‘Bedtime, now, Hogfly,’ said Hiccup.
‘Oooo bedtime! Is it my bedtime?’
‘Yes we’re going to bed now, Hogfly…’
Hiccup took off his backpack, and the Hogfly
hopped in, wedging his fat little bottom inside and
woofing enthusiastically.
‘Night, night, Hogfly…’ whispered Hiccup. ‘And
well done! You were very useful there…’
Hogflys love to be helpful. This Hogfly
was so pleased to be praised, he blew
himself up into a balloon again,
and POP! He burst with pride,
even though he had already
forgotten what Hiccup was
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thanking him for.
‘Sleep tight!’ yawned the Hogfly. ‘Anchors
aweigh! Happy holidays! Good night, sweet ladies,
good night…’
The instant Hiccup put the lid on the backpack,
deep, snuffling, catarrh-filled snores rumbled from
within.
Quiet as shadows, Hiccup and
Windwalker and Wodensfang flew
towards the moving light. They
landed on a boat nearby, and
leapt like cats from deck to deck,
keeping well in the shadows.
Suddenly there was a sound
of running footsteps. Hiccup and
the two dragons dived behind
a boathouse to hide. The metal
boots of Very Vicious ran past them,
hastening back towards the pitched battle
taking place around and above the Great Hall, which
was now burning as merrily as a gigantic bonfire…
Heart thumping, Hiccup waited until Very
Vicious had disappeared.
A ladder rested against one side of the final boat.
Quiet as a ghost, Hiccup climbed that ladder, and
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peered over the edge.
There were two Alvinsmen guards on deck,
talking in whispers to each other. They were so
engrossed in their conversation that they did not see
Hiccup and the two dragons slip over the side and hide
behind the tent-house in the middle of the deck.
The first guard was sucking his finger.
‘That wretched little dragon BIT me!’ he
grumbled. He looked thoroughly harassed. ‘For a
dragon with no teeth, it HURT! If I’d known this job
included dragon-sitting I’d never have volunteered…
That horrible little creature blew a rude raspberry right
in my face!’
They could only have been talking about
Toothless.
‘Oh, well done, Toothless,’ breathed Wodensfang,
even though he was
normally so keen
on teaching the little
dragon some manners.
Heart lifting,
Hiccup recognised
the voice of Toothless
singing to himself,
down in the depths of
the ship somewhere.
Toothless, thought Hiccup. Thank goodness you’re
all right.
‘One hundred and thirty-three thousand four
hundred and eighty-nine b-b-bottles hanging on
a wall…’ sang the little dragon sadly, for Toothless
was feeling very sorry for himself. ‘One hundred and
thirty-three thousand four hundred and eighty-nine
bottles hanging on a wall… and if ONE green
bottle should accidentally f-f-fall… there’ll be one
hundred and thirty-three thousand four hundred and
eighty-eight bottles hanging on a wall…’
Toothless had recently learnt to count, and
singing this particular song was his way of keeping his
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spirits up until Hiccup rescued him. Toothless was
convinced, of course, that Hiccup was going to rescue
him.
The second Alvinsman had his hands over his
ears.
‘SHURRUP you revolting little tone-deaf frog!
BE QUIET!’
For one moment Toothless stopped. And then
he began again, in that same, maddening lugubrious
drone:
‘One hundred and thirty-three thousand four
hundred and eighty-eight bottles h-h-hanging on a
wall… one hundred and thirty-three thousand, four
hundred and eighty-eight bottles h-h-hanging on a
wall…’
‘Go down and get him to stop!’ said the second
Alvinsman.
‘Why me?’ begged the first Alvinsman. ‘He’s
already bitten me, done the rude raspberry, eaten half
my lunch and the end of my favourite scabbard, and
we’ve only had him for five minutes! Why don’t you go
down and get him to stop?’
‘OK, OK… you have to be firm with these little
pests, you’re too soft,’ grumbled the second Alvinsman,
and he climbed down a hatch in the middle of the
deck. ‘It’s all in your tone of voice. Watch me. Now
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look here, you horrible little reptile, pipe down or—
OW! He bit me too!’
‘Don’t for Thor’s sake spank him!’ begged the
first Alvinsman. ‘The witch said he was the Last Lost
Thing, and it was very important that he was kept in
peak physical condition…’
‘That’s r-r-right, you ignorant Alvinsmen!
Toothless is the Last Lost Thing, and he’s the
B-B-BEST ONE!’ Toothless shouted up from
below. ‘One hundred and thirty three thousand, four
hundred and eighty-SEVEN bottles… h-h-hanging on
a wall…’
‘I’m very tempted to lose him again right now,’
said the second Alvinsman climbing up out of the
hatch. ‘He threw up that lunch of yours down my
waistcoat and he bit me right on the nose…’ The
Second Alvinsman had never been attractive, but he
was even less pretty now with his nose swelling up to
twice its normal size.
Well, you shouldn’t go around kidnapping other
people’s dragons, should you? thought Hiccup with
satisfaction.
BANG! One of Camicazi’s pebbles hit something
explosive in the distance, as the sound of the Hooligan
National Anthem rang around the cavern.
‘Do you think that’s the Dragonmarkers attacking
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us?’ said the
first Alvinsman.
‘It must
be,’ replied the second
Alvinsman. ‘I’d recognise
Valhallarama’s singing voice anywhere.
Very Vicious better hurry back with reinforcements. If
we get attacked by Dragonmarkers, we can’t defend
the Things all on our own…’
The Things.
So it was just as Hiccup hoped. They had hidden
Toothless with the other Lost Things!
A ship was the obvious place to hide them, so
that if they were attacked they could quickly carry them
to a new hiding place.
The Things must be right here on this ship…
There was a clatter of feet on the platform behind
them, and a third Alvinsman came climbing up the
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ladder, a burly man with a large yellow
moustache.
‘Message from the witch,’ panted the third
Alvinsman. ‘You need to get the Things ready so th
at
she can move them to a safer location.’
‘Are you sure we should get them out of the
hiding-place?’ said the first Alvinsman. ‘Was that
exactly what the witch said? You know how cross she
gets if we do things without being told…’
They were terrified of the Witch Excellinor. She
had that effect on people.
Oh please… begged the watching Hiccup in his
mind. Please get the Things out of their hiding-place…
‘Well what the witch said exactly was: “If they
don’t get the Things out of their hiding place quickly,
I will personally remove their backbones with my
fingernails,” ’ said the third Alvinsman.
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This had the ring of truth to it, and the two
Alvinsmen began to twist the pulley that hauled up the
anchor-rope. It took all their strength to turn the pulley
round in great grunting heaves.
And as they drew the anchor rope in, they also
drew in the Things, one by one.
‘Aah…’ sighed the Wodensfang in Hiccup’s
ear. ‘That was why I kept seeing them floating
underwater in my dreams…’
The witch had attached the Things, you see, to
long ropes tied to the anchor rope. And that was why
Snotlout had never found them. He must have hunted
through these boats so many times, in the secrecy and
darkness of night-time. But he never thought to look
underwater.
She was a very nasty woman, that witch, but you
had to admit that she was rather clever at hiding things.
First the crown came over the side. Then the
Roman shield, the arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-
exist, the bracelet that contained the heart’s stone, the
key-that-opens-all-locks, the ticking-thing (smashed but
still ticking), the Dragon Jewel, the second-best sword
and, last of all (and this took a great deal of grunting
and straining on the part of the Alvinsmen), the Lost
Throne of the Wilderwest… followed by the anchor.
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The Throne was covered with seaweed, and
as they heaved it over the side, little jewel-like crabs
scuttled out of its crevices and scattered all over the
deck.
THE THINGS! thought Hiccup exultantly, as a
crab pattered across his foot. We’ve found the
Things! Now all that we have to do is steal
them…
‘OK,’ said the first
Alvinsman nervously, ‘let’s
stash the Things down in
the hold so we’re ready to
move them when the witch
gives the order.’
The three Alvinsmen
hastily untied the Things from the
anchor-rope and carried them down an
open hatch.
‘Ow!’ came the muffled voice of the first
Alvinsman. ‘That horrible little dragon bit me again!’
The three Alvinsmen re-emerged and the first
Alvinsman slammed down the hatch, bolting and
padlocking it.
Hiccup drew a little pouch of hazelnuts out
from his pocket. (He always kept little treats for
Toothless in his pocket.)
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He threw one of the hazelnuts as far as he could
on to a neighbouring boat, and then ducked behind the
shadows of the tent-house.
CLANG!
‘What was that?’ bleated the first Alvinsman.
‘You two go and investigate, and I’ll look after
the Things…’ panted the third Alvinsman. ‘We’re
obviously under some sort of attack.’
The first and the second Alvinsmen climbed
down the ladder on to the next boat, swords drawn, to
investigate the noise.
The third Alvinsman was leaning way over the
side of the boat, flare held up high, watching them.
Hiccup tiptoed up and gave him a big shove.
The third Alvinsman gave a small, muffled
scream, and with a satisfying
SPLASH!
landed in the water below and…
CREAK!
Hiccup pushed the ladder down so that there was
no way the third Alvinsman could climb back on to the
boat again. Then he grabbed the boathook, and pushed
off.
He had the Things! He had the Things!
Hiccup’s heart was doing a happy little jig.
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He hadn’t had a great deal of hope for Plan B,
but so far, it was working unexpectedly well.
What Hiccup did not realise, at the time, was that
the third Alvinsman was not, in fact, an Alvinsman at
all.
It was his own mother, Valhallarama.
You see, Camicazi wasn’t the only one who liked
to dress up in big blond moustaches.
Valhallarama had crept into Alvin’s war bunker
dressed as an Alvinsman, intending to steal the Nine
Lost Things in time to meet Hiccup back on the beach
on Doomsday Eve.
And she would have done it too, if her son had
not unfortunately mistaken her for a real Alvinsman
(the blond-moustache disguise in her case was rather
good, much better than Camicazi’s, because she had
the acreage to carry it off) and given her a big shove in
the back that had thrown her into the water.
‘Oh, Hiccup,’ sighed Valhallarama to herself, as
she trod water and ‘accidentally’ let off an arrow in the
direction of the second Alvinsman, who was firing at
the deck of the departing boat. ‘I told you not to leave
the underground hideout. I told you to trust me, and I
would take care of everything…’
Valhallarama shook her head forgivingly.
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‘But then,’ she mused, ‘maybe I have to learn to
stand back and let the boy do it his way, make his own
mistakes.’ She sighed. ‘It is harder to do that than I
thought.’
But Hiccup knew nothing of this until much,
much later.
He was busy concentrating on the immediate
problem before him.
He had to row the boat out of the cavern before
those Alvinsmen could raise the alarm. Luckily the
boat was very close to the waterfall. You could hear the
roaring of the water, like the bellow of a Seadragonus
Giganticus Maximus…
Once he was out of the cavern, he would be fine,
the wind would take the sails.
… But even though it was such a short distance,
and not a particularly large boat, how was he to row it
all on his own?
Hiccup ran across the deck, towards the oars,
and peered swiftly into the hatch just to check that
Toothless was in there.
‘Toothless?’ he whispered.
‘Master!’ the joyful voice of Toothless
squeaked back.
Oh, thank Thor!
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‘Don’t worry, Toothless!’ Hiccup yelled through
the hatch. ‘I haven’t got time to unlock this hatch
now but I’m going to save you!’
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16. ‘MY TOOTH…WHERE IS
MY TOOTH?’
And then Hiccup stiffened.
All the hairs on the b
ack of his neck rose like the
quills on a fretful porcupine. Not two yards in front of
him, hovering in mid-air, floating in the atmosphere as
if they were being dangled by a malevolent god…
… was a pair of evil red eyes.
And out of airy nothing there came a nasty
whining wisp of a whisper: ‘My tooth… Whe-e-e-ere is
my tooth?’
As soon as Hiccup saw those red eyes, he was
conscious that his arm had been singing in agony
around that horrible tooth for the last hour or so. There
had been so much going on, he had ignored the pain.
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Slowly, slowly, around those evil red eyes with
two little slits for pupils, there materialised the body of
a Vampire Spydragon, crouching on the hatch as if it
was guarding it.
The Vampire Spydragon was a revolting sight,
enough to give you nightmares for years.
Its head was that of a gigantic bat, with one huge
cruel-looking vampire tooth protruding from the side
of its slobbering mouth.
Its horrible little nose was snuffling as the saliva
dripped down its vampire fangs.
That pain in Hiccup’s arm must have been a sign
that the Vampire Spydragon was using the tooth to
track him down.
‘My tooth…’ whined the Vampire Spydragon,
‘Whe-e-ere is my tooth? For I need to eat what I have
bit…Whe-e-ere is my tooth????’
Hiccup said nothing, just backed away in terror,
his left arm hidden behind him.
‘Aha!’ rasped the Vampire Spydragon, its wicked
red eyes lighting up in cruel triumph.
‘You are trying to hide it, you nasty little
burglar, but you cannot conceal it from me… I think
I spy it… I think I have found it… You stole my
tooth, you horrible little thief…’
‘I didn’t mean to…’ stammered the petrified
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Hiccup, taking a
couple of steps backwards.
‘You can have it back if you
like… I don’t want it…’
‘You stole my tooth,’
spat the Vampire Spydragon
savagely, ‘and now I have
found it, I shall finish the
meal that I began…’
It crouched for a second,
bat wings stretched out. And
How To Train Your Dragon: How to Betray a Dragon's Hero Page 14
