How to Twist a Dragon's Tale

by Cressida Cowell

  And then he broke into a rousing rendition of “Rule Barbaria! Barbarians Rule the Waves,” and every single Hooligan stood up straight and proud, and singing out the chorus at the top of their lungs while performing the Hooligan salute.

  For a nation that spent a great deal of time fighting, burgling, and ransacking, the Hooligans were a surprisingly musical lot. It was a shock to hear these ruffianly characters open their mouths, and the proud words come ringing out, pure and true, in perfect tune with each other, and in deep and gorgeous contrast to the scene of smoky devastation going on behind them.

  Humungously Hotshot got up to go. He shook Stoick warmly by the hand. “I must say,” said Humungous, “I think the clever thing to do would be to get out of here as fast as is humanly possible. But I have got to admire your suicidal bravery, mad and completely pointless as it is. Good luck, everybody!”

  “Won’t you stay and fight with us?” pressed Stoick the Vast. “A great Hero like yourself would be a tremendous help.”

  “Well, I think now I’m more of an Ex-Hero,” repeated Humungous. “I’m just a Sword-for-Hire. No, I’ve had it with lost causes. It’s all about ME, ME, ME from now on. But I do just have one last thing to do before I shoot off as far away from this doomed Archipelago as I can get. Could you possibly point me in the direction of the little Island of Berk?”

  Stoick the Vast’s face broke into a broad grin. “But my dear Humungous!” he exclaimed. “This IS the Isle of Berk!”

  Humungously Hotshot’s jaw dropped.

  “No!” he said. “Then you must be . . . you must be . . .”

  “Chief Stoick the Vast!” cried Stoick the Vast.

  “Really?” gasped Humungous, very politely NOT asking the question, And do you ALWAYS prance around the mountainside dressed only in knickers and one blue sock?

  “And this is your son?” Humungous pointed at Hiccup.

  “HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE THIRD!” roared Stoick the Vast proudly.

  Humungous seemed to find this difficult to take in.

  “THIS is Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third?”

  Humungous turned to Stoick. “You know, Stoick, I’ve changed my mind. I think I will hang around here for a while, after all.”

  “Wonderful!” boomed Stoick. “I think you said your new profession was a Sword-for-Hire?”

  “That’s right,” said Humungous.

  “Well, I’ve been looking,” said Stoick thoughtfully, “for a Bardiguard for my son, Hiccup. You should be good at Bardiguarding, having once been a Hero.”

  A Bardiguard was a bodyguard for the Heir to a Viking Chief.

  Like a Hero, you were expected to be more than just a magnificent Warrior.

  You had to be a complete all-rounder, good-looking, musical, handy on the harp, and just as good with the spear as you were with the axe. And you had to be a great teacher as well, because you were supposed to be instructing the young Heir in all these skills.

  “How’s your weapon-work?” asked Stoick.

  For answer, Humungous drew his axe from his belt so quickly and so gracefully that Stoick didn’t even see his hands move. He threw it sizzling through the air in such a way that it cut off one of Nobber Nobrains’s plaits and then boomeranged back into Humungous’s hand again, where he twiddled it twice around his wrist, balanced it for a moment on his elbow, and somersaulted it back into his belt again.

  The Hooligans oooohed with pleasure. There was nothing they enjoyed more than really good weapon-work.

  “WOW!” gasped Stoick.

  This man was cooler than a cat twirling his whiskers on a freshly frozen iceberg.

  “Oh, that was nothing,” said Humungous, sighing. “In my younger days I could have done it with my eyes shut.”

  “DON’T TRY IT,” growled Nobber Nobrains warningly.

  “And I presume you’re as good with everything else?” asked Stoick.

  For answer, Humungous drew out his bow and arrow.

  “You see that boy with the skull tattoos?”

  Humungous pointed out Snotlout, who was standing some distance away chatting with Dogsbreath the Duhbrain and picking his nose. Humungous let fly his arrow, and Snotlout fell backward with a short cry.

  “My son!” exclaimed Baggybum the Beerbelly.

  Humungous held up a humungous yet elegant hand.

  “There is absolutely no cause for alarm, my dear sir. I think you will find that your son is completely unharmed. I have simply removed the booger from his nostril.”

  It was so. It had all happened so quickly, Snotlout just assumed he had been stung by a wasp, and went on talking to Dogsbreath, his nose booger-free.

  “But that’s impossible!” stammered Stoick.

  “Child’s play,” said Humungous, shaking his head. “The boy’s nostrils are the largest I have ever seen.”

  “And skiing? Dragon riding? Bashyball skills?” asked Stoick.

  “Nothing to what they were in my prime,” said Humungous sadly, “but still tip-top, A-Grade, first-class. Us Ex-Heroes don’t do mediocre.”

  “Is it just me,” whispered Fishlegs, “or is this guy really rather irritating?”

  “It’s just you,” said Hiccup, gazing at Humungous in total admiration.

  “And harping?” asked Stoick. “I am just assuming, with that magnificent waistline of yours, that you can sing a splendiferous Saga?”

  “Once there was a lady,” sighed Humungous sadly, “who claimed she would have DIED for my singing. Singing was my specialty, but NO MORE. Fifteen years working in those Jail-Forges, and my voice is completely broken. The gold dust crept into my lungs, the heat burned out my voice box. And worst of all, I have lost the will, the heart, the desire to do it . . . I will NEVER sing again.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Stoick, “I do love a nice singsong. Never mind. In every other way you seem perfect for the job. Will you be my son’s Bardiguard? I will pay you handsomely.”

  “I accept the post with pleasure,” said Humungous immediately. “I’m saving up to buy a little farm somewhere quiet and out the way.”

  “Excellent!” smiled Stoick the Vast. And Stoick bustled off to call a meeting of the local Tribes, so he could form a War Party to fight the Exterminators.

  “Will you teach me that Flash-thrust with twist thingy that you did in the Fire?” asked Hiccup, looking delightedly up at Humungous.

  “Of course,” said his new Bardiguard, who was busy sharpening his sword.

  6. HICCUP’S BARDIGUARD HAS A BUSY TIME

  Stoick rather regretted hiring Humungous over the next couple of weeks.

  Everybody, including Hiccup, seemed to think he was absolutely marvelous. He autographed axes, spears, favorite dragons, even Baggybum’s famous beerbelly.

  “Even his WRITING is humungously cool,” sighed Baggybum, gazing down at the stylish scrawl on his tummy. “I’ll never wash again . . .”

  “Did you ever?” grunted Stoick, thinking, Who does this Humungous guy think he IS ?

  And that was the other thing.

  Everybody normally followed Stoick’s lead where it came to fashion.

  That meant the beard was worn au naturel, in a tremendous tangly mess the size of a large and complicated bird’s nest that had recently been attacked by a weasel.

  The whole was then decorated with a lavish sprinkling of food droppings.

  Suddenly, everybody was appearing with their beards immaculately groomed, just like Humungous’s, and the ends of the moustaches elaborately twiddled and coaxed in pretty little curls. And Stoick strongly suspected they were WASHING, not to mention doing up their shirt buttons, and polishing their helmets till they shone.

  “What have you done to your beard?” Stoick demanded of a rather guilty-looking Gobber, whose haystack had turned into a riot of ringlets overnight.

  Gobber blushed.

  “Oh this . . .” said Gobber carelessly. “It’s just the latest fashion, you know . . . more HEROIC . . . Everybody’s doing it
.”

  “Well, you all look ridiculous,” blustered Stoick.

  But what he found by far the most difficult part of the whole Bardiguard business, was that Hiccup seemed to look up to Humungous so much. It was all “Humungous this” and “Humungous that” nowadays.

  Indeed, Hiccup did admire Humungous.

  Here was a Hero a cut above the usual uncouth Barbarian. His fighting wasn’t just the usual loutish bonking on the head, but stylish, elegant, graceful.

  He taught Hiccup the Flash-thrust-with-twist thingummy, and showed him how to tie an opponent into elaborate and beautiful knots, while at the same time courteously inquiring about the state of their health.

  But Humungous was causing Hiccup the odd little difficulty, not his fault, of course, but there it was.

  Hiccup’s general practice on the Pirate Training Program was to try and blend into the background and hope that nobody noticed him. But this is difficult if an exceptionally good-looking six-foot-seven internationally renowned Hero is following two steps behind you with his sword drawn and shouting out, “MAKE WAY FOR HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE THIRD, ONLY SON OF THE CHIEF!”

  And there were other problems.

  Gobber allowed the boys a bit of time off to recover from their Herding-Reindeer-on-Dragonback lesson, and then it was back to the normal Program a day or so later, and an Axe-fighting-with-Art lesson.

  The strange weather had, if anything, gotten even hotter. How hot could it get? It was like standing in the middle of an oven.

  The boys stood in a straggly line in front of Gobber, scratching their bottoms and sweating profusely. Above them towered Huge Hill, like a bad omen, its lower half alive with trees and ferns, its upper half a scalded desert, as bald and nude as Gobber’s still-helmetless-and-now-very-sunburned head.

  When Gobber the Belch asked for volunteers to fight Snotface Snotlout, there was a stony silence among the boys. Snotlout was horribly good at Axe-fighting, and he was a terrible cheat who tended to kick you in the ankles with his specially sharpened sandals when Gobber wasn’t looking.

  So imagine Hiccup’s horror when Humungous stepped forward, shouting out, “I VOLUNTEER HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE THIRD, ONLY SON OF CHIEF STOICK THE VAST, O HEAR HIS NAME AND TREMBLE, UGH UGH!”

  “SShhhhhh . . .” begged Hiccup. “Please . . . pipe down . . .”

  “Excellent idea!” bellowed Gobber happily. “Hiccup is fighting Snotlout, then.”

  “Oh, for Thor’s sake,” groaned Hiccup miserably.

  “What did you do that for?” hissed Fishlegs. “You’re his Bardiguard, you’re supposed to be looking after him, not serving him up to his enemies on a plate . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” said Humungous in surprise. “He’s the son of a CHIEF, the hot fighting blood of the Horrendous Haddocks runs raging through his veins, he could take this guy Snotlout with one FLICK of his regal fingernails . . .”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” said Fishlegs, “but Snotlout is nearly twice his size, he’s as mean as a hornet with a grudge, and he HATES Hiccup.”

  “Oh, I do,” grinned Snotlout, cracking his knuckles.

  Snotlout happened to be the son of Baggybum the Beerbelly, who was Stoick the Vast’s brother. This meant that if something were to happen to Hiccup, some tragic accident say, the next in line to the throne would be Snotface Snotlout.

  Snotlout thought that he would make an EXCELLENT Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.

  “Oh, come on, this Snotlout guy is pitifully weedy!” snorted Humungous loudly. (This was unlike Humungous, for he was normally very polite.)

  “T-T-Toothless bin saying that for years,” broke in Toothless excitedly, for he loved a good fight.

  “Keep it down, please,” begged poor Hiccup, for Snotlout was hearing all this, and an even more spiteful look was coming into his eyes than normal.

  “You’ll smoosh this guy into the floor and have him begging for mercy, Hiccup!” cried Humungous.

  “Let’s just see WHO is going to be doing the begging . . .” snarled Snotlout from between gritted teeth, and rolling up his sleeves.

  The boys practiced their Axe-fighting with wooden axes in order to try and reduce the mortality rate. But somehow Humungous, who was helping Gobber by handing out the weapons, made matters even worse by handing Snotlout a real axe instead of the wooden one.

  Both Snotlout and Hiccup realized this halfway through the fight when Snotlout’s axe collided with Hiccup’s shield and instead of bouncing off it, cut into the wood and stuck there.

  A gleam of delight came into Snotlout’s shark-like little eyes.

  “KILL THE PIG-NOSTRILLED, JELLYFISH-HEARTED, WART-COVERED BULLY, HICCUP!” shouted Humungous helpfully from the sidelines.

  “S-s-scratch his eyes out! Tear his wings off! Go for his h-h-horns!” squealed Toothless, flapping around getting in the way.

  “Snotlout! Your axe is real!” shouted Hiccup.

  “That’s not my fault,” snarled Snotlout, “everybody here saw your precious Bardiguard give it to me, so nobody’s going to blame me . . .” and he yanked at the axe to get it out of Hiccup’s shield.

  Gobber was out of earshot, too busy yelling at Tuffnut Junior —

  “THAT IS AN AXE FOR THOR’S SAKE, TUFFNUT, NOT A WOODEN SPOON, NOR A KNITTING NEEDLE . . .”

  “HUMUNGOUS! HELP!” shouted Hiccup.

  “You’re doing a great job!” shouted Humungous, giving an encouraging and graceful thumbs-up. “Keep up the good work! I think I saw tears in the Snotty-baby’s eyes just then . . . Don’t forget the Flash-thrust; it works just as well in axe-work.”

  “ANYONE! HELP!!!!” cried Hiccup.

  Fishlegs dropped his wooden axe and ran away from his fight with Clueless. “HUMUNGOUS! Do something! That’s a real axe Snotlout’s got there!”

  “There’s no cause for alarm,” said Humungous calmly, as Snotlout dragged his axe out of Hiccup’s shield, yanked the shield out of Hiccup’s hands, and raised the shiny metal blade above his head. “Hiccup has the situation completely under control. He’s just lulling this thug into a false sense of security.”

  “Are you a total MORON?” raged Fishlegs. “Hiccup is about to DIE . . .”

  Snotlout brought the wickedly sharp axe down toward Hiccup, Hiccup raised his own wooden axe up above his head to try and protect himself, and the metal axe just cut right through it, so that it split in two and fell to the floor.

  The metal axe continued on down toward Hiccup’s chest; Hiccup closed his eyes, waiting for the blow, and . . .

  . . . and in the nick of time, Humungous drew his own axe from his waistbelt with lightning swiftness, and he lopped Snotlout’s axe off at the base so that the metal end fell harmlessly to the ground, while Toothless and Fishlegs dragged Snotlout backward by the seat of his trousers.

  RRRRRRIIIIP!!!!

  Snotlout’s trousers split from top to bottom, and Snotlout fled from the scene, half naked, followed by the loud laughter of his fellow students — I am afraid that Vikings have rather a basic sense of humor, and one of their number getting his trousers removed was just the kind of simple joke that really amused them.

  “HA HA HA HA HA!” chuckled the Hooligan boys, leaning on their axes.

  “I’m sorry, Hiccup,” said Humungous, helping Hiccup up.

  “Thank you,” gasped Hiccup, with a sigh of relief.

  “What are you thanking him for?” squeaked Fishlegs in irritation. “He’s an IDIOT! An idiot with style, but still an idiot.”

  “Shut up, Fishlegs; he saved my life for the SECOND TIME, didn’t he?” said Hiccup.

  Humungous looked uncomfortable.

  The very next day, Hiccup was on the way to his Taking Money with Menaces lesson with Fishlegs. Humungous had wandered off a bit further up the mountain.

  “I’ve packed,” Fishlegs was arguing. “I think we should leave. You heard what Humungous said; that Volcano is going to blow any minute.”

  �
�We can’t just leave the rest of the Tribe here to get exterminated,” Hiccup replied anxiously. “We have to persuade them somehow to come too . . .”

  Fishlegs was just answering that there was NO WAY they were going to be able to persuade the Hooligans to do anything of the sort, because they were all too chronically stupid to understand the peril of the situation . . .

  . . . when a large boulder mysteriously detached itself from the blackened hillside above.

  It came crashing down toward Hiccup and would have squashed him entirely, and that would have been the end of Hiccup, if Humungous hadn’t called out from above at the last minute:

  Hiccup and Fishlegs flung themselves to the left and the right, and the rock came crashing down in between the two of them.

  “OhforThorssake . . . ohforThorssake . . . ohforThorssake . . .” gasped Fishlegs, sprawled on the ground and looking up at the dust clouds stirred up by the gigantic stone that had nearly killed them both. “It’s a sign, don’t you see, it’s a sign from Woden that we really ought to be getting out of here . . . I’m going to go and check my packing again . . .”

  “Sorry, guys!” said Humungous, hurrying down from the mountain above. “My foot slipped and I must have knocked off a little bit of rock. Are you all right?”

  “Well, we’re still three-dimensional, and thank you for asking,” replied Fishlegs sarcastically. “Oh, how I wish I had a nice smart Bardiguard all of my very own, to chuck rocks at me, and send me unarmed into one-to-one combat with teenage psychopaths.”

  It seemed that perhaps Fishlegs might be right about the signs, however, because all these misfortunes, one after another, seemed rather foreboding.

  Only the very next day after the rock incident, Hiccup was sitting down to a supper of oysters with his father. Humungous the Bardiguard was standing to attention behind Hiccup’s chair. Toothless was underneath the very same chair quietly gobbling up an entire chicken that he’d nicked from the larder.