becalmed.
But as the Dragon Furious turned his head
downward, he caught, out of the corner of his eye a
tiny glint of something shiny in the air.
What was that?
He jerked his head up again.
There it was again, a little flash, a little speck of
414
sunlight glinting on something moving.
The Dragon narrowed his eyes.
What in the name of Thor and his mighty dragon
Worldshaker could it possibly be?
There it was again, a bright spark, or a wink.
Great forked-tongued giants! It was the sun
shining on the tip of a sword! A sword levitating through
the air!
It was indeed, for the Witch was so eager to make
the kill, that she drew the Stormblade a little early and
held it high above her head, so that the tip of it was
visible above the body of the diving Stealth Dragon.
If you had looked down on that scene, it might
have seemed as if the Stormblade itself was flying
through the atmosphere, on its own, as if it were
magnetically being drawn towards Hiccup’s heart…
And history might, indeed, have repeated itself,
had the Dragon Furious not seen that tiny pinprick of a
sword slicing through the clouds.
The Dragon Furious gave a great scream.
He acted without thinking.
In that split second, it was as if it was a hundred
years ago, when Furious looked down and saw
Grimbeard the Ghastly bringing down the Stormblade
against an unarmed Hiccup the Second…
415
Back then, Furious had desperately dived, flying
with all of his wing strength…
He had tried to place his body in between his
beloved Master and the sword…
But he had leapt too late.
So now, one hundred years later, the Dragon
sprang forward, placing his whole body between the
sword and Hiccup, shielding him. He spread wide his
wings and stood up to his greatest extent, so that there
was suddenly an entire dragon mountain between
Hiccup and the Stormblade.
The Stealth Dragon was travelling so fast he
crashed straight into the gigantic Seadragon’s chest.
Holding the Stormblade above her head with both
hands and throwing her entire body weight behind it,
the Witch plunged the sword into the Dragon Furious’s
chest.
The plunge made her lose her balance; she lost
her footing on the Stealth Dragon’s back, and with
an ‘ooh!’ of surprise, the Dragon dropped away from
beneath her, and the Witch was left swinging from
the sword-hilt of the Stormblade, at a dizzyingly high
distance from the ground.
The Dragon Furious started in surprise and
shock, just as you might, if someone had stuck a pin
416
into you. He looked
down to see the tiny
little figure of the Witch
swinging from that pin,
equally surprised to find
herself attacking Furious
rather than Hiccup.
The Dragon reached
down, and plucked the
Witch off him, and flicked her
away with his fingers from that
astonishing height…
UP, UP, UP through the
air soared the Witch, her little
limbs working back and forth like
the legs of a white cockroach… and
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN she fell,
in a most satisfying arc for those of
us who like people being given their
just rewards, right bang splat plumb
into the slimy depths of the blowhole
of Woden’s Throat.
The blowhole, so deep that
it was rumoured to go down to the
centre of the earth itself, swallowed
417
up the
Witch, and then
with a great satisfied
belch, it shot a triumphant
trumpeting spout of water way,
way into the air, as if the Reef
itself were alive, and were digesting
its lunch.
‘Oh, thank Thor!’ whispered Hiccup.
‘The Witch is dead…’
After all these cruelties, all these years, the
Witch who was the boiled-down essence of evil,
eager for empires and hungry for power, the Witch, at
last, was dead.
It was difficult to feel any sadness for the death of
so very wicked a person.
‘Are you all right, little blood-brother?’ asked
the Dragon Furious.
‘I’m fine…’ replied Hiccup shakily. ‘I’m just
fine… Are you all right too?’
It was just a tiny scratch on his chest. The Dragon
Furious would be fine.
Of course he would be fine.
The Stormblade was merely the size of a pin, or a
418
needle,
in relation to
the Dragon’s gigantic
bulk. The Dragon had
drawn out the Stormblade as
if it were the annoying sting of
a wasp, and flicked it away with
the same careless anger as he had
snuffed and flicked the Witch.
Surely surely, he would be fine.
‘He’s fine…’ breathed the
Wodensfang, with relief. ‘He’s fine…’
‘THE WITCH IS DEAD! ALVIN
IS DEAD, AND I HAVE MADE THE
HUMAN KING HICCUP THE THIRD,
MY BLOOD-BROTHER, A PROMISE!
AND I WILL KEEP THAT PROMISE,’
said the Dragon Furious.
He turned to Hiccup, and Hiccup could see
the Dragon’s chest, where the tiny wound from the
Stormblade, showed an infinitesimal scratch.
‘FOR A PROMISE IS A PROMISE, IF IT IS
MADE IN BLOOD.’
But then the great Dragon stiffened and grew
strangely still.
The great Dragon in front of them, so splendid in
the might and height of his glory, trembled and choked.
‘No,’ said Hiccup. ‘No… no… no… I don’t
understand, Wodensfang, what is happening?’
‘I don’t know,’ whispered the Wodensfang. ‘But
I feel a sudden dread…’
The Dragon Furious had shrugged off a thousand
pesky human sword-cuts. The prick of a needle could
not have any effect on a Seadragon the size of a
mountain.
Unless…
Unless the Stormblade was poisoned.
Unless it was poisoned, not with the slow-working
poison of the Venomous Vorpent, for which Hiccup
had found the antidote, but with the most potent and
devastating drug that a wicked Witch could lay her
hands on.
However many good human beings there are,
422
trying to do good things, what do you do about the evil
ones who are waiting in the wings, and who, in one
second of destructive wickedness, undo all the work
that the good human beings have been working on
patiently for lifetimes?
No. NO.
‘Wodensfang, quick! There must be something
we can do?’ said Hiccup,
‘There is nothing y
ou can do,’ whispered the
Dragon Furious. ‘The Witch has poisoned me…’
Hiccup gaped as the great Dragon swayed before
him.
‘This is all my fault…’ wept Hiccup.
‘It is not your fault,’ said the Dragon. ‘You
acted in good faith. But you see,’ said the Dragon
Furious affectionately to Hiccup, ‘this is what I have
been trying to tell you, little blood-brother…
‘You cannot build this new world of yours
within a generation, or even ten generations,’ said
the Dragon Furious longingly. ‘It will take a long,
long time for humans to become better than they are
now…’
He had laid his head down on the Reef now, and
was panting short, hard breaths. Steam came off his
immense body and rose up into the air in great clouds.
423
The storm had passed, and all was quiet, except
for a gentle breath of rain that came down on them all
like a blessing.
So many dragons and humans had died already in
this battle. But there was something so dreadful about
the sheer VASTNESS of this splendid creature whose
life was now draining away, that brought home the
destruction, the insanity and the waste of this war.
There was a particular horror about a creature
so mighty, so splendid, who moments earlier had been
shooting out thunderbolts in the violent splendour of
the prime of his life, being brought down so low, and
dying in front of their very eyes.
It made even the most bloodthirsty of the human
Vikings think: This must never happen again.
Hiccup stretched up to the Dragon’s head, and
held on to it, with his tiny, insignificant hands, hands
that could barely reach up to the Dragon’s great chin.
Once, a great whale had become stranded by the
tide on the Long Beach on Berk. The entire village
had tried to move the whale back into the sea, but they
could not do it, for the poor creature was too large.
Hiccup felt the same feeling of helpless rage, that he
was too small to do anything about this catastrophe,
too tiny to prevent the dying of this enormous,
426
terrifying, beautiful creature.
For the first time, Hiccup realised, deep in his
bones, that the Dragon Furious might be right, that all
Hiccup’s efforts to recreate the world might be in vain,
that Hiccup might need a Plan to save the dragons, in
the end.
And holding the Dragon’s dying head, the Plan
came to him, in the same brilliant flash as when he had
found the Jewel inside the lobster necklace.
A Jewel of a Plan.
Hiccup held the Dragon’s dying head.
‘Do not worry, Furious,’ said Hiccup
passionately. ‘You must not die worrying that because
this has happened to you, the dragons will not be
saved in the end. I will work my hardest to make sure
that the Second Kingdom of the Wilderwest is better
than the First.
‘But if it does happen that I get to the end of my
lifetime, and it seems that humans have not improved
sufficiently, then I have a Plan that will save the
dragons.’
‘Is it a c-c-clever one?’ whispered Toothless.
‘Clever-ish,’ said Hiccup.
‘You have a Plan, do you?’ said the Dragon
Furious softly, and now his eye looking on Hiccup was
427
definitely affectionate as well as ironic. ‘A Plan that
will save the dragons? Now that would have to be a
very clever plan indeed. We both know that saving
the dragons may be impossible.’
The Dragon Furious smiled once more.
Hiccup swallowed hard.
‘My Plan will only come into action as a last
resort,’ said Hiccup, his voice shaking ‘if we feel it is
the only way the dragons can be saved.
‘At the moment of my death, whoever is King of
the Dragons at that time must lead the dragons back
to the coldnesses of the north, far from men’s eyes.
Out in the deepest oceans, there are still parts of the
world where men do not tread with their dirty feet…
‘Dragons have told me that there are trenches
in the darkness of the seas that are so deep, that even
in a thousand years human beings will not be able to
follow you there,’ said Hiccup. ‘And you dragons are
of the chameleon family. You know how to hide.’
The Dragon Furious looked at Hiccup with a
kind of thoughtful wonder.
A tiny spark of genuine hope had lit in the embers
of his eyes. ‘We do know how to hide,’ said the Dragon
Furious. ‘We are supremely good at hiding.’
‘And you would get even better at it,’ promised
428
Hiccup. ‘Even now, the nanodragons hide so
brilliantly in the grasses and the heathers that unless
you know they are there, and put your face right up
to them, you can’t see them at all.
‘You would hide so effectively, so completely,
that it would be as if you never existed. And as you
begin to vanish, I promise you, that I will make sure
our bards and storytellers will spread the rumour
that you were only ever mythical creatures, like
chimeras or sphynxes. Humans of the future must
never know that they share the earth with you, for
then they would seek to dominate or destroy you.
‘You would enter a Sleep Coma, and wait for
the human race to either improve its nature, or to
disappear. You were here long before the humans, and
perhaps you will be here long after.’
The Dragon smiled again. He even laughed, a
frail, explosive laugh.
‘It is a crazy Plan,’ said the Dragon Furious, his
eyes alight with genuine amusement and excitement at
the thought of it. ‘A Plan dreamed up by a lunatic or
a fool. Just the sort of Plan that Hiccup the Second
used to come up with. He was always getting me into
trouble with Plans like that…’
‘It is a crazy Plan,’ admitted Hiccup. ‘And
429
maybe I am a fool, but I will save the dragons,
Furious, I promise you this. Whatever happens, I will
save them. I will, I will, I will.’
He turned to the humans now, sitting silent in
the surrounding skies on their dragons, awed by the
dreadful sight of the great Dragon Furious lying with
his body slumped in the water on the Reef.
‘Look! One of us humans did this!’ shouted
Hiccup, this time in Norse, punching the air
passionately. ‘The dragons only fight us because they
think we will destroy them. This is our fault! This must
never happen again! Never! Save the dragons!’
Vikings are an emotional people. Only moments
before, they had been fighting the dragons with
everything they had. But the sight of this dying dragon,
so close, and at the end of his life, suddenly so weak,
so vulnerable, stirred them all. This was no monster,
but a cornered animal, and as they all knew, a cornered
animal would fight desperately, bloodily, and beyond all
reason.
‘Save the dragons!’
‘Save the dragons!’
‘Save the dragons!’ cried the humans.
‘Save the dragons,’ whispered the Dragon
Furious.
430
The Dragon’s eyes, though very, very dim, had
now lit with sudden, real, genuine hope. He gazed at
the horizon with a faraway look in his eye.
‘You know,’ he said to Hiccup, with a kind of
wonder in his eye, ‘looking into the Future, I really
believe that this crazy Plan of yours might work.’
And then he turned to Luna, hovering sadly
among the dragons above Wrecker’s Bay in all her
glowing white glory.
‘It may be that I am dying,’ said the Dragon
Furious carelessly, and as if that was not very important,
‘and will not be able to fulfil my pledge to you,
Hiccup. In which case, I give my kingdom to Luna,
and she shall repeat the pledge after me, and keep the
promise that I now give.’
And so Luna repeated the pledge.
‘As a sign of my faith in King Hiccup the
Third, I am giving him this Dragon Jewel,’ said the
Dragon Furious.
The Dragon Furious opened up his palm, and
there within it was that speck of dust, the Dragon
Jewel. The Dragon Rebellion dragons backed away
with scared murmurs, such was the power and dread of
this Jewel.
‘Take it, Hiccup,’ urged the Dragon Furious,
431
letting the Jewel drop into Hiccup’s hand. ‘There may
be those among my dragon army, less forgiving than
I, who will wish to carry on the Red-Rage. You will
need it for protection.’
Hiccup eyes were full of tears. ‘You are giving
this to me still? You trust me even though this has
happened?’
‘I trust you, little blood-brother,’ said the
Dragon Furious.
The effort of his last speech seemed to have been
too much for the Dragon Furious, for he was seized
with a paroxysm of coughing, and he lay down again on
the Reef, trembling and jerking and snorting.
‘Nooo!’ yelled Hiccup, and started forward
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 23
