Far, far in the distance, Humungously Hotshot
the Hero, and the Ten Fiancés, and Tantrum the Hero,
and Valhallarama and many, many more of the Vikings,
were on their knees, eyes closed, singing one of the old
Viking songs, and you could just about hear it, very,
very faintly, through the rain and the smoke and the
fire:
‘Once I loved Truly, Thor, and my heart paid
the price,
Let me love Truly, Thor, let me love TWICE!’
The Wodensfang, trembling opened his eyes. He, too,
had been waiting for the terrible pain of the Dragon’s
lightning bolts, the final scorching flames.
But they never came.
‘My one True Love vanished, and my heart broke
that day,’ sang those beautiful Viking voices, very very
softly in the distance. ‘But once you’ve loved Truly, Thor,
then you know the way!’
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20. … IT CERTAINLY SCARES
THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT
OF ME
Sweat was pouring down Hiccup’s face. He was
trembling, back braced, expecting to feel the fiery
flames of the Dragon…
… but they never came.
Hiccup opened his eyes.
The Dragon was staring down at him with those
tortured eyes, an extraordinary expression on his face,
smoke snorting from his nostrils, shaking his steaming
head from side to side as he struggled with conflicting
emotions.
Hiccup’s heart beat fast… Oh my goodness…
His gamble might just work… Toothless’s brave action
had made the Dragon pause, and Hiccup had a chance
now, a chance to talk, and to change the Dragon’s
mind.
‘You have to give this new world a chance,
Furious,’ cried Hiccup urgently, holding out his arms
to the Dragon in supplication, a trembling, shivering
Toothless still shielding his Master’s heart. ‘Look!’ said
Hiccup, pointing at his forehead. ‘This Dragonmark
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is a symbol of the brotherhood between humans and
dragons. I will swear by this Mark, that no dragon in
this Wilderwest, where I am now the King, will ever
be a slave again.’
The Dragon Furious trembled as he looked upon
that Mark.
For now all the memories that he had been
struggling to suppress for so many many years came
thundering back in a rush that nearly overwhelmed
him. He remembered another time, another boy.
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Second, who had
once been the Dragon Furious’s blood-brother.
He remembered playing in the Grimler Dragon
cave, when the little wild Hiccup the Second was still
a baby and they could only speak to one another in
Dragonese.
He remembered the days with Hiccup the
Second upon his back, when the world seemed young
and new and full of possibilities, flying high in the air
together in such perfect harmony that you could hardly
tell where the boy ended and the dragon began.
Throwing away that Jewel was just the sort of
incredibly stupid thing that Hiccup the Second would
have done.
The Dragon Furious remembered when the
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defiant teenage Hiccup the Second had put the Mark
on his own forehead, to show his love for the Dragon
Furious, and how his father Grimbeard the Ghastly had
raged at him in a fury, for the Mark was banned and
had become the Mark of a slave.
How his father had stormed! How Grimbeard
had tried to wash it off, swearing to Thor as he rubbed
away at it with his sleeve… But nothing would rub that
Mark off, for the Dragonmark can never be removed.
The Dragon Furious had thought that not one
speck of love remained. Not a jot. Not a whisper. One
hundred years in captivity had cured him of that love
and turned his heart into a dark and hungry forest…
But it appeared that he had not been completely
cured after all.
Human hearts can break and heal and beat again,
and it appears that dragon hearts are the same.
Hiccup the Second was gone forever, separated
from the Dragon by an ocean of sky and time, and he
could not come back to visit.
But still, somehow, a tiny part of him was here,
in the raggedy, awkward shape of Hiccup Horrendous
Haddock the Third.
And the Dragon Furious loved him.
The Dragon swayed back and forth, snorting
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and bellowing in pain and confusion. He had been
stoking his anger for so long, feeding it, nourishing it.
So this unexpected damming of his anger, this sudden
uncertainty, was difficult for him to bear.
‘We will miss our chance,’ said the Dragon
Furious. ‘This is the dragons’ last chance…’
‘No, no, that is not true!’ cried Hiccup. ‘Dragons
and humans can live together! I am the King now,
and I will make this Wilderwest a better world, a
world in which there is no slavery, but the two of us
live freely, a world of equality and freedom…’
‘It is too late,’ said the Dragon, and now he
seemed distressed and angry at himself, raking his own
body with his long talons in his indecision. ‘Or it is too
early. Whatever it is, it is the wrong time… Why can
I not do this? I am failing as a King to my dragons if
I do not kill you, boy…’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Hiccup eagerly, for he could
sense the great restless creature was open to persuasion
now. ‘Perhaps being the best King you can be means
giving this a chance again…’
‘Ah, but we dragons are older than you are. We
have seen all this before,’ said the Dragon Furious,
with a strange kind of longing in his voice. The
Seadragon brought up his gigantic, broken head.
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‘Maybe this is possible… Maybe… The boy
did find the Jewel, after all, and maybe that it is
indeed a message from Fate…’
Maybe…
Maybe…
Maybe…
Hiccup waited, throat dry, heart beating. Had he
said enough? Had he used the right words?
The Dragon swayed from side to side, wracked
with indecision.
And then something dreadful happened.
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21. THE WITCH INTERVENES
WITH FATE
Just when it seemed like things might be moving in the
right direction, just when it seemed as if Hiccup might
be able to persuade the Dragon Furious to call off his
Rebellion… something dreadful happened.
It was, I suppose, an illustration of everything the
Dragon Furious was most worried about: that despite
all that the good humans do, there are always the evil
ones, hiding in the shadows.
The evil one in question, was, of course, the
Witch.
She had seen Hiccup throw the Jewel. She had
seen the Dragon Furious hesitate. She had known that
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the horrible little rat would be talking, Thor rot him.
She had watched it all, and she had the sense that
everything she had lived for, everything she had worked
for, everything she had killed for, was slipping through
her bony fingers, and she could no longer bear it.
Twenty years trapped in a tree trunk, slowly
growing white as a slug, quietly going mad in that
darkness, gnawing on rats’ bones, licking the bark
for moisture, as she laid her plans like spiders’ webs
and looked back into the past searching for signs and
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planning destinies and willing, willing, willing her son
Alvin to be the King.
Now at the last minute, was it all to be snatched
away from her by one little rat-runt of a boy?
She realised that she needed to make her own
intervention with Fate.
She bounded on all fours up to Madguts the
Murderous, who had always been one of the most
staunch of the Alvinsmen, trying not to wrinkle up her
nose, for the repulsive diet* of Madguts the Murderous
made him really rather smelly. ‘The little rat is giving us
away! He’s thrown away the Jewel!’ hissed the Witch.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Gumboil,
Madgut’s henchman.
‘The boy’s actions prove he is not the real King,’
sneered the Witch. ‘Giving away the Dragon Jewel
when he has it in his hand! Dangerous foolishness.
Trust me, I can look into the future. The Dragon
Furious has the Jewel, see, clasped in his ugly paw!’
‘Oh…’ Gumboil and Madguts could see the
Witch’s point.
‘You must lend Alvin your Stealth Dragon, and
Alvin will kill the Dragon Furious and retrieve the
Jewel before it is too late,’ said the Witch. ‘The Dragon
Furious will not have mercy. He is not capable of it,
*The Murderous Tribe lived on a diet of month-old rotten haddock
stuffed with pickled onions and bad eggs, all washed down with
enormous quantities of beer.
and the boy is a fool to risk all on the heart of a reptile.
Dragons are monsters. They are not capable of the
higher feelings like us human beings. Mercy is what
distinguishes us from the beasts…’
Madguts the Murderous grunted in agreement,
rubbing his filthy hands together, prettily decorated
as they were with tattoos of human skulls (an artistic
demonstration of the higher feelings of human beings,
of course).
‘But surely Alvin cannot intervene…’ said
Gumboil. ‘That would be breaking the rules… The
world will end—’
‘Pshaw!’ spat the Witch. ‘There is no time for
scruples when the future of humanity is on the line! I
repeat, the boy’s actions make him a traitor, and Alvin,
who is the real King, should be out there negotiating
for us instead.
‘Besides,’ the Witch pointed out craftily, ‘if Alvin
is riding the Stealth Dragon, the Dragon Furious will
not realise he is there until it is too late…’
‘But that’s cheating!’ protested Gumboil. Even
the Murderous Tribe still had a twisted sense of
honour.
‘The future of humanity is worth a little cheating,’
said the Witch. ‘Besides, it is not really cheating, is it,
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when Alvin is the true King?’
Madguts the Murderous never lent anyone his
Stealth Dragon, ever since an unfortunate incident a
couple of years earlier when Bertha of the Bog-Burglars
had stolen it for a bet.* But it did seem that this was a
rather special occasion.
So he reluctantly grunted his approval.
Gumboil scurried towards the Stealth Dragon
and ordered him to follow Alvin on this one special
occasion.
‘Mother, you have to stop interfering!’ whispered
Alvin furiously as the Witch pushed him towards the
Stealth Dragon, headbutting his reluctant ankles,
dragging on his trousers with her teeth. ‘I don’t
want to go! It’s like a furnace out there! We can
bide our time… wait for our moment to strike in the
darkness—’
‘You have run out of time for biding!’ spat the
Witch. ‘Where is your sense of ambition? This is the
moment for striking, Alvin. For seizing your destiny!’
They were alone now, beside the shadowy outline
of the obedient Stealth Dragon, patiently awaiting
orders.
‘This isn’t my way of doing things, Mother!’
howled Alvin. ‘You have to let me do things my way…
*Please see Book 6: A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons
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I’m more of a skulker, a lurker, a poisoner in the
shadows. I don’t like to put myself in personal danger
unless I know I can win.’
‘Cowardice!’ hissed the Witch. ‘Whining! I’m not
interested in that wishy-washy personal stuff, just get
on that dragon’s back before I bite you! Don’t worry, I
will do your killing for you, but I need you there. Give
me your second fire-suit and the Stormblade.’
Sulkily, Alvin handed them over. Sulkily, he
climbed on to the back of the Stealth
Dragon.
You have to hand it to
the Witch, for an elderly
woman, she certainly had courage.
She wrapped herself in the fire-suit, seized the
Stormblade, vaulted on to the back of the Stealth
Dragon, kicked her bony heels at the dragon’s flanks,
and with a whoop from the Witch, the Stealth Dragon
took off. As he leapt upward, he turned from the
browny hue of a brackish bog to the exact colour of the
flames and blackened clouds of the sky above.
22. THAT’S WHY THEY
CALL HIM ALVIN THE
TREACHEROUS (THE CLUE IS
IN THE NAME REALLY)
So while Hiccup and the Dragon Furious were talking,
while the Dragon Furious was wondering if he should
indeed call off the Rebellion, they could not see the
Witch and Alvin coming towards them across the Bay.
You cannot sense a Stealth Dragon approaching.
That is what makes them such an effective military
weapon. No sound. No sight. No smell.
The Stealth Dragon, when it swoops, can even
slow down its heart to such a muffled beat that the
most hearing-sensitive of little dragons cannot hear it
approaching. Nobody quite knows how it can do that
without dying, or how the beating of its wings is so
quiet that it is undetectable.
Crouching down low on the Stealth Dragon’s
back, the Witch and Alvin were invisible too, hidden by
its camouflaged spine fins and its silent beating wings.
They had seen the Dragon Furious take the Jewel
in his hand, and it was the Witch’s amiable intention to
attack that hand, so that Alvin could steal the Jewel. In
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the meantime, she would kill Hiccup.
‘Are we all quite clear on the plan?’ snapped
the Witch. ‘First we fly to the
Dragon’s hand, Stealth
Dragon, so Alvin can steal the Jewel. And then I deal
with the boy…’
The Murderous Tribe knows how to train
dragons, and the Stealth Dragon obeyed without
question. Alvin was more mutinous, muttering darkly
under his breath.
The Dragon Furious and Hiccup were so busy
concentrating on each other that it was almost as if the
world around them had ceased to exist.
The distant sounds of the chanting Rebellion
dragons, the songs and battle cries of the humans had
all faded into nothingness as their world narrowed into
a conversation between a boy and a dragon.
On, on, the Stealth Dragon flew towards the reef,
with the boy and the mighty dragon unconscious of
their approach.
Despite himself, the shaking, wavering Dragon
Furious was allowing himself to believe, to hope, in the
future.
But some instinct deep within him sensed
approaching danger, and his ears pricked up, and he
sniffed the air.
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‘What’s wrong?’
whispered Hiccup as the Dragon
Furious craned his neck upwards, and
scanned the horizon like some gigantic cat.
Hiccup drew his sword. A cold, cold
feeling had come over him. He peered
about him, shading his eyes as he tried to
see through the drifting smoke. There was
nothing to see but the fires that marked
the boundary of the Combat Ring, and
way, way in the distance, the restless
dragons and the restless Vikings,
hoping for peace, but ready for War.
The Dragon Furious’s beautiful eyes
were so acute that he could spot a fieldmouse
hidden in a bog from a distance of ten miles. He could
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see stars and comets moving that were invisible to the
human eye. It was even said that he could see through
walls, and into time itself, although I do not know if
that is possible.
But even a Dragon Furious cannot see something
that is invisible, and although he sensed there was
danger, he could not see where it was coming from.
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 19
