I want you
to go out there, and you mustn’t let them catch you…’
‘Okey dokey!’ said the Hogfly, as circular and
as purple as an enormous fat grape, if you can picture
a grape with a curly tail and an eager little piggy face.
‘I LOVE playing “it”! I’m even better at “it” than
“fetch”! They’ll NEVER catch me!’
‘Wait until I give the signal,’ whispered
Hiccup, taking the unconscious Wodensfang out of his
waistcoat and putting him into his backpack, so he’d
be safe. Hiccup grabbed a large bit of seaweed and put
in on his head, and smothered himself with sand and
muck.
The Hogfly hid just below the rim of
the boat, round as the moon, and giggling
excitedly to himself. ‘They’ll get such
a surprise…’ gurgled the Hogfly.
Hiccup put his eye
to the knot-hole. The Vampire
Spydragon was crouched down low, ready to
pounce…
‘Now!’ whispered Hiccup.
Over the top shot the Hogfly, squeaking,
‘Can’t catch me!’
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
The Sand-Sharks let off their darts
simultaneously, and every single one
of those darts ricocheted
off the circular body of
the inflated little Hogfly and landed
harmlessly in the sand.
The Vampire Spydragon started, paused in
his pouncing, and turned his red eyes towards the
extraordinary sight of the puffed up lapdragon flapping
speedily through the air.
‘Oh good shot!’ the Hogfly twittered generously,
dodging this way and that, like a Bashyball with wings.
‘But I bet you can’t catch me now!’
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
BONG! BONG! BONG!
‘Good shot again!’ chirruped the Hogfly in
good-natured surprise. ‘But now I’m going to make it
a bit trickier for you all by doing this…’
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
In that second when the Spydragon was staring at
the Hogfly in astonishment, Hiccup crawled out from
behind the shelter of the boat, heart thumping, his
forearm singing with such pain that he had to bite his
lip to prevent himself from crying out. Covered in sand
and muck with the seaweed on his head like a rather
jaunty hat, Hiccup squirmed forward in the sand as fast
as he could slither, dragging his swollen side behind
him.
The Sand-Sharks had never come across anything
like the Hogfly before. The more they shot a battery
of darts at the Hogfly, the more they bounced off his
spherical little body. It was baffling. They had shot
so many darts that a cute little lapdragon as
small as this one ought to be stuffed full with
the adder’s bite of the sleep-drug and lying
dead upon the sand, not flapping
around above them making
happy conversation.
‘Oh you guys, you’re so good at this, you
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 3
