my friend, Fishlegs, is it? The Vorpent stings
dragons as well as humans. Thousands of
DRAGONS die of Vorpentitis every year. When
I bring back the frozen potato, I shall plant
potatoes all over Berk, and no dragon shall die
of Vorpentitis ever again.’
Well, that got One Eye, of course, because his
hatred of humans was only matched by his love for
his fellow dragons, and five minutes later Hiccup was
hitching the big Sabre-Tooth Dragon up to his sleigh.
Hiccup told Stoick on the way that he was going
to spend the night at Snotlout’s house and Stoick was
delighted.
‘Excellent, my boy,’ roared Stoick, ‘so you’ve
decided to take my advice, and find yourself a better
friend. Well done, Hiccup.’
‘So now,’ said Hiccup, sitting down in the sleigh
next to Camicazi, ‘we can nip to Hysteria, steal the
potato, and get it to Fishlegs without my father even
knowing we’ve gone.’
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Only Snotlout noticed the small Sleigh-Dragging-
a-Boat sneaking out of Hooligan Harbour, on its way to
Hysteria on the quest for the Frozen Potato.
Snotlout hoped that wherever Hiccup was going,
it was somewhere dangerous, and that he would NEVER
COME BACK.
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8. THE WRATH OF THOR
One Eye pulled the sleigh across the ice at a crazy speed.
Once or twice Hiccup tugged on the reins to try and
get him to slow down, but the big Driver ignored him,
and so in the end, Hiccup gave up trying. ‘The quicker
we get to Hysteria, the better, anyway,’ he reminded
himself. The burningly cold wind slammed into his face,
tearing at his eyelids as they careered across the ice.
The Hopeful Puffin bounced crazily behind them
like an ugly duckling desperately trying to keep up with
its demented mother. Luckily, although she was not an
attractive-looking boat, she was sturdy and used to the
odd knock or two. Hiccup had brought along snacks for
everybody that were supposed to last the whole journey,
but Toothless finished all of them in the first three
minutes, littering the sleigh with crumbs, chicken bones
and winkle shells.
‘Toothless c-c-cold…’ he wailed. ‘Toothless
h-h-hungry… Toothless BORED. Ow ow ow ow…
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Camicazi s-s-sitting on my ta-a-ail… Are we nearly
there yet?’
‘We only left five minutes ago!’ exclaimed
Hiccup.
‘Toothless play I-Spy,’ said Toothless firmly.
At first Camicazi was horribly cheerful, chatting
constantly, and singing loudly, her bright blue eyes
prickling with excitement.
But as the long hours wore on, and as they played
their fifty-second game of I-Spy with Hiccup translating
for Toothless, and as the sky turned pink and grey with
the coming of the evening, and as they passed the Mazy
Multitudes to their left and began to hear the first moans
of the Doomfang under the ice, even Camicazi fell silent.
Hiccup made One Eye wait for the evening
to grow darker before they turned the corner into the
Wrath of Thor, so the Hysteric lookouts wouldn’t spot
them coming.
For a tense, stomach-churning half-hour they
waited, until Hiccup judged it was safe, and gave a pull
on One Eye’s reins to get him going again.
The gigantic sea cliffs of Villainy and Hysteria
loomed above them scarily in the darkness. One Eye
bounded into the Wrath of Thor, and the cliffs leapt up
on either side of the little sleigh as it raced along, like
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dizzyingly high prison walls.
The eyes of dragons shine
in the dark, and so One Eye’s great
eye acted as a searchlight, showing
them the way. The ice in the narrow
gorge was so clear that it was almost
transparent, and in the beam of One Eye’s
eye, you could see right through it, as if it were a two-
metre-thick pane of frosted glass, down into the sea
below. How interesting, thought Hiccup as he looked
over the edge of the sleigh, I can even make out a shoal
of mackerel down there…
The mass of tiny fish went on for ever,
swimming slowly in their millions way down
below them, until suddenly they scarpered,
shooting away like tiny sparks in an explosion,
as a great dark shape, infinitely large, suddenly
appeared under the ice. It was the
gargantuan shadow of a dragon
the size of an underwater
mountain, and it easily kept
up with the speedy little
sleigh, its long tail lazily
powering it along,
its wings nearly
brushing the edges of
the Wrath of Thor as it beat
them slowly to swim underneath.
‘Issa D-d-doomfang!’ whispered
Toothless into Hiccup’s ear. ‘Let’s go
h-h-home…’
Hiccup gazed downwards in fascinated horror
as the great dragon turned its head to one side
and Hiccup found himself staring into an
enormous, bloodshot, green dragon eye, as long
as the sleigh itself.
It was as if all the green in the
world, of peas, of grass, of spinach, of
leaves, of beans and frogs, had been
concentrated in that one eye and
given it the intensity of a pure green
acid. It was like looking straight
into the sun at midday, through a great
green microscope, and Hiccup was so
dazzled he nearly fell off the sleigh,
until he was brought back to his senses by a
terribleTHUD! and the ice below them jumped up like
The DOOMFANG
The Doomfang is a gigantic predator of the
Open Ocean, very rarely seen by humans.
It is armed not only with fearsome fangs and
claws, but also a strange blue fire that ‘freezes’
its victims to death.
~STATISTICS~
COLOURS: Always as black as your darkest
nightmare.
ARMED WITH: Terrible jaws and fangs. Also
have unusual frozen fire breath, with blue
flames that kill by FREEZING you.
FEAR FACTOR:..............9
ATTACK:.......................9
SPEED:.........................9
SIZE:............................9
DISOBEDIENCE:............9
an earthquake. The sleigh jumped too, and One Eye
soared briefly into the air with a complaining yowl.
THUD! went the ice again as the Doomfang
butted his head against the thick transparent wall. With
terrified relief, Hiccup realised the ice was so deep that
it was holding strong, although it was now shot through
with tiny little white cracks.
The sleigh raced towards the entrance to Hysteria
Harbour like a mouse streaking towards a mousehole.
The dragon followed, thudding the ice underneath as
they went, with terrible blows from its battering-ram
head. When One Eye turned into the harbour, he was
going so fast the momentum from the boat behind
almost turned them round in a great screeching circle.
The sleigh balanced wildly on one runner, before
slamming back down and carrying on.
Hiccup looked over his shoulder. The Doomfang
was too large to fit through the narrow harbour entrance.
It pushed its great head through and Hiccup could see,
though not hear, its huge mouth opening in a roar of
rage, its paw with the terrible talons tearing at the water.
It blew out a great gush of underwater blue flame that
shot out underneath the speeding sleigh and streaked
forward in a straight line right up to the shoreline, almost
as if it were a bright blue road telling them where to go.
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‘He’s not pleased,’ grinned Camicazi, as the sleigh
raced along the bright blue road. ‘That is one Doomfang
in a VERY BAD MOOD.’
‘Let’s hope the ice holds long enough for us to
steal the potato and get out of here,’ shivered Hiccup.
‘That creature would kill us with one snap of its jaws!’
When One Eye finally came to a plunging halt at
the ice’s edge and Hiccup clambered out of the sleigh,
his legs wobbling like jellyfish, the evening had become
night. The bright blue road had turned palest turquoise,
and was gradually fading entirely.
The harbour, thank Thor, was entirely deserted.
Pulled up on to the rocks, half buried in snow, were
hundreds of Hysterical boats. Even in their snow-covered
state, you could tell these were ghost ships, that hadn’t
rocked on salt water for fifteen years. Rags of sails hung
from drooping masts, oars and rudders jutting from the
snow were rotting or snapped in half.
Hiccup sent Toothless off to have a look at
the Hysterical Village, and the little dragon reluctantly
flapped off into the darkness.
‘Why does T-t-toothless always have to do
this?’ complained Toothless.
‘Because you’re the one with wings, Toothless,’
Hiccup explained for the umpteenth time, unhitching
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One Eye. Camicazi unpacked her burglary equipment,
humming happily, shoving interesting-looking pointy
instruments into her pockets, putting on her special shoes
with spikes on the soles, winding length after length of
stout rope around her middle.
Hiccup’s usual companion on adventures was
Fishlegs, who was always terrified and asking what
on earth they were doing in YET ANOTHER life-
threatening disaster? So it was quite a change to have
Camicazi treating the whole thing as if it were an
enjoyable outing.
They put on their skis and waited for Toothless
to return from his trip to find out the whereabouts of the
Hysterical Village. He gave them a shock when he flapped
out from nowhere, and landed on Hiccup’s shoulder.
‘Iss s-s-scary out there,’ panted Toothless,
his eyes glowing luminously in the darkness. ‘Them
Hysterics is having a b-b-banquet for Freya’sday
Eve… looksa SCRUMMY.’
Hiccup explained what Toothless had said to
Camicazi, and she got up. ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Hopefully
they’ll be so distracted they won’t notice us. Let’s get
going.’ The little party set off up the cliff path, One Eye
pulling them, his one eye burning bright in the darkness.
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9. BACK ON BERK
Back on Berk, Fishlegs was hot as fire, weak as a fly
caught in a spider’s web, and talking nonsense. Old
Wrinkly quietly bathed his head with cool water, and
tried to feed him some watery tea.
‘Stop it… you withered old… dried-up crab
claw,’ fretted Fishlegs feebly, trying to twist away from
the old man’s hand, but hardly strong enough to move.
‘They must get here before ten in the morning,’
muttered Old Wrinkly to himself. ‘He’s dying fast.’
‘Don’t worry,’ whispered Fishlegs, looking
straight into Old Wrinkly’s concerned old eyes. ‘Hiccup
will make it. Hiccup always makes it… Thor only
knows how,’ and then he drifted off into nonsense
again.
Out in the middle of the Sullen Sea, strange
noises could be heard, like the creaking of an old man’s
knee, or the rapping of a gigantic knuckle on a door.
The ice was beginning to crack.
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119
10. FREYA’SDAY EVE ON
HYSTERIA
When they reached the top of the cliff, the ground
kept on rising up to Mount Hysteria, on which was
perched the shadowy outline of the Hysterical Village, all
in darkness.
One Eye dragged them right up to the bottom
of the village walls, where Camicazi got out her ropes.
She threw up the rope with the metal hook
attached, and on the first attempt it caught hold of the
top of the wooden wall. She squirmed up it like a little
blonde monkey and disappeared over the top. One Eye
spread wide his wings and flew after her.
Hiccup took a deep breath, grabbed hold of
the rope, and climbed up, trying to ignore the skulls
grinning at him from the top of the battlements.
They were the only visitors to the Hysterical
Village in fifteen years.
The village seemed at first to be deserted.
There was no one in the streets, no light in
the windows.
But the Great Hall was blazing with light. Smoke
billowed out of several chimneys, music and chatter and
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laughing poured out of the windows.
Weirdly, beside the Great Hall, lying on great
tree-trunks, there stood the largest Viking ship Hiccup
had ever seen. It did seem a trifle strange to keep a ship
so far from the sea, but Hiccup supposed the Hysterics
hadn’t been doing any sailing at all for the last fifteen
years, so perhaps the centre of town was as good a place
to keep a boat as any.
And what a ship it was…
It was more the depth and length of a Roman
galleon and it was the only Viking longboat Hiccup had
ever seen with not one but three masts. On its prow the
figurehead dragon was a snarling Monstrous Nightmare,
and Hiccup’s heart beat a little faster with excitement
as he read the name painted on its side in big flowing
letters: The American Dream. Perhaps the story Old
Wrinkly told him really WAS true…
In stark contrast to the ships Hiccup had seen
in the harbour, this boat was in tip-top condition. The
rest of the village was two metres deep in snow, but The
American Dream was spotless, her decks entirely snow-
free. She was freshly painted, the Hysterical flag flew
cheerily from her central mast and her oars were all out,
just as if she were about to set sail for distant shores at a
moment’s notice.
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‘We’ll climb up on to the roof of the Great Hall,
>
and see if we can overhear what’s going on,’ whispered
Camicazi. Camicazi didn’t even bother to use a rope
this time. She just shinned up the sheer wall, appearing
to cling to it with invisible suction like a frog. Once she
reached the roof, she let down a rope for Hiccup, and
One Eye hauled him up with it.
The roof was thigh deep in snow, and Hiccup
had to crawl through it, following the path made by
Camicazi. She wriggled through to the central chimney,
which had no smoke coming out of it, and she and
Hiccup peered down into the room below.
A blast of heat so strong Hiccup had to close his
eyes poured out of the chimney. Hiccup’s hands burned
as they began to warm up. Eventually his watering eyes
adjusted to the heat and the light.
Down below, the Hysterics were enjoying a truly
magnificent banquet. The long central table was loaded
high with fish, flesh and fowl cooked in every possible
manner, whole stags, entire pigs, and brimming cups
of beer and wine. A big drunken chap was
dancing a jig on the table at one end,
and the Hysterics were laughing,
and throwing bits of food and
chair legs at him.
Fires blazed in six huge fireplaces. Enormous
white rugs made out of the skin of polar bears were
strewn about the floor. Hanging on the walls were the
heads of dragons of every possible size, colour and
description. And also the heads of a couple of animals
Hiccup had never seen before, one that looked like
an enormous, depressed deer, and another that
resembled a gigantic bull with black curly hair.
A map of the Barbaric World drawn
on deerskin was hanging in a great curtain
against the north wall. On the west of
the map, someone had scribbled out
the great tumbling waterfall which on
most Viking maps was marked ‘End
of the World’, and replaced it with
a crude charcoal drawing of an
island it called AMERICA.
With a sinking of the
heart, Hiccup recognised a big
blond bearded bloke sitting on
a throne as the Chief, Norbert
the Nutjob. It was definitely
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse Page 6
