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

  who may be annoying you…’ She rolled her eyes

  significantly in the direction of the Dragonmarkers.

  Alvin shook his bitten hand, cheering up

  immensely. ‘Once I’m King, and I’ve defeated the

  Dragon Furious with the Jewel, I could start the

  executions immediately…’

  He postponed his hook-sharpening for a moment,

  to have a happy little daydream of all the people he

  would like to execute in the first half hour of his reign.

  (As it happened, his mother, the Witch Excellinor, was

  rather high up that list, but luckily she didn’t guess

  that.)

  Only one little hour until he was crowned King.

  One little hour, and then he would be told the

  Secret of the Dragon Jewel, so now he came to think of

  it, he wouldn’t even HAVE to wring Toothless’s neck.

  He could just use the power of the Jewel to destroy

  the dragons forever…

  Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock went the

  ticking thing, swinging from Alvin’s waist belt, ticking

  down the minutes until Alvin was crowned King.

  Would it be the humans or the dragons

  who survived?

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  Both camps were ready now. Both knew that

  before this day was over, numberless unlucky ones

  among them would die on the battlefield, just as they

  imagined Hiccup had done two days earlier, and they

  would not all be opening their eyes on another day

  tomorrow…

  Watching, waiting.

  Only a few more hours now.

  They knew that it was Doomsday.

  But Doomsday for whom?

  5. GETTING TO TOMORROW

  ‘We have to get to the island that the Wodensfang

  was talking about, Hogfly… The island that is

  called Yesterday or Tomorrow or something,’ said

  Hiccup, checking with trembling fingers to see whether

  the Wodensfang was awake. ‘And we’ve got to get

  there FAST.

  ‘Wake up, Wodensfang! Wake up! Please

  wake up!’ whispered Hiccup, desperately tickling the

  Wodensfang behind the ears, under the arms, but no,

  the Wodensfang snored on, extraordinarily loudly for

  such a small and elderly dragon. ‘OK, he’s not waking

  up. Hogfly, I’m afraid we’re going to have to do

  this on our own. But that’s OK, right? We can do

  it, can’t we? Only, we’ve not got much time…’ said

  Hiccup, hurriedly putting the Wodensfang back in his

  backpack.

  Hiccup’s left side was feeling a little less numb,

  and his brain seemed to have cleared a little, like the

  mist lifting all around them. There is nothing like

  MORTAL DANGER to clear the mind.

  Right.

  He staggered swiftly towards the sleeping

  Spydragon, who was snoring almost as loudly as the

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  Wodensfang. This was going to be painful, but

  Hiccup had to do it. He held his forearm up to the

  Spydragon’s snoring jaws, averting his eyes because he

  didn’t want to see what would happen next.

  ‘Ow!’

  The two teeth lifted out of Hiccup’s forearm with

  a most repellent sucking noise and slid, like magnets,

  back into the two gaps in the Spydragon’s mouth. Even

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  if the Vampire Spydragon woke up, he wouldn’t be able

  to track them now.

  ‘YUCKY,’ gulped the Hogfly.

  Hiccup hurriedly wrapped the wound up with a

  rag torn from his shirt, because it was bleeding quite

  a bit. He stooped to pick up some of the Sand-Shark

  darts and stuffed them into his pockets, and then

  he half-ran, and half-hopped up the beach. As he

  stumbled along, he tried to reassure the little Hogfly

  in case he was worried. ‘It’ll be fine, Hogfly. I mean,

  look at how we dealt with those Sand-Sharks, we can

  do this…’

  The Hogfly did not look worried. He was

  practising flying upside down.

  ‘All we have to do is get to this Tomorrow

  place. I’m sure the Dragon Rebellion dragons won’t

  be able to follow us there…’

  But which island was Tomorrow? Maybe it was

  the big island just to the south of the Murderous

  Mountains, the only island in sight not covered in

  dragons.

  ‘Is that the island of Tomorrow, Hogfly?’ asked

  Hiccup, pointing.

  ‘Ooh, are we playing a guessing game now?’

  asked the Hogfly, eagerly turning the right way up, and

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  frowning in a puzzled way at the outline of the island.

  ‘It’s a tricky one… I give up! Is it a pancake? Is it a

  teacup? Is it your grandmother’s hat?’

  ‘Oh brother,’ said Hiccup.

  He staggered on, up the sand dune behind the

  beach. From the top, he could see the rolling ocean to

  the west, and another larger island to the north, flatter

  than this one, in the shape of the top of a question

  mark. He could also see the whole of the tiny island of

  Hero’s End laid out in front of him.

  And it was extraordinary.

  The entire island was covered in shipwrecks.

  Not just one shipwreck, but the wrecks of thirty

  or forty Viking ships, strewn out over the blasted

  landscape in front of him.

  For when the dreadful gales of the Winter Wind

  of Woden blew unfortunate ships through Hero’s Gap,

  those that weren’t blown out into the cold Atlantic

  ended here, on the little isle of Hero’s End.

  ‘Maybe there’s something we can use as a

  boat, something that isn’t completely wrecked!’

  shouted Hiccup to the Hogfly with rising hope, and he

  stumbled unsteadily towards the broken ships, as the

  wind tried its best to pluck him out of the marsh and

  send him bowling over into the sea.

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  ‘Look for a ship that might actually sail, Hogfly!’

  shouted Hiccup to Hogfly over the shrieking wind.

  Most of the ships had been sunk there for

  centuries, their tattered sails rotting into the marshes

  over hundreds of years. Some were more recent, but

  they all had great holes in the hull, or were split in two,

  and Hiccup knew they could not carry him across the

  narrow strip of water to Tomorrow.

  ‘I’ve found one!’ squealed the Hogfly, pointing

  both trotters at one.

  ‘No, Hogfly, it has to be one that hasn’t got a

  hole in it…’

  ‘I’ve found another one!’

  ‘No Hogfly, it really, really does have to be one

  with no holes in it at all…’

  A little further on, Hiccup spotted the small

  upturned bottom of a rowing boat, and hurrying

  towards it, he realised with mounting excitement that

  the boat was virtually intact, apart from a small section

  bitten out of it by some large sea creature.

  Perhaps a Leviathorgan? Or a half grown Woden’s

  Nightmare, by the look of those tooth patterns… he

  thought to himself. And then: Wow, I do seem to know

  an awful LOT about dragons, imagine thinking about

/>   natural history at a time like this…

  The boat was small enough that Hiccup could

  turn it over by himself, and panting hard, he dragged

  it over the marshes by the end of a fraying rope, every

  now and then sinking so deep into the soggy ground

  that he thought he wouldn’t be able to get out again. A

  little later, he had got the little boat into the sea, and to

  Hiccup’s passionate relief, it floated, a little lopsidedly.

  Everything seemed to be going Hiccup’s way.

  The wind had even changed direction, so it was now

  blowing a violent gale in the direction of the island

  he hoped was Tomorrow. That wind would blow him

  rapidly across the white-tipped waves and on to the

  island, Hiccup was sure of it – as long as the boat

  didn’t sink…

  He pushed away from the shore of Hero’s End,

  bailing out the water slopping over the shattered, bitten

  side and steering as best he could with a broken oar

  he had found inside the boat. The salt was in his eyes,

  every bone ached, and his swollen arm and toes were

  so cold that he could barely feel them.

  Ah, the Final Test was a Test indeed, of heart

  and body and mind and spirit. Hiccup was so very,

  very weary, so cold, so confused, that some part of him

  wanted to give up, just lie down in the bottom of the

  boat and let it fill up with water and go down to the

  quiet soft nothingness of the seabed, where the

  pain would be no more. But something within

  him made him carry on bailing that water, and

  moving the oar with his numb and swollen

  arm. He had to get to Tomorrow… He

  had to get to Tomorrow…

  He did not really know why he

  had to get to Tomorrow, but still he

  made himself move that oar, bail

  that water, with what little strength

  he had.

  His heart began to lift a

  little halfway across the causeway.

  Maybe he would make it after all. Maybe he wouldn’t

  be blown off course…

  And then he looked up through his slightly less

  bruised eye, and for a second, as the fog shifted, he

  caught sight of a little army of dragons flying swiftly

  towards him from the direction of the Murderous

  Mountains, before the fog closed up again and

  swallowed them from view.

  Gorebreathers. Tongue-twisters. Hellsteethers, his

  brain told him helpfully. Armed with poisonous gases,

  arm-twisting tongues, jaws that leap out and get you…

  Those Sand-Sharks must have told the Dragon

  Rebellion where he was, and this was the Dragon

  Furious sending more dragons to kill him.

  Hiccup was so well informed about dragons that

  he had noticed the exact flying speeds of each one, and

  had already calculated that they would intercept him

  before he got to the beach of Tomorrow, even though

  it was now so tantalisingly close. How could he fight

  these dragons, all on his own, with no weapons?

  And it appeared that one of the dragons, at least,

  was nearer than he thought.

  There was a confused roaring noise, and

  something swooped down out of the fog, and Hiccup

  only just flattened himself on the bottom of the boat in

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  time to avoid being swept up by it.

  Oh for Thor’s sake! What was that?

  Whatever-it-was was so well camouflaged that it

  was invisible, but as it rose up and away from Hiccup,

  its chameleon body slowly turned from the exact colour

  of a foggy sky to its own natural colour, a breathtaking

  sea green.

  It was a Deadly Shadow, and a Triple-Header

  Deadly Shadow at that. He could see all of its three

  heads outlined against the fog. Deadly Shadows were

  extremely rare, and exceptionally dangerous.

  Fires electric lightning bolts as well as flames… one

  of the rarest and most frightening attack dragons in the

  Archipelago…

  Hiccup picked himself up from the bottom of

  the boat, and gripped his pathetic broken oar in one

  trembling hand, swivelling around to see where it might

  attack from next. But there was nothing to be seen but

  fog, fog and more fog.

  ‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’ barked the Hogfly

  warningly.

  The Deadly Shadow swooped down again, and

  this time as it dived, Hiccup aimed at it with the oar,

  but missed and fell over.

  And as it swooped that second time, just before

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  he fell over, Hiccup saw two wild-looking human

  figures sitting on the Deadly Shadow’s back, screaming

  at him. The smaller of the two had a lot of blonde hair,

  and was yelling at the top of its voice, and brandishing

  a sword above its head.

  The three heads of the Deadly Shadow appeared

  to be arguing with each other. Hiccup glimpsed two

  other dragons flying beside the Deadly Shadow: a black

  Windwalker dragon and a yellow hunting-dragon that

  Hiccup saw too briefly to work out what species it was.

  ‘Trust nobody,’ the Wodensfang had said.

  These must be the humans that the Wodensfang

  said would be hunting him too… And they looked

  ferocious.

  The third time the Deadly Shadow swooped,

  Hiccup was ready.

  There was the same roaring noise, and as the

  highly camouflaged creature dived, and Hiccup

  could see the dim outline of its gigantic outstretched

  claws, he ducked again before stretching up and

  WHACKING the claws as hard as he could with his

  splintered oar, which nearly split in two.

  Then Hiccup took out two of the Sand-Shark

  darts, and threw them as hard as he could with his

  good hand, and one of them sank into the shining

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  flanks of the Deadly Shadow, and the other one hit the

  smaller yellow dragon next to it.

  The Deadly Shadow soared away into invisibility

  again, leaving the boat rocking so violently that it nearly

  sank, and water came pouring in one of the sides,

  and poor Hiccup tried to bail it out with his cupped

  hands…

  This was all rather unfortunate, to say the least.

  For of course, the three heads of the Deadly

  Shadow were Innocence, Arrogance and Patience.

  (Patience was the middle head, because that was what

  he had to have.) And the people on the back of that

  Deadly Shadow dragon were Fishlegs No-Name and

  Camicazi, Heir to the Bog-Burglars. And the two

  dragons flying with them were Stormfly, Camicazi’s

  little golden Mood-Dragon, and the Windwalker,

  Hiccup’s very own riding-dragon.

  They were Hiccup’s very best friends in all the

  world, and with Hiccup, Wodensfang and Toothless

  they formed the Ten Companions of the Dragonmark.

  But of course, Hiccup hadn’t a clue who

  they were.

  6. IT’S DIFFICULT TO RESCUE

  SOMEBODY WHO DOESN’T

  WANT TO BE RESCUED

  Camicazi and Fishlegs had spent a long and wearyr />
  night on dragonback, searching for Hiccup through the

  fog.

  They may have looked a little crazed to Hiccup,

  but that was because they had been up all night without

  so much as a wink of sleep.

  Throughout the night, they hunted through that

  terrible blinding mist, hiding when they suddenly came

  across the Dragon Furious’s search parties, looking,

  looking, looking for Hiccup. They had travelled all

  around the coast of Tomorrow, north to the isle of

  Grimbeard’s Despair, south to the Lava Lout Islands,

  shouting until their throats were cracked and sore:

  ‘Hiccup, where are yo-o-ou?’

  It had been a long night indeed.

  What Fishlegs really wanted to be in life was a

  bard, so these kind of ‘Total War’ situations weren’t

  where he was at his best. Every now and then he would

  drop off to sleep on the Deadly Shadow’s shoulder

  and have a little dream about happier times on the

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  little isle of Berk, with him and

  Hiccup sitting down in the green

  grass chatting about poetry or

  something restful like that.

  And then he would wake

  up with a start, and he was in

  the fog, and all the grass on

  Berk had been burnt to a crisp,

  and his cheeks were streaked with

  tears, and Hiccup was probably dead.

  The only thing that gave him any

  comfort was being on the back of the Deadly Shadow

  dragon. There is something vaguely soothing about the

  presence of an enormous invisible three-headed Deadly

  Shadow, who has sworn to stay by your side forever

  and protect you with his life.

  ‘Face it, Camicazi,’ Fishlegs said

  very sadly at about five o’clock in the

  morning. ‘They brought his helmet

  back up from the sea. Hundreds of

  people saw him die. It’s impossible

  for him to be alive.’

  Unlike Fishlegs, Camicazi

  was a good person to have by your

  side in a ‘Total War’ situation,

  because she loved a good battle, and she was incurably

  optimistic. But even she was beginning to doubt