the sidelines would storm out, screaming most terribly,
and Wrecker’s Bay would become a bloody, terrible
scene as the two armies fought one another to the
death.
It was already haunted by so many ghosts of the
past, that Bay, for that was where the Winter Wind of
Woden blew unfortunate ships who were wrecked on
the terrible Reefs, and it wasn’t always clear whether it
was the wind howling through the holes in the Reefs or
the wailing of the human and the dragon ghosts who
had lost their lives here once.
Now it was haunted by future ghosts as well as
past ghosts. The silent watching audience could see
them all in that moment, the ghosts of Heroes and
Dragons past, present and future, flying together in the
Bay in their minds’ eye.
‘T-t-toothless the Seadragon has SPECIAL
POWERS,’ said Toothless to himself as the
little Hiccup party set out. ‘He will grind that
F-F-Furious’s bones to dust with his… with his…’
Toothless had no idea what his special powers would
be, but he ran through all the delightful possibilities in
his head. Invisibility, lasers, super-speed…
It was difficult for Windwalker to fly through
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the air towards where the dim black outline of
Furious lay in Wrecker’s Bay, for the air all around the
Dragon was so burningly, burningly hot, that at times
Hiccup had to pull down the visor of his fire-suit and
Windwalker had to draw down his third eyelid, which
was see-through. The wind was blowing strongly, and so
poor Windwalker felt as if he was trying to fly against a
burning jetstream of fire, and any second, he felt as if
his raggedy wings might blow inside out, sending him
plummeting downwards.
‘It’s hot,’ complained Toothless. ‘T-t-toothless
LIKES it hot, Seadragons love it toasty warm…’
Hiccup had a sudden longing image in his mind
of happier times, of Toothless playing in the hearth fire
in the old Chiefly hut on Berk, racing up and down the
chimney, with squeals of delight…
‘… but this is too hot, even for a great terrifying
Seadragon like T-t-toothless…’ said Toothless sadly.
‘Yes, Toothless,’ replied Hiccup, who even in the
protection of his fire-suit was drenched in sweat, his
body burning up like he had a raging temperature. ‘It’s
definitely too hot.’
Every instinct in Hiccup was telling him to turn
away, go back – but he could hear the distant voices
of the peoples of the Archipelago singing those old
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Archipelago songs, and willing him on:
‘I’ve heard that the sky in America
Is a blue that you wouldn’t believe
But my ship hit a rock in these boggy shores
And now I’ll never leave…’
And the songs gave him courage, and calmed him, as
if the dear familiar owners of those voices were flying
right beside him.
As he approached closer to the might and the
heat of Dragon Furious, Wodensfang began to fly more
slowly, more uncertainly, his breath catching in his little
throat. He had known the Dragon Furious for so many
years… old friend, old enemy. But now it was as if the
Dragon had turned into something else, something
older than the hills around, and something more
implacable.
The nearer, nearer, Hiccup, Windwalker,
Toothless and Wodensfang came to the Dragon
Furious, the hotter they became, as if they were flying
into the very fires of hell, and even underneath his
fire-suit, Hiccup’s face burned as if he had stuck it in
the oven.
Hiccup had not been this close to the Dragon
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Furious since the time he first met him, buried in briars
and chains in the forest on Berserk, and you could still
see the remnants of that forest captivity in the trees
that had grown through the Dragon’s spines, the chains
trailing from him.
Even back then he had been a truly terrifying
sight, enough to make you sweat with fear when you
saw him.
But the Dragon had changed. War had changed
that Dragon, and something about the way he had
changed made Hiccup’s heart sink down into his boots
and his stomach churn like a nauseous sea.
The maddened melancholy of Furious’s great
yellow eyes had become bleaker, and wilder, and
deader, like the cruel implacable eyes of a Great White
Shark. Although he was still – so still – you could feel
the anger reeking off him like the clouds of steam that
rose from his shining, blackened sides, and almost smell
his fury in the heat of the air.
His skin was peeling off, like the little peelings of
charcoal that fly into the air when a bonfire is roaring at
its hottest, and all around, those little black flakes were
whirling upward.
His great steaming, roasting body was covered
in battle scars, and spears, axes and swords were buried
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in his flanks and neck like ornaments, forming a little
spiky coral crust.
Toothless was so terrified that he forgot he
was a Seadragon, and he couldn’t really think of any
special powers to give himself that would be up to
this situation. So he gave up flying entirely, and buried
himself in Hiccup’s waistcoat, while Hiccup forced
himself nearer, nearer, although every instinct, every
nerve in his body, was screaming: ‘Turn round! Go
back! Pull on Windwalker’s reins and turn him back
the other way!’
Was the Dragon Furious alive or was he dead?
The Dragon was crouched down, still as if
turned into rock, only the tip of his tail swaying as
they approached, yellow eyes unblinking, but in their
depths, moody firestorms brooded and crackled.
Wodensfang could not meet the raging, seething
intensity of the Dragon’s gaze.
There came a point when Windwalker could fly
no further. He just would not go on, but hovered in the
steaming heat, his sleek black sides shaking so wildly
with terror that it was as if he had some shivering fever.
And then the Dragon suddenly opened his jaws
with such unexpected violence that Hiccup nearly fell
off the Windwalker’s back with the shock of it.
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The Dragon Furious opened his mouth and let
out a great wild mad shriek, like the alien scream of
a goshawk, and you could see buried in the roasting,
smoking chasm of his throat, the ghostly outline of a
Viking ship’s burning mast, stuck there like a fish-bone.
Who knows who they had been, those poor human
souls, whose ship had been swallowed in one hungry
gulp, and who had disappeared forever into the fiery
furnace of the belly of the beast?
War has driven him crazy, thought Hiccup, feeling
the sick taste of panic in his mouth.
How can I even
dream of talking to a creature like this? How can I appeal
to his reason when he has gone so far beyond reason into a
wild alien place?
The Dragon shrieked, shrieked and shrieked
again, and the drilling sound of it burrowed so madly
into Hiccup’s brain that he had to cover his ears, and
even then his eardrums vibrated and throbbed with
pain.
For a second it seemed as if the Dragon would
not be able to speak at all, so mad with fury was he,
that it was as if he had forgotten all language. He
leapt forward as if to tear Hiccup apart on the spot,
but then threw himself violently back the other way,
and thrashed about, shrieking on and on, until Hiccup
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thought he might go mad with the noise of it.
But eventually, the Dragon seemed to be making
an effort to control himself and find some memory
of speech, thrashing and foaming at the mouth and
making strange strangled guttural noises until he finally
fixed on something approaching words. He spoke in
Norse, even though he knew Hiccup spoke Dragonese,
and there was something dreadful about that, for it
was as if he were trying to keep Hiccup as a stranger,
something alien to him…
Because he knows he is going to kill me, thought
Hiccup with dull terror.
The Dragon spat out each foreign Norse word
as if he hated it, as if the human word was something
poisonous and revolting in his mouth.
‘So, Wodensfang, you have betrayed me…’ said
the Dragon Furious. ‘You promised you would bring
me the Dragon Jewel before the King came to meet
me… Where isss this Jewel?’
Shaking, Wodensfang flew above Furious’s head,
hovered for second with the Jewel in his claws… and
then, guiltily, sadly, he dropped it.
Wodensfang dropped the little Jewel and the
mountain moved. Out shot the Dragon’s mighty fist,
and the claws of Furious closed around the Jewel, as a
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hand might close around a speck of dust.
And now the steam around the dragon seemed
to grow thicker and more intense as the Dragon
brought the Jewel up to those seething, burning eyes
so he could inspect it. His pupils narrowed to great
unbelieving slits in order to better focus on the tiny
bead of a Jewel. And then those great eyes raised slowly
again to gaze with spear-like fury at the guilty, raggedy,
flapping little Wodensfang.
A dreadful ominous noise began to rumble in the
Dragon’s throat, as if the Dragon really were a volcano
and he was going to explode.
‘I know! I know!’ squeaked the Wodensfang, ‘it
is not the real Dragon Jewel, but give me a chance to
explain!’
The steam rising from the Dragon’s back began
to hum. The Dragon did not open his mouth, but
his eyes glowed with a strange light, and he spoke
to the Wodensfang through his thoughts alone, for
Seadragons can communicate with one another like
that. And those thoughts were SAVAGE.
‘What… is… this???’ the Dragon’s mouth did not
move, but his words came alive in the Wodensfang’s
brain like hissing, angry serpents, and the Wodensfang’s
eyes glowed too as he received them.
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‘Thisss is not the Dragon Jewel.
‘Thissss – as you must well know, Wodensfang,
for you have known the Dragon Jewel well for a
thousand years – thisssss…
‘… is a FAKE.’
‘Yes,’ replied the Wodensfang nervously. ‘I know.
I have to admit, it is, indeed, a fake…’
‘BETRAYAL!’ screamed the Dragon Furious’s
thoughts. ‘TREACHERY! You have double crossed
me, Wodensfang!’
The Dragon Furious turned his eye upon the
Wodensfang, and drew in his breath to obliterate him.
‘Yes,’ said the Wodensfang, brave once more. ‘I
did, I am, and I will. But also ,’ said the Wodensfang,
‘No, I didn’t, I’m not, and I won’t.* I have betrayed
the enemy that you are now, but not the friend that
you once were.’
‘Yes and no!’ squeaked the Wodensfang. ‘No and
yes! It is all Grimbeard the Ghastly’s fault. The fake
Jewel was one of his red herrings. He always did have
a nasty sense of humour…’
‘If this is not the real Dragon Jewel ,’ hissed
the Dragon Furious’s thoughts, ‘Where isss the real
Dragon Jewel? Be careful how you answer me,
Wodensfang. Tell me the truth…’
*For Seadragons were used to talking to each other in this complicated
way, living as they do in the past, present and future simultaneously.
‘We do not know where it is,’ admitted the
Wodensfang. ‘It could be anywhere at all in the vast
and empty wastes of an endless Archipelago.’
Furious finished the Wodensfang’s thought for
him.
‘So it does not really matter if this is not the
real Jewel. For although I do not now have the Jewel,
nor does Hiccup. And you have run out of time to
find it.’
The seething madness in the Dragon Furious’s
yellow eyes calmed a little at that.
The Wodensfang was very afraid to say the next
sentence. But bravely he said it anyway:
‘You see, I have always hoped, Furious, that you
would not carry this through to its bloody ending.
That you would let this Hiccup try one more time to
bring the humans and dragons together.
The Dragon hunched down, his eyes fixed on the
little speck of Hiccup hovering in front of him in the
smoke and the fire and the black rain of his smoking
skin. He had grown very still again, as if he had turned
to stone, with only the tip of his tail swaying very gently
from side to side.
The Dragon’s thought-voice was now very cold
and bleak, and he spoke with absolute finality.
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‘Then your hope will be in vain, Wodensfang.
‘A King must harden his heart, and act in the
interests of his people. And if I show mercy now, it
will be the end of dragons.’
Hiccup had no idea what was being said. He only
knew that he had to speak now. His voice sounded
very small and weak, and indeed he barely could speak
at all, with the burning heat tearing at his throat. But
still he spoke, in Dragonese, trying to reach out to that
alien otherness that the Dragon Furious had become,
trying to make some connection with him, and bring
him back.
‘I have not come here to die, Furious,’ shouted
Hiccup hoarsely. ‘I have come here to give you my own
promise. I promise you that now I am the new King,
I will make the Wilderwest a Kingdom in which
humans and dragons can live together peacefully—’
‘Humans cannot change,’ roared the Dragon
Furious, and his eyeballs spat with electricity, and two
&
nbsp; thunderous lightning bolts shot from them to either
side of the trembling Hiccup. ‘Do not think that you
can use your treacherous forked-tongued words to
change anything. Words change nothing. You see…
When I look at you, I do not see a new King of the
Wilderwest. I see the old King of the Wilderwest. I
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see… Grimbeard the Ghastly…
‘I see Grimbeard the Ghastly sitting there
before me, as if it were a hundred years ago, right
here today!’
The little spark of hope that had lit in Hiccup
when the Dragon started talking, died abruptly.
He isn’t talking because he is wanting to bargain,
he’s going to play with me before he kills me, thought
Hiccup. Like a cat with a mouse…
‘Look at you,’ roared the Dragon, in a screaming
taunt. ‘You little human King, you, all dressed up
with the King’s Things. The Crown… the shield…
the second-best sword… the lobster necklace… the
ticking-thing. You are Grimbeard the Ghastly to the
life!’
The Dragon Furious reached out a talon and
jeeringly swung the ticking-thing so that it swayed
back and forth from where it dangled on Hiccup’s belt
beneath the hovering Windwalker. Tick tock tick tock
tick tick tock.
‘I am not Grimbeard the Ghastly!’ Hiccup
shouted up to the Dragon. ‘I will never be like him! I
am a Hiccup, and I will always be a Hiccup!’
‘I have a GRUDGE against Grimbeard the
Ghastly,’ growled the smouldering Dragon Furious.
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‘He killed my Master, and kept me captive in the
darkness for a hundred years… Do you know how
long a hundred years can seem when you have
nowhere to go, nothing to do but to keep on thinking
about the past, the present and the future?
‘If I had that Grimbeard here before me, O how
I would RIP him…
‘I cannot rip Grimbeard but I can rip you…
‘So FLY AWAY little King, and let us see how
far you get before I RIP you…’
The Dragon opened up his great bloodstained
jaws so wide that Hiccup could see his cavern of
his throat, and the fireholes preparing to shoot
thunderbolts…
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 16
