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

  jokes. I gave it to this girl Termagant, the one that I

  was romancing at the time. I told her I’d lost the hand

  in a nasty fishing accident, and she nursed me back to

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  health. The necklace was fit for her, I thought. I wasn’t

  going to give her anything NICE… ’

  ‘What happened to her? The girl, what happened

  to her?’

  ‘Well… I abandoned her,’ said Alvin, as if that

  was obvious. ‘As soon as I was well again, and she had

  served her purpose. She wasn’t worth ME.’

  ‘AAAAARRGHHH!’ screamed the Witch.

  ‘AAARGH! AARRGH! AAAAAARGH! Don’t you

  see, you imbecile, the Jewel was hidden INSIDE the

  lobster claw? Of course it was! I know it was! You had

  it! You had it! And you gave it away!’

  For of course, what the Witch was seeing in her

  mind’s eye was the final piece of the jigsaw.

  Fifteen years ago, Termagant placed her little runt

  baby in an old lobster pot, and set it out to sea in the

  old barbaric fashion, the way that the Tribes had dealt

  with their runts and their unwanted offspring for as

  long as the world could remember. Setting them out to

  sea, for the sea to deal with them.

  And then, just before she pushed the little craft

  away, she reached up and took the necklace from

  around her neck, and placed it on her baby’s lap. It was

  the only thing the poor girl had that the baby’s father,

  Alvin, had given her.

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  Then she pushed the baby out to sea, like a little

  Viking funeral. Not knowing of course, that both the

  baby and the craft would survive the journey, cross the

  sea and land on the beaches of the little isle of Berk.

  The baby of course, was Fishlegs.

  And, it could be said, that the lobster claw had

  saved his life. For inside the smelly claw was hidden

  the last Lost Thing, and like all the Lost Things, it was

  almost as if it had been searching for Hiccup, who was

  the True Heir to Grimbeard the Ghastly.

  That would be impossible of course. How could

  that be?

  Be that as it may, the hidden Jewel carried the

  lobster pot safe across the waves, safe through the

  storm, true as a star or a magnet, to the shores of Berk

  where the baby Hiccup had just been born.

  Perhaps Fishlegs’ mother had instinctively known

  that?

  Who knows? A mother’s love for her child is so

  strong, that sometimes she can know things without

  even knowing that she knows them.

  All that she knew was that the lobster claw might

  keep him safe, and she had been right.

  Well, well, well.

  Isn’t Fate artistic?

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  I have said this before, perhaps, but…

  Everything we do, you see, has its consequences

  and repercussions, every kind act, and every bad, every

  friend we make, and every enemy.

  Everything is connected.

  Like the complicated interlocking wheels of a

  ticking-thing.

  In that moment of suspended time, the truth

  broke upon Alvin, and he turned deathly white.

  ‘I had it… I had the Jewel inside my hand and I

  threw it away… The most precious Thing I ever had…

  and if I hadn’t thrown it away I could have been the

  King…’ he groaned.

  The Druid Guardian was regarding him with

  stern amusement, and he nodded his head. ‘For you

  know the price of everything, Alvin, and the value of

  nothing. You would have made a very bad King.

  ‘I may have been blind,’ added the Druid

  Guardian, with deep satisfaction, ‘but the X-ray eyes of

  the Dragon Guardians must have seen that Hiccup was

  carrying the Jewel with him, even when he did not yet

  know it himself.’

  Fishlegs was white as he listened to this, and

  realised what it might mean.

  All around him, the Vikings were already

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  celebrating, for Hiccup had found

  the Jewel… and Fishlegs was over

  the moon too, of course, for Hiccup

  would be saved and they ALL

  would be saved, and it was all

  because of Fishlegs and the

  fact he had given Hiccup his

  lucky lobster claw necklace.

  But Fishlegs was feeling some

  rather more mixed emotions along with all the joy.

  Oh for Thor’s sake. Fifteen years looking for his

  father… fifteen years!

  And his father turns out to be ALVIN THE

  TREACHEROUS?

  ‘No,’ whispered Fishlegs, white to the lips. ‘It’s

  not true… it can’t be true… That man cannot be my

  father…’

  He felt as if someone had just given him an

  enormous present at the same time as punching him

  rather violently in the stomach.

  ‘HE HAS THE JEWEL! HE HAS THE

  JEWEL! HICCUP THE KING! HICCUP THE

  KING!’ roared the crowd.

  ‘Thumbnails and Earwax and little Twirly Bits of

  Thor!’ cursed the Witch. She was looking really quite

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  insane. ‘O Curse you, Destiny!’

  The Witch shook her bony fist up at the heavens.

  ‘How does he do it? It is almost as if those Things

  were out there looking for him! As if he were some

  kind of horrible Hiccup-shaped magnet…’

  What the Witch hadn’t learnt you see, old as she

  is, is that Hiccup had acquired these things as a result

  of his very own nature. His lifelong kindness to his

  good friend Fishlegs is what had led Fishlegs to give

  him the lobster claw necklace.

  Whereas Alvin’s habitual meanness towards

  others is what led him to give it away.

  19. AND IT HAUNTS THE

  PRESENT IN MORE WAYS

  THAN WE THINK…

  Hiccup held aloft the Dragon Jewel in one fist.

  The Dragon was blinded for a second by the ray

  of light hitting the Jewel – saw immediately what it

  was and, giving a snort of pure terror, he closed up his

  fireholes in the nick of time, before those bolts of flame

  could be released.

  The Dragon screamed, as if he had been hit by a

  gigantic spear, eyes turned black in horror.

  And then…

  ‘The Dragon Jewel,’ he hissed with a terrible

  sigh. ‘The real Dragon Jewel…’

  ‘He’s found it…’ whispered the Wodensfang, his

  eyes alight with hope and desperate relief. ‘He’s found

  it! Fate is on the side of the good after all…’

  In that second the Jewel was in his hand, Hiccup

  could feel its power.

  The power to rule over the dragons, the power of

  life and death. The power to destroy them completely.

  ‘I have the Jewel, Furious!’ Hiccup shouted.

  ‘And I know its secret power!’

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  The Dragon

  paused. A moment caught

  out of time.

  The destiny of dragons,

  caught up in a human hand.

  ‘Then use it,’ hissed the

  Dragon Furious,
panting, his eyes

  black with pain. ‘Break it. End it.

  Fate has landed on your side.’

  ‘We do not need to break it,’ said Hiccup.

  ‘We can bargain, I can promise. I promise you that

  now I am King, dragons will be free. We can end this

  War, we can make a peace, and dragons can be free

  again to fly wherever they will…’

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  ‘But you will not live forever,’ sighed the

  Dragon.

  The boiling, steaming Dragon was racked with a

  confusion of emotion: distress, fear, anger. His great

  body shivered, his head twisted from side to side.

  Hiccup looked the Dragon Furious in the eye.

  It was dangerous, but it was the only way to see

  what he was thinking.

  There was a pause, and then within the stormy

  black depths, the pupils flickered and went pinprick

  bright with flame once more.

  ‘End it! End it!’ urged the Dragon. ‘Whatever

  way, this must end now. I will not take your promise.

  We cannot go on like this. Dragons cannot be slaves

  again!’

  ‘I cannot end it!’ yelled Hiccup, tears streaming

  down his face. ‘It would break my heart!’

  ‘You are a KING!’ screamed the Dragon

  Furious, angry once more, flames shooting

  out of those eyes again. ‘A KING must act

  in the interests of his people. You cannot

  hesitate. You have to make the kill, that

  is what we teach our dragon young from

  the very start…

  ‘Look at me, that is human blood that you

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  see here on my fangs, those are human rags you see

  dripping from my claws. I am a MONSTER, can you

  not see that? See that, and end it!’

  ‘You are not a monster!’ cried Hiccup. ‘You are

  no more a monster than Toothless here…’

  ‘Well if you will not end it, then see what a

  monster I can be,’ roared the Dragon, and he exhaled

  again. ‘Break it, or I kill you, and once I have the

  Jewel in my power, I will keep my promise and I will

  kill the whole human lot of you…’

  This was the moment for striking.

  The carnivore in the Dragon Furious knew it.

  Only Hiccup now stood between him and victory for

  the dragons, an end to their misery of enslavement.

  Prey, Hiccup was prey, only prey, strike first, and

  think afterwards…

  The Dragon Furious threw back his head, the fire

  holes already filling with the deadly flames, his intake

  of breath so huge that Hiccup’s body was dragged

  forward in the wind of it. One more second and it

  would be over…

  Hiccup’s arms were wide, the Jewel held aloft in

  his right hand. In that instant he knew, as he had always

  known, that he would not break the Jewel, he would

  not kill the dragons for all time, he would not make the

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  decision that a King ought to make.

  Great hot tears rolled down his cheeks.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ whispered Hiccup. ‘I will not do

  this… I will not break the Jewel.’

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  It was

  not in Hiccup’s

  nature, and he could

  not be anything other than

  the boy he was.

  Instead, he turned right around and

  flung the Dragon Jewel as far as he could way,

  way out into the sea. And then he turned to the Dragon

  Furious.

  ‘You would not break the Jewel, either, if you

  were living in my skin,’ shouted Hiccup passionately

  to the Dragon. ‘I know you would not do it. You are

  not a monster, and I trust you not to kill me. And I

  promise you in return that I will build a new world, a

  better world, a world worthy of both our species. Not

  our species as they are, but as they could be.’

  Hiccup shut his eyes and waited.

  The Dragon could not believe it. The sheer

  unexpectedness of this action on the part of Hiccup

  made him halt once more. He started in shock, as if

  he was reminded of something, and after watching

  in confusion as the Jewel dropped into the ocean, he

  seemed to grow angrier than ever.

  ‘What are you DOING?’ roared the Dragon.

  The Vikings could not believe it either.

  ‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT!’ roared Very-Vicious

  the Visithug, who was having his turn with the

  telescope-thingy. ‘THE KING HAS THROWN THE

  JEWEL AWAY!’

  There was a cry of horror from the Vikings

  watching on the clifftops.

  ‘NO! NOT POSSIBLE!’

  And then a groan…

  ‘WE ARE DOOMED…’

  ‘SING, BOYS, SING!’ roared Gobber the

  Belch, desperately, as if by the mere power of song they

  could reverse the doom that awaited them.

  Half of the Vikings fell to their knees and began

  to sing. The other half prepared for the Total War that

  they felt sure was now about to happen after Furious

  killed the King.

  ‘I told you,’ hissed the Witch. ‘I TOLD YOU!’

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  When you are doomed, there is still some small

  satisfaction in having been right all along.

  ‘Fool,’ snarled the Dragon Furious, recovering

  himself. ‘Fool… Your puny human arms cannot throw

  that Jewel far enough. You cannot lose it that way…’

  The Dragon’s enormous eye could see the Jewel

  as it dropped, like a speck of plankton, through the sea.

  He reached out, and caught up the Jewel with his left

  paw as if fell through the ocean. The Dragon held up

  the Jewel victoriously, so his dragon troops could see he

  had it.

  ‘Our leader has the Dragon Jewel!’ roared

  the Dragon Rebellion dragons in triumph. And then

  the Dragon prepared to kill the boy. But in that second,

  when the Dragon should have made the final deadly

  strike, something happened.

  The Dragon saw the boy in front of him, arms

  spread wide and defenceless in supplication. There is

  nothing more defenceless than a defenceless human.

  No teeth, no talons, no thunderbolts, no fire. No

  Jewel, the wet hair sticking up around the Dragonmark

  on his forehead. The boy stood there calmly with his

  arms wide and his eyes shut, and around his head there

  flapped a tiny, selfish little dragon, Toothless, who was

  frantic with anxiety.

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  Finally, in a pathetic attempt to shield the boy,

  Toothless settled over Hiccup’s heart and spread wide

  his wings.

  On the little dragon’s chest there was a scar.

  And in that moment in which the Dragon

  Furious should have taken the kill, an old, old memory

  intervened, of another boy, another time, another scar.

  For there had been three Hiccups: Hiccup the

  First, Hiccup the Second and Hiccup the Third. And

  here there were three Seadragons: one old, one young,

  and one in the prime and glory and power of middle

  life. Every one of the three had a scar upon his chest.

  The Dragon Furio
us had got his own scar from

  when he had once leapt, with the same terror and

  desperation as Toothless, to try and save his human

  brother, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Second.

  The Stormblade pierced his chest in that terrible,

  hopeless leap. It wounded but did not kill his younger

  Dragon self, so much larger and grander than this

  ridiculous little creature. But for all the Dragon’s might,

  his muscles and his fire, he could not save Hiccup

  Horrendous Haddock the Second from dying.

  The Dragon Furious thought he had forgotten.

  He thought that one hundred years in chains,

  broken and in wingless solitude, had killed the love that

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  had made him leap. But the past never really leaves us.

  Love never dies, as the ruby heart’s stone taught

  Hiccup, and even the Stormblade cannot kill love.

  Once we love, we cannot forget, though the flesh

  hardens around the wound that once bled, though it

  be buried in one hundred years of chains and twisted

  round with the cruel growing thorns of the choking

  forest. A door opened in the Dragon’s mind that the

  Dragon had been trying to keep closed for many long

  years so that he could carry out his Rebellion. When

  it finally opened, it did so with the same sudden force

  with which Hiccup’s memory had returned in the ruins

  of Grimbeard’s Castle. And now it had opened, even

  just a crack, it was impossible to shut it once again.

  The mind is a strange universe. In that precious

  second, that moment on Tomorrow in which the future

  of human and dragon hung in the balance, the long

  distant past of yesterday came back to the Dragon

  Furious as pin-sharp fresh as if it were right now, this

  minute… and he could not make the kill.

  The Dragon snorted, shook his head, tried to

  force himself to do it, make those electric lightning

  bolts come out… but they would not come. The

  Dragon bellowed with fury at himself, tried again

  once more…

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  ‘NOOOOO!’ roared the Dragon Furious. ‘I have

  to do it! I must fulfil my promise!’

  But no, however hard he tried, thrashing his tail

  madly with anger, he could not make himself do it.