How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel

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How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 12

by Cressida Cowell


  Valhalla and back again… Show him, Gormless!’

  Gormless let fly the spear-throwing machine, and

  Ching! Ching! Ching! Ching! Ching! Ching! Six spears

  buried themselves in a tight circle around The Hopeful

  Puffin 2. Hiccup gulped. ‘One spear would kill me,

  witch,’ said Hiccup. ‘You don’t need a hundred…’

  ‘Find us the Jewel!’ screamed Alvin the

  Treacherous.

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  15. HICCUP SETS OFF TO

  FIND THE JEWEL

  Everyone was looking at Hiccup expectantly.

  OK, now this really was a tricky situation.

  He looked down at the map, hoping it would

  help, but he had looked at that map so many times

  in the last six months, and it had never been helpful.

  The red herring Grimbeard had painted on the top

  somehow looked like it was laughing at him.

  His visor fell down with a clang that sounded

  horribly like a death knell.

  He edged The Hopeful Puffin 2 out very slightly

  on to the endless red sands.

  Hundreds of Warriors on their sand-yachts

  followed.

  An outsider watching this would have seen it

  as ridiculous. Hiccup on his sand-yacht, The Hopeful

  Puffin 2, making its erratic way forward, followed by

  all these soldiers of the Wilderwest on their sand-

  yachts, all with their arrows pointing at Hiccup.

  ‘Find it!’ shrieked the witch. ‘Now!’

  Hiccup moved the yacht forward a little.

  And stopped.

  Two hundred yachts followed a little.

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  And stopped.

  ‘You’re going to have to

  give me a little room,’ Hiccup called

  out. ‘To give my Jewel-finding-senses

  some space to develop.’

  ‘Give the nasty toad a little room!’ yelled

  the witch. ‘But not too much room! Just a tiny bit

  of room! A little bit more! No, not that much!’

  As if things weren’t complicated enough,

  the basket on Hiccup’s yacht was very,

  very heavy.

  So heavy that it might have been filled

  with rocks and amber already.

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  And Hiccup suspected he knew why.

  Those innocent blue eyes…

  When Hiccup was a tiny bit ahead so no one

  would hear, he pulled up his visor (not without

  difficulty, the beastly thing still had a tendency to jam),

  and whispered softly out of the corner of his mouth,

  ‘What are you doing in there, Camicazi? I told you

  to escape! And how did you know this was my sand-

  yacht?’

  ‘You wrote The Hopeful Puffin 2 on the back of

  it,’ explained the basket, adding hastily, ‘and I don’t

  know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of

  this Cami-whatsit.’

  ‘Camicazi, I know perfectly well it’s you in there,’

  hissed Hiccup. ‘Why didn’t you escape with the rest of

  your escape team?’

  ‘I’ve trained the team well,’ Camicazi whispered

  back. ‘They can take the Eggingarde kid to the

  Wanderers without me. If you think I’m going to Half-

  Turn My Back on you again, Hiccup Horrendous

  Haddock the Third, you’ve got another think coming.

  From now on, I’m never letting you out of my sight.

  What’s going on? It was very shrieky out there.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Hiccup. ‘I have to find the

  Jewel in three hours, or the witch will kill everybody.’

  ‘But I’m not sure the Jewel is out here,’ said

  Camicazi, in the basket.

  ‘Try telling the witch that,’ said Hiccup.

  ‘So, do we attack?’ said the basket after a while.

  ‘I’ve got two drawn swords in here and a dagger

  between my teeth.’

  ‘That may not be enough,’ admitted Hiccup,

  looking at the hundreds of following sand-yachts,

  the thicket of swords, the rocket-launchers, the

  Warriors with their killer eyes all trained on him, the

  Northbows stretched to breaking-point.

  ‘What’s the plan, then?’ asked Camicazi.

  Hiccup sighed.

  The truth was, at that particular moment he was

  all out of Plans.

  The enormous wilderness of the sands-with-

  no- Jewel-in-them stretching in front of him, and the

  army of heavily armed people bristling with the worst

  in weaponry that the human mind could dream up,

  all edging threateningly up behind him, were slightly

  sapping his creativity.

  He had that feeling of dread, again, sitting in his

  stomach like cold porridge.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ muttered Hiccup. ‘Knowing that

  220

  dreadful trickster of a Grimbeard there is probably

  no Jewel for at least six miles in any direction. It’s

  probably at the other end of the beastly Archipelago.’

  ‘So you admit it!’ said Camicazi delightedly.

  ‘Steady… don’t let the tricksy little rat out of

  your sight,’ whispered the witch Excellinor from behind

  Hiccup and the sand-yacht. ‘Keep your arrows steady

  now.

  ‘Have you found it yet, you disgusting little

  shrimp?’

  And then something truly extraordinary

  happened.

  You have to see it through the witch’s eyes, and

  the eyes of the hundreds and hundreds of slaves and

  Warriors of the Wilderwest gathered there on the

  sands.

  To them, it must have seemed like some sort of

  miracle.

  Some kind of supernatural magic.

  There they were in their thousands, bristling with

  armour and with all their swords pointing at Hiccup,

  the guards with their sand-yachts with super-huge sails

  that could easily outrun Hiccup’s battered old sand-

  yacht (particularly because he was weighed down by

  Camicazi, but of course, they didn’t know that).

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  There was no way that Hiccup could possibly slip

  through their fingers…

  Absolutely no possible way.

  But then one second he was in front of them,

  oaring his sand-yacht on its raggedy, slightly erratic

  progress, wobbling heavily to the left.

  And the next, there was a rush of wind above

  their heads, a sort of blurring of the air as if a sudden

  very specific mist had come down…

  And then there was a short, sharp cry and the

  next moment it was as if Hiccup, sand-yacht, basket

  and all, were swallowed up in one gulping swoop by the

  very air above them…

  It was unbelievable.

  One minute he was there, the next he was gone.

  The crowd with their weapons and their axes and

  their swords looked at the spot where he was last seen

  with goggling eyes and jaws agape, and huge gasps of

  wondering, disbelieving, gob-smacked amazement.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Gumboil slowly. ‘He’s

  completely vanished…’

  ‘NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!’ shrieked the witch. ‘No! No!

  No! No! No!’ as Gumboil hastily oared the witch’s

  sand-yacht to the absolute spot where last he was. ‘It’
s

  not possible! It’s just not possible!’

  222

  King Alvin’s royal sand-yacht came to a gloomy

  swishing stop beside her. ‘I did tell you, Mother. I

  have a long history with this brat, and we should have

  hooked him to death while we had a chance. I’ve been

  keeping my hook especially sharp on purpose.’

  There is a kind of satisfaction that comes with

  being right, even when it is to your disadvantage. ‘And

  now he even has the map…’ said Alvin with a kind of

  grim, gloomy smugness.

  ‘It’s not possible!’ screamed the witch. ‘He must

  be here somewhere! DIG! DIG, you fools, DIG!’

  The witch sprang animal-like from her sand-yacht,

  and began to dig herself, with her iron fingernails,

  raking up the sand in great handfuls like some

  desperate exasperated dog. As if, in some extraordinary

  way, Hiccup could have spirited himself below the

  sand, sand-yacht and all.

  The Warriors and the slaves rushed to help

  her with their spades, digging yet another hopeless,

  pointless hole, like so many of the other hopeless

  pointless holes that they had dug in this bay.

  Suddenly the witch paused in her hopeless

  digging, hands full of sand, and sniffed the air.

  And she began to jump on all fours, and down to

  all fours again, like a cat leaping, and at the top of

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  each leap she clawed the very air with her bony

  hands, as if she could scratch the boy out of the sky

  itself with her long, iron fingernails, and bring him

  down with her puny arms. ‘He’s up here! I know it!

  I know it! I can see it! With my true blind eyes I see

  him!’ she screeched.

  Quite an impressive effort for an elderly woman.

  And the crowds of Warriors and curious slaves

  watching this on their sand-yachts began to whisper to

  each other: ‘Ooh, she’s lost it now. She was always on

  the edge, but now she’s gone completely bananas…’

  And then, because the Vikings are a superstitious

  lot, and impressed by anything that looks magic: ‘Did

  you see the boy, though? Completely disappeared, into

  thin air…’

  ‘I’ve heard he did the same thing a couple of

  years ago in the Fortress of Sinister. He flew, flew in

  the air, with no dragon, no anything…’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Absolutely, on my best blue helmet he did. Do

  you think he really could be the—’

  ‘SILENCE!’ roared Alvin the Treacherous,

  sensing the whispering. ‘SILENCE. The next traitor

  that talks, they shall be talking to Hooky here, who is

  itching for blood as it is!’

  Silence on the red sands.

  ‘Half of you get down on your knees and dig!’

  howled Alvin the Treacherous, ‘and the other half jump

  in the air for the boy in case he’s still up there!’

  Slowly the peoples of the Archipelago began

  to obey.

  225

  And if the great god Thor had been looking

  down at that moment perhaps he might have reflected

  with an ironic smile at the state that the proud

  independent peoples of the Archipelago had got

  themselves into.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of them, digging a

  pointless hole in the middle of the sands, or jumping

  fruitlessly in the air.

  While the winds blew all around them and the

  sands stretched away for ever.

  226

  16. THE TRIPLE-HEADER

  DEADLY SHADOW

  It was a very satisfactory moment to see the effect of

  Hiccup’s magical disappearance on the witch and the

  crowds of the Wilderwest.

  However, unfortunately, as you will have

  guessed, Hiccup’s magical disappearance wasn’t so

  very magical after all.

  He had, in fact, been abducted by the Triple-

  Header Deadly Shadow dragon who was

  working as an assassin for the Dragon

  Furious.

  The Wodensfang and Toothless

  guessed this of course, cowering and

  peering gloomily out of the nets

  swinging from the back of Alvin’s

  royal sand-yacht.

  ‘You see, I told him,’

  whispered the Wodensfang.

  ‘I warned him about that

  dragon. It’s only paranoia if

  things aren’t out to get you…

  At least he’s wearing

  his helmet…’

  227

  ‘Yes,’ said Toothless sadly. ‘But what is he

  going to do without T-t-toothless to look after

  him? Hiccup needs Toothless… I’m one of the

  Lost Things… And I’m the best one…’

  ‘Ooooooh!’ squealed Camicazi from the basket.

  ‘You have thought of a plan, I can feel it, I knew you

  would!’

  Actually, Hiccup was just trying to work out

  what just happened.

  They were in the claws of something that

  appeared to be invisible when Hiccup looked

  upwards, but Hiccup knew it must just be excellent

  camouflage. It could be a Stealth Dragon. Hiccup had

  come across those before.

  And then with a very sick feeling, Hiccup

  remembered how the Wodensfang had been

  warning him for ages that they were being followed

  by something that the Dragon Furious had sent to

  kill him… How the bed last night had looked as if

  something had attacked it…

  ‘This isn’t a plan,’ said Hiccup, in a petrified way,

  ‘at least it may be a plan, but it isn’t my plan, it’s the

  Dragon Furious’s plan.

  ‘We’ve been abducted by some kind of

  camouflaged Stealth Dragon Thingummy that the

  228

  Dragon Furious must have sent to kill me.’

  ‘Oh great!’ sang Camicazi, popping up from the

  basket enthusiastically, like a wild blonde jack-in-the-

  box. ‘I love Stealth Dragons!’

  ‘So do I,’ said Stormfly, emerging from the

  basket after Camicazi, and turning a beautiful

  flirtatious pale pink.

  ‘I don’t think

  you’re going to love this Stealth

  Dragon,’ Hiccup assured her

  through chattering teeth.

  230

  Camicazi put up her finger.

  ‘I’ll get my emergency battle-axe then,’ she said

  popping down into the basket. ‘I brought it along just

  in case. And I’ve got a spare sword for you.’ (Camicazi

  always came well-armed.) ‘And then you can take one

  head, and I’ll take both the others, because I’m the girl.

  You see, you did need me, I knew you would. Oh, this

  is exciting, it’s just like old times!’

  Hiccup didn’t like to rain on Camicazi’s parade,

  but there wasn’t much chance of the two of them

  fighting it on their own.

  He felt a little sick as he looked down over the

  invisible fist clutching the crushed sand-yacht, down,

  down at the red sands far below. Being abducted by a

  dragon, rather than flying it himself, always made his

  ears pop. He didn’t know
why, they weren’t flying

  particularly high, but it was just one of those weird

  things. He took the sword that Camicazi was handing

  him in a shaking clammy hand.

  Here we go, he thought.

  The Deadly Shadow landed and held Hiccup and

  Camicazi and the crushed sand-yacht in one transparent

  claw. Above them the mighty beast towered.

  ‘Let us go, you great see-through COWARD!’

  yelled Camicazi. ‘Let us go so we can fight like

  232

  VIKINGS, you window-featured, triple-headed

  LIZARD-BRAIN!’

  When it landed, the Deadly Shadow saw no

  need for disguise any more. The camouflage faded

  from its chameleon skin, and for the first time, Hiccup

  saw what species it was.

  Uh-oh, they were in real trouble.

  He’d never seen one of these before, but he

  knew this was a disaster.

  It was a Deadly Shadow, and a Triple-Header

  at that, and Deadly Shadows shot lightning bolts as

  well as flame. It was a breathtaking sea-green when

  it wasn’t camouflaged, and at least three metres tall

  and nine metres long. Way up in the six cheeks of its

  three heads you could see the faint bright yellow that

  told you that they contained poisonous ducts.

  Like a creature this powerful really needs poison

  as well, thought Hiccup, slightly hysterically. That’s

  just overkill.

  ‘Wow,’ breathed Stormfly, batting her naughty

  eyelashes at the Deadly Shadow. ‘You ARE a

  magnificent creature, aren’t you?’

  Hiccup was trying to think of everything he

  knew about Deadly Shadows, but all he could think

  at that particular moment was:

  233

  Ooh dear, he looks cross.

  WHOOF!

  The Deadly Shadow leapt, and suddenly he was

  pinned to the ground, the breath being squeezed out

  of him. Hiccup and Camicazi gasped for air.

  The creature opened its great jaws, and from

  all three of its heads there came a scream at so deep

  a pitch, and so loud, and coming from so many

  directions at once that the noise seemed to blow

  poor Hiccup’s hair back and entered his entire being,

 

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