don’t think Alvin’s boot came down in time…’ gasped
Hiccup. ‘Oh, thank Thor and Woden and the great
bushy plaits of Freya herself!’ cried Hiccup, hugging
Toothless with all his might – lovely wriggly Toothless,
still very much alive, and licking him all over his face
with his little forked tongue.
Despite his best efforts, Hiccup wasn’t making
much progress across the slippery, slidy, seaweedy
rocks. Above them raged the chaos, screams and terror
of the Final Battle, talon against shield, arrow against
dragonskin.
‘Toothless, quick, fetch the Jewel before
somebody else gets it,’ Hiccup gasped.
Toothless squeaked in excitement, and dashed off
to find the Jewel, lying horribly exposed on the Reef.
Camicazi hopped off the Deadly Shadow’s back
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to look for the Jewel too. Fishlegs got off to question
the cursing, squirming Alvin.
Fishlegs was feeling extremely emotional, and
feeling emotional brought out the Berserk in him.
An excitable rash was spreading across his face, and
confusing his feelings further.
‘I have been looking for my family for fifteen
years,’ said Fishlegs, looking down at Alvin, squirming
in the iron clasp of the Deadly Shadow’s talons.
‘Fifteen years of searching, fifteen years of wondering,
and I have to say, whoever I dreamed my father
would be, I never in a thousand years thought it might
be you…’
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‘I deny everything!’ spat Alvin the Treacherous.
‘LET ME GO! I have a Jewel to break!’
‘I mean, I don’t even like you,’ said Fishlegs.
‘How can I have a father I don’t even like?”
‘It’s perfectly possible, I have a mother who I’ve
hated for years,’ raged Alvin. ‘And speaking of mothers,
one thing she was right about: this is no time for the
personal touchy-feely stuff. I’m on a mission here, so
kindly get your ugly three-headed dinosaur to remove
its claws from my neck, its bad breath is making me
feel sick…’
‘How sick would you feel if we removed your
head?’ cooed Arrogance.
Alvin understood a little Dragonese and he
turned pale at this.
‘There must be something nice about you,’ said
Fishlegs hopefully. ‘Do you like poetry?’
‘I hate poetry,’ ground out Alvin. ‘I hate poets. I
hate Boys-with-Faces-like-Haddocks-that-Somebody-
Trod-On, and if I were to have a son like you who was a
runt, I would be the first one to bundle them in an old
lobster-pot and toss them out to sea. We have a saying
in the Outcast Tribe: “Cast out the weird, so your Tribe
may be feared.” That’s the only thing to do with runts.’
Poor Fishlegs turned white, as if Alvin had hit
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him. ‘Yes, we have a similar saying in the Hooligan
Tribe, “Only the strong can belong…”’ he said
miserably. ‘But what about my mother? Why did you
abandon her?’
‘Oh, these girls,’ snarled Alvin. ‘I have always
been a good-looking man, and the Treacherous have
a nice smooth line in talking. Is it my fault that some
Viking vixen gets ideas above her station and thinks she
can pin me down over some pathetic I’m-so-in-love-
with-you nonsense? ME with my brilliant future?’
‘You were married to her!’ cried Fishlegs.
‘I was crossing my fingers,’ said Alvin. ‘Then it
doesn’t count.’
Now the Berserk rage really had gone to
Fishlegs’s head and he was trembling all over with
temper, and a bright red itch had got into his eyes. His
eyes streamed, and his nose ran with snot.
‘RELEASE HIM, DEADLY
SHADOW!’ he shouted.
‘Are you sure?’
said Innocence, hugely
disappointed.
‘ALVIN THE
TREACHEROUS, YOU
FALSE-HEARTED
YELLOW-BELLIED MOLLUSC!’ roared Fishlegs,
very dignified for someone in a Berserk rage, and
drawing his sword with a flourish. ‘I CHALLENGE
YOU TO A DUEL FOR ABANDONING MY
MOTHER AND LEAVING HER TO DIE OF A
BROKEN HEART!’
The Deadly Shadow reluctantly released Alvin,
who leapt to his feet, brushing down his sleeves as if
they were tainted by the Shadow’s touch.
‘I am the true King of the Wilderwest,’ sneered
Alvin, ‘and I do not duel with runts. Tell you what
though, runt. We’ll try a little test to see if you really are
a Treacherous.’
Alvin threw wide his arms.
‘Kill me,’ said Alvin softly. ‘One shot, and I will
not hit you back, runt. See, I have not even bothered to
draw my sword. Kill me…’
The Berserk rage was running through Fishlegs’s
veins, hot and pure as poison. But furious though he
was, Fishlegs could not do it.
The temper left him, and he drooped sadly.
Alvin leant forward, and poked his iron mask in
Fishlegs’s face.
‘You see,’ purred Alvin. ‘A Treacherous could
do that. You are not a Treacherous, you No-Named
accident.’ Alvin turned his back on Fishlegs with a
contemptuous swirl of his cloak, striding off to look for
the Jewel.
Slowly Fishlegs lifted his downcast head.
And then he shouted after his father’s departing
back: ‘You are right! I am not a Treacherous! And YOU
do not disown me, Alvin the Treacherous! I disown
YOU! I cast you out as my father! I EXPEL you! I am
putting you in a great big imaginary lobster pot RIGHT
NOW and setting you out to sea!
‘For I am Fishlegs No-Name, the First of his
Tribe!’ Fishlegs punched his fist up at the stormy
heavens for emphasis. ‘And the motto of the No-Name
Tribe is: “Be of good cheer, ALL welcome here!”’
Fishlegs suddenly spotted a flaw in this motto,
and added hurriedly, ‘… and everyone is welcome
except for YOU, Alvin the Treacherous! You are
OUTCAST from my Tribe!’
Camicazi still hadn’t found the Jewel. She was
running all over the rocks, desperately trying to find
it, muttering to herself, for Bog-Burglars do not have
a great deal of patience, ‘I mean, where is it? I’m not
sure I would even recognise the beastly thing if I saw
it…’
Toothless had joined her, and he had even less
patience than Camicazi, so he was practically crying
with annoyance. ‘T-t-toothless hates stupid Jewels
that look exactly like all the other rocks on this
stupid stupid R-r-reef…’
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As he hurried off to join them, Alvin called back
to Fishlegs over his shoulder: ‘A Treacherous would stab
me in the back right now. Whoever you are, you are no
true son of mine!’
Motionless, Fishlegs watched Alvin go.
‘Who am I kidding?’ he whispered. ‘I’v
e never
been any good at the whole Viking grunting and
thumping, stabbing and jabbing thing, I like playing the
lyre, for Thor’s sake, even in a Berserk rage, I couldn’t
kill anybody.’
‘That’s because you take after your mother,’
whispered Innocence, pressing her nose consolingly
against Fishlegs’s cheek.
‘You’re the spitting image of her,’ said Patience,
‘which is one reason we love you so much.’
‘She loved poetry,’ said Arrogance, simply.
‘Always singing, and laughing, and she’d have been
so proud of you, Fishlegs, just like we are.’
Fishlegs did not understand what they were
saying, but he put his arms around the Shadow’s heads
and hid his face in Arrogance’s neck.
‘You are my family now,’ said Fishlegs.
‘We are,’ ‘We are,’ ‘We are,’ hissed Innocence,
Arrogance and Patience all together. ‘We are yoursss
forever…’
388
There was a horrible, screeching, screaming
noise from above. A noise so screamingly, desperately
awful that it felt as if the hairs on your head were being
dragged out by the roots, a noise that sent terror to the
very depths of your soul.
Alvin froze for one moment, and then gave a yell
of pure fear as he saw what was racing down towards
them.
The Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow were coming
for Alvin…
That was their terrible sound as they hurtled
through the air, changing as they flew from air into fire
and back again. One second they were howling tunnels
of wind, the next they were flaming bullets; and so fast
was their descent you could only see the vague outline
of their thunderbolt progress.
They had been watching languidly from their
airy perches in the upper atmosphere to check that the
rules of single combat were observed correctly.
They saw Alvin and the Witch sneak into the
combat ring, they saw them strike the Dragon Furious,
they saw Alvin steal the Jewel.
‘He has desecrated the rules of single combat!’
howled the Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow, as they
dived downwards at unimaginable speeds. ‘Come,
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Fates, come my
Dragon Valkyries,
come my pretty kittens of
Destiny! We know the fate for
those who transgress the iron laws of
the Archipelago, for we ARE that fate…
‘Get him!!!!!!’
The Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow were
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travelling so fast that when Alvin was plucked
up and thrown into the air by his hook, it
was as if he were being picked up
by a whirlwind. They hit the
Reef like an exploding
bomb, bounced off it,
and caught Alvin,
yelling with
fear, and took him up and up…
The Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow took Alvin
the Treacherous in their iron invincible grip, up and up
and up to drown his frail human flesh in the ice and fire
of the upper atmosphere, so that he could never more
return to earth, except as dust or purple rain.
Alvin the Treacherous had often said that a
Treacherous was very hard to kill, and in his case, that
saying could not have been truer.
Alvin had survived the booby trap of Grimbeard’s
coffin (that was when he lost his hand), being
swallowed by a Monstrous Strangulator (that was when
he lost his hair), falling into a Sharkworm feeding
frenzy (that was when he lost his eye and his leg), being
eaten by a Fire-Dragon that dived into a volcano (that
was when he lost his nose), dropping into the inferno
when the woods of Berserk went up in flames (that
was when he found his mother, and started gaining an
unpleasant skin condition).
But surely even ALVIN could not survive this
time.
Alvin blamed Hiccup for all of his misfortunes,
so the very last words you could hear him say, as he
was taken ever upwards into the ice and fire of airy
oblivion, were:
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‘This is all your fault, Hiccup Horrendous
Haddock the Thi-i-i-i-ird!’
And then he was gone.
‘He’s gone…’ said Camicazi gazing upwards,
open-mouthed. ‘I don’t believe it… He’s really gone….
This time I really, really do think that’s the end of him.
Not even Alvin could get out of that one. Wow, it’s
quite a way to leave this world, I have to say, you can’t
get more spectacular than that…’
Fishlegs felt like he’d been hit by the same
whirlwind that had snatched up Alvin. All this was
rather difficult to digest. He’d spent fifteen years (and
twelve books) trying to find his father, and then when
he finally did find him, he turned out to be the most
evil, wicked person in the entire Archipelago.
This is one of the tricky things about Quests.
Sometimes they lead you to a disappointment or,
worse, an unpleasant surprise.
One of Alvin’s spare hooks came clanging down
on to the Reef and his eye patch must have dropped
off as he was taken upward by the Dragon Guardians.
The eye patch now came fluttering down from above
like a malevolent black butterfly, circling a few times in
the wind before landing a couple of feet from where
Fishlegs was standing. Fishlegs picked it up and stuffed
393
it in his waistcoat pocket.
So that he could think about it later.
With an excited squeak, Toothless spotted the
Dragon Jewel, glistening and sparkling in a rock pool.
‘T-t-toothless has found it! Toothless is
b-b-brilliant! Toothless is marvellous! Toothless is
best Jewel–Finder in the whole entire universe!’
gloated Toothless, pouncing down towards it.
But just before Toothless reached the Dragon
Jewel, the Dragon Furious, desperately fighting humans
in the air above, saw through the smoke and the fire
and the confusion of screaming fighting dragons and
humans, down to what was happening on the Reef. His
magnificent eye, which could spot a fish moving at the
bottom of the ocean from the distance of a mountain
top, saw the tiny wink of the amber, nestling in the rock
pool.
The Dragon Furious’s hand came down upon the
Dragon Jewel…
SLAM!
… just before Toothless could get to it, sending a
great shower of water raining over the little dragon.
‘Look what you did you great b-b-big bully!’
complained Toothless as the giant hand of the Dragon
Furious snatched the Dragon Jewel upward.
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25. HOW CAN I TRUST YOU?
The Dragon Furious caught up the Jewel.
Alvin was dead. The Dragon Jewel was safe,
unbroken, and in the Dragon Furious’s hands.
But had Alvin and the Witch ruined everything
nonetheless?
Had they taken away the dream of a new
Kingdom of the Wilderwest, even before it had really
begun?
All around the Bay, the humans and the dragons
were fighting the Final Battle, just as fate foretold. The
air rang with the terrible sound of metal on dragon
fang, the smell of burning flames, the shriek of reptile
and of humans.
Had everything that Hiccup had fought for, over
twelve long Quests, had it all been snatched away from
him at the very last minute?
‘Stop this!’ cried Hiccup, yelling helplessly up
at the Dragon Furious. ‘Stop it! Alvin is dead! YOU
HAVE THE DRAGON JEWEL! There is no need
for this any more!’
But the Dragon Furious threw up his head to the
heavens and roared in fury and in pain.
He turned his brilliant eyes upon Hiccup.
‘No need? NO NEED?’
396
The Dragon was incandescent with rage, torn
with conflicting emotions. He was so burnt up with fury
his skin actually caught on fire. He leant down his head
towards Hiccup and opened up his mouth and roared
at him in a burning hot roar so violent that Hiccup was
blown back in the rush of it.
‘Why did I hesitate? Why did I trust you, even
for a second? Why could I not make the kill? You
see what humans are? You see, how your promises are
worthless, when there are people like those humans,
waiting in the wings, to poison every single promise
that you make?
‘HOW CAN I TRUST YOU? HOW
CAN I BARGAIN WHEN HUMANS
CANNOT CHANGE ?’
Hiccup was sheltering in the little nooks and
crannies of the Wrecker’s Reef, with the Dragon tearing
up the rocks around him in his frustration.
‘LOOK WHAT WE HAVE DONE TO OUR
WORLD!’ shouted Hiccup throwing out his arms at
the blackened devastation all around. ‘LOOK AT
OUR FRIENDS, OUR COMPANIONS, DYING
AND BEING WOUNDED UP THERE IN THE
BATTLE!’ screamed Hiccup.
The Dragon did not seem to be listening, still
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crumbling up the Reef as fast as Hiccup could run away
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 21
