How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Read online

  ‘Windwalker!’ he screamed. ‘Fly! Windwalker

  fly! Fly around his head to confuse him!’

  Windwalker gave a snort of terror, but nodded

  bravely. Windwalker had once been a very odd-looking

  dragon, an extraordinary bundle of fur that looked

  remarkably like a cross-eyed duckling mixed with an

  anxious wolf cub. But over the last couple of years, in

  his adolescence, Windwalker had gradually shed his

  hair and become sleeker, faster and more aerodynamic.

  His ankles had strengthened, his bending wings

  became an advantage as he gained control and mastery

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  over them, and he was now almost as fast as a Silver

  Phantom. Soon he would enter a chrysalis stage,

  and after that a truly extraordinary transformation

  would occur… But that’s another story. For now,

  the Windwalker had turned into one of the swiftest,

  most manoeuvrable dragons in the Archipelago. Only

  a dragon like the Windwalker could even think of

  getting in so close to the Dragon Furious, and elude his

  thunderbolts.

  So as the thunderbolts were unleashed, the

  terrified Windwalker zigzagged back and forth, back

  and forth, so quickly that the thunderbolts barely

  singed his wings.

  ‘Listen to me, Furious! Listen!’ Hiccup shouted

  down, crouched low on the Windwalker’s back as the

  Windwalker dodged and flickered and twisted around

  the Dragon Furious’s head in an extraordinary display

  of aerial artistry as the Dragon Furious swatted at him.

  ‘WORDS… CHANGE… NOTHING!’ screamed

  the Dragon.

  The Dragon’s eyes followed the Windwalker’s

  incredible loops and turns like a jaguar following a

  bluebottle, and then he grew still, and the Windwalker

  hovered behind his great head, to avoid the

  thunderbolts…

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  ‘No, Windwalker!’

  squealed the Wodensfang, ‘Furious

  has eyes in the back of his head!’

  And so it was – oh, what a time to

  find this out! – that adult Seadragons do indeed

  have eyes in the back of their heads that begin life

  as spots or moles, and grow into eyes as the Dragon

  grows, and then as the dragon ages and gets smaller,

  the skin closes over them, and buries them, and they

  dwindle into nothing again.

  But the eyes in a Seadragon the size of Furious

  are very much there.

  At the back of his head, behind his ears they

  lurked, closed in sleep like tiny little dozing crocodiles,

  but now they snapped open, and shot lightning bolts at

  the boy and his Windwalker from the pupils.

  With a great roar the Dragon whipped his head

  around and let out a howling tornado of fire.

  ‘Fly Windwalker, fly!’ screamed Hiccup as the

  valiant riding-dragon zig-zagged this way and that

  trying to avoid the fiery thunderbolts.

  And the Seadragon’s talon nipped

  the Windwalker’s tail and flung him down,

  so that the Windwalker spiralled down out

  of the air and had to make an emergency

  crash-landing on the Reef below, with such

  out-of-control speed that Hiccup fell off

  on the landing.

  And then the Dragon

  Furious pinned him down

  on the Reef with two of

  his talons, and Hiccup was

  looking up, helpless, into

  the implacable eye of

  the Dragon.

  17. SOMETIMES WHAT YOU

  ARE LOOKING FOR IS RIGHT

  HERE AT HOME

  ‘History repeats itself,’ said the Dragon grimly. ‘And

  it will KEEP ON repeating itself, until somebody

  like me steps in and stops it.’

  The Dragon had stopped playing, and now meant

  business.

  He inhaled, about to send a flame of fire down to

  kill Hiccup. The force of the Dragon’s inhalation was

  so strong that it was dragging Hiccup towards those

  open jaws… He could smell the rank fishy smell of the

  Dragon’s breath…

  Hiccup shut his eyes and waited for the terrible

  pain of the flames.

  The only thing that could save me now is the Dragon

  Jewel, thought Hiccup.

  And at that exact moment, the alarm on

  Grimbeard the Ghastly’s ticking thing went off,

  probably in protest at the Dragon dragging on it, in a

  peel of tiny clockwork bells, ringing to the sound of the

  Hooligan National Anthem.

  A typical Grimbeard the Ghastly touch.

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  You have to admit it, the guy did have STYLE.

  Hiccup looked down, and two of the arrows on

  the ticking thing, the one shaped like a lightning bolt

  and the one shaped like a question mark, were going

  round and round and round.

  The Dragon Furious started, and was distracted

  for one crucial second, trying to work out where the

  sudden and unexpected noise was coming from.

  And coincidentally – what are the impossible

  odds against this? – the distant voices of the Vikings

  on the clifftops were singing that very same Hooligan

  National Anthem that the ticking thing was playing.

  You could hear their tiny faint voices carrying on the

  wind:

  ‘I didn’t mean to come here,

  And I didn’t mean to stay…

  But I lost my heart to these rainy bogs…

  And I’ll ne-e-ever go awa-a-ay!’

  The Dragon Furious suddenly realised what was

  making the noise.

  ‘It’s Grimbeard’s ticking-thing, sounding out

  the second of your death, with the Hooligan National

  Anthem…’ said the Dragon bleakly.

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  ‘I’ve heard

  that the sky in

  America

  Is a blue that

  you wouldn’t believe,

  But Berk is my lobster after all,

  And now I’ll ne-e-ever leave…’

  The Dragon inhaled again, ready to unleash his fire.

  But a little bell had gone off in Hiccup’s brain,

  like the alarm on a ticking-thing.

  That Hooligan National Anthem, what did it

  mean? The same thing that Hiccup had learnt when he

  returned from the Quest to find the sixth Lost Thing,

  the arrow from America, and he saw the little isle of

  Berk for the first time after a long absence.

  Maybe there are lands with bluer skies and richer

  soils somewhere over the horizon… But sometimes what

  you are looking for is right here at home.

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  And what was that nonsensical bit in the anthem

  about a lobster?

  Hiccup’s left hand was holding on to the lucky

  lobster necklace that Fishlegs’s mother gave to the

  baby Fishlegs long, long, ago when she was forced to

  put him out to sea in an old lobster pot because he was

  a runt…

  What had the Dragon Furious just said when he

  was jeering at Hiccup?

  ‘You little human King, you, all dressed up

  with the King’s Things. The Crown… the shield…

  the second-be
st sword… the lobster necklace… the

  ticking-thing. You are Grimbeard the Ghastly to the

  life!’

  Why did the Dragon Furious mention the lobster

  necklace? It was a bit odd for him to say that because

  the lobster necklace wasn’t one of Grimbeard the

  Ghastly’s Lost Things. Was it?

  WAS IT?

  BUT WHAT IF IT WAS?

  The Dragon Furious had known Grimbeard the

  Ghastly well. He obviously remembered Grimbeard the

  Ghastly wearing a lobster necklace.

  What if it had been this one?

  And then a perfect storm of interlocking thoughts

  and questions came jostling into Hiccup’s head, all

  pointing at how to unravel Grimbeard the Ghastly’s

  riddle, all of the Questions and the Answers he had

  learnt during the course of twelve long and exciting

  Quests…

  Love never dies… When you fight for your

  friend, you are also fighting for yourself… The

  fang-free dragon… You have to keep on trying even

  though you are beaten before you start… Sometimes

  second-best is best… Accidents happen for a reason…

  And SOMETIMES WHAT YOU ARE

  LOOKING FOR IS RIGHT HERE AT HOME.

  What if what he was looking for had been with

  him all along?

  Hiccup had never had to look for the Things,

  they just found their way to Hiccup, as if they were

  seeking him out. What if the lobster necklace had

  kept Fishlegs safe all those long, long years ago not

  because it was lucky, but because it was searching for

  Hiccup?

  Accidents happen for a reason…

  What if the Dragon Guardians had not dropped

  Hiccup by accident after all, but because they knew

  he was carrying the last and most important of the

  Lost Things?

  What is within is more important than what is without…

  Those were the words written on the back

  of the Map to find the Jewel. What if those words

  were in fact, a clue, a riddle to the real Jewel’s true

  whereabouts? The Dragon Jewel had been hidden

  for so long in the hilt of a sword, what if it were now

  hidden INSIDE something else?

  The Dragon Furious was inhaling again, ready to

  shoot those fatal thunderbolts…

  A fang-free dragon… Why a fang-free dragon? How

  did that fit into the pattern?

  ‘Toothless,’ said Hiccup, very calm, very stern,

  ‘I want you to pretend this lobster claw is a walnut.

  Crack it with your jaw without harming what is

  inside.’

  A fang-free dragon has a huge advantage in

  cracking a walnut without breaking the precious

  interior.

  Toothless’s hard little gums were the neatest,

  most efficient little nutcrackers in the whole of the

  Archipelago.

  Toothless was so terrified he did not even argue.

  For once in his life, he obeyed without question.

  He reached up his little shaking neck, took the

  lobster claw in his fang-free jaws and bit it once, and

  into Hiccup’s hand there fell what had

  been hidden there all the time,

  something small and light and

  bright and golden, a piece

  of precious amber with

  two little dragons caught

  forever in the gold: one

  dark and one light, and

  each with a tail in the

  other one’s mouth…

  The alpha and

  the omega.

  In my end is my beginning.

  Past and present and future all together in an

  instant.

  Toothless and Hiccup blinked at it in amazement.

  Wodensfang let out a sigh of relief.

  Above, the Dragon Furious was on the brink of

  expelling his thunderbolts…

  But he saw what Hiccup was holding in his

  hand, checked himself just in time and loosed his grip.

  Hiccup leapt to his feet, holding the bright amber up

  in one shaking hand, and the Dragon gave a snort of

  terror as a sudden shaft of sunlight sliced through the

  clouds and fire above and made the piece of amber

  wink up at the Dragon Furious, so that he recognised

  what it was.

  The Dragon Jewel.

  The real one.

  18. THE PAST NEVER LEAVES

  US…

  Back on the cliffs of Tomorrow, the Vikings were

  singing their hearts out, willing their King and Hero to

  do well in this single combat, although they knew that

  the outcome of the battle would not be good.

  They stood there, singing and peering through the

  fog and fire, hands shielding their eyes, trying to work

  out what was going on.

  Stoick was watching what was going on through

  his telescope-thingy,* so he narrated the news very loudly

  to everyone else.

  ‘He’s doing very well… he’s flying brilliantly…

  Oh well done, my boy, well done…’ And then: ‘OH

  NO!’ as the Dragon Furious pulled Windwalker out of

  the sky… ‘OH NO OH NO OH NO! HE’S DOWN!

  THE DRAGON HAS GOT HIM DOWN!’

  Stoick handed the telescope-thingy to

  Valhallarama because he couldn’t look any more.

  Her arm trembling very, very slightly, that iron

  woman Valhallarama put the telescope-thingy to her

  eye. ‘The Dragon seems to be about to fire…’ she said

  grimly. ‘He’s throwing back his head… We should go

  OUT there! We must save him!’

  *This first appears in Book 8: How to Break a Dragon’s Heart and allowed

  him to see things from far away a bit more clearly.

  ‘But that would be breaking the laws of single

  combat,’ gloated the Witch. ‘And a King could not

  break such laws, or the world ends. It’s a shame, a real

  shame…’

  ‘SING THE HOOLIGAN NATIONAL

  ANTHEM!’ ordered Gobber the Belch.

  ‘HANG ON A SECOND!’ cried Valhallarama.

  ‘Hiccup is holding something up. He’s jumping to

  his feet. OH BY THE BEARD OF FREYA THE

  MAGNIFICENT! THE DRAGON IS HOLDING

  HIS FIRE! THE DRAGON LOOKS AFRAID!

  WHAT IS GOING ON?’

  The Druid Guardian snatched the

  telescope-thingy from Valhallarama to look for himself.

  ‘Well bless my soul,’ cried the Druid Guardian.

  ‘Hiccup has found the Dragon Jewel after all! He really

  IS a wonderful King!’

  ‘What do you mean he’s found the Dragon

  Jewel?’ said Valhallarama, in a bewildered sort of way.

  ‘HICCUP’S FOUND THE JEWEL!’ Stoick

  roared. ‘HE’S FOUND THE REAL DRAGON

  JEWEL THIS TIME! WE ARE SAVED!’

  And the Vikings broke off singing for a second

  and erupted in cheering, stamping applause.

  ‘Impossible!’ hissed the Witch. ‘The real Dragon

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  Jewel can’t just turn up suddenly on that Reef over

  there for the little rat to find it at exactly the right

  moment!’

  A sudden feeling came over the Witch. Like

  Hiccup, she was good at riddles. She gasped, and

  nearly dropped to the ground.

  ‘Unl
ess… Unless… UNLESS HE HAD IT

  ALREADY!

  ‘Alvin!’ said the Witch urgently. ‘I just had this

  horrible vision! Tell me again, Alvin, where did you find

  Grimbeard’s coffin?’

  ‘I’ve already told you this, Mother,’ said Alvin

  impatiently. ‘I heard a rumour that some girl and

  her dragon had discovered Grimbeard’s grave, but

  were keeping it a secret out of respect for the dead. I

  disguised myself as a poor fisherman, romanced the

  girl, and persuaded her to tell me where the grave was.

  It was on that little island over there, the little Isle of

  Hero’s End. And after she had shown me, I sneaked

  back and dug it up. Very clever of me.’

  ‘And what was in Grimbeard’s coffin?’ hissed the

  Witch. ‘The coffin that you opened long, long ago, the

  one that was booby-trapped and took off your hand?’

  ‘I fail to see why this is important. We’ve been

  over this, Mother,’ answered Alvin. ‘There was no body

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  in the coffin. The body had vanished. It was just the

  map to Grimbeard’s Treasure and the riddle.’

  ‘So there was nothing, nothing else?’ asked the

  Witch. ‘Nothing there at all?’

  ‘Nothing of importance,’ said Alvin, turning

  white now, as a slow creeping realisation like a little

  shiver came over him, ‘Certainly nothing worth losing

  my hand over… but there was… I suppose there was

  something… but it didn’t matter…’

  ‘What was it?’ shrieked the Witch, clawing at him

  as if she wanted to strangle him. ‘What was it? I told

  you to tell me EVERYTHING, Alvin…’

  Alvin swallowed hard. ‘But it was nothing. It was

  just a smelly old pair of lobster claws hanging on a

  chain. A necklace fit for a slave. Typical Grimbeard the

  Ghastly, he always had a nasty sense of humour.’

  ‘WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?’ screamed the

  Witch.

  Alvin was now a horrible sickly yellow. ‘Well, now,’

  he said, ‘it was a long time ago… fourteen, fifteen years

  ago. I thought it wasn’t important. Just an old lobster

  claw, one of Grimbeard’s unpleasant little practical