of royal blood… Not a Common-or-Garden at all,
but a Toothless D-d-daydream, who are a bit like
M-m-monstrous Nightmares only cuter…’
‘Hmm,’ said Stormfly thoughtfully, looking him
over to see if he was turning purple, which is what
Mood-dragons do when they lie.
And a bright red and bashful Fishlegs was
showing Barbara the Barbarian the letter they had
found in the Underground Cavern, while saying in an
offhand manner: ‘Oh yes, I go on all Hiccup’s Quests.
I’m his best friend, you know, he’s all the family I have,
apart from this enormous Deadly Shadow dragon here,
I know, quite cool, isn’t he…’ and trying not to itch
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at the same time because he didn’t want Barbara to
realise he was allergic to CATS.
But Barbara may have realised, because she
brought out her fog-horn and blew on it several times,
making such a loud noise that the cat’s fur stood up
like the quills on a sea urchin and she bounced back
immediately on to Barbara’s shoulder.
Even the Alvinsmen seemed pretty pleased
with the way things had turned out. Very-Vicious was
showing off the Hogfly to everyone, bellowing proudly:
‘He’s the FIRST Hogfly to go to Valhalla and come
back again, and I’m going to make him a Warrior
and Hero of the Tribe,’ while the Hogfly licked him
lovingly and Boily of Bashem snorted, ‘You can’t make
a lapdragon a WARRIOR, Vicious…’
Only Alvin and the Witch seemed depressed, the
Witch snapping out useful things like, ‘I can’t believe
you couldn’t think of ONE good deed that you did in
twenty years, it didn’t have to be a big one, Alvin, they
were using anything, you could have just helped an old
lady across the water or something…’
‘I could help YOU into the water if you like,
Mother,’ said Alvin bitterly, looking over the edge of
the cliff in a hopeful fashion. ‘Just one little push…’
And then the Druid Guardian shouted out:
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‘THE KING NEEDS TO PREPARE FOR THE
BATTLE WITH THE DRAGON FURIOUS IN
SINGLE COMBAT!’
‘… yes, but the problem was, Camicazi, when
you shook your axe in the air I just assumed you were
ATTACKING me rather than waving hello…’ Hiccup
prattled on before Camicazi dug him in the ribs and
hissed, ‘The King… He’s talking about you, Hiccup.’
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Hiccup, jumping in surprise. ‘So
he is…’
… while thinking, I am NEVER going to get used
to this…
As Hiccup rose to his feet, he was not looking
forward to the single combat. He was absolutely
terrified. Just the thought of the Dragon Furious
brought him out in a cold sweat. But in his heart of
hearts, beneath his terror, he not only felt hopeful, he
even felt confident.
The Dragon would be frightened of the Jewel.
The strength of the Jewel’s power made Hiccup strong,
and now he knew its dark secret he would be able to
bargain with the Dragon Furious and save the humans
without destroying the dragons.
And then, he felt a rustling in his backpack, and
the Wodensfang woke up.
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The Wodensfang’s little
brown face appeared over the
top of Hiccup’s backpack,
and his little brown nose
twitched as he tried to take
everything in, and his dazed,
bleary eyes blinked at the
enormous company of
people gathered excitedly
in the ruined hall.
‘Dear me,’ croaked
the Wodensfang. ‘Where am I and what on earth is
going on?’
And then he looked up, and saw the Crown on
Hiccup’s head, did a double take, blinked twice and
gave a whoop of joy.
‘Oh my goodness! My dear boy! YOU DID
IT! YOU’RE THE KING! YOU DID IT! YOU
REALLY, REALLY DID IT!’
The Wodensfang fluttered out of the backpack on
his old brown wings. He capered around Hiccup, and
embraced him tearfully.
‘I can’t believe I MISSED it all! This is
marvellous! This is glorious! O happy happy day! I
have to admit, I thought that the whole thing would
259
be completely
impossible…
HOW did you
do it? What did
you do about the
Sand-Sharks?
How did you get to
Tomorrow without a
boat? How did you stop
the Dragon Furious from killing you before you got
there?’
‘It’s a long story,’ smiled Hiccup. ‘But thank
you, Wodensfang, I really couldn’t have done it
without you, even though you were only awake for
the first five minutes, that was a vital five minutes…’
‘Where did you find the Jewel?’ asked
Wodensfang eagerly.
‘What do you mean, where did I find the
Jewel?’ said Hiccup, confused. ‘We found the Jewel
ages ago, back in the Amber Slavelands. You were
there Wodensfang.’ And he pointed to the Dragon
Jewel around his neck.
‘No, I mean the real Dragon Jewel,’ said
Wodensfang.
Hiccup had a very nasty feeling in the bottom
260
of his
stomach, the
sort of tickly butterfly
sensation that he got when
he knew he was about to receive
some very bad news.
The real Dragon Jewel? What
did the Wodensfang mean?
‘Wodensfang,’ said Hiccup
with trepidation, ‘what on earth
are you talking about? There
is only one Dragon Jewel and
that is this one.’
Now it was the
Wodensfang’s jaw that fell
open.
‘DON’T TELL ME
YOU HAVEN’T FOUND
THE REAL DRAGON
JEWEL YET?’ squeaked
the little brown dragon. ‘Oh
dear! Oh dear! Oh my ears and
whiskers!’
The Wodensfang quivered in the
air in astonishment and disbelief.
‘This is not the real Dragon
Jewel!’ he squeaked. ‘THIS IS
ONE OF GRIMBEARD’S RED
HERRINGS!
‘This is a FAKE!’
Hiccup’s heart sank right
down into his ragged
furry boots.
Oh dear.
Oh dear. Oh
dear oh dear
oh dear.
14. THAT GRIMBEARD THE
GHASTLY REALLY WAS A
VERY TRICKY MAN
‘What ARE you talking about?’ said Hiccup, looking
at the Wodensfang in a dazed sort of way. ‘Not the
real Dragon Jewel? Of course this is the real Dragon
Jewel! It even has Grimbeard’s initials, G.G.,
written quite clearly on the back of it!’
The Witch could not understand Dragonese but
she sensed a problem, and she bounded ove
r, on all
fours. ‘Is something wrong?’ she hissed eagerly.
The Wodensfang switched to Norse. ‘This isn’t
the real Dragon Jewel! Oh dear oh dear oh dear! This
is just terrible! I just ASSUMED that you must have
found the Dragon Jewel if you were crowned King,
because otherwise the Druid Guardian wouldn’t have
crowned you!’
‘Don’t blame me!’ huffed the Druid Guardian,
with a strong sense of injury.
‘I do blame you!’ squeaked the Wodensfang.
‘The real Dragon Jewel is unmistakeable. In the real
Dragon Jewel, there are two little dragons suspended
in the heart of the amber, each with a tail in the other
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one’s mouth. Look! No dragons!’ He pointed a wing at
the fake Dragon Jewel hanging round Hiccup’s neck.
‘Well I can see that now,’ said the Druid
Guardian crossly. ‘But before I crowned the King I
was blindfolded. The Jewel’s setting was correct. I
checked with my Dragon Guardians, and they told me
I was crowning the right person… and just to make it
absolutely clear, Thor actually lifted Hiccup up into the
air with his mighty hand and—’
‘Oh noooooooooooooooo!’ wailed the
Wodensfang. ‘How could this be happening?’
Hiccup had a most unpleasant sick feeling in the
264
bottom of his stomach. Suddenly it was all sounding
horribly like just the sort of thing that Grimbeard the
Ghastly would do. In fact he had form in this regard. It
would be just like Grimbeard to have two Jewels, in the
same way that he had two Swords and two Treasures,
one real one, and one decoy.*
Oh Grimbeard and his red herrings…
I have definitely said this before, but Grimbeard
the Ghastly was the trickiest trickster since the great
trickster god Loki put his Particularly Tricky hat on.
Hiccup gasped with sudden realisation. ‘There
was a herring painted on the top of the map to find the
Jewel! I always wondered what it meant…’
‘And T-t-toothless told you it was a red one!’
exclaimed Toothless, adding confidentially to the rest of
the company: ‘T-t-toothless knows ALL the colours…’
And if you, dear reader, look back to the tenth of
Hiccup’s memoirs, How to Seize a Dragon’s Jewel, you
will discover that Hiccup is completely right. Painted
on the top of the map of the Amber Slavelands is a very
large red fish, and that fish is indeed a member of the
herring family.
Fishlegs got out the map now.
And there it was. It wasn’t a teeny weeny little
herring either, drawn discreetly in one of the corners.
*See Book 2: How to Be a Pirate
It was a whopping great monster of a herring that
stretched all the way from one side of the map right
to the other, and to make it even more obvious, the
herring in the picture was winking.
Not a little, secretive wink. A great, big THIS
IS ME, GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY, MAKING
ONE OF MY NASTY LITTLE JOKES kind of a
wink.
How could I not have noticed that? breathed
Hiccup. It’s completely OBVIOUS now you know it’s
there… and I’m supposed to be GOOD at riddles.
‘Wodensfang,’ said Hiccup in Norse, patiently but
between gritted teeth, ‘if you knew that this wasn’t the
real Jewel all along, why on earth didn’t you tell us this
earlier?’
‘I couldn’t tell you before,’ explained the
Wodensfang, ‘because I promised Grimbeard the
Ghastly that I wouldn’t interfere with Destiny and the
finding of the Things because otherwise it wouldn’t
be a proper Test. The King must find the Things. I
should not intervene. I am only speaking now because
for some inexplicable reason you seem to have been
crowned King anyway…’
‘Everything was in order!’ said the Druid
Guardian crossly. ‘After one hundred years, do you
266
think the Dragon Guardians and I are going to make a
mistake?’
‘And I was so sure you were going to find the
real Jewel, Hiccup, back there on Hero’s End,’
moaned Wodensfang. ‘Or rather, that it would find
you, like all the other Things found you. I mean,
Grimbeard was buried on Hero’s End! It seemed like
DESTINY had taken you there on purpose! Are you
quite sure you didn’t find it there?’
‘Well I’m so sorry, but I was rather busy at
the time,’ said Hiccup, ‘dealing with a whole load of
Sand-Sharks who were trying to kill us, remember?
And I also didn’t know I was SUPPOSED to be
looking for a Jewel, because I thought we had
already found the Jewel. Understandably, you have to
admit…’
‘Well that shouldn’t matter!’ said Wodensfang.
‘The Things usually make their way to you without
you looking for them. Did you not stumble over any
large, grim-looking graves or anything? Are you
quite sure it didn’t fall into your pocket without you
realising it?’
Hiccup turned out his pockets. He patted himself
all over. He even, in his desperation, took off his shoes
and felt inside them.
267
‘Quite sure,’ said Hiccup.
No Jewel.
‘Well, this completely ruins my Plan,’ said the
Wodensfang.
‘What was your Plan, Wodensfang?’ asked
Hiccup dejectedly.
‘I made a bargain with the Dragon Furious
a number of months ago when we were in the
underground hideout…’ said the Wodensfang.
‘Oh!’ said Toothless suddenly. ‘I remember
this! Toothless h-h-heard you talking to the Dragon
Furious! But Toothless thought that was a dream!’
‘Yes,’ said Wodensfang, ‘Toothless overheard me
speaking telepathically to Furious because Toothless
is a young Seadragon just coming into his powers…’
‘Toothless is a Seadragon?’ said Hiccup.
‘T-t-toothless is j-j-jolly well not a Seadragon!’
retorted Toothless crossly. ‘Toothless is a Toothless
Daydream! Everyone knows that!’
‘Yes well, Toothless is a Seadragon at the
beginning of his life and I am a Seadragon at the end
of his life… but I can’t go into that now,’ said the
Wodensfang. ‘The point is, we were running out of
time to find all the Things, so I made a bargain with
the Dragon that if he called off his Rebellion until
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the Doomsday of Yule, I would bring him the Dragon
Jewel before the single combat…’
‘Wodensfang!’ gasped Hiccup. ‘You weren’t
thinking you would betray me, were you?’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’ said the Wodensfang
hurriedly. ‘I was going to take the Dragon Furious the
FAKE Dragon Jewel, so I could fulfil my promise,
and then you would have ridden into single combat
with the REAL Dragon Jewel, and
everything would
have been fine!’
Sometimes, talking to the Wodensfang made
Hiccup’s head go round and round, even when he
wasn’t being attacked by Sand-Sharks at the same time.
He was having some difficulty taking all this in.
‘Wodensfang,’ said Hiccup at last. ‘I’ve made
some crazy plans in my time, but trust me, you have
just come up with the worst Plan in the history of
Plan-making.
‘Even if, by some magical coincidence, I had
managed to find a Jewel on Hero’s End, a Jewel that
I didn’t even know that I was looking for, if you
brought the Dragon Furious a FAKE Jewel instead of
the real one, let me tell you right now, Wodensfang,
the Dragon Furious would have KILLED you.’
‘The life of a little old dragon has never been of
269
much importance when the fate of the world hangs in
the balance,’ said Wodensfang. ‘Anyway, it may have
been a bad Plan, but it was, at least, a Plan. Without
the real Dragon Jewel,’ said the Wodensfang, ‘I am
very much afraid we are doomed.’
The Vikings hadn’t understood the Dragonese
parts of Hiccup and Wodensfang’s conversation, but
there had been enough bits in Norse for them to realise
what a bad situation they were in.
There was a long silence, only broken by
Toothless saying thoughtfully to no one in particular,
‘Actually T-t-toothless might make rather a GOOD
Seadragon…’
‘Is there any way of knowing where the real Jewel
might be now?’ asked Hiccup, speaking Norse again in
desperation.
‘It could be anywhere at all in the wild and windy
wastes of an endless Archipelago,’ said the Wodensfang
gloomily. ‘And we have run out of time to find it.’
The Wodensfang was right. This was a disaster.
They could not win against the dragons now.
Without a Dragon Jewel, they all knew that they
were lost. They looked about each other with hollow
eyes. Oh dear oh dear oh dear… Everything had
suddenly got very dark.
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The Witch Excellinor showed her black gums in
a very nasty grin. ‘Well, well, well,’ she gloated. ‘This is
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 14
