How to Train Your Dragon: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse Read online

161

  over his eyes) Toothless flew over the waving nails of the

  Squealers. This was very brave of him, for if he looked

  down he could see their horrible black bobby bodies with

  the piranha teeth, and to a dragon as small as Toothless,

  it was like wandering casually in front of a pack of lions

  with open jaws.

  Hovering above the casket, he was so scared that

  for a moment his fireholes seized up, and he couldn’t

  breathe out a single flame, only clouds and clouds of

  bluey-grey smoke.

  ‘Relax…’ whispered Hiccup from the table.

  ‘Breathe deeply… no pressure… you’ve all the time

  in the world…’ Hiccup was trying to sound as calm as

  he could even though half the room was on fire.

  ‘All the time in the world…’ sang Hiccup

  nervously. ‘Just relax… go to your happy place…’

  The nails of the Squealers began to twitch as

  they sensed the smoke.

  ‘HA!’ puffed Toothless furiously, practically

  disappearing he was making so much steam.

  ‘Toothless’s h-h-happy place! Happy place N-N-

  NOT here!’ and to Hiccup’s intense relief, Toothless’s

  final indignant snort ended in a big breath of fire that

  engulfed the entire casket.

  ‘Don’t set fire to the potato!’ Hiccup

  162

  reminded him.

  ‘S-s-set fire to this! DON’T set fire to that!’

  complained Toothless. ‘Mister Hiccup just stop being

  such a B-BOSSY-BOOTS and give a dragon a

  chance!’

  But he made his flame smaller, and directed it

  steadily at the ice around the potato, and slowly, surely,

  the ice began to melt.

  Meanwhile, Camicazi climbed back up to the

  ceiling again, and wriggled along the beams until she was

  directly above Norbert’s Papa.

  She let herself down on another rope, so that she

  was hanging, like a little spider, about a metre above the

  casket, and then she wound the rope around her ankle

  and flipped upside down.

  She waited until Toothless had finished melting

  the ice, and had flapped off back to the safe distance of

  Hiccup’s shoulder.

  Right in front of Norbert’s Papa’s frozen staring

  eyes, Camicazi reached into the casket and carefully,

  delicately, removed the potato with the arrow stuck in it

  from the bed of ice.

  Hiccup held his breath. If the casket was booby-

  trapped, this would be the moment that something might

  happen…

  163

  But there did not seem to be any booby-traps.

  Camicazi swung there, potato in one hand.

  Norbert’s Papa wobbled for a second on his stand, but

  he was still grinning ferociously, his eyes staring straight

  ahead at nothing. (He was DEAD, after all.) The snores

  of the sleeping Hysterics rumbled peacefully through the

  quiet Hall.

  Camicazi put the potato in her pocket.

  ‘She’s done it, she’s done it, she’s done it…’

  whispered Hiccup to himself.

  Camicazi was about to turn herself the right

  way up again and climb the rope, but then she spotted

  something else in the casket.

  ‘Uh oh…’ whispered Hiccup.

  Camicazi couldn’t resist. She reached in and

  picked the something else out of the casket…

  For one second it seemed like it still might be all

  right again.

  But it turned out that the frozen body of

  Norbert’s Papa was very carefully balanced, and when

  this second weight was removed from the casket, it

  began to tip s-l-o-w-l-y backwards, and then gathering

  speed, until the entire body crashed like a great tree

  trunk into the waving forest of Squealers down below.

  165

  166

  screeched the Squealers.

  The noise they made was simply ear-splitting.

  The glass of the frozen casket shattered into

  pieces, and the ice inside fell to the floor.

  All over the room, the Hysterics sat bolt upright

  as if electrified, blearily opening their eyes and saying,

  ‘Wossat? Wassgoing on?’ to each other. Even with

  the scarf and Hiccup’s hands over his ears, poor old

  Toothless nearly fainted from the loudness of the noise.

  ‘Watch out, Camicazi!’ yelled Hiccup. Norbert

  the Nutjob woke up, and threw his double-headed axe

  straight at Camicazi, dangling from her rope. Camicazi

  saw the axe coming, and let herself drop.

  167

  The axe missed, and Camicazi landed on the

  floor, or, more precisely, on the gigantic wobbly stomach

  of a Hysteric who was so dead to the world he didn’t

  even wake up.

  Norbert the Nutjob ran to drag his frozen father

  out of the mass of shrieking Squealers. Stiff and ice-cold

  as he was, they still tried to eat him, blunting their teeth

  on his hard frozen legs, slashing their horrible long nails

  on his solid-frozen moustaches. Once he had pulled

  his Papa to safety, the Squealers stopped screaming as

  abruptly as they had begun. Norbert the Nutjob drew his

  sword and strode towards Camicazi, with a murderous

  expression on his face…

  ‘GET OUT OF HERE!’ screamed Camicazi.

  ‘I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me!’

  Hiccup was standing right in the middle

  of the table. About twenty large Warriors were

  already advancing towards him, swords,

  axes and daggers drawn. The odds

  were not on Hiccup’s side…

  and Hiccup was completely and

  entirely unarmed.

  He had no bow and arrow,

  no dagger. He did not even have

  his sword, for Norbert the Nutjob

  168

  had taken it from him earlier, if you remember. (Which

  was a shame, because Hiccup was good at sword-

  fighting.)

  So, in absence of his sword, Hiccup picked up

  two large, sloppy, creamy pumpkin pies, and crashed

  them like cymbals on either side of another Warrior’s

  face. The Hysteric fell backwards, a sticky, dripping,

  pumpkin mess, and promptly sat down on the smaller

  Warrior behind him.

  Meanwhile, dodging Hysteric sword-thrusts,

  Hiccup grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which

  happened to be a gigantic half-eaten TURKEY

  carcass, and shoved it over the head of the closest

  Warrior. The Hysteric’s arms were pinned by his sides,

  muffled shouting noises came from within the turkey,

  and he staggered off, like a grotesquely large dead

  chicken with human legs.

  Hiccup was getting into the swing of things.

  He tipped an entire bowl of maple syrup on the floor,

  sending the Hysterics slipping and sliding all over the

  place. He winded another Warrior with a watermelon.

  He pelted them all with onions. Now the

  Squealers had stopped squealing, Toothless flew down

  from the roof to join in the battle. He found a bowl

  of chestnuts, sucked up a whole mouthful so that his

  cheeks were bulging like
a hamster, and zoomed over

  the heads of the Warriors, spitting out fire and red-hot

  roasted chestnuts like a barrage of flaming bullets.

  Chaos reigned in the Great Hall. Vegetables

  flew in all directions. Hysterics who had been woken by

  a fat overripe tomato splattered in their faces assumed

  that this was all just a merry midnight food-fight, and

  170

  enthusiastically attacked their fellow Hysterics.

  ‘Hurry up, Camicazi!’ screamed Hiccup, slapping

  another opponent around the cheek with a large flat

  flounder, and running up the other end of the table.

  Camicazi had problems of her own. She was

  defending herself against Norbert the Nutjob, who was

  livid with rage and lashing out at her with his sword.

  Norbert the Nutjob had had a trying couple of

  days. His bottom was still throbbing from the arrow-

  wound, Hiccup had made a fool out of him in the

  Ordeal-by-Axe, somebody appeared to have bitten off

  his beloved moustaches, and the Hooligans were even

  now stealing his Papa’s American Vegetable.

  And they hadn’t even had the decency to send

  some proper adult Assassins! This third Assassin was

  even smaller than the first two. To add insult to injury,

  he, Norbert the Nutjob, noble Chief of the Hysteric

  Tribe, and Master Swordsman, was finding it difficult

  to defeat this tiny little blonde Assassin in one-to-one

  combat. She just wouldn’t stay still.

  She met every lunge he made, carelessly singing

  the Bog-Burglar national anthem as she did so. She

  performed cartwheels between moves. She even picked

  up a piece of wild boar sandwich off the floor and

  started to eat it, while still fighting.

  171

  She talked CONSTANTLY.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me

  eating on the job,’ she said chattily,

  easily deflecting his Grimbeard’s

  Grapple sword-thrust, and

  throwing in a Piercing Point

  of her own. ‘I know it’s

  rather rude to fight with

  my mouth full, but I’m

  absolutely STARVING,

  haven’t eaten a thing

  all evening…’

  172

  Norbert the Nutjob gave a grim smile and sprang

  forward with a particularly violent sword-thrust.

  She dodged it, leapt up, swung on his beard while

  she wiped her sticky fingers on his shirt-front, and sprang

  back down again.

  ‘I’m going to KILL you…’ panted Norbert the

  Nutjob, his eyes watering with the pain of having his

  beard pulled. ‘First with my sword, and then with my

  axe, and then I’m going to feed you to the Squealers.’

  ‘You clever, clever boy!’ sang Camicazi,

  delightedly spotting her rope dangling just behind his

  head. ‘But you’ll have to CATCH me first, you know…’

  And with that, she somersaulted right between

  his legs, came up the other side, and squirmed up her

  rope with astonishing speed, pulling the end of it up

  behind her.

  Norbert the Nutjob looked down at his legs for

  a dazed moment, and then through them, and then

  he swung round to find that Camicazi had apparently

  vanished into thin air.

  He whirled around again. She wasn’t there either.

  How completely extraordinary…

  Camicazi, swinging centimetres above Norbert

  the Nutjob’s head, removed his helmet so gently, so

  softly, with her pick-pocketing, burglaring fingers, that he

  never felt a thing.

  She then bashed him on the head as hard as

  she could with the frozen potato. Norbert staggered a

  bit, swayed this way and that, and then fell to the floor,

  unconscious. As he lay prone, Camicazi dropped back

  down to the ground again, and patted him reassuringly

  on the shoulders.

  ‘Practice, Norbert, that’s what you need,’ she said

  condescendingly. ‘You’re never too old to learn.’

  ‘CAMICAZI!!!!!’ shrieked Hiccup from the

  banqueting table, knocking out a Hysteric with a leg of

  roasted buffalo, shoving a carrot up the nose of another,

  174

  and spraying three more with Home-made Nettle

  Champagne. ‘GET OVER HERE!’ Camicazi swung

  across, and landed on the table beside him.

  Most of the table was now in flames, and the fire

  had spread to ALL the polar bear rugs.

  Most ominous of all, the Squealers were actually

  MOVING to get out of the Hall. Squealers are so lazy

  that they only move when they are in mortal danger.

  They wriggled towards the door like disgusting fat,

  bloated slugs, their nails waving frantically, leaving a trail

  of snotty slime.

  The rope that snaked up to the chimney in the

  ceiling, the other end of which was attached to One

  Eye’s great leg, dangled between Camicazi and Hiccup.

  They both grabbed hold of it, coughing from the smoke,

  and tugged three times.

  Just the second before One Eye dragged them up

  and out of danger, Hiccup leant down and picked up a

  metal food tray from the table.

  And then they were up and away, the Hysteric

  swords just brushing their heels as they rose swiftly to the

  ceiling and out through the hole in the roof.

  14. THE POTATO-

  BURGLARS’ RUN

  They appeared, blinking like moles, into the daylight,

  for night had turned into morning while they were in

  the Hysterical Great Hall; the sky was no longer black

  but the bluey grey of a seagull’s back, and the sun was

  coming up fast from behind the Mazy Multitudes.

  Down below they could hear the roar of the

  Hysterics, the loudest of all being Norbert the Nutjob

  shouting, ‘MY VEGETABLE! THEY’VE GOT MY

  VEGETABLE!’ The Hysterics were already

  176

  stampeding towards the door, in pursuit.

  Hiccup knew they hadn’t a hope of getting

  away on foot, and they didn’t have time to find their

  skis again.

  In such situations, being tough is not

  necessarily the way to stay alive, because

  however tough you are, if there are five

  hundred Hysterics on skis and only

  FOUR of you, you are not going to

  win the battle.

  What you need in THIS

  kind of situation is a Clever Idea,

  and luckily Hiccup was good at

  Clever Ideas.

  Hiccup put the food tray

  down on the roof and sat on it.

  ‘Come on, Camicazi, you sit behind me,’ ordered

  Hiccup.

  ‘Oh, good-ee,’ said Camicazi, her eyes

  lighting up.

  The roof of the Great Hall hung slightly over the

  village walls. From there a steep slope ran all the way

  down to the harbour.

  So when the Hysterics poured out of the doors

  of the Great Hall in a shouting, angry river they had an

  excellent view of Camicazi and Hiccup tobogganing

  down the roof and sailing over the walls of the village on

  board one of their s
ilver food trays.

  ‘AAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!’ screamed Hiccup

  and Camicazi as they soared through the air.

  By some miracle they landed the right way up on

  the slope below.

  And then the lightning descent began.

  Take it from me, there is nothing on earth that

  moves faster than two children going down a practically

  vertical slope on a highly polished silver food tray.

  Hiccup had sledged before, but never on a hill

  so steep that it was practically a cliff. And in fact the

  exact descent that they made has now become an annual

  competition on Hysteria. It is known as ‘the Potato-

  Burglars’ Run’, and it follows the same route that Hiccup

  178

  and Camicazi took, starting, as they did, on top of

  the roof of the Great Hall, and ending, less than two

  minutes later, in Hysteria Harbour.

  ‘The Potato-Burglars’ Run’ is the most dangerous

  toboggan run in the Inner Isles, and for those brave

  enough to try it, accidents are common.

  Hiccup and Camicazi were lucky not to break

  their necks. They screamed down that hillside, wildly out

  of control, yelling at the tops of their voices.

  One Eye and Toothless couldn’t possibly keep

  up with them, for it was like trying to catch a speeding

  arrow.

  When they hit the ice of the harbour two bottom-

  bruising, hair-raising, eye-popping minutes later, they

  were going so fast that they wildly overshot the sleigh

  they had left there, and The Hopeful Puffin patiently

  waiting for their return.

  They scrambled off the food tray and raced

  towards the sleigh. One Eye came soaring down, and

  they hurriedly hitched him up and set him going at a

  brisk trot towards the Harbour Exit.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ panted Camicazi, looking

  back up at the Hysterical Village, where the Great Hall

  was now a gigantic bonfire. ‘Those Hysterics are going to

  be SO CROSS.’

  179

  ‘My congratulations,’ growled One Eye to

  Hiccup, as he pulled them rapidly forwards. ‘You are

  the first Human I have ever met who uses his brain