This was the Dragon Furious, and today on the
Doomsday of Yule he would meet the new King of the
Wilderwest in single combat.
The Dragon had rested well in preparation for the
battle, and now he was watching Hero’s Gap, the little
stretch of water between the Murderous Mountains
and the island of Tomorrow, like a cat watching a
mousehole.
The Dragon Furious’s gigantic eyes saw
everything.
He saw the Sand-Sharks returning from Hero’s
End, and he knew that they would tell him that Hiccup
was alive.
Surely, thought the Dragon Furious to himself,
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surely I still have nothing to fear, even if he is alive?
The boy had no Things! Not one! So if he were
to set one Hiccupy toenail on the sands of Tomorrow…
if he flew on the back of a dragon into one inch of
Tomorrow’s air-space… why, the sands of Tomorrow
would begin to shake, and they would give birth to
those dreadful monsters known as THE DRAGON
GUARDIANS OF TOMORROW. They would rocket
out of the sands, take the boy in their dreadful claws
and give him Death by Airy Oblivion…
So surely there was nothing to fear?
And even if, by some extraordinary and
impossible chance, Hiccup survived the Dragon
Guardians, and got himself crowned without any
Things, the Wodensfang had promised to betray the
new King, even if that King was Hiccup, and steal the
Dragon Jewel from him, and bring it to the Dragon
Furious before the fight.
No King would win without the Jewel. Not
Hiccup. Not Alvin. Not anyone.
A King without a Jewel could be broken in half
like a matchstick.
There was nothing to fear…
Nothing at all.
But the Dragon Furious’s gigantic eyes saw
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everything. And he
remained uneasy.
So even before
the Sand-Sharks arrived
back at Wrecker’s Bay, the Dragon
Furious called his second-in-command to him, a
luminously beautiful Seadragon slightly smaller than
himself, known as Luna. She was so-called because
she glowed with light like the moon. She lit up the
dark stormclouds all around, and waves of heat pulsed
out of her, so that the rain smoked and hissed when it
landed on her shining body.
‘The Boy may be alive, Luna…’ hissed the
Dragon Furious.
The Dragon Furious did not move his lips to say
this, for Seadragons can communicate with each other
telepathically. Nothing of the dragon-mountain moved,
although his eyes may have glowed a little brighter as
the thoughts transferred themselves.
‘Send your best and most ruthless dragons
through Hero’s Gap to look for the boy. And Luna…
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do not go yourself.’
‘You do not trust me, King?’ asked Luna,
affronted.
‘I do not question your loyalty, Luna, but
it is harder to harden your heart than you think.
Particularly against well-meaning humans like
Hiccup,’ said the Dragon Furious. ‘There is something
about this boy…’
The Dragon Furious’s words rolled on in Luna’s
mind.
‘Many dragons have refused to fight alongside
us because of this boy. One Eye, for instance… and
even those irritating little nanodragons will not join
the Rebellion, chattering rudely about how Hiccup
once saved their King’s life or some such nonsense…
‘This is our last chance, Luna. The humans are
growing in cleverness. In the next few centuries they
will develop weapons of such power that they will
wipe us out, because humans are incapable of sharing
this world. But if we strike now, we shall have
freedom for the dragons forever…’
‘Freedom…’ sighed Luna, with longing
melancholy. ‘Freedom… Free to wander where we will
in the open skies. Free to fly high, high, high in the
airy winds, free to touch the moon itself, free to dive
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forever in the sweet black nothingness of the Open
Ocean… ah… freedom…’
‘Send your best dragons, Luna,’ growled the
Dragon Furious. ‘But stay here yourself.’
Luna bowed her radiant head. She would
send out a party of their most fearsome and pitiless
dragons to destroy Hiccup before he got to Tomorrow:
Hellsteethers, Tongue-twisters, Gorebreathers… Just in
case.
The Dragon Furious sank slowly below the waves
until only his eyes were showing above the water, his
gaze fixed on Hero’s Gap.
The Dragon had looked into the future, and the
humans must be destroyed before they could destroy
the dragons.
Watching, waiting.
Only a few more hours now.
He knew that it was Doomsday.
But Doomsday for whom?
On the high cliffs of Tomorrow, in the ruins of
Grimbeard’s City, the battered remains of the human
army were waking up too. Human beings from the four
corners of the Archipelago were gathered there, for
they had all been burnt out of their homes.
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To the south and east, the Archipelago was in
ruins, the landscape unrecognisable, island after island
scorched black with fire, whole villages obliterated,
hillsides with great bites taken out of them, and the
dreadful stench of burning wafted across the Bay.
The Alvinsmen were there, of course, the
Danger-Brute, Hysteric, Murderous, Berserk, Villain,
Visithug, Outcast and Uglithug Tribes.
But even the Dragonmarkers had fled to follow
Alvin. You could recognise them by the Dragonmark
on their foreheads, and they were the Hooligan,
Meathead, Bog-Burglar, Silent, Peaceable and
Quiet-Life Tribes.
And then there
were the Tribes that did
not belong to either side:
Wanderers, Swallows, former
slaves, the Nowheres and
the Nothings, not to mention
Humungously Hotshot and
Tantrum the Heroes, and
their Companions, the Ten
Fiancés.
Even the Barbarians,
the most ferocious fighters in
the Archipelago, had been beaten
back by the dragons.
The Barbarians carried highly trained cats into
battle with them, who would leap from the Barbarians’
shoulders and assault their opponents mid-swordfight.
(A highly effective tactic, because it is enormously
difficult to swordfight someone when a cat is attacking
your head.)
A young teenage Heir called Barbara the
Barbarian, a six-foot champion bare-knuckle fighter,
and her black cat Fearless, had held the Dragon
Rebellion at bay for many long months that had turned
into years. But she and her cat and her father and her
exhausted people had sounded the retreat two weeks
ago and joined the journey west to fight under Alvin’s
banner.
Stoick and Valhallarama, Hiccup’s father and
mother, woke after hardly sleeping. These great Heroes
were Vikings, not used to the softer emotions, but on
the hard ground, Stoick had placed his hand around
Valhallarama’s to comfort her, and they slept with the
helmet of what they imagined to be their dead son
between them.
Two days earlier, Hiccup’s
cousin Snotlout had
heroically worn Hiccup’s
clothes, and ridden
Hiccup’s dragon into battle. Half the Tribes of the
Archipelago had witnessed Snotlout fall into the sea
with an arrow in his chest, so Stoick and Valhallarama
believed that Hiccup had died and gone to the Viking
afterworld.
‘This is not my fault, is it, Valhallarama?’
said Stoick, wearily looking out on the obliterated
landscape, holding his shaggy head. Somewhere out
there was his lost Chiefdom, his ships turned to ashes,
his old world gone forever. ‘Is this a curse come down
on us all because I would not put the baby Hiccup out
to sea to die, when we knew he was a runt? Are the
gods punishing us because I loved my son too much to
follow the tradition? Should Hiccup – though we loved
him so – should Hiccup not have lived?’
For it was Hiccup who had released the Dragon
Furious and started the trouble in the first place.
Valhallarama put her iron hand on Stoick’s
shoulder. ‘We are Warriors, Stoick,’ she said gently. ‘We
both know what War means, that our loved ones can
pay the ultimate price by losing their lives, so Wars
should never be undertaken lightly.
‘But the slavery of humans
and of dragons was an
abomination that could
not continue,’ said Valhallarama, that great Hero, her
stern cliff like face refusing to show her grief. ‘Hiccup
was right to release the Dragon Furious, and you were
right not to follow tradition. There are some Questions,
some battles, some Hiccups that are worth losing a
world for.
‘And perhaps even when all ends in disaster, you
cannot do the wrong thing, if you do it out of love.’
‘That is true, Valhallarama,’ said Stoick, taking
some small comfort from this, and standing a little
straighter, with some of his old Chiefly spirit. ‘I did do
the right thing, didn’t I? Our beloved Hiccup may have
died and nothing will ever take that grief away, but he
was a very great Hero, was he not?’
‘He was,’ Valhallarama agreed.
‘I can still see Hiccup now,’ sighed
Stoick proudly. ‘In that terrible Prison
Darkheart, standing in front of Alvin and
shouting: “Is it perfect to have humans
and dragons dying in chains? Are
creatures as beautiful as this to
be made extinct for all time? Are
we to say goodbye forever to
the magic and the dreaming
and the flying of our
childhoods? I say NO!”’
Stoick punched the air in imitation of his son’s
glorious defiance. And then he shook his shaggy head
in admiration. ‘What a son he was! What a very great
boy… Yes, I am proud to die with his Dragonmark on
my forehead, and I am proud to have been his father,
although the gods only let him be with us for that very
little while…’
The two middle-aged Heroes leaned in towards
one another, creaking a little, for they had put on
weight in recent years, and constant swordfighting
can be wearing on the knees. They pressed their
foreheads together, Dragonmark to
Dragonmark, like two old trees
leaning inward
to support one another against the raging of the gale.
And maybe they were thinking: at least Hiccup
did not have to open his eyes on to a Doomsday such
as this.
The Vikings had promised to submit themselves
to the will of the gods, but it was difficult to know
what the gods could be thinking of as the humans
prepared for the last great battle, up here in the ruins
of Grimbeard’s Castle.
Sadly, Bertha, Chief of the Bog-Burglars,
sharpened her axe, looking back on happier times
when she was striding waist-deep in the delightful bogs
of home, her faithful Goreblaster swimming by her
side.
Mournfully, Barbara the Barbarian stroked the
proud back of Fearless, while her six bodyguards tested
their arrows and dreamed of riding through the snowy
wastes of Barbaria on the back of their snow-dragons,
wind streaming through their moustaches, cats
miaowing happily on their shoulders, flying back, back
in time to a village that no longer existed.
Even the Alvinsmen were out-of-sorts, and
unhappy with themselves. Madguts stroked his mighty
invisible Stealth Dragon, trying not to think of life
without him. Yes, these humans HATED Alvin. But
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what could they do but follow him?
The armies of the dragons were everywhere, thick
and dark like locusts, turning the sky black with their
numbers, leaping out of the sea and crawling across the
ice floes.
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Alvin
was the humans’
only chance now.
For Alvin had
the Lost Things, so he
was the only one who could be
crowned King.
Alvin stood in the ruins of Grimbeard’s Castle,
that noseless, heartless, pitiless Man-of-War, breath
hissing through his iron mask, sharpening his hungry
hook, already gloating over his victory.
‘Hurry up, hurry up!’ snapped Alvin as the Druid
Guardians of Tomorrow manoeuvred the Throne on
to the four stout stumps where the Throne had once
stood before, long ago, when Grimbeard the Ghastly
was the last King of the Wilderwest.
They were making ready for the Crowning.
Nearby were the ten Lost Things. The
ticking-thing, the shield, the Crown, the
key-that-opens-all-locks, the Dragon Jewel, the
second-best sword, the ruby heart’s-stone, the arrow,
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the Throne and Hiccup’s little hunting-dragon,
Toothless: the smallest, naughtiest little hunting-dragon
in the whole of the Archipelago, swinging from the
back of the Throne in a tiny cage.
Toothless, too, thought his Master was dead,
so the poor little dragon was limp with his continual
crying, his spines all flopped over with his misery, lifting
up his head to the sky and howling like a little wolf.
‘Can’t somebody shut that dragon up?’ said
Alvin, between gritted teeth, gripping his sword,
the Stormblade, in a hopeful fashion. But there was
nothing he could do – Toothless was one of the Lost
Things, so until Alvin was crowned King, Alvin could
not lay a fin
ger on him.
‘I promise you, you horrible little
newt-with-wings,’ swore Alvin, putting his face
right up to the cage and leering at Toothless with his
one grim eye, and pointing his hook at him, ‘that the
very first act I shall accomplish as King, is to wring your
little froggy neck…’
‘T-t-toothless will bite you all over first!’
yelled Toothless, in Dragonese. ‘You h-h-horrible
Master-killing human nightmare!’
Toothless leaned through the bars of the cage and
shot flames at Alvin’s good hand. And then Toothless howled
even harder.
‘Aaarggh!’ cried Alvin, sucking his finger, ‘if
only I could kill you RIGHT NOW, you wretched little
creature!’
‘You c-c-can’t!’ sobbed Toothless, with some
of his old defiance. ‘T-t-toothless is one of the Lost
Things… and Toothless is the B-B-BEST ONE…’
‘Don’t you worry, little Juiceless,’ said Stoick,
with ponderous, awkward sympathy, poking one of his
fingers through the bars of the cage, and stroking the
trembling, miserable little dragon along his back. ‘Your
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Master Hiccup may be dead, but
we will look after you…’
But how would Stoick be
able to do that once Alvin was
crowned King? How could he and
Valhallarama protect Toothless,
or the Silver Phantom, or any of
these dragons who had remained
faithful to the humans’ side, and
were now waking up, and wheeling
above their human Masters’ heads
right here, right now, in Grimbeard’s
Castle? These dragons were prepared
to go into battle with their Masters, to
lay down their lives in order to protect
them. Was their loyalty to be rewarded
with their own extinction?
Alvin’s mother the Witch
Excellinor bounded up on all fours like
a big white bony dog, her long white
hair dragging behind her in the mud.
‘Patience, Alvin my sweetest,’
she purred.
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‘You will not have to wait long for the pleasure of
executing the little dragon-rat… and any others
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 5
