How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 9

  But the sentries were busy searching for Hiccup,

  and the launch of the Dragon Guardians from the

  beach had created a bewildering, blinding sandstorm

  that mingled with the fog and the smoke.

  The Dragon Guardians had rocketed up into the

  airy atmosphere, and it would take them at least five

  minutes to turn around and dive, like unimaginably

  enormous peregrine falcons, back down under the

  sands of Tomorrow.

  So in the middle of all that disturbance, the

  Deadly Shadow sailed right over the top of the entire

  Guardian army and into the air-space of Tomorrow

  without being detected.

  Fishlegs and Camicazi got their first good look at

  the island of Tomorrow, laid out beneath them like a

  child’s map in a fairy story.

  It was a good-sized island, covered, like all the

  islands of the Archipelago, with marsh and bog and

  bracken, and thickly forested in the south. Although

  the ruined city of Tomorrow was in a state of splendid

  decay, it was still the largest city that Fishlegs and

  Camicazi had ever seen. No fewer than fifteen castles

  were built around the edge of a large natural harbour,

  and thousands more buildings were laid out in a ruined

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  rabbit warren that was sinking slowly back down into

  the marsh, broken windows peering only inches above

  the level of the bog.

  There where once had been houses, shops,

  stables, a bustling, thriving city, the centre of the

  kingdom of the Wilderwest, now was only the

  tumbledown rubble of stone and wall and roof, where

  the wind whistled sadly, and the melancholy cry of the

  seagulls echoed through the ruins.

  Right on the top of the highest cliff, they could

  see the largest building of all: the great ruined wreck of

  the Castle of Grimbeard the Ghastly himself.

  It was here that the great human party of

  cheering Alvinsmen and mourning Dragonmarkers had

  assembled for the Crowning.

  They had halted, and were staring at the sky,

  looking at the awesome sight of the Dragon Guardians

  rocketing ever upwards, with the sand raining down on

  them in a drenching storm.

  ‘What’s happening? What does this mean?’

  snapped Alvin, in a sudden panic that his Kingdom

  might be snatched away from him at the last minute.

  The Druid Guardian, head of the human

  Guardians of Tomorrow, turned his blindfolded face to

  the heavens and sniffed the air. He knelt down on the

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  ground, and listened

  to the sound of the

  pounding feet of his

  fellow Guardians,

  searching the island.

  ‘Intruders…’

  whispered the

  Guardian. ‘Intruders

  on Tomorrow… how

  extraordinary…’

  Poor little cried-out Toothless, his spines all

  flopped over with misery, lifted up his head and opened

  up his eyes, and gave a little whine of hope. His

  Master… could it be his Master?

  Alvin whitened. He forgot he was not King yet,

  and hauled the Druid Guardian roughly to his feet.

  ‘Quick! The Crowning! We must hurry up with the

  Crowning!’

  The Druid Guardian shook him off angrily. ‘The

  Crowning will not be hurried. My dragon and human

  Guardians will have dealt with these intruders…’

  ‘Alv-i-i-innn…’ warned the Witch Excellinor,

  her mouth stretched in a warning grin. ‘Patience, my

  sweetest… Patience, my darling…’

  Alvin recalled himself with an effort. He mentally

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  added the Druid Guardian to his Executions List.

  And then he swallowed his irritation and grovelled

  cringingly.

  ‘I am sorry, Your Worshipfulness… I forgot myself

  for a moment… I am so keen, you see, to assume

  the responsibilities of Kingship… and get you your

  freedom of course…’

  ‘Freedom…’ whispered the Druid Guardian

  longingly.

  Who was he to quarrel with the will of the

  gods? And if the will of the gods came in

  the unpalatable form of Alvin the

  Treacherous, why then, it would at

  least grant him his freedom and

  his eyesight, right at the end of his life, to see the world

  for the very first time…

  The Throne of the Wilderwest had been carried

  by two strong men up to the dais in the centre of

  the room, and for the first time in a century, the

  Throne was back in its rightful place, looking out over

  Grimbeard’s kingdom.

  The Druid Guardian cleared his throat and threw

  up his arms, to begin the sacred words of the

  Crowning Ceremony.

  Two minutes earlier, Hiccup had landed up to his waist

  in a large bog.

  He could hear the screams and shouts of the

  Axemen from the beach, and sheer terror gave him the

  strength to struggle out of the bog and fling himself

  into the cover of some nearby bracken.

  He would be hunted now, he knew it, and he

  tried to force himself to calm down and think clearly.

  He popped his head from the bracken for a

  second. To the east, was the city of Tomorrow. He

  could see the little figures of the Alvinsmen and the

  Dragonmarkers standing among the ruins of a great

  Castle on the highest ground. That must be where

  the little brown Wodensfang had said the

  crowning would take place, and he had

  to get there before they crowned the

  wrong King.

  But in between him and the

  Castle, there was a sea of ferns

  that seemed to stretch out forever.

  He would never make it in time…

  He popped back down into the

  cover of the undergrowth again, as the shouting behind

  him grew louder.

  As he crawled forward through the wet bracken

  on his hands and knees, he began to shake with

  hysterical laughter. This was ridiculous… He had no

  idea who he was, or what he was doing, he ached all

  over, it looked like he was being chased by thousands

  of men, and dragons, and all he really wanted to do

  was lie down in the undergrowth and go to sleep.

  But something within him made him push on,

  moving one swollen knee forward after the other, even

  though he knew what he was doing was impossible,

  even though he knew he was defeated before he had

  even begun.

  And perhaps that is what heroism truly

  is, who knows?

  For Hiccup could hear the shouting of hundreds

  of Guardian Axemen, wading through the bog

  behind him. It could only be minutes before he was

  discovered, for they could run far faster than he could

  crawl.

  But as Hiccup pushed forward, by some

  extraordinary miracle, he stumbled across a long

  tunnel, made by a creature that wanted to travel

  secretly through the bracken, without being spotted by

  predators wheeling in th
e skies above.

  Fernwinders, his brain told him.

  Wingless, medium-sized dragons that carve tunnels

  through the forests of ferns in the Archipelago so they can

  charge across the islands at surprising speeds.

  There was a trembling and a shuddering and a

  sound of running feet, and Hiccup only just rolled out

  of the way in time as a dragon about the size of a large

  dog stormed past him with mad, panicked eyes.

  Those huge monsters that had erupted from the

  sands must have unsettled the Fernwinders, for the

  bracken was now alive with them, charging through the

  undergrowth like terrified little rhinoceroses.

  Hiccup was ready for the next one that careered

  through the tunnel he was lying in, and as the creature

  plunged past in a snorting, puffing, rocketing rush,

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  Hiccup flung himself at the Fernwinder’s retreating tail

  and just managed to grab hold of one of the spiny fins.

  The Fernwinder squealed in protest, and swung its tail

  wildly to try and free itself from Hiccup’s grasp, but it

  did not halt its terrified progress, and leapt on through

  the tunnel, with Hiccup hanging on for dear life.

  That was a mad, hectic, sleigh-ride of a couple

  of minutes, with Hiccup bumping after the charging

  Fernwinder, the breath being knocked out of his poor

  battered body as he was dragged frantically through

  the undergrowth. But he could hear the cries of the

  Guardian Axemen growing fainter, and he desperately

  hung on, trying not to scream with each crunching jolt

  as the maddened Fernwinder took him deeper and

  deeper into the bracken.

  ‘Faster! Faster!’ squeaked the Hogfly in delight,

  peering out of the back of Hiccup’s backpack as they

  careered through the ferns.

  Twisting round corners, the Fernwinder

  stampeded on, with Hiccup dragging after him like

  a broken doll, until the creature’s tail gave a final

  frenzied swipe, and Hiccup could hold on no longer,

  and spiralled to a bruising halt. Panting hard, Hiccup

  picked himself up, and very cautiously poked his head

  above the fern canopy. His spirits rose with excitement

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  this time, rather than fear.

  The Fernwinder could have taken him anywhere

  on the island. He could have been further away than

  ever from his destination.

  But by sheer, blind, dumb luck, he had been

  dragged towards the Castle rather than away from it.

  He was only a couple of hundred yards away now.

  This could not be luck. It had to be Fate.

  Ignoring the pain, Hiccup forced himself on, on,

  on, half-limping, half-crawling through the clinging

  mud and brambles.

  On, on, on.

  9. THE PROPHECY OF

  GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY

  In Grimbeard’s Castle, the ceremony for the crowning

  of the next King of the Wilderwest was underway.

  Inside the great ruined walls, the surviving

  remnants of the Tribes of the Archipelago were

  gathered: burnt, hungry, wounded and exhausted by

  this terrible War against the dragons.

  The necessity for that Crowning could not be

  more self-evident.

  For Grimbeard’s City had been built at the exact

  place where Grimbeard himself would have the best

  view of his Kingdom. To the north, the towering peaks

  of the Murderous Mountains. To the west, the ocean

  stretched out forever. And to the south and east, every

  single island of the Archipelago was in flames. Even

  those villages that the Dragon Rebellion had taken

  months ago burned afresh, for the Dragon Furious had

  sent his armies out to re-light the fires

  as a signal to the

  humans, on this Doomsday of Yule, that the Day of

  Reckoning had arrived.

  It was as if the whole world was on fire.

  The Great Dragon himself was stretched out in

  Wrecker’s Bay, so unimaginably enormous he made

  the Bay look like a shallow pool. He could see them

  gathered there in their ruined Castle, puny little human

  ants.

  ‘See, you pathetic human worms,’ hissed the

  Dragon Furious. ‘See, and be afraid.’

  The Dragon Furious spoke in a voice so low

  and powerful and at such an extraordinary frequency

  that it caused great waves to roll out across the Inner

  Ocean. It was so loud that all could hear it: the people

  of the Archipelago in the Castle, Fishlegs and Camicazi

  on the back of the Shadow Dragon, even Hiccup,

  stumbling as fast as he could through the bracken.

  The Dragon spoke in Norse, for Seadragons can

  speak Norse when they so choose.

  ‘This is the Doomsday of Yule, and on this day,

  destruction awaits you all! CROWN your pathetic new

  King of the Wilderwest, put him on your silly human

  Throne, and then bring him out here to face ME in

  single combat… And once I have destroyed him, I shall

  not rest until I have destroyed every last human being

  breathing on this earth!’

  The Dragon lifted up his great head, and

  lightning poured out of his mouth in an upward storm,

  and the sky lit up with an extraordinary bright light, as

  all across the Archipelago the dragons answered his cry.

  On the clifftop, the Dragonmarkers and the

  Alvinsmen held up their arms and hid their faces to

  shield them from the blinding brightness of the light as

  the whole world in front of them turned into a sea of

  flames, burning with the brightness of mini-suns.

  The numberless dragons of the Dragon Rebellion

  joined in that terrible unearthly screaming, a sound

  of WAR so dreadful that the mountains echoed with

  it, and the ground actually shook with the multiple

  stamping of the dragons’ feet as if it were the beginning

  of an earthquake. It was a sound that sent the hair

  on every Viking’s head a-quivering, for a people

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  accustomed to War knew what that sound meant.

  Oh dear, thought Hiccup as he scrambled like

  a mouse through the bracken. As the echoes of this

  terrible noise died away, a dreadful silence came over

  the massed Tribes of Vikings standing in the ruined

  Throne Room of what had once been the Castle of

  Grimbeard the Ghastly, as if for the very first time, they

  realised that the end was near.

  This was their last hope, this Crowning of the

  King, the last throw of the dice for a people trapped

  and surrounded on the Island of Tomorrow, and the

  Dragon Jewel seemed a small protection against the

  coming apocalypse.

  Of one accord, the Tribes began to sing the Last

  Song of Grimbeard the Ghastly, the Song he sang just

  before he went into the west on his ship The Endless

  Journey, never to be seen again.

  ‘I sailed so far to be a King, but the time

  was never right…

  I lost my way on a stormy past, got wrecked in

  starless night…

  But let m
y heart be wrecked by hurricanes and my

  ship by stormy weather

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  I know I am a Hero and a

  Hero is FOREVER!’

  ‘In another time, another place,

  I could have been a King,

  But in my Castle’s ruined towers the

  lonely seabirds sing,

  I burnt up my Tomorrows,

  I cannot go back ever,

  But I am still a Hero…

  and a Hero is FOREVER!’

  A shiver went down Alvin’s spine. ‘I wish

  they wouldn’t sing that,’ he whispered

  to his mother. For that was the song

  that Hiccup had been singing when

  they killed him. ‘It is as if the boy is

  haunting me, even now, in the hour of

  my triumph…’

  ‘Hush, my sweeting,’ Excellinor

  whispered back. ‘The boy is gone

  forever, food for the little fishes. He

  is an ex-boy, as dead as Grimbeard

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  the Ghastly himself…

  Enjoy your victory.’

  The Druid Guardian stepped

  forward.

  ‘Give me the King’s Things,’

  rasped the old man.

  Alvin held up the King’s

  Lost Things.

  All were mouse-quiet now.

  Even the Dragon Rebellion were

  quiet, as if the dragons, too, were

  trying to listen to what was going on

  in the ruined castle. It was as if they all

  knew that hundreds of years of dragon and

  human history had been leading up to this

  moment.

  The Druid Guardian examined the

  Things. He held up the Dragon Jewel so that

  its amber caught the light. The Jewel, so small

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  that it could easily fit into a human fist, seemed a tiny

  protection against the coming apocalypse.

  He took Toothless out of the cage in which he

  was cowering, and stroked him gently. ‘Dragons should

  not be in cages,’ murmured the Druid Guardian softly.

  ‘Be proud, little dragon, and hold your head high, for

  you are the first Lost Thing…’

  Poor little Toothless cheered up a little at this

  human kindness. He licked the Druid Guardian’s hand