How to Train Your Dragon: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse Read online

  and not just his muscles.’

  ‘If he really use his b-b-brain,’ complained

  Toothless, catching up and collapsing, exhausted, on the

  seat of the sleigh, ‘we not here in the first p-p-place.’

  In that very same instant, over the brow of the

  hill came the Hysterics.

  They had put their helmets on and they were on

  skis, howling the Hysterical Howl like a pack of speeding

  wolves. They were already shooting arrows in their

  direction, trying to hit the sleigh. But they were too late.

  Once their skis hit the ice they travelled for a while, and

  then came to a halt. Hiccup and Camicazi were nearly

  at the Harbour Exit by now, and the arrows shot by the

  Hysterics fell harmlessly on the ice.

  Looking over her shoulder at the furious

  Hysterics, Camicazi let out a whoop of joy as One Eye

  galloped out of Hysteria Harbour.

  ‘We made it!’ she yelled.

  ‘We haven’t made it yet,’ said Hiccup nervously.

  That sharp noise of cracking, like axes on a tree trunk,

  was even louder now that they were on the ice. And

  Hiccup was looking out for the Doomfang.

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  ‘Here’s the Vegetable,’ said Camicazi, handing

  Hiccup the Frozen Potato with the arrow stuck in it.

  ‘And this other thing I found in the casket – I’m sorry, I

  shouldn’t have taken it as well, but once you start burgling,

  it’s difficult to stop.’

  Hiccup took the Potato and the Other Thing, and

  stuffed them in his breast pocket, not really concentrating,

  for the great shadow of the Doomfang had appeared under

  the boat, and was following them under the ice.

  ‘If we can just get to the Open Sea before the ice

  cracks we’ll be all right,’ muttered Hiccup to himself. ‘The

  Doomfang won’t leave the Wrath of Thor. The Doomfang

  hasn’t left the Wrath of Thor in fifteen years…’

  The walls of the cliffs raced past them on either

  side. The Doomfang, dark and terrible, stretching out for

  ever, swam slowly beneath them. And they reached the

  edge of the Open Sea without the ice cracking.

  ‘You see!’ grinned Camicazi. ‘We did it!’

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  15. THEY MIGHT JUST

  MAKE IT, NOW

  It seemed like they had INDEED done it, as they burst

  into the Open Sea, One Eye pulling into that Great

  White Wilderness at terrific speed, the Wrath of Thor left

  behind them, the potato safely in Hiccup’s breast pocket,

  and Berk only a three-hour sleigh ride away.

  And then everything went wrong.

  ‘What’s th-th-that???’ stammered Toothless,

  pointing with one wing to a shape on the ice behind them,

  coming closer by the second.

  That was an enormous, leaping Driver Dragon,

  far bigger and faster than One Eye, pulling a gigantic

  sleigh with one man in it. A very cross man, with an arrow-

  wound in his bottom, a lump on his head, chewed-off

  moustaches and a double-headed axe in one hand.

  In fact it was Norbert the Nutjob.

  Before Hiccup had time to think, Norbert was

  upon them.

  His sleigh drew alongside the galloping One Eye.

  And then he reached over, and with one blow of his axe,

  he cut the reins and tackle attaching One Eye to the

  sleigh.

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  One Eye bounded on, but the sleigh, and The

  Hopeful Puffin behind it, came to a shuddering halt.

  ‘Oh, suffering scallops,’ moaned Hiccup.

  There they were, as still as a stone, in the middle

  of a Great White Desert that stretched for miles and

  miles and miles. In front of them, Norbert the Nutjob

  was pulling on his Sabre-Tooth’s reins to wheel his sleigh

  round for the attack.

  Below them was the Doomfang.

  For the first time in fifteen years, the Doomfang

  had left the Wrath of Thor.

  It, too, had stopped when the sleigh stopped. In

  fact the sleigh had come to rest right in the centre of its

  terrible green eye, as if it were a target.

  And a target it was, for Norbert the Nutjob.

  Norbert leapt into their sleigh, tall and terrible

  and COMPLETELY CRAZY.

  ‘AHA!’ roared Norbert the Nutjob, his

  tic dancing for pure horrible murderous joy. ‘I’VE

  CAUGHT YOU, YOU REVOLTING LITTLE

  BLONDE ASSASSIN! AND NOW I SHALL

  TEACH YOU NOT TO HIT PEOPLE ON THE

  HEAD WITH THEIR OWN POTATO!’

  Norbert the Nutjob raised his axe over Camicazi,

  and he was about to bring it down, when Hiccup said

  loudly, ‘I wouldn’t do that, Norbert.’

  Hiccup felt in his breast pocket, and drew out

  the potato with the arrow still stuck in it. It was warmer

  this morning, and the potato, snuggled down the front of

  Hiccup’s furry waistcoat, was no longer frozen.

  Norbert glanced at Hiccup, and then gasped in

  astonishment, as right in front of Norbert’s eyes…

  … HICCUP PULLED THE ARROW OUT OF

  THE POTATO.

  For as Hiccup had suggested earlier to Norbert,

  the arrow slid out perfectly easily now the potato had

  defrosted.

  Hiccup pushed it in and out of the potato several

  times just to drive the point home.

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  Norbert the Nutjob dropped his axe.

  ‘My father’s Prophecy!’ screamed Norbert the

  Nutjob, his head in his hands. ‘I don’t believe it…

  It can’t be true! You… you revolting little Hooligan

  Vegetable-Burglar… you… are the Chosen One? … You

  will lift the Curse and rid us of the Doomfang…?’

  Hiccup nodded solemnly, thinking, nutty as a

  fruitcake.

  At that very moment, the sun came over the

  horizon…

  Rays of sunlight bounced off the snow and ice all

  around them, and off the Doomfang’s Great Green Eye

  and dazzled Hiccup, so that he had to fling up an elbow

  to shield himself from the glare.

  A sound like a million whips rang out, or a trillion

  axe blows, or a thousand of Thor’s thunderbolts rolled

  into one.

  The ice cracked from side to side.

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  16. THE DOOMFANG

  A great jagged split appeared in the white frozen sea,

  a split that ran all the way from the Outcast Lands to

  the north, down to the Bog-Burglar islands in

  the south.

  The world broke open like a

  big white egg.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!’ screamed

  Hiccup. ‘Quick! Get into The

  Hopeful Puffin!’

  Norbert the Nutjob, Camicazi and

  Hiccup bolted out of the sleigh, and leapt into

  the little boat, the ice giving way beneath their feet.

  ‘LET DOWN THE SAIL!’ screamed

  Hiccup, cutting the rope tying the boat to the sleigh.

  The sail flopped down and the wind caught it,

  sending it billowing outward like a plump cushion. There

  was another enormous CRACK! and the ice in the

  Sullen Sea splintered into millions of tiny pieces. The

  sleigh slip
ped gently into the grey-green water and was

  seen no more, and The Hopeful Puffin was afloat.

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  Through the jagged jigsaw of ice, between them

  and the Isle of Berk on the horizon, up rose the

  Doomfang.

  It reared out of the sea, showering The Hopeful

  Puffin with water and shards of ice, telescoping upwards

  to its immense height, which was impossibly,

  RIDICULOUSLY high, blotting out the newly risen sun.

  The SOUND it made was unutterably awful, a

  sadness so extreme it made you want to weep yourself,

  a sound that crept up the spine like spiders’ feet,

  and scuttled over the scalp, sending each

  individual hair on Hiccup’s head prickling

  upwards like the spines on a hedgehog. It

  was the glossy black of a gigantic, muscly

  panther, and when it opened its awful

  Cavern jaws to roar, its serrated teeth were

  as green as its eyes, and the

  yellow frothy scum of its

  saliva steamed and

  smoked in the cold

  morning air.

  Indeed, its whole body seemed boiling hot, and

  like the flanks of a horse that has galloped for miles,

  great clouds of smoke rose up from its tremendous

  gleaming bulk and into the sky.

  ‘It’s come for me…’ moaned Norbert the Nutjob,

  in a tremble of fear.

  ‘No it hasn’t,’ said Hiccup. ‘It’s come for ME.’

  And the Doomfang did seem to be looking

  directly down at Hiccup.

  It was as if Hiccup had always known that

  this was going to happen, that somehow he was never

  going to get in and out of Hysteria without meeting the

  Doomfang face to face.

  ‘Don’t look into its eyes,’ warned One Eye.

  You should never look into a dragon’s eyes. But

  in this case it was difficult not to – they were so large

  and so close, like a couple of green suns. Hiccup was

  hypnotised for a moment, and his head spun so that he

  nearly lost his balance and dropped off the boat.

  ‘What do you WANT?’ Hiccup yelled

  desperately in Dragonese.

  The Dragon opened its great mouth and tried

  to speak. But all that came out was a terrible unearthly

  howl of horror and SADNESS, and the foam dripped

  from its jaws in a revolting bubbly waterfall. It tried

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  again, and the terrible sound came out again, only

  louder.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Hiccup.

  But the creature could not say, and its struggle to

  speak made it angry, and it began shooting out with its

  blue flames, nearer and nearer to Hiccup. ‘What does it

  want me to do?’ asked Hiccup frantically.

  ‘We’re done for,’ despaired Norbert, wringing his

  hands.

  Camicazi patted the moaning Norbert soothingly

  on the back. ‘We’ll be all right,’ she repeated over and

  over again, ‘we always are, Thor only knows how…

  Hiccup’ll have a Cunning Plan…’

  ‘Oh that’s right,’ remembered Norbert. ‘Of

  course! My father’s Prophecy! He is the Chosen One,

  and he alone can rid us of the Doomfang!’

  But for once in his life, Hiccup did NOT have a

  Cunning Plan.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Hiccup again, more

  to himself, this time.

  The Doomfang made one last terrible attempt to

  communicate, coming out with a truly dreadful, garbled

  cacophony of noise, and then opened its jaws wide,

  sucking in its breath.

  Hiccup did not know what they had done for the

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  creature to have it in for them.

  Perhaps it had gone crazy and turned into a Man-

  Eater? It had certainly killed Norbert’s Papa, fifteen years

  ago, and was it now going to kill them too?

  Because now it was aiming directly for them, and

  Hiccup braced himself for the Monster to breathe out its

  flames and set the boat alight like a little barbecue.

  But what shot out of the creature’s mouth was not

  a Terrible Burst of Fire, not the frozen flames that would

  have sent all three of them, and Toothless too, straight to

  Valhalla in a heroic bonfire.

  Curling and unfurling, quick and flexible as a

  gigantic muscly snake, out of the Doomfang’s mouth came

  the Doomfang’s TONGUE.

  One hundred metres long, pink and pulsing, the

  Doomfang’s TONGUE sped straight to Hiccup’s

  left hand, and the wriggling, squirming,

  revoltingly WET forked end of it

  burrowed its way into his palm

  and wrapped itself round

  the potato.

  Hiccup nearly dropped the potato there and

  then. But then he realised what the creature wanted.

  He dropped the arrow, and grabbed hold of the

  potato with both hands. The juices of the Doomfang’s

  tongue foamed disgustingly over his hands.

  Hiccup p-u-l-l-e-d.

  The Doomfang p-u-l-l-e-d.

  There was only one potato, and both of them

  wanted it. Both of them NEEDED it. Desperately,

  Hiccup tried to get a better grip on the potato, slimy and

  greasy with the yucky bubbly saliva. He wasn’t going to

  lose the quest, and Fishlegs’s life, NOW, not when they

  were so close to home, not when the shadow of Berk

  was so tantalisingly near.

  He leant

  right back, pulling with

  a might he never knew he had. But the Doomfang

  pulled too, and the chances of Hiccup, not more

  than four stone, winning a tug of war against a Dragon

  numberless stones heavier were very tiny indeed.

  Not im-POSSIBLE, but, let’s face it,

  im-PROBABLE.

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  Hiccup did not let go. He would never have let

  go. He would have stood there all day and all night, if he

  could have.

  But one fork of the Doomfang’s tongue unpeeled

  Hiccup’s desperate fingers, one by one, and the other

  fork gave a horrible squirm, and with a final terrible

  wrench, the Doomfang’s tongue wrested the potato out

  of Hiccup’s hands.

  As Hiccup fell backwards into the bottom of the

  boat, he saw with more despair than he had ever felt

  before in his short adventurous life, the revolting tongue

  retreat with a flick as quick as a toad catching flies, back

  into the Doomfang’s mouth. The jaws shut over it with

  awful finality.

  The Doomfang swallowed the Potato.

  The quest was over.

  17. THE QUEST IS OVER

  Tears pouring down his face, Hiccup watched as the

  Doomfang threw back its head and screamed as loudly as

  if it had been shot with a gigantic spear.

  It sent a great sheet of freezing blue flame like an

  uphill waterfall shooting up into the sky. These flames

  shot so high they hit a small cloud up above, instantly

  freezing it, and turning it bright blue. And then, just

  like that, the Doomfang sank slowly beneath the waves,

  leaving nothing behind but a whirlpool of gigantic ripples,

  spreading wider and wider.
>
  They spread towards The Hopeful Puffin, rocking

  it violently up and down. They spread wider still, and

  lapped the shores of Hysteria itself, and carried on down

  the Wrath of Thor.

  Hiccup sat in the bottom of the boat, unable

  to believe that the Doomfang wouldn’t rear up again,

  and maybe spit out the potato, or give it back in some

  way. But eventually the ripples got smaller and vanished

  entirely, and so too did Hiccup’s last hope.

  This really was the end.

  The nearest potato was now thousands and

  thousands of miles away, in the great country to the west,

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  known as America to those who believe in such a place.

  ‘Issa g-g-g-gone!’ whispered Toothless in

  amazement.

  Up on the clifftops, the long line of watching,

  silent Hysterics began to shout: ‘THE DOOMFANG IS

  GONE! THE DOOMFANG IS GONE! HURRAH

  FOR THE WEIRD LITTLE RED-HAIRED BOY,

  THE DOOMFANG IS GONE!’

  And softly, and silently, snow as blue as Gobber

  the Belch’s nose rained down from the frozen cloud

  above Hiccup’s head.

  The blue snow rained down like confetti at a

  coronation, settling in Hiccup’s hair, and on One Eye’s

  white back, and in between Toothless’s horns.

  ‘YOU are the Chosen One,’ said Norbert the

  Nutjob, still unable to believe it. ‘YOU have rid us of

  the Doomfang. YOU have lifted the Curse of Hysteria?’

  Hiccup was suddenly furiously angry.

  Not with Norbert, but with the gods.

  For six long months he had been longing for

  spring to come, praying to Thor for the ice to melt, and

  now, just when he and Camicazi had been through

  so much, and nearly achieved the impossible, just at

  precisely the wrong moment, Thor had made the ice

  crack and freed the Doomfang.

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  And this ridiculous blue snow was just the icing on

  the cake. What was it Snotlout had said?

  The snow will turn as blue as Gobber the Belch’s nose

  before YOU become the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.

  The gods were laughing at him now, playing with

  him for their sport.