How to Twist a Dragon's Tale Read online

  Only a couple of hours later, this sweltering wind had blown them right out of the Archipelago and into the Open Sea. There was a steady stream of dragons fleeing from Lava-Lout Island overhead, and they were joined by an ominous cloud of smoke coming from the same direction. Every now and then there was a rumble, but it was not clear whether it was thunder, or the Volcano.

  I wish I could have explained to my father what I was doing . . . thought Hiccup, looking wistfully back at the outline of the Isle of Berk. Somehow, without meaning to, and while trying his hardest, he always seemed to be letting his father down. I wish he didn’t think I was a traitor . . . if we don’t succeed, he’ll think I really DID run away . . . If only he had LISTENED to what I was trying to say.

  Stoick rarely listened.

  Fishlegs clung on to his Running-Away Suitcase, muttering to himself, “This is not a good idea . . . this is not a good idea . . . this is not a good idea . . .”

  “I’m not quite sure what the guy with the face like a fish is contributing to the Team, Hiccup,” whispered Humungous. “You’re the Leader, and the little blonde is the Stone-Carrier, but what is he doing? He seems rather a negative influence.”

  “Don’t be fooled by appearances,” Hiccup whispered back. “He is a Berserk.”

  “Really?” said Humungous, in great surprise. In his experience, Berserks were generally rather LARGER, and did not normally suffer from asthma, eczema, and knock-knees.

  Eventually the outline of Lava-Lout Island appeared on the horizon, with its smoking Volcano, and this was such an ominous sight that even Toothless lost some of his cheekiness, and went to perch on Hiccup’s shoulder.

  Misery seemed to have been trapped up in the island for so long now, the land was trembling in feverish shivers; great reverberating trembles that rocked the sea crazily around it.

  The roasted landscape was dotted with these greeny-yellow spots like pimples or pustules, as if they were symptoms of some deadly contagious disease, but as they drew nearer and nearer it became clear that these were not spots but Eggs, thousands and thousands of evil Exterminator Eggs, waiting for the Volcano to explode so they could hatch and spread their dusky devastation across the whole of the Archipelago.

  They found a long scoop of a beach to land on, curved like a horseshoe, and The Peregrine Falcon skimmed across the shallow waters, until its belly landed on the black sand, and the boat came to a sludgy stop.

  Clearly, the Windwalker was not going to set foot on the island.

  Humungous sighed. “I’ll take the boat out a bit, and hang around, just in case . . . just in case . . .”

  Humungous never finished the end of that sentence, but it lingered, unspoken, in the air . . . just in case, by some outrageous miracle, you DO come back here alive.

  “Good luck, guys,” called Humungous.

  The three small unlikely Heroes began to trudge reluctantly up the beach.

  Fishlegs took his suitcase with him.

  He knew that it was stupid, but somehow he felt a bit safer with his Running-Away Suitcase. It gave him courage. As if he could leave at a moment’s notice if he wanted to. And, of course, he’d have some nice clean socks and knickers to change into when he got to Valhalla.

  12. WELCOME TO LAVA-LOUT ISLAND

  The Exterminator Eggs were so numerous that they found themselves picking their way through them. The Eggs had been laid hundreds of years earlier, so they were embedded very deeply into the soil, and grass, moss, heather, and bracken had grown over them over the years. Now, however, all the vegetation had been burned down, so it had exposed them like gigantic fat white maggots.

  A furious, frenzied, scratching noise was coming from within them. It wasn’t clear at first what this noise was, but as the Vikings climbed higher they began to come across Eggs that did not have the white, greasy opaqueness of bacon fat like their brother-Eggs further down.

  These Eggs had skin that was wearing thin, and fine lines were appearing all over the surface, like cracks on china that was about to break. They were clearly close to hatching, and on some the shell was so fine that it had become see-through, and the Exterminator fledgling was clearly visible within, all twisted and snarled in an angry knot.

  These fledglings had grown so large over the centuries, and were so cramped in their Egg prisons, that their limbs were contorted into the most grotesque positions, and it was the ends of their talons that were making that feverish scratching noise, as they tore at the hard shell exterior that was keeping them trapped.

  Once you have looked into the eyes of an Exterminator, it is impossible to forget them. The look in an Exterminator’s eyes, of pure, concentrated, white hot FURY, the irises vibrating with pinpoint anger, is a look that haunts a person through their waking hours and in their nightmares forever after.

  The Vikings had to climb over these horrible, slimy see-through Eggs, and as they did so the eyes of the Exterminators fixed upward on them in a frenzy of impotent rage, and the scratching became even more screechily furious.

  “Oh . . . yuck . . . this is vile . . .” groaned Fishlegs, giving a shriek of horror as he slipped and fell with his face pressed up against one of the Eggs, with only that hard exterior separating him from the manic eye and madly scraping sword-talon of the Creature within.

  Once he had made sure that the carnivores really were trapped inside the Eggs, Toothless couldn’t resist the opportunity of teasing them, of course.

  He flapped right up and landed on the Eggs, sticking his tongue out and making faces at the imprisoned beasts, which drove them into extremities of temper, and they tried to throw themselves at him, but the most they could achieve, of course, was to make their Egg rock slightly in its bed of burned-out carbon.

  Toothless thought that this was a very good joke, and carried on doing it, despite Hiccup telling him repeatedly NOT to infuriate the Creatures any more than they had to.

  Dragons have a cruel streak, and I’m afraid that Toothless even made up a song about the Exterminators, which he sang as he cheekily swooped over the Eggs making farting noises, and setting them rolling down the hill with his nose.

  “Can’t c-c-catch me

  O w-w-weedy little Extermi-babies

  Frogs without legs

  Tadpoles in your cradles

  I can see you crying in your Eggs

  But you c-c-cant . . . catch . . . ME!”

  Everywhere they walked there were these grim entrances to the Fire-Gold Mines, out of which great clouds of steam mixed with gold dust were billowing. Hiccup swallowed hard, peering down the sinister dark holes, cruel bright streams of magma snaking through the bottom of them, and imagining the poor Windwalker forced to crawl down there, struggling like a fly without wings.

  The Lava-Lout Village gave an even grimmer vision of what the life of Humungous must have been like, kept for fifteen years as a slave by these greedy savages.

  There were CAGES everywhere, manacles, chains, whips, weapons of all description. Huts with barred windows, beds of stone or iron. No wonder poor Humungous didn’t want to step on this cursed island again.

  Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Camicazi walked on, Fishlegs lagging slightly behind, puffing away like anything, but still stubbornly dragging his Running-Away Suitcase.

  Every now and then they came across these unusual man-made Statues, of the kind that Humungously Hotshot had been describing, raised up high on a prominent rock so that they were clearly visible to all the Eggs round about.

  They were Statues of a Face, three times as large as any man, and the Face did look just a little bit like what Hiccup remembered Alvin the Treacherous looking like.

  But there was no sign of Alvin the Treacherous himself.

  It had all been surprisingly easy so far.

  They were now only four or five hundred meters from the top of the Volcano, and they had reached it without bumping into anything nasty at all.

  All they had to do now was get to the summit, throw the Fire-Stone over the edge, a
nd then run back down to the Harbor.

  . . . They were nearly there . . .

  They were nearly there . . .

  Only fifty meters to go, when Something put its black foot over the lip of the Volcano above them.

  A black foot with five claws sprouting out of it, each claw as broad and sharp and gleaming as a SWORD.

  Out of the top of the Volcano, like a gigantic slimy slug, slithered the revoltingly muscly figure of a huge EXTERMINATOR, three times as big as a lion. Green saliva frothed from its fangs. Great clouds of steam snorted out of its flaring furious nostrils.

  Its face was contorted in a ghastly grimace of anger, eyes popping with a fury that burned like acid. Its tail and its horns appeared to be on fire. It reared up on its hind legs, slicing through the air with its ten terrible sword-claws, and through the transparent wall of its fireproof chest you could see its two great black hearts pumping its boiling-hot black blood, sending it shooting through its body at twenty times the speed and pressure of the blood of any other living creature.

  It opened its terrible mouth to ROAR, and it was a noise that sent shivers screeching down the Vikings’ spines and set their hearts racing as quick as a panic-stricken rabbit’s.

  It seemed impossible that a Creature this wild could be controlled by a human being, but in the Exterminator’s mouth was the choking copper-red slab of a metal bit, and on its back, in between its great ebony wings, rode the tall, sinister figure of a Man.

  The Man had one arm that ended in a copper-red hook, and this hook was heaving on the metal reins as he fought to gain control of the enraged, rearing Creature. With the other arm he lashed at the Exterminator’s sides with a great black whip until the dragon brought down its great front legs, and bowed down in snarling, pacing, barely controlled submission.

  Fishlegs, Camicazi, and Hiccup took a few steps backward, Camicazi holding on very tightly to the Fire-Stone. The Man in Black pushed up the visor on his Fire-Suit.

  The face below it was the same face they had seen on those gigantic statues littered over the island. A completely hairless face with no eyebrows, eyelashes, or moustache. An unpleasant, glittering smile with too many teeth in it.

  One eye piercing, as mean as a snakebite. The other eye gone and covered by an eye patch.

  One arm long, with a golden dragon bracelet writhing all around it.

  The other arm short, ending in a hook like a copper-red question mark.

  “Good day, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third,” drawled Alvin the Treacherous, quietly pushing his whip back into his waistband, unscrewing his hook and replacing it with his sword, the Stormblade. “How absolutely delightful to bump into you again. And where might YOU three young scallywags be heading this lovely sunny Sunday afternoon?”

  13. MEANWHILE, BACK ON BERK

  Meanwhile, back on Berk, at exactly the same moment that Alvin unscrewed his hook, a very gloomy Stoick had been standing with his Warriors around him, watching the crush of the deserting crowds at Hooligan Harbor.

  His rather unpleasant nephew, Snotlout, came sidling up to him, an ingratiating smirk on his ugly mug.

  “Humungous and Hiccup have already run away,” he sneered. “And they’ve taken The Peregrine Falcon.”

  “THE PEREGRINE FALCON ?” roared Stoick the Vast. “They’ve burgled my Peregrine Falcon?”

  This was adding insult to injury.

  Stoick the Vast loved his Peregrine Falcon. It was a beautiful blue and black narrowboat, the fastest in the Archipelago. Not only had that beastly thinks-he’s-so-cool Humungous led his son astray with this cowardly Running-Away business, he’d had the cheek to do it in Stoick’s favorite boat!

  “Yup,” said Snotlout, gleefully fanning the flames of Stoick’s wrath. “I saw them only half an hour ago, sailing out of here to the west, as cool as you please.”

  Stoick opened his mouth to explode.

  And then he shut it again.

  “To the west?” he said, baffled. “Are you sure they were sailing to the west?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He swiveled around to the left, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.

  There, disappearing over the western horizon, he could just see the curved white sail of The Peregrine Falcon. He would recognize that sail anywhere.

  “Everybody else is deserting to the SOUTH!” bellowed Stoick. “To the west is Lava-Lout Island, the Volcano and all those Extermi-whosits! What is my son doing deserting to the WEST?”

  Stoick was not the brightest Barbarian in the business, but even he could see that this was a major mistake on the part of his son.

  Gobber gave a little cough at Stoick’s elbow. “Um . . . I’m not sure he is deserting, Chief. Didn’t you hear him say back there in The Thing that he was going to take the Fire-Stone back to the Volcano to stop it from exploding?”

  There was a short pause.

  “Did he?” said Stoick eagerly.

  Stoick didn’t know what to think.

  On the one hand he was over the moon that his son wasn’t deserting after all, and was NOT a traitor to his Tribe, or a disgrace to the noble name of Haddock.

  On the other hand, this was insanity.

  Throwing the Fire-Stone back? Risking the Volcano exploding, the Exterminators hatching . . .

  It was ridiculous, mad, suicidal . . .

  . . . why, it was straight-down-the-line HOOLIGAN HERO behavior!

  “WELL, WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING HERE TWIDDLING OUR THUMBS FOR, THEN?” roared Stoick. “WE SHOULD BE HELPING THE LAD! LAUNCH THE BLUE WHALE! GET OUT MY BATTLE-AXE! (Thank you, Snotlout, for bringing this to my attention.) DOWN TO THE HARBOR, ONE TWO ONE TWO ONE TWO!”

  Curses, thought Snotlout. Why did I open my big mouth?

  14. IS IT ALWAYS NICE TO BUMP INTO AN OLD AQUAINTANCE?

  Hiccup would have been delighted to know that his father and the Hooligan Tribe were sailing to his assistance.

  But they were still an hour or so’s sail away, and in the meantime, Hiccup had more immediate problems.

  Without even thinking, all three Vikings drew their swords as well.

  Before doing this, Camicazi quietly removed her hairy waistcoat from around her shoulders, and carefully nestled the Fire-Stone inside it. (Alvin was performing the final twist on his sword, so he didn’t notice her doing this, which is important, as we shall see.)

  So near, and yet so far.

  Fishlegs fumbled with his scabbard, in his haste to draw his sword, and the entire contents of his Running-Away Suitcase spilled all over the mountainside.

  “Alvin the Treacherous!” blurted out Camicazi. “How on earth did you escape from all those Sharkworms?”*

  “So kind of you to ask, my dear young lady,” murmured Alvin the Treacherous, picking at his teeth with the end of his hook, for all the world as if he were relaxing in an easy chair, rather than sitting on the back of an Exterminator, on top of a Volcano that was about to explode. “So kind of you to ask. After you had torn down my precious Fort Sinister and thrown me to the Sharkworms, most people would assume that I would indeed be dead.”

  Alvin’s one eye was now cold and furious.

  “We didn’t throw you to the Sharkworms!” protested Fishlegs. “You fell, in the middle of trying to kill us!”

  Alvin ignored him. “But you should know that a Treacherous is hard to kill, my dears, very hard to kill. The Sharkworms were hungry but I was hungrier. The first Sharkworm took my eye” — Alvin pointed savagely at his eye-patch — “but it regretted it,” said Alvin with grim satisfaction. “I killed it as it ate, from a single blow of the Stormblade, and then I crawled inside its open mouth, and hid within the floating corpse while the feeding frenzy continued.”

  “Oh, yuck,” groaned Fishlegs, pulling a face.

  “Indeed,” bit Alvin, “but one finds one is not so picky when one’s life is on the line. Six long hours the frenzy continued, before the Sharkworms started to drift away, along the Summer Current. And then, my hook curle
d around the floating Sharkworm’s backbone, I struck out for the shore. It took me a long time, for we had drifted far,” said Alvin bitterly, “and weak and eye-less as I was. And then when I finally managed to get within swimming distance of the land, and let go of the dead Creature that had hidden me and supported me that whole way, it took one final act of revenge. Even though it was long since dead, its jaws snapped forward in a reflex action, and took off one of my kicking, swimming legs from just below the knee.”

  “Oh, dear,” murmured Hiccup, sympathetic, even though it was Alvin.

  “Quite so,” said Alvin. “All of the Romans had left by the time I got back to the Island. So I spent that long, cold winter hiding in the ruins of Fort Sinister, nursing myself back to health, practicing my sword-fighting, and dreaming of REVENGE.”

  “Oh dear,” said Hiccup again.

  “Quite so,” said Alvin again. “I have my revenge on the SHARKWORM. I have carved my fake leg out of the tooth with which it bit me. But I do not have my revenge on YOU, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. You owe me a hand, a leg, an eye, and a full head of hair, and I intend you to pay.”

  “But it is not strictly my fault that you lost all these things!” protested Hiccup. “You brought them on yourself! And speaking of owing people things, what about YOUR treatment of poor Humungously Hotshot? You took his ruby heart’s stone, and left him to rot in the terrible Gold Mines of this island. You let him think that his Love did not love him, and had married someone else knowing that he was still alive, and in slavery. What had Humungous done to you for you to hate him so badly?”

  “I can hate without reason,” spat Alvin the Treacherous. “And what about his treatment of ME? He promised me that he would kill you. That would have been such a lovely artistic twist of Fate, to kill his Love’s only son. I would have enjoyed that so much.

  “And I worked so hard for it, pouring poisonous lies about you into his foolish trusting ears, stoking up his ANGER and his bitterness, his desire for revenge . . . I never expected a Hero like him would break a solemn promise like that one, especially to ME, whom he owed so much. My goodness” — Alvin sounded virtuously indignant — “you can’t trust anybody these days!”