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
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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!’
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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.
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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…’
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‘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
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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.
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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
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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:
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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,
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 12
