‘I am sorry, Father,’ cried Thuggory solemnly,
and he bowed formally to his father as a son should.
‘But Hiccup is right. If the dragons were free, they
would not make war on us. It is time for a new world,
a better one.’
Thuggory stopped in front of Valhallarama,
very brisk and soldier-like, and knelt and removed his
helmet as if he were becoming a Warrior.
Valhallarama put the Dragonmark on his
forehead.
‘Hiccup for King!’ yelled Thuggory, jumping to
his feet and punching the air.
‘Well, only one person!’ scoffed the witch.
‘You’re not going to get very far with only one foll—’
‘Hiccup for King!’ roared a whole cohort of
young Meatheads, clearly friends of Thuggory.
Suddenly all around the courtyard, the young
teenagers of the Tribes pressed forward to get the
Mark. Camicazi landed in the courtyard with Fishlegs
on the back of the Deadly Shadow, and had to
push her way to the front and threaten several
Danger-Brutes to get her Dragonmark first.
Because even the young of the conventionally
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vicious Tribes such as the Danger-Brutes and the
Visithugs were clamouring for the Mark now.
How was this possible?
Well, a strange thing had happened during the six
months of Hiccup being an Outcast.
Hiccup had turned from the most unlikely,
scrawny, puny little Viking ever, into a romantic figure
of rebellion.
Many of the younger Vikings had been secretly
following his progress as Hiccup set free dragon-traps
and eluded the forces of the Wilderwest in yet another
brilliant and hair-raising escape.
They had been whispering in secret stories
of Hiccup’s adventures, and suddenly they were
whispering them not as evidence of what a weirdo he
was, how bizarre, how freakish, but of how clever, how
extraordinary, how bravely unusual he was…
‘Have you heard how he discovered the Land
That Does Not Exist?’ they had been whispering.
‘Have you heard how he defeated the Sea
Dragon? The Strangulator? How he tricked the
Romans at the Fortress of Sinister? How he stopped
the Exterminators at Lava-Lout island? How he slipped
through the witch’s fingers once again in the land of
Nowhere? How he found EVERY SINGLE ONE
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of Grimbeard the Ghastly’s Lost Things, and Alvin only
stole them from him?’
When you put it like that, it seems extraordinary
that no one had noticed what a Hero they had in their
midst already. Short of going round with a big fat arrow
on his head saying ‘HERE IS THE
GREATEST HERO YOU’VE HAD IN THE
ARCHIPELAGO FOR CENTURIES’ there isn’t
much more that Hiccup could have done to make this
blindingly obvious.
But it can sometimes take a while for people to
change their minds about things.
Even Hiccup’s ridiculous birthday, the 29th of
February of a Leap Year, a source of shame to him for
his entire life, was suddenly in his favour.
‘And I’ve heard he’s only three years old,’ they
whispered, in hushed respect.
‘To have done all this when he is only THREE
YEARS OLD. Why it’s superhuman!’
This is the way that legends begin.
You remember what I said, way way way back at
the start of Hiccup’s adventures, how this would be the
story of becoming a Hero the Hard Way?
Now you can begin to see exactly how hard the
way has been.
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Alone, Hiccup had stood up against Alvin the
Treacherous and the entire weight of the Tribes. Alone,
he had stood up for what he believed in, for what he
felt was right, even when everyone else thought he was
wrong.
That was something, in the end, that the Vikings
could respect.
And somehow, along the way, Hiccup with his
masked dragonskin fire-suit, his inventive equipment,
his raggedy Windwalker dragon, his championing of the
weak and friendless, his weird little toothless hunting-
dragon, his actually really-rather-cool tattoo…
(For when you come to think about it, a tattoo
in the shape of a dragon on your forehead, is kind of
cool.)
Somehow with all these things, Hiccup had
become…
… a Hero.
And not just any old Hero either.
The sort of person people will follow into battle
and risk their lives for.
A King.
It wasn’t just the young either.
Even Mogadon the Meathead found himself
looking anew at Hiccup, and changing his mind.
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How is it that things can change so quickly, as it
seems, in an instant?
The fact is that things had been changing anyway,
without the Vikings really realising. The existence of
Prison Darkheart had been an unspoken source of
shame that the non-slave-trading Tribes had tried very
hard to forget about.
Most of the Vikings were fond of the dragons
they had grown up with, and even with the war going
on, the thought of a world without dragons was
depressing and frightening.
Plus the witch and Alvin had already enslaved
many friends and relations, and a large number of
people in that courtyard had a vague anxiety that they
could be next.
So people had been changing their minds
without really realising, and when things build to a
tipping point, a revolution can happen in just five
minutes.
‘M-U-U-U-U-U-UTINYYYYYYYYY!!!!’
screamed Alvin the Treacherous. ‘LOYAL CITIZENS
OF THE WILDERWEST, ARREST THESE
TRAITORS, BURY THEM IN THE DEEPEST
DARKEST DUNGEON YOU CAN FIND, AND
THROW AWAY THE KEY!’
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Absolute chaos then ensued in that Prison
Darkheart, as in one life-changing second, everybody
tried to decide which side they were on and,
furthermore, work out which side everybody else
was on, which wasn’t so very easy on the spur of the
moment like that.
All the slaves were on Hiccup’s side of course,
and some of the guards began to set them free from
their chains immediately. Most Tribes like the Bog-
Burglars, Peaceables and Hooligans were already
thoroughly fed up with the whole Treacherous regime.
But the witch and Alvin still had plenty of
supporters among the Murderous and Uglithug Tribes,
the Danger-Brutes and the Berserks. I’m afraid there
were plenty of vicious and heartless humans in that lot.
And because there wasn’t time for everybody
who wanted it to get themselves clearly marked with
the Dragonmark so that everyone knew where they
were, the ensuing battle very quickly became extremely
confusing.
The night air rang with the b
right sound of
sword on sword, and cries of ‘What are you doing? I’m
on your side!’ and ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I just assumed
because you were a Murderous that you’d be for the
witch,’ and ‘Oh, you did, did you? Well, let me tell
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you, some of us Murderous are just as sensitive as the
next guy…’ And so on.
Firing arrows at a ridiculously systematic rate,
Valhallarama fought her way to Stoick’s side and
HIYYYAAHHH!!!! with one swing of her battle-axe she
chopped through the chains that bound him.
Hiccup was close enough to hear what his
mother said to Stoick.
‘You were not my first love, Stoick the Vast,’ said
Valhallarama. ‘But you are my last…’
Stoick’s tired eyes lit up. And then Valhallarama
grinned, just like she must have grinned, once, when
she was a wild little girl.
‘Welcome to the Company of the Dragonmark,
Chief.’ And she handed Stoick her second best sword.
Stoick’s chest swelled. The years fell off him. For
Thor’s sake, he was not an old man after all, a little
past his prime perhaps, but the best years of his life
were ahead of him and he could feel the dance of war
beginning to tingle in his feet…
‘Valhallarama, my darling,’ said Stoick, ‘that is a
lovely thing to say, and you were magnificent, as ever!’
Valhallarama had drawn the Nevermiss, and the
two of them rang their two swords together grandly,
affectionately, as if they were lifting glasses in a toast.
Roaring like a charging bull, Stoick launched
back into battle, swinging his sword at Alvin’s warriors,
creaking a tiny bit at the knees perhaps, but mostly like
he’d never really left.
‘GUARDS OF THE WILDERWEST! COME
FIGHT FOR YOUR KING!’ screamed Alvin.
‘NO!’ yelled the witch. ‘The Dragon Rebellion!
Don’t forget the Dragon Rebellion!’
But the guards on the battlements left their
positions on Alvin’s orders, and the attack of the
Dragon Rebels became louder and more furious, and
there was a danger that at any second now they would
break through and overwhelm the prison itself.
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30. THE BATTLE OF PRISON
DARKHEART
No wonder they called this bay the Dragons’
Graveyard. Indescribably sinister it was, this past and
present battlefield, and the wind wailing through
those dead dragon skeletons seemed to carry voices
of a millennium of ghosts.
Now the tide had risen again and the living
dragons were waking.
The red sand below the sea was giving birth to
live dragons, swarming in their thousands out of the
scarlet sand below and bursting out of the bay, and
none of them were Hiccup’s favourite species.
Serpent-tongues writhed and twisted around
the white dragon bones, shaking out their wet
wings. Sandrazors, Hellsteethers, Darkbreathers and
Tonguetwisters joining them from the Forgotten
Forest and the Open Ocean. The darkest types of
dragon species, the monsters, the ones that hated
the humans most.
They were chanting the beginning of the
Red-Rage and sharpening their talons on the bones of
their dead dragon brothers. They saw the little human
ants and their terrible weapons of exploding fire and
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spears departing from the battlements, and they
knew their time had come.
Crouching in the centre of the ghastly graveyard
of dragons’ hopes and dreams and lives, was the
Dragon Furious. It is difficult to describe the beauty of
Furious. Now that he was no longer a captive, his skin,
though scarred, had returned to its former glory. It was
a blue so blue that you have never seen that colour
before. Deeper than the blue sky, more royal than
cerise, brighter than sapphires.
‘The humans are fighting among themselves,’
whispered Furious, and his eyes blazed with triumph.
And I mean, quite literally, blazed. An
extraordinary feature of fully grown Sea Dragons is
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that their eyes
can catch fire and
smoke. Little bursts of
bright red flame, as sharp as lasers,
darted from the pupils.
‘ATTA-A-A-A-A-A-CCCKKKKKKK!!!!!!!’
roared the Dragon Furious to his second-in-command,
a great Sea Dragon called the Thunderer.
‘ATTACK!’
And so
began the Battle for
Prison Darkheart.
For the first time in a thousand
years, the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion
flew over the undefended battlements, and into the
prison itself.
The humans fighting each other were now in
disarray. They could not reach their Exploding Things.
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Their weapons of destruction were now being blown
up by the magnificent winged serpents invading from
above.
Valhallarama, under attack from warriors of the
Wilderwest and dragons simultaneously, killed four
Sandrazors that were launching themselves with sword
sharp wings pointed straight at her neck, and shouted,
‘COMPANIONS OF THE DRAGONMARK!
RETREAT FROM THE PRISON AND MAKE FOR
THE SHIPS! OUR STRONGHOLD SHALL BE
THE BOG-BURGLAR ISLANDS TO THE WEST!’
Alvin and his supporters were now fleeing to the
ships as well, and the witch was organising their own
retreat to the Uglithug territories in the east.
Everyone had to make their choice. West for
Hiccup and the Dragonmark, east for Alvin and the
witch.
The Wodensfang and Toothless couldn’t really
choose of course, they were going with Alvin whether
they liked it or not, for they were swinging in the
amber-nets over Alvin’s shoulder.
‘We’re going the wrong w-w-way!’ squealed
Toothless. ‘We need to go with H-H-Hiccup! This is a
disaster! Toothless is the most important Lost Thing,
Hiccup can’t possibly do without me!’
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The Hairy Scary Librarian seemed to feel that
maybe he was quits with Hiccup, and he had a new
score to settle now that he had realised the emptiness
of a witch’s promise. So he headed west, to the Bog-
Burglar Islands.
In the middle of the battle, Gobber the Belch
passed Snotlout, deep in thought, looking to west
and east.
Snotlout couldn’t decide which way to go.
He knew what the witch and Alvin were now, and
he hated them almost as much as they scared him. But
taking Hiccup as his King? His despised little runt-boy
cousin? His pride revolted at the thought. Hiccup had
stepped in to save Snotlout, but even that was kind of
irritating.
‘Snotlout!’ called Gobber. ‘You can still fight
for the right side, Snotlout. You are one of the best
Warriors I have ev
er taught. You remember the
Black Star you won against Alvin at the Battle of the
Lucky Thirteen? You’d be a tremendous asset to the
Company of the Dragonmark. Come with us!’
Snotlout did not answer, and Gobber shrugged
his shoulders, and left him there.
Snotlout reached into his pocket and took out the
Black Star medal, one of the highest awards for bravery
the Archipelago can bestow. He turned it over and
over, trying to decide. West or east? West or east?
Which way would Snotlout go?
And that is where we will leave him, standing
undecided in the middle of the battlefield.
Thinking.
Valhallarama fought her way across to Hiccup.
‘DUCK!’ yelled Valhallarama.
‘What?’
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‘DUCK!’ she yelled again, pushing him
downwards, and firing an arrow over his head that
killed a swooping Sandrazor stone dead mid-swoop.
‘OK, Hiccup,’ said Valhallarama. ‘It is too
dangerous for you to stay with us. Take the Jewel
and hide from both dragon and Viking. Deadly
Shadow dragons know how to hide. Make your way
to Tomorrow for the Crowning day, and your father,
the Company of the Dragonmark and I will meet you
there. In the meantime, no one must know you are
alive.’
‘But I haven’t got any of the Things!’ protested
Hiccup. ‘Alvin has everything apart from the Jewel!’
‘The Jewel is the most important Thing of all,’
said Valhallarama. ‘Be careful of it.’
Just before the Great Warrior turned away, back
to the battle, Hiccup put his hand on his mother’s
metal arm. Even though he was particularly bedraggled
after his long and tiring day, streaked with Monster
juices and ocean, he was somehow less small and
unlikely than he had ever been before.
He looked… Oh dear, what did he look like?
It was all such a long time ago.
But I think he looked a little more…
… grown-up.
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‘Thank you,’ said Hiccup to Valhallarama.
‘You have nothing to thank me for,’ said
Valhallarama. ‘I am your mother. Oh and
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