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

This was the Dragon Furious, and today on the

  Doomsday of Yule he would meet the new King of the

  Wilderwest in single combat.

  The Dragon had rested well in preparation for the

  battle, and now he was watching Hero’s Gap, the little

  stretch of water between the Murderous Mountains

  and the island of Tomorrow, like a cat watching a

  mousehole.

  The Dragon Furious’s gigantic eyes saw

  everything.

  He saw the Sand-Sharks returning from Hero’s

  End, and he knew that they would tell him that Hiccup

  was alive.

  Surely, thought the Dragon Furious to himself,

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  surely I still have nothing to fear, even if he is alive?

  The boy had no Things! Not one! So if he were

  to set one Hiccupy toenail on the sands of Tomorrow…

  if he flew on the back of a dragon into one inch of

  Tomorrow’s air-space… why, the sands of Tomorrow

  would begin to shake, and they would give birth to

  those dreadful monsters known as THE DRAGON

  GUARDIANS OF TOMORROW. They would rocket

  out of the sands, take the boy in their dreadful claws

  and give him Death by Airy Oblivion…

  So surely there was nothing to fear?

  And even if, by some extraordinary and

  impossible chance, Hiccup survived the Dragon

  Guardians, and got himself crowned without any

  Things, the Wodensfang had promised to betray the

  new King, even if that King was Hiccup, and steal the

  Dragon Jewel from him, and bring it to the Dragon

  Furious before the fight.

  No King would win without the Jewel. Not

  Hiccup. Not Alvin. Not anyone.

  A King without a Jewel could be broken in half

  like a matchstick.

  There was nothing to fear…

  Nothing at all.

  But the Dragon Furious’s gigantic eyes saw

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  everything. And he

  remained uneasy.

  So even before

  the Sand-Sharks arrived

  back at Wrecker’s Bay, the Dragon

  Furious called his second-in-command to him, a

  luminously beautiful Seadragon slightly smaller than

  himself, known as Luna. She was so-called because

  she glowed with light like the moon. She lit up the

  dark stormclouds all around, and waves of heat pulsed

  out of her, so that the rain smoked and hissed when it

  landed on her shining body.

  ‘The Boy may be alive, Luna…’ hissed the

  Dragon Furious.

  The Dragon Furious did not move his lips to say

  this, for Seadragons can communicate with each other

  telepathically. Nothing of the dragon-mountain moved,

  although his eyes may have glowed a little brighter as

  the thoughts transferred themselves.

  ‘Send your best and most ruthless dragons

  through Hero’s Gap to look for the boy. And Luna…

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  do not go yourself.’

  ‘You do not trust me, King?’ asked Luna,

  affronted.

  ‘I do not question your loyalty, Luna, but

  it is harder to harden your heart than you think.

  Particularly against well-meaning humans like

  Hiccup,’ said the Dragon Furious. ‘There is something

  about this boy…’

  The Dragon Furious’s words rolled on in Luna’s

  mind.

  ‘Many dragons have refused to fight alongside

  us because of this boy. One Eye, for instance… and

  even those irritating little nanodragons will not join

  the Rebellion, chattering rudely about how Hiccup

  once saved their King’s life or some such nonsense…

  ‘This is our last chance, Luna. The humans are

  growing in cleverness. In the next few centuries they

  will develop weapons of such power that they will

  wipe us out, because humans are incapable of sharing

  this world. But if we strike now, we shall have

  freedom for the dragons forever…’

  ‘Freedom…’ sighed Luna, with longing

  melancholy. ‘Freedom… Free to wander where we will

  in the open skies. Free to fly high, high, high in the

  airy winds, free to touch the moon itself, free to dive

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  forever in the sweet black nothingness of the Open

  Ocean… ah… freedom…’

  ‘Send your best dragons, Luna,’ growled the

  Dragon Furious. ‘But stay here yourself.’

  Luna bowed her radiant head. She would

  send out a party of their most fearsome and pitiless

  dragons to destroy Hiccup before he got to Tomorrow:

  Hellsteethers, Tongue-twisters, Gorebreathers… Just in

  case.

  The Dragon Furious sank slowly below the waves

  until only his eyes were showing above the water, his

  gaze fixed on Hero’s Gap.

  The Dragon had looked into the future, and the

  humans must be destroyed before they could destroy

  the dragons.

  Watching, waiting.

  Only a few more hours now.

  He knew that it was Doomsday.

  But Doomsday for whom?

  On the high cliffs of Tomorrow, in the ruins of

  Grimbeard’s City, the battered remains of the human

  army were waking up too. Human beings from the four

  corners of the Archipelago were gathered there, for

  they had all been burnt out of their homes.

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  To the south and east, the Archipelago was in

  ruins, the landscape unrecognisable, island after island

  scorched black with fire, whole villages obliterated,

  hillsides with great bites taken out of them, and the

  dreadful stench of burning wafted across the Bay.

  The Alvinsmen were there, of course, the

  Danger-Brute, Hysteric, Murderous, Berserk, Villain,

  Visithug, Outcast and Uglithug Tribes.

  But even the Dragonmarkers had fled to follow

  Alvin. You could recognise them by the Dragonmark

  on their foreheads, and they were the Hooligan,

  Meathead, Bog-Burglar, Silent, Peaceable and

  Quiet-Life Tribes.

  And then there

  were the Tribes that did

  not belong to either side:

  Wanderers, Swallows, former

  slaves, the Nowheres and

  the Nothings, not to mention

  Humungously Hotshot and

  Tantrum the Heroes, and

  their Companions, the Ten

  Fiancés.

  Even the Barbarians,

  the most ferocious fighters in

  the Archipelago, had been beaten

  back by the dragons.

  The Barbarians carried highly trained cats into

  battle with them, who would leap from the Barbarians’

  shoulders and assault their opponents mid-swordfight.

  (A highly effective tactic, because it is enormously

  difficult to swordfight someone when a cat is attacking

  your head.)

  A young teenage Heir called Barbara the

  Barbarian, a six-foot champion bare-knuckle fighter,

  and her black cat Fearless, had held the Dragon

  Rebellion at bay for many long months that had turned

  into years. But she and her cat and her father and her

  exhausted people had sounded the retreat two weeks />
  ago and joined the journey west to fight under Alvin’s

  banner.

  Stoick and Valhallarama, Hiccup’s father and

  mother, woke after hardly sleeping. These great Heroes

  were Vikings, not used to the softer emotions, but on

  the hard ground, Stoick had placed his hand around

  Valhallarama’s to comfort her, and they slept with the

  helmet of what they imagined to be their dead son

  between them.

  Two days earlier, Hiccup’s

  cousin Snotlout had

  heroically worn Hiccup’s

  clothes, and ridden

  Hiccup’s dragon into battle. Half the Tribes of the

  Archipelago had witnessed Snotlout fall into the sea

  with an arrow in his chest, so Stoick and Valhallarama

  believed that Hiccup had died and gone to the Viking

  afterworld.

  ‘This is not my fault, is it, Valhallarama?’

  said Stoick, wearily looking out on the obliterated

  landscape, holding his shaggy head. Somewhere out

  there was his lost Chiefdom, his ships turned to ashes,

  his old world gone forever. ‘Is this a curse come down

  on us all because I would not put the baby Hiccup out

  to sea to die, when we knew he was a runt? Are the

  gods punishing us because I loved my son too much to

  follow the tradition? Should Hiccup – though we loved

  him so – should Hiccup not have lived?’

  For it was Hiccup who had released the Dragon

  Furious and started the trouble in the first place.

  Valhallarama put her iron hand on Stoick’s

  shoulder. ‘We are Warriors, Stoick,’ she said gently. ‘We

  both know what War means, that our loved ones can

  pay the ultimate price by losing their lives, so Wars

  should never be undertaken lightly.

  ‘But the slavery of humans

  and of dragons was an

  abomination that could

  not continue,’ said Valhallarama, that great Hero, her

  stern cliff like face refusing to show her grief. ‘Hiccup

  was right to release the Dragon Furious, and you were

  right not to follow tradition. There are some Questions,

  some battles, some Hiccups that are worth losing a

  world for.

  ‘And perhaps even when all ends in disaster, you

  cannot do the wrong thing, if you do it out of love.’

  ‘That is true, Valhallarama,’ said Stoick, taking

  some small comfort from this, and standing a little

  straighter, with some of his old Chiefly spirit. ‘I did do

  the right thing, didn’t I? Our beloved Hiccup may have

  died and nothing will ever take that grief away, but he

  was a very great Hero, was he not?’

  ‘He was,’ Valhallarama agreed.

  ‘I can still see Hiccup now,’ sighed

  Stoick proudly. ‘In that terrible Prison

  Darkheart, standing in front of Alvin and

  shouting: “Is it perfect to have humans

  and dragons dying in chains? Are

  creatures as beautiful as this to

  be made extinct for all time? Are

  we to say goodbye forever to

  the magic and the dreaming

  and the flying of our

  childhoods? I say NO!”’

  Stoick punched the air in imitation of his son’s

  glorious defiance. And then he shook his shaggy head

  in admiration. ‘What a son he was! What a very great

  boy… Yes, I am proud to die with his Dragonmark on

  my forehead, and I am proud to have been his father,

  although the gods only let him be with us for that very

  little while…’

  The two middle-aged Heroes leaned in towards

  one another, creaking a little, for they had put on

  weight in recent years, and constant swordfighting

  can be wearing on the knees. They pressed their

  foreheads together, Dragonmark to

  Dragonmark, like two old trees

  leaning inward

  to support one another against the raging of the gale.

  And maybe they were thinking: at least Hiccup

  did not have to open his eyes on to a Doomsday such

  as this.

  The Vikings had promised to submit themselves

  to the will of the gods, but it was difficult to know

  what the gods could be thinking of as the humans

  prepared for the last great battle, up here in the ruins

  of Grimbeard’s Castle.

  Sadly, Bertha, Chief of the Bog-Burglars,

  sharpened her axe, looking back on happier times

  when she was striding waist-deep in the delightful bogs

  of home, her faithful Goreblaster swimming by her

  side.

  Mournfully, Barbara the Barbarian stroked the

  proud back of Fearless, while her six bodyguards tested

  their arrows and dreamed of riding through the snowy

  wastes of Barbaria on the back of their snow-dragons,

  wind streaming through their moustaches, cats

  miaowing happily on their shoulders, flying back, back

  in time to a village that no longer existed.

  Even the Alvinsmen were out-of-sorts, and

  unhappy with themselves. Madguts stroked his mighty

  invisible Stealth Dragon, trying not to think of life

  without him. Yes, these humans HATED Alvin. But

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  what could they do but follow him?

  The armies of the dragons were everywhere, thick

  and dark like locusts, turning the sky black with their

  numbers, leaping out of the sea and crawling across the

  ice floes.

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  Alvin

  was the humans’

  only chance now.

  For Alvin had

  the Lost Things, so he

  was the only one who could be

  crowned King.

  Alvin stood in the ruins of Grimbeard’s Castle,

  that noseless, heartless, pitiless Man-of-War, breath

  hissing through his iron mask, sharpening his hungry

  hook, already gloating over his victory.

  ‘Hurry up, hurry up!’ snapped Alvin as the Druid

  Guardians of Tomorrow manoeuvred the Throne on

  to the four stout stumps where the Throne had once

  stood before, long ago, when Grimbeard the Ghastly

  was the last King of the Wilderwest.

  They were making ready for the Crowning.

  Nearby were the ten Lost Things. The

  ticking-thing, the shield, the Crown, the

  key-that-opens-all-locks, the Dragon Jewel, the

  second-best sword, the ruby heart’s-stone, the arrow,

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  the Throne and Hiccup’s little hunting-dragon,

  Toothless: the smallest, naughtiest little hunting-dragon

  in the whole of the Archipelago, swinging from the

  back of the Throne in a tiny cage.

  Toothless, too, thought his Master was dead,

  so the poor little dragon was limp with his continual

  crying, his spines all flopped over with his misery, lifting

  up his head to the sky and howling like a little wolf.

  ‘Can’t somebody shut that dragon up?’ said

  Alvin, between gritted teeth, gripping his sword,

  the Stormblade, in a hopeful fashion. But there was

  nothing he could do – Toothless was one of the Lost

  Things, so until Alvin was crowned King, Alvin could

  not lay a fin
ger on him.

  ‘I promise you, you horrible little

  newt-with-wings,’ swore Alvin, putting his face

  right up to the cage and leering at Toothless with his

  one grim eye, and pointing his hook at him, ‘that the

  very first act I shall accomplish as King, is to wring your

  little froggy neck…’

  ‘T-t-toothless will bite you all over first!’

  yelled Toothless, in Dragonese. ‘You h-h-horrible

  Master-killing human nightmare!’

  Toothless leaned through the bars of the cage and

  shot flames at Alvin’s good hand. And then Toothless howled

  even harder.

  ‘Aaarggh!’ cried Alvin, sucking his finger, ‘if

  only I could kill you RIGHT NOW, you wretched little

  creature!’

  ‘You c-c-can’t!’ sobbed Toothless, with some

  of his old defiance. ‘T-t-toothless is one of the Lost

  Things… and Toothless is the B-B-BEST ONE…’

  ‘Don’t you worry, little Juiceless,’ said Stoick,

  with ponderous, awkward sympathy, poking one of his

  fingers through the bars of the cage, and stroking the

  trembling, miserable little dragon along his back. ‘Your

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  Master Hiccup may be dead, but

  we will look after you…’

  But how would Stoick be

  able to do that once Alvin was

  crowned King? How could he and

  Valhallarama protect Toothless,

  or the Silver Phantom, or any of

  these dragons who had remained

  faithful to the humans’ side, and

  were now waking up, and wheeling

  above their human Masters’ heads

  right here, right now, in Grimbeard’s

  Castle? These dragons were prepared

  to go into battle with their Masters, to

  lay down their lives in order to protect

  them. Was their loyalty to be rewarded

  with their own extinction?

  Alvin’s mother the Witch

  Excellinor bounded up on all fours like

  a big white bony dog, her long white

  hair dragging behind her in the mud.

  ‘Patience, Alvin my sweetest,’

  she purred.

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  ‘You will not have to wait long for the pleasure of

  executing the little dragon-rat… and any others