But the sentries were busy searching for Hiccup,
and the launch of the Dragon Guardians from the
beach had created a bewildering, blinding sandstorm
that mingled with the fog and the smoke.
The Dragon Guardians had rocketed up into the
airy atmosphere, and it would take them at least five
minutes to turn around and dive, like unimaginably
enormous peregrine falcons, back down under the
sands of Tomorrow.
So in the middle of all that disturbance, the
Deadly Shadow sailed right over the top of the entire
Guardian army and into the air-space of Tomorrow
without being detected.
Fishlegs and Camicazi got their first good look at
the island of Tomorrow, laid out beneath them like a
child’s map in a fairy story.
It was a good-sized island, covered, like all the
islands of the Archipelago, with marsh and bog and
bracken, and thickly forested in the south. Although
the ruined city of Tomorrow was in a state of splendid
decay, it was still the largest city that Fishlegs and
Camicazi had ever seen. No fewer than fifteen castles
were built around the edge of a large natural harbour,
and thousands more buildings were laid out in a ruined
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rabbit warren that was sinking slowly back down into
the marsh, broken windows peering only inches above
the level of the bog.
There where once had been houses, shops,
stables, a bustling, thriving city, the centre of the
kingdom of the Wilderwest, now was only the
tumbledown rubble of stone and wall and roof, where
the wind whistled sadly, and the melancholy cry of the
seagulls echoed through the ruins.
Right on the top of the highest cliff, they could
see the largest building of all: the great ruined wreck of
the Castle of Grimbeard the Ghastly himself.
It was here that the great human party of
cheering Alvinsmen and mourning Dragonmarkers had
assembled for the Crowning.
They had halted, and were staring at the sky,
looking at the awesome sight of the Dragon Guardians
rocketing ever upwards, with the sand raining down on
them in a drenching storm.
‘What’s happening? What does this mean?’
snapped Alvin, in a sudden panic that his Kingdom
might be snatched away from him at the last minute.
The Druid Guardian, head of the human
Guardians of Tomorrow, turned his blindfolded face to
the heavens and sniffed the air. He knelt down on the
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ground, and listened
to the sound of the
pounding feet of his
fellow Guardians,
searching the island.
‘Intruders…’
whispered the
Guardian. ‘Intruders
on Tomorrow… how
extraordinary…’
Poor little cried-out Toothless, his spines all
flopped over with misery, lifted up his head and opened
up his eyes, and gave a little whine of hope. His
Master… could it be his Master?
Alvin whitened. He forgot he was not King yet,
and hauled the Druid Guardian roughly to his feet.
‘Quick! The Crowning! We must hurry up with the
Crowning!’
The Druid Guardian shook him off angrily. ‘The
Crowning will not be hurried. My dragon and human
Guardians will have dealt with these intruders…’
‘Alv-i-i-innn…’ warned the Witch Excellinor,
her mouth stretched in a warning grin. ‘Patience, my
sweetest… Patience, my darling…’
Alvin recalled himself with an effort. He mentally
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added the Druid Guardian to his Executions List.
And then he swallowed his irritation and grovelled
cringingly.
‘I am sorry, Your Worshipfulness… I forgot myself
for a moment… I am so keen, you see, to assume
the responsibilities of Kingship… and get you your
freedom of course…’
‘Freedom…’ whispered the Druid Guardian
longingly.
Who was he to quarrel with the will of the
gods? And if the will of the gods came in
the unpalatable form of Alvin the
Treacherous, why then, it would at
least grant him his freedom and
his eyesight, right at the end of his life, to see the world
for the very first time…
The Throne of the Wilderwest had been carried
by two strong men up to the dais in the centre of
the room, and for the first time in a century, the
Throne was back in its rightful place, looking out over
Grimbeard’s kingdom.
The Druid Guardian cleared his throat and threw
up his arms, to begin the sacred words of the
Crowning Ceremony.
Two minutes earlier, Hiccup had landed up to his waist
in a large bog.
He could hear the screams and shouts of the
Axemen from the beach, and sheer terror gave him the
strength to struggle out of the bog and fling himself
into the cover of some nearby bracken.
He would be hunted now, he knew it, and he
tried to force himself to calm down and think clearly.
He popped his head from the bracken for a
second. To the east, was the city of Tomorrow. He
could see the little figures of the Alvinsmen and the
Dragonmarkers standing among the ruins of a great
Castle on the highest ground. That must be where
the little brown Wodensfang had said the
crowning would take place, and he had
to get there before they crowned the
wrong King.
But in between him and the
Castle, there was a sea of ferns
that seemed to stretch out forever.
He would never make it in time…
He popped back down into the
cover of the undergrowth again, as the shouting behind
him grew louder.
As he crawled forward through the wet bracken
on his hands and knees, he began to shake with
hysterical laughter. This was ridiculous… He had no
idea who he was, or what he was doing, he ached all
over, it looked like he was being chased by thousands
of men, and dragons, and all he really wanted to do
was lie down in the undergrowth and go to sleep.
But something within him made him push on,
moving one swollen knee forward after the other, even
though he knew what he was doing was impossible,
even though he knew he was defeated before he had
even begun.
And perhaps that is what heroism truly
is, who knows?
For Hiccup could hear the shouting of hundreds
of Guardian Axemen, wading through the bog
behind him. It could only be minutes before he was
discovered, for they could run far faster than he could
crawl.
But as Hiccup pushed forward, by some
extraordinary miracle, he stumbled across a long
tunnel, made by a creature that wanted to travel
secretly through the bracken, without being spotted by
predators wheeling in th
e skies above.
Fernwinders, his brain told him.
Wingless, medium-sized dragons that carve tunnels
through the forests of ferns in the Archipelago so they can
charge across the islands at surprising speeds.
There was a trembling and a shuddering and a
sound of running feet, and Hiccup only just rolled out
of the way in time as a dragon about the size of a large
dog stormed past him with mad, panicked eyes.
Those huge monsters that had erupted from the
sands must have unsettled the Fernwinders, for the
bracken was now alive with them, charging through the
undergrowth like terrified little rhinoceroses.
Hiccup was ready for the next one that careered
through the tunnel he was lying in, and as the creature
plunged past in a snorting, puffing, rocketing rush,
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Hiccup flung himself at the Fernwinder’s retreating tail
and just managed to grab hold of one of the spiny fins.
The Fernwinder squealed in protest, and swung its tail
wildly to try and free itself from Hiccup’s grasp, but it
did not halt its terrified progress, and leapt on through
the tunnel, with Hiccup hanging on for dear life.
That was a mad, hectic, sleigh-ride of a couple
of minutes, with Hiccup bumping after the charging
Fernwinder, the breath being knocked out of his poor
battered body as he was dragged frantically through
the undergrowth. But he could hear the cries of the
Guardian Axemen growing fainter, and he desperately
hung on, trying not to scream with each crunching jolt
as the maddened Fernwinder took him deeper and
deeper into the bracken.
‘Faster! Faster!’ squeaked the Hogfly in delight,
peering out of the back of Hiccup’s backpack as they
careered through the ferns.
Twisting round corners, the Fernwinder
stampeded on, with Hiccup dragging after him like
a broken doll, until the creature’s tail gave a final
frenzied swipe, and Hiccup could hold on no longer,
and spiralled to a bruising halt. Panting hard, Hiccup
picked himself up, and very cautiously poked his head
above the fern canopy. His spirits rose with excitement
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this time, rather than fear.
The Fernwinder could have taken him anywhere
on the island. He could have been further away than
ever from his destination.
But by sheer, blind, dumb luck, he had been
dragged towards the Castle rather than away from it.
He was only a couple of hundred yards away now.
This could not be luck. It had to be Fate.
Ignoring the pain, Hiccup forced himself on, on,
on, half-limping, half-crawling through the clinging
mud and brambles.
On, on, on.
9. THE PROPHECY OF
GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY
In Grimbeard’s Castle, the ceremony for the crowning
of the next King of the Wilderwest was underway.
Inside the great ruined walls, the surviving
remnants of the Tribes of the Archipelago were
gathered: burnt, hungry, wounded and exhausted by
this terrible War against the dragons.
The necessity for that Crowning could not be
more self-evident.
For Grimbeard’s City had been built at the exact
place where Grimbeard himself would have the best
view of his Kingdom. To the north, the towering peaks
of the Murderous Mountains. To the west, the ocean
stretched out forever. And to the south and east, every
single island of the Archipelago was in flames. Even
those villages that the Dragon Rebellion had taken
months ago burned afresh, for the Dragon Furious had
sent his armies out to re-light the fires
as a signal to the
humans, on this Doomsday of Yule, that the Day of
Reckoning had arrived.
It was as if the whole world was on fire.
The Great Dragon himself was stretched out in
Wrecker’s Bay, so unimaginably enormous he made
the Bay look like a shallow pool. He could see them
gathered there in their ruined Castle, puny little human
ants.
‘See, you pathetic human worms,’ hissed the
Dragon Furious. ‘See, and be afraid.’
The Dragon Furious spoke in a voice so low
and powerful and at such an extraordinary frequency
that it caused great waves to roll out across the Inner
Ocean. It was so loud that all could hear it: the people
of the Archipelago in the Castle, Fishlegs and Camicazi
on the back of the Shadow Dragon, even Hiccup,
stumbling as fast as he could through the bracken.
The Dragon spoke in Norse, for Seadragons can
speak Norse when they so choose.
‘This is the Doomsday of Yule, and on this day,
destruction awaits you all! CROWN your pathetic new
King of the Wilderwest, put him on your silly human
Throne, and then bring him out here to face ME in
single combat… And once I have destroyed him, I shall
not rest until I have destroyed every last human being
breathing on this earth!’
The Dragon lifted up his great head, and
lightning poured out of his mouth in an upward storm,
and the sky lit up with an extraordinary bright light, as
all across the Archipelago the dragons answered his cry.
On the clifftop, the Dragonmarkers and the
Alvinsmen held up their arms and hid their faces to
shield them from the blinding brightness of the light as
the whole world in front of them turned into a sea of
flames, burning with the brightness of mini-suns.
The numberless dragons of the Dragon Rebellion
joined in that terrible unearthly screaming, a sound
of WAR so dreadful that the mountains echoed with
it, and the ground actually shook with the multiple
stamping of the dragons’ feet as if it were the beginning
of an earthquake. It was a sound that sent the hair
on every Viking’s head a-quivering, for a people
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accustomed to War knew what that sound meant.
Oh dear, thought Hiccup as he scrambled like
a mouse through the bracken. As the echoes of this
terrible noise died away, a dreadful silence came over
the massed Tribes of Vikings standing in the ruined
Throne Room of what had once been the Castle of
Grimbeard the Ghastly, as if for the very first time, they
realised that the end was near.
This was their last hope, this Crowning of the
King, the last throw of the dice for a people trapped
and surrounded on the Island of Tomorrow, and the
Dragon Jewel seemed a small protection against the
coming apocalypse.
Of one accord, the Tribes began to sing the Last
Song of Grimbeard the Ghastly, the Song he sang just
before he went into the west on his ship The Endless
Journey, never to be seen again.
‘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 m
y heart be wrecked by hurricanes and my
ship by stormy weather
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I know I am a Hero and a
Hero is FOREVER!’
‘In another time, another place,
I could have been a 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!’
A shiver went down Alvin’s spine. ‘I wish
they wouldn’t sing that,’ he whispered
to his mother. For that was the song
that Hiccup had been singing when
they killed him. ‘It is as if the boy is
haunting me, even now, in the hour of
my triumph…’
‘Hush, my sweeting,’ Excellinor
whispered back. ‘The boy is gone
forever, food for the little fishes. He
is an ex-boy, as dead as Grimbeard
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the Ghastly himself…
Enjoy your victory.’
The Druid Guardian stepped
forward.
‘Give me the King’s Things,’
rasped the old man.
Alvin held up the King’s
Lost Things.
All were mouse-quiet now.
Even the Dragon Rebellion were
quiet, as if the dragons, too, were
trying to listen to what was going on
in the ruined castle. It was as if they all
knew that hundreds of years of dragon and
human history had been leading up to this
moment.
The Druid Guardian examined the
Things. He held up the Dragon Jewel so that
its amber caught the light. The Jewel, so small
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that it could easily fit into a human fist, seemed a tiny
protection against the coming apocalypse.
He took Toothless out of the cage in which he
was cowering, and stroked him gently. ‘Dragons should
not be in cages,’ murmured the Druid Guardian softly.
‘Be proud, little dragon, and hold your head high, for
you are the first Lost Thing…’
Poor little Toothless cheered up a little at this
human kindness. He licked the Druid Guardian’s hand
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 9
