towards the giant head. ‘No! Do not die! You do not
have to die!’
But the Dragon was dying, nonetheless. The
lamps of his eyes were fading fast. His voice trembled,
the Dragonese hissing weakly out of the edges of his
once-beautiful mouth, the smoke dying to a trickle. He
closed his eyes.
Tears streamed down Hiccup’s face. He laid
his cold cheek against the burning heat of the dying
dragon’s skin, and that seemed to wake up the dragon
again.
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‘Do not be sad,’ said the Dragon Furious,
opening his eyes once more.
‘Listen to how happy everyone is. We have
peace at last… and so do I.
‘Do not mourn me, Hiccup, or any of you. This
is not a time for grief, but a time for celebration.
You see, I have been dead for many years. I had not
realised until this moment, how much I had become
like Grimbeard the Ghastly.
‘I have been Grimbeard in dragon form. The
less hope I had, the more I destroyed. I have killed
and killed and killed again, and the more I killed,
the more dead I became.
‘Like Grimbeard, I have done some terrible,
terrible things…
‘But here, right when I am about to die, Hiccup
– you have given me back my life.
‘Although my Rebellion failed, and I failed,
perhaps there is, after all, a sort of nobility in my
failure… Perhaps you were right, Wodensfang, and
history really is a succession of noble failures.’
‘It is true,’ said Wodensfang, ‘that in this failure
you have justified everything that I have lived for,
everything I have fought for, my entire life.’
The little old dragon’s face was lit up with ecstatic
joy.
‘Dragons are just as capable of nobility as
humans. We, too, can be merciful. We, too, can turn
the other cheek… We too, can love, just as humans
do. You put Hiccup’s life before your own, Furious,
and you die a Hero.’
‘Ah, love,’ said the Dragon Furious, and he
smiled once again. ‘Love is a bad bad business, as
Grimbeard himself would say. Love has brought me to
where I am now.’
The Dragon did not seem sad about this. He even
heaved what might have been a dry laugh. ‘But for
one hundred years in my forest prison, I went over
and over in my head that moment where I leapt too
late, and failed to save Hiccup the Second from the
Stormblade. Over and over again I said to myself: If
only I had seen earlier… If only I had leapt quicker…
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‘If only… if only…
‘But now I have leapt in time,’ said the Dragon
with deep satisfaction. ‘I made the leap… I saved the
boy Hiccup… One hundred years too late, but still, it
seems, in time. And look how I am rewarded!’ said the
Dragon, smiling now for the third time, with the most
untroubled, clear look in his yellow eye that Hiccup
had yet seen. The fires in his eyes had died completely,
and now they glowed with a warmth and light that
shone in that dark Bay with the brightness of mini
suns.
‘The boy Hiccup has a Plan that will save the
dragons!’ cried the Dragon Furious to his followers.
‘The dragons will be saved, and that is all that I ever
wanted.
‘So do not weep tears for
me, dragons or Vikings. This
little scratch is nothing.
‘And you were right,
Wodensfang,’ the Dragon
added. ‘the boy was worth it.’
‘As I said, Love is
always worth it, old friend,’
said Wodensfang. ‘Love is
always worth it.’
‘I am born again,’ said the Dragon Furious.
He did, indeed, look about a hundred years
younger than he had done a couple of minutes earlier.
The lamps of the Dragon’s eyes glowed with a
fierce light once more, and he was seized with a sudden
energy.
He forced himself to lift his head, to move
towards the edge of the Reef, and he spoke with a
return of his old determination.
‘I will not die here in Wrecker’s Bay. I shall
not be trapped here, on land, for the seagulls and the
Vultureclaws to pick my bones, and for my skeleton
to be a sad reminder of a dragon who dared to be a
rebel, and fought perhaps too fiercely for what he
believed in.
‘A hundred years ago, when Grimbeard the
Ghastly was about to die, he did not stay buried in
Hero’s End, where his grave is. No, he set out to the
west in his ship The Endless Journey, never to be seen
again.
‘That is where I am going…’ said the Dragon
Furious, and despite everything, he reared up to gaze at
the horizon, a great, magnificent Dragon-mountain, the
Stormblade’s cut a mere insignificant pinprick in his chest.
‘Home…’ sighed the Dragon Furious, looking
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beyond Tomorrow, beyond Hero’s End, out at the
endless waves stretching away forever.
‘The Open Ocean… miles and miles of glorious
empty wilderness… Now that is where a dragon can
really spread out his wings and swim, as carefree and
as wild as a dragon ought to be…
‘And maybe I will not die after all,’ said the
Dragon Furious recklessly, his eyes burning more
fiercely still, with brighter and brighter hope, or was
it fever? ‘Maybe the cold clear seas of home will
cure me, and I shall have victory over death. A new
beginning. It has happened before, the impossible has
become the possible, so why should it not happen to
me?
‘Whatever happens,’ said the Dragon, ‘I go
first… I shall be the first to hide.’
There was a sigh among the listening humans and
dragons.
He turned to Luna, shining softly silver, grave as a
statue. ‘You are the new ruler of dragons now, Luna,
and I hope that you shall be a better monarch than I
have been. Remember your pledge.’
And then he turned to Hiccup.
‘Promise me again, O Boy-Who-Has-a-Name-
That-I-Love. Promise me one last time…’
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‘I promise that I will save the dragons,’ said
King Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third.
With a last, desperate effort the Dragon Furious
launched himself off the Reef, drenching those Vikings
and dragons who had landed on the rocks in the
resulting tidal wave.
His first few strokes through the water were
painfully slow. But was it Hiccup’s imagination, or did
he seem to be growing stronger, the further he swam
away?
They watched him go into the sunset in the final
hours of daylight on the last day of Doomsday: the
entire massed Tribes of the Archipelago, the countless
armies of the Dragon Rebellion, the numberless little
nanodragons, Luna a
nd the Dragon Guardians of
Tomorrow, standing still and silent, saluting the great
Dragon as he left for the west.
They watched the Dragon Furious swim past
Tomorrow, through Hero’s Gap, past Hero’s End, and
out, and on, and further and further into the future.
And it really did seem that he was growing stronger
and stronger, as the great Dragon swam away, and got
smaller and smaller in their eyesight, until when he
reached the horizon, far, far away, he was almost the
size of the Wodensfang himself.
438
And then, just as he dipped over the horizon and
the last blink of sunlight vanished and the moon rose
up, he had the strength to leap out of the sea, in one
last, joyous, very-alive leap.
439
27. THE GHOSTS HAVE BEEN
SET FREE…
The dragons and the humans watched the Dragon
Furious as he went, and cheered him as he disappeared
from their sight.
He had said not to weep for him, but they all had
tears in their eyes.
It was difficult to know whether they were tears
of sadness or of joy, for the Dragon was so joyous when
he left them, and what he had achieved, as he said
himself, was so impossible.
PEACE.
Peace in the Archipelago, after so many years
of War. Who would have thought it possible at the
dawning of this day?
And then slowly the dragons and the humans fell
silent and looked at each other, panting, weary, ragged,
crying for the Dragon, and yet jubilant.
They looked at each other, as if to say: ‘What do
we do next?’
It was getting dark.
Luna gave a great roar of command.
The massed armies of the Dragon Rebellion
spread out their wings and, almost of one accord,
440
dispersed to their homes all over the Archipelago
and beyond. The Sharkworms, Leviathorgans and
Thunderers to the Open Ocean; Fire-Starters and
Nightmares to the caves, although a fair few of them
stayed the night in Wrecker’s Bay with Luna before
making the long journey home.
At a cry from Ziggerastica, the little nanodragons
rose into the air like a buzzing cloud of locusts, spread
out in such numbers that for one moment the sky
turned black, as if night were long here already, before
they disappeared, humming, to hide once again in the
grasses, the bogs and the marshes of the Archipelago.
Meanwhile the dragons who had supported the
humans in the Final Battle looked to their human
companions, to see what they should do.
And the humans, in their turn, looked to Hiccup.
All of them, great burly Visithugs, Wanderers,
former Slaves, all of the Tribes of the Archipelago,
standing out there on the Reef, ragged, war-torn,
tattooed Warriors, turned to Hiccup, looking at him
expectantly.
Oh my goodness, thought Hiccup, with a start,
for the second time that day, I’m the King. They are all
expecting me to know what to do… I’m NEVER going to
get used to this.
441
It was not as cold as it was that morning, but it
was beginning to get very dark.
The humans were exhausted with the emotion of
the day, and the sheer weight of the task ahead of them
seemed almost insuperable.
They should go home, but where was home for
the Vikings now? Almost every house in every village
had been destroyed by the War. Whole mountains had
been demolished, forests burned to the ground, and
were smoking still. The entire Archipelago had been
turned into a lunar landscape of craters and charred
embers where once the trees had swayed, alive with
chattering Squirrelserpents and Dreamserpents.
They had to re-build their entire world, and that
was quite a task.
‘Fellow citizens of the Wilderwest,’ said Hiccup.
‘We have a peace to build, and a new city on Tomorrow,
a great city worthy of this new Kingdom of the
Wilderwest.
‘It will take time, but we will do it. Any dragon
who wishes to live alongside us, as a citizen of the
Wilderwest, as valued as any human, is very welcome,
but those who want to return to the wild are absolutely
free to do so,’ said Hiccup, for many of these dragons
had such strong attachments to their Masters that they
442
had no wish to leave, and indeed, it would be unkind
to separate them from their human companions.
‘In the future we will honour this day, the
Doomsday of Yule, with a great celebration of Furious,
his dragon companions, and our own human friends
who died in this War, and who sacrificed their lives for
this peace, and so that there should never be slavery of
human or dragon again.
‘We shall call it the celebration of the Black Star.’
Hiccup held up Snotlout’s Black Star, the highest
award for courage the Hooligan Tribe can give.
‘So, before we all return to our homes on the
various different islands of the Archipelago, and start
our new lives, we will camp out tonight on the island
of Tomorrow, in the ruins of Grimbeard’s Castle, and
we will forget that we are weary, and there is such an
impossible task ahead of us.
‘Tonight we CELEBRATE.
‘We celebrate the end of the dragon and human
war, and the beginning of the new Kingdom, and the
lives of the Heroes who fought to make that happen.’
‘Oh goodeee!’ Stoick rubbed his hands together.
‘A feast! A feast! Tomorrow was packed with deer, I
think we could catch ourselves a huge feast of venison,
I love a venison stew!’
443
So the Tribes of the Archipelago set off on
dragonback, back to Tomorrow in a great happy line,
weary but excitedly chattering about the battle.
They rode on dragonback towards Tomorrow
along the path of the moon, flying wing-tip to wing-tip,
dragons and humans together.
Stoick the Vast and Bertha of the Bog-Burglars
led a huge party of Vikings in an evening fishing trip
on dragonback across the sea of Wrecker’s Bay. Within
an hour, it was like old times once again, as Stoick
swept down on the fish on the back of his Bullrougher,
whooping loudly with excitement.
Hunting at night on dragonback was one of
the favourite sports of the Vikings – the eyes of their
dragons lit up at night, so that it was possible to hunt
your prey even as darkness fell.
The hunting party returned with vast quantities of
fish, and Bertha and Stoick arguing loudly about who
had caught the most.
There was a full moon that night and the clouds
and the smoke had dispersed. The Druid Guardian
came up to Hiccup, sitting a little uncomfortably on his
stone Throne.
‘The Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow would like
>
to request their freedom, now the Curse on Tomorrow
has been lifted, and peace has returned to the
Archipelago,’ said the Druid Guardian with a bow.
THE CURSE HAS BEEN LIFTED!
It was the first time those words had been said
aloud, and Hiccup’s heart leapt with delight at the
words as he heard them.
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‘Of course they should be set free!’ said Hiccup,
and the Druid Guardian held up his hand, and it was
as if three thousand fireworks were going off all at
once as the Dragon Guardians rocketed away from the
claustrophobic confines of planet Earth, breaking free
from the clogging demands of gravity itself, up and
up and up, revelling in the fires they generated as they
entered the upper atmosphere.
What a glorious sight they made, as they soared
on the edge of space for the first time in a century,
rocketing and diving, and leaping in joyous squiggles,
dancing in the glory of their new-found freedom.*
You would only ever see such a thing once in a
lifetime, the entire massed Tribes of the Archipelago
and their dragons feasting in the ruins of Grimbeard’s
Castle, eating and laughing and dancing around
bonfires.
One hundred years ago, the Curse had come
upon Tomorrow when Grimbeard the Ghastly enslaved
half his population, killed his very own son, and buried
the Dragon Furious in a forest prison.
Ghosts from that time had haunted the
Archipelago throughout Hiccup’s childhood.
Now, the Curse had been crushed, and the ghosts
set free, like the Dragon Guardians of Tomorrow.
*Shooting stars, as we all know, are not really stars that are moving. How
would that be possible? The idea is preposterous. Stars cannot move any
more than stones. They are Dragon Guardians, burning at the edges as
they fly.
It was a wonderful sight to see former slaves and
former Masters eating together. How could Vikings
– such a proud, wild, free people – ever have agreed
to such a thing as slavery? It was almost as if for a
hundred years the peoples of the Archipelago had been
put under some terrible enchantment, and were only
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 24
