If one, just one, of these countless creatures were to wake up, it would raise the alarm to the others and the boys would meet a horrible death. Hiccup had once seen a deer that had wandered too close to Wild Dragon Cliff torn to pieces in a matter of minutes ...
Hiccup closed his eyes. "I will NOT think about it," he said to himself. "I WILL NOT."
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None of the other boys were thinking about it.
Ignorance is very useful in such circumstances. Their eyes were popping with excitement as they walked through the cave, hands over their noses to keep out the revolting smell, looking for the biggest dragon they could find that would fit in their basket.
They left the torches in a pile at the entrance. The cavern was already well-lit by the Glowworms -- huge, sluggish animals dotted here and there that shone with a steady yet dim fluorescence, like a low-watt light bulb. And the Flamehuffers gave off extra little bursts of light that flickered on and off as they breathed in and out.
Predictably, most of the boys headed toward the plug-uglies of the dragon world.
Snotlout made a big fuss about grabbing a vicious-looking Monstrous Nightmare, smiling nastily at Hiccup as he did so. Snotlout was the son of Baggy-bum the Beerbelly, Stoick the Vast's younger brother. He was intending to get rid of Hiccup sometime in the future so that he, Snotlout, would become Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. And a gruesome and terrifying Chief, as Snotlout meant to be, would need a properly awesome dragon.
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Wartihog and Dogsbreath got into a loudly whispered fight over a Gronckle, a heavily-armored brute with fangs like kitchen knives sticking out in such numbers that it couldn't keep its mouth shut. Dogsbreath won, then managed to drop it as he was trying to bundle it into his basket. The weaponry of the beast made a horribly loud clatter as it landed on the floor of the cavern.
The Gronckle opened its evil, crocodile eyes.
Everybody held their breath.
The Gronckle stared ahead. It was difficult to tell from its blank expression whether it was awake or fast asleep. Hiccup realized, in an agony of suspense, that the gossamer-thin third eyelid was still down.
And there it stayed for a few heart-stopping moments, until. . .
It slowly closed its upper eyelids again.
Amazingly, not one of the other dragons woke up. A few grumbled groggily before making themselves comfy again. But most were in such a stupor that they barely even stirred.
Hiccup let out his breath. Maybe these dragons were so dead to the world that nothing would wake them from their slumber.
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[VIKING DRAGONS and THEIR EGGS
GRONCKLE
The Gronckle is the plug-ugly 0f the dragon world. But what it lacks in looks, it makes up for on the battlefield. They can
be slow and, dare I say it, stupid ~ and sometimes they get so fat that
they are unable to take off. They are also prone to dragon acne.
STATISTICS
COLORS: Snot green, bogey beige, pooey brown. ARMED WITH: All the best in dragon weaponry. Fangs like daggers, extra spike on neck, hall with spikes on end of tail 8
DEFENSES: Super-thick, flame-proof and scratch-proof skin 9
RADAR: None 0
POISON: None 0
HUNTING ABILITY: Gronckles are slow to maneuver in the air 0
SPEED: See above 5
FEAR AND FIGHT FACTOR: Terrifying in action 9]
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He swallowed hard, muttered a prayer to Loki, the patron saint of sneaky exploits, and edged forward cautiously to grab the most unconscious-looking dragon, so he could get out of this nightmare as fast as possible.
It is a little-known fact that dragons grow colder the deeper they sleep.
It is even possible for dragons to go into a sleep coma in which they are icy cold, with no obvious pulse, or breath, or heartbeat. They can stay in this state for centuries, and only a highly skilled expert can tell from looking at them if they are alive or dead.
But a dragon who is awake or lightly sleeping is very warm indeed, like bread that has just come out of the oven.
Hiccup found one that was about the right size and fairly cool to the touch and maneuvered it into his basket as quickly and carefully as he could. It was a very basic Basic Brown, but at that moment Hiccup could not have cared less. Even though it was barely half-grown, it was surprisingly heavy.
"I DID it, I DID it, I DID it!" he chanted happily
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to himself. At least he wasn't going to be the only boy in the class who didn't have a dragon. Everybody seemed to have gotten themselves one by now and they were all making their way quietly toward the exit. Everybody, that was, except for . . .
Fishlegs, who was already covered in a bright red, itchy rash, and was at that very moment approaching a pile of knottily entangled Nadders on very loud tiptoes.
Fishlegs was even worse at burglary than Dogs-breath.
Hiccup stopped dead in his tracks. "Don't do it, Fishlegs -- PLEASE don't do it!" he whispered.
But Fishlegs was fed up with Snotlout's taunting and of being sneered at and jeered at. He was going to get himself a really cool dragon that all the other boys would respect.
Squinting so hard he could barely see the pile of dragons, his eyes streaming, and scratching himself violently, Fishlegs reached slowly toward the bottom-most dragon, took one leg in his hand, and gently . .. yanked.
The entire pile came crashing down in a furious
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tangle of limbs and wings and ears. Every boy in the cavern gave a horrified gasp.
Most of the Nadders snapped crossly at each other before settling back down to sleep.
One brute bigger than the others opened his eyes and blinked a few times.
Hiccup noted, with great relief, that the third eyelid was still down.
The boys waited for the eyes to close.
And then Fishlegs sneezed.
Four GIGANTIC sneezes that went echoing and bouncing off the cavern walls.
The big Nadder stared sightlessly ahead, frozen like a dragon statue.
But very faintly, an ominous purring noise began in his throat.
And very slowly . . .
. . . the third eyelid slid upward.
"Uh-oh," whispered Hiccup.
The Nadder's head suddenly whipped round to face Fishlegs, its yellow cat's eyes snapping into focus on the boy. It unfolded its wings to their greatest extent and stealthily advanced, like a panther about to
26
spring. It opened its mouth wide enough to show the forked dragon tongue and ...
"R-R-R-U-U-U-U-U-N-N-N!" shouted Hiccup, grabbing Fishlegs's arm and dragging him away.
The boys ran for the exit tunnel. Fishlegs and Hiccup were the last to get there.
There was no time to pick up the torches, so they were running in the pitch dark. The basket with the Basic Brown dragon in it was bumping on Hiccup's back.
They had two minutes' start on the dragons because it took a while for the first dragon to wake everybody else up. But Hiccup could hear a furious roaring and flapping as the dragons started to pour into the tunnel after the boys.
He ran a little faster.
The dragons could move faster than the boys because they could see better in the dark, but they were held up when the tunnel got smaller, and they had to fold their wings up to squirm through.
"I. . . haven't. . . got. . . a . . . dragon," panted Fishlegs, a couple of paces behind Hiccup.
"That," said Hiccup, as he scrambled frantically on his elbows through a narrow bit, "is the LEAST ... ow ... of our problems. They're gaining on us!"
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"No ... dragon," repeated Fishlegs stubbornly.
"Oh, for THOR'S SAKE," snapped Hiccup.
He thrust his basket into Fishlegs's arms and grabbed the empty one from Fishlegs's back. "Have MINE, then. Wait here."
And Hiccup turned and went back through the narrow bit even though the ro
aring was getting louder and closer by the second.
"WHAT... ARE ,.. YOU ,,. DOING???" screamed Fishlegs, frantically dancing up and down on the spot.
Hiccup came back through the hole again precious moments later. Fishlegs grabbed hold of an arm to help haul him through.
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They could hear a horrible snuffling that sounded as if the nose of a dragon had entered the other end of the hole. Hiccup bunged a rock at it and it squealed indignantly.
They turned a corner and suddenly they could see light from outside at the end of the final tunnel.
Fishlegs went first, but, just as Hiccup was kneeling down to follow, a dragon pounced on him with a flap and a shriek. Hiccup hit it and it fell back enough for him to crawl toward the light. Another dragon -- or maybe the same one -- sank its fangs into Hiccup's calf. He was so desperate to get out he dragged the animal through with him.
As soon as Hiccup's head and shoulders were through into the light, there was Gobber. He grabbed Hiccup under the armpits and hauled him out, dragons pouring after him.
"JUMP!" yelled Gobber, as he stunned a dragon with one blow of his mighty fist.
"What do you mean, JUMP??" Hiccup hesitated as he looked down at the dizzying drop into the sea.
"No time to climb down," panted Gobber, banging a couple of dragons' heads together, and bouncing three more off his gigantic belly. "JUMP!!!"
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Hiccup closed his eyes and leaped off the cliff.
As he plunged through the air, the dragon that was attached to his leg released its jaws with a squawk of alarm and flew off.
Hiccup was traveling at such speed by the time he hit the water that it didn't feel like water at all, more like something hard and painful, and so cold that he nearly passed out.
He spluttered to the surface, amazed to find that he didn't appear to be dead, and was immediately drenched by the gigantic splash of Gobber the Belch landing a couple of feet away from him.
Shrieking furiously, the dragons swarmed out of the cave and dive-bombed the floating Vikings.
Hiccup pulled his helmet as far down as it would go. There were horrible scraping sounds as dragons' talons raked across the metal. Another one landed, hissing, on the water right in front of Hiccup's face. It took off again with a screech when it felt how cold the sea was. The dragons didn't like flying through the snow and, with relief, Hiccup watched as they flew back to scream terrible dragon insults in Dragonese from the warmth of the cave entrance.
Gobber started to pull the boys out of the sea
30
and onto the rocks. Viking boys are strong swimmers, but it is difficult to keep afloat when you have a basket full of trapped, terrified dragons on your back. Hiccup was the last to be saved -- just in time, as the cold was beginning to put him to sleep.
Well, at least that wasn't DEATH, thought Hiccup as Gobber grabbed him by the neck to rescue him, nearly drowning him again in the process -- but it certainly wasn't GLORY, either.
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Chapter 3 HEROES OR EXILES
The boys scrambled over the slimy pebbles at the edge of the beach and back up Madman's Gully, the gorge they had climbed through a couple of hours before. This was a narrow crack in the cliffs filled with large rocks. They tried to move as quickly as they could, but this is difficult when you are slipping and sliding over huge stones covered in ice, and they made painfully slow progress.
A dragon that hadn't been put off by the snow came shrieking down into the gorge. He landed on Wartihog's back and started savaging him, sinking his fangs into Wartihog's shoulder and ripping red lines into his arms. Gobber bashed the dragon on the nose with the handle of his axe, and the dragon let go and flapped away.
But a whole wave of dragons replaced him, pouring into the canyon with awful, rasping cries, fire shooting from their nostrils and melting the snow before them, talons spread wickedly as they swooped downward.
Gobber stood, legs wide apart, and whirled his big, double-headed axe. He threw back his great,
32
hairy head and yelled a terrible primeval yell, that echoed down the sides of the gorge and made the hairs on the back of Hiccup's neck stick straight up like the spines on a sea urchin.
Individually, dragons tend to have a healthy sense of self-preservation, but they are braver when they hunt in packs. They knew now that they had the advantage of massive numbers, so they didn't check their flying for an instant. They just kept on coming.
Gobber let go of the axe.
Spinning end to end, the axe soared up through the softly falling snow. It hit the biggest dragon of the lot, killing him instantly, and then kept on going, landing in a snow-drift hundreds of feet away and disappearing.
This made the rest of the dragons think a bit. Some of them scrambled over each other in their haste to fly away, yelping like dogs. The others came to
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a halt, hovering uncertainly, screaming defiance but keeping their distance.
"Waste of a good axe," grunted Gobber. "Keep going, boys, they could come back!"
Hiccup needed no encouragement to keep going. As soon as he got out of the gorge and onto the marshy land behind it, he broke into a stumbling run, every now and then falling flat on his face in the snow.
Some time later, when Gobber reckoned they were a safe distance from Wild Dragon Cliff, he yelled at the boys to stop.
Very carefully he counted heads again, to check he hadn't lost anybody. Gobber had spent an unpleasant ten minutes standing at the mouth of the dragons' cave wondering why there was such a terrible racket and what he was going to say to Stoick the Vast if he lost his precious son and heir for good.
Something Tactful and Sensitive, he supposed, but Tact and Sensitivity were not Gobber's strong points, and he took the first five minutes to come up with "Hiccup copped it. SORRY," and then spent the second five minutes tearing his beard out.
Consequently, although secretly mightily relieved, he was not in a Good Mood and, as soon as
34
he could get his breath back, he exploded all over the place, as the boys stood, shivering violently, in a bedraggled line.
"NEVER ... in FOURTEEN YEARS .,.
have I come across such a load of HOPELESS
BARNACLES as you lot. WHICH OF YOU USELESS MOLLUSKS WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR WAKING UP THE DRAGONS????"
"I was," said Hiccup. Which wasn't strictly true.
"Oh, that's BRILLIANT," bellowed Gobber, "just BRILLIANT. Our Future Leader shows off his magnificent Leadership Skills. At the tender age of ten and a half he does his best to annihilate himself and the rest of you in A SIMPLE MILITARY EXERCISE!"
Snotlout sniggered.
"You find something amusing about that, Snotlout?" asked Gobber, with dangerous softness. "EVERYBODY IS ON LIMPET RATIONS FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS."
The boys groaned.
"Smart work, Hiccup," sneered Snotlout. "I can't wait to see you in action on the battlefield."
"SILENCE!" yelled Gobber. "THIS IS YOUR
35
INITIATION, NOT A DAY OUT IN THE COUNTRY! SILENCE, OR YOU'LL BE LUNCHING ON LUGWORMS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES!"
"Now," continued Gobber, more calmly, "although that was an absolute mess, it wasn't a total disaster. I PRESUME that you do all HAVE a dragon after that fiasco . . . ?"
"Yes," chorused the boys.
Fishlegs took a sideways glance at Hiccup, who was staring straight ahead.
"Lucky for you," said Gobber, ominously. "So you have all passed the first part of the Dragon Test. There are, however, still two parts that you have to complete before you can become full members of the Tribe. Your next task will be to train this dragon yourself. This will be a test of the force of your personality. You will assert your will over this wild creature and show it who is Master. Your dragon will be expected to obey simple commands such as "go" and "stay," and hunt fish for you in the way that dragons have hunted for the Sons of Thor since anybody can remember. If
you are worried about the training process, you should study a book called How to Train Your Dragon by
36
Professor Yobbish, which you will find in the fireplace of the Great Hall."
Suddenly Gobber looked very pleased with himself. "I stole that book from the Meathead Public Library myself," he said modestly, regarding his very black fingernails. "From right under the nose of the Hairy Scary Librarian . . . He never noticed a thing . . . Now THAT'S burglary for you. . . ."
Wartihog put up his hand. "What happens if we can't read, sir?"
"No boasting, Wartihog!" boomed Gobber. "Get some idiot to read it for you. Yout dragons will begin to go back to sleep, because this is still their hibernation time" -- some of the dragons had, indeed, gone very quiet inside the baskets -- "so take them home and put them in a warm place. They should wake up in the next couple of weeks.you will then have only FOUR MONTHS to prepare for Initiation Day at the Thor's-day Thursday Celebrations, and the final part of your Test. If, on that day, you can prove that you have trained your dragon to the satisfaction of myself and other elders of the Tribe, you can finally call yourself a Hooligan of Berk."
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The boys stood very tall and tried to look like proper Hooligans.
"HEROES OR EXILE!" yelled Gobber the Belch.
"HEROES OR EXILE!" yelled eight boys fanatically back at him.
Exile, thought Hiccup and Fishlegs sadly.
"I. . . hate . . . being . . . a . . . Viking," panted Fishlegs to Hiccup as they stumbled back through the bracken to the Hooligan village.
How to Train Your Dragon Page 2
