by dragons’ talons, body coated in sea salt. He had
been bitten on the hand by a Vampire Spydragon the
other day, so his left arm had swollen up, and his
whole left-hand side was a strange purple colour.
An odd sort of Hero, for the worst crisis humanity
has ever faced.
But he was alive, at least… just.
On Hiccup’s chest there perched a very ancient
hunting-dragon called the Wodensfang, over a
thousand years old, and as wrinkled and tattered as a
crumbling brown leaf.
The Wodensfang had tried to haul Hiccup up the
beach, gripping on to Hiccup’s torn collar, and pulling
as hard as he could, with his little old tired legs, but the
Wodensfang was only the size of a small skinny rabbit,
so the sad bedraggled body of the unconscious boy did
not move so much as an inch.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ moaned the Wodensfang
desperately, warming Hiccup’s heart with the heat of
his own body and gently trying to wake him by blowing
warm air into his face. ‘This really couldn’t be worse…
they’re going to find us if we don’t get a move on…
32
and I’m worried the tide might come in and drown
you, just to add to our problems… Wake up, Hiccup,
wake up! You must wake up!’
The boy’s eyelids fluttered. In desperation, the
Wodensfang spat a little seawater into his face. The boy
spluttered, coughed.
‘Oh thank the great Wings in the Sky!’
exclaimed the Wodensfang, so agitated he hopped
from foot to foot, rubbing his wings together like a
grasshopper. ‘He’s alive and he’s waking up!’
The boy’s eyes opened. Or rather, one of them
did. The other was so swollen and bruised, he could
barely open it at all.
‘Oh Hiccup,’ crooned the Wodensfang, ‘I
am so sorry, boy, but you must get out of the sea
immediately… the tide is coming in…’
Hiccup sat up with a groan, coughing, and
put a hand to his forehead which ached as if Thor
the blacksmith was bringing down his hammer on
it repeatedly from the inside and the
outside with such ringing
blows that Hiccup’s ears
sang with the pain.
‘Where am
I?’ whispered
Hiccup, coughing
up sea-water and
struggling for
breath.
‘You’re on
the little Isle
of Hero’s End,’
explained the
Wodensfang.
‘Your ship sank,
with all the Lost Things on it, I’m afraid, so Alvin
retrieved them and he has them now, which means
we’re in a bit of a hurry, actually—’
‘Why was I on a ship?’ interrupted Hiccup.
‘Who is Alvin? What are the Lost Things? Who are
you? And, more importantly…
‘… who am I?’
The Wodensfang blinked at him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Who am I?’ repeated Hiccup.
‘You don’t know who you are?’ squeaked the
Wodensfang. ‘Are you really telling me you don’t know
who you are?’
Hiccup shook his head.
‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear!’ moaned the
Wodensfang. ‘However bad things seem to be, they
can always get worse! The boy has lost his memory!’
I’m afraid that the Wodensfang was right. Hiccup
had been hit on the head by the mast of the ship as it
sank, and he had indeed lost his memory.
‘I’m sorry,’ shivered Hiccup miserably. ‘I can’t
remember who I am, or why I am here, or anything at
all.’
He struggled to think, but it was as if the choking
smoke and fog that was all around them had crept
through his ears and into his aching head and turned
everything upside down and into confusion.
All he knew was that he was cold, and sore, and
something terrible had just happened, and he was in
the middle of doing something very important.
‘Oh this is a disaster! Not to mention a very
long story,’ said the Wodensfang, jumping anxiously
from foot to foot. ‘And I cannot emphasise more how
pushed we are for time. I am the Wodensfang, you are
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, and you’re a
very great Hero!’
‘Am I?’ said Hiccup, in surprise, looking down
at his ragged, skinny little frame. ‘But that seems so
unlikely!’
‘Trust me,’ said the Wodensfang. ‘It’s unlikely,
but you are. You’re not the normal sort of Viking
Hero, admittedly, but you’re very clever and you can
speak Dragonese, and you’re one of the only people
in the world who can do that. How extraordinary
that you don’t know who you are, but you can still
36
remember your Dragonese…’
‘So I can!’ said Hiccup in surprise, replying to the
Wodensfang, indeed, in Dragonese.
‘You’re going to have to concentrate very hard
here,’ fretted the Wodensfang, trying, unsuccessfully,
not to panic, ‘because we’re in a bit of a dire
situation. Look over there!’
The Wodensfang, thoroughly agitated, pointed a
shaking dragon wing to the north-east. Hiccup couldn’t
see out of one of his eyes, which was too swollen to
open, but if he tilted his head slightly to the left, and
slo-o-o-wly and painfully cracked open the bruised
eyelid of his right eye he could just about see out of
that one.
‘I can’t see anything over there,’ said Hiccup.
The fog was indeed so dense that you couldn’t really
see anything at all.
‘OK, you’re going to have to trust me on this,’
squeaked the Wodensfang. ‘OVER THERE, on the
Murderous Island, the Dragon Furious has gathered
together a multitude of dragons so enormous, so
ferocious, that the world has never seen anything like
it before. He has drawn them together, these wild and
lawless creatures, with a single aim…
‘And the aim of the Dragon Furious… is the
37
extinction of the entire human race.’
There was a nasty silence.
Hiccup swallowed hard as all around him the
smoke swirled, getting up and into his nose, and
making him cough, and the cold sea seemed to
have seeped into his very bones, so that he shivered
uncontrollably, and he could hear his heart beating:
thump… thump… thump…
‘Doomsday…’ whispered Hiccup in slow horror,
a single dim memory coming back to him, like a
Sharkworm fin surfacing in the water, and disappearing
again as suddenly as it had returned. ‘Doomsday… The
last battle between the dragons and the humans…
‘Are you quite sure about this?’ said Hiccup,
peering uncertainly into that smog.
‘I’m absolutely sure,’ gabbled the Wodensfang
in a quiver of anxiety. ‘And you, Hiccup Horrendous
&
nbsp; Haddock the Third, are the Hero who is the humans’
and the dragons’ last and only hope.’
‘I am?’ spluttered Hiccup. ‘Me?’
He gave a strangled, disbelieving laugh and
looked down at his battered body. He had legs like
pieces of seaweed, and arms like chicken wings, and
his left forearm seemed to have been attacked by
something, because it had swollen up to twice the size
38
of a normal forearm. It was also purple, along with the
entire left side of his body.
‘Heroes have to swordfight and throw axes and
spears and stuff. What can I do against a dragon
army like that?’ Hiccup said in some desperation.
‘Actually, you’re a surprisingly good
swordfighter—’
Hiccup flapped his floppy forearm at the
Wodensfang. ‘Not right now I’m not! I can’t hold a
sword. What am I going to do, flap my opponents to
death? Maybe I could dribble on them, that would be
scary…’
The Wodensfang ignored this interruption.
‘We need to get off this island as soon as
possible. I’ve been watching the Dragon Rebellion
sending out search parties hunting for you all night
and— oh! Oh dear!’
The little brown dragon gave a short sharp
exclamation, his big eyes opened wide, and he looked
down at a small brown dart protruding from one of his
little skinny shoulder-blades.
‘Oh! Oh my goodness, I’ve been hit!’ squeaked
the Wodensfang. Many species of dragons shot little
darts containing a mild poison that sent their prey
to sleep. Wodensfang pointed a wing up towards the
39
grasses at the back of the beach. ‘Mayday! Mayday!
Dragon Rebellion search party!’
Hiccup whirled around. There was nothing to
be seen in any direction on the beach, only that thick
black smoke and the wind and the cry of seagulls.
Z-I-N-G!
Another little dart flew past Hiccup’s nose,
missing him by inches. It seemed to be coming from
the bluff of the beach behind them. There wasn’t time
to think, Hiccup had to react automatically.
Hiccup leaped to his feet and made the
unwelcome discovery that not only was the whole
left-hand side of his body an unusual colour, his left leg
was as numb as his arm and as floppy as a jellyfish.
He staggered forward, wobbling like a drunken
sailor, fell over at exactly the right moment for another
dart to miss him and go sailing over his head, skidded
up to the Wodensfang, removed the dart from the little
dragon’s shoulder-blade, and stuffed him in the ragged
remains of his waistcoat.
‘Are you all right?’ stuttered Hiccup.
‘I’m fine!’ squeaked the Wodensfang. ‘A bit of a
numbing effect but otherwise fine…’
Z-I-N-G! Z-I-N-G! Z-I-N-G!
Hiccup rolled behind a large nearby rock. The
40
little darts were coming from up on the grassy edge
of the beach, thought Hiccup to himself, his heart
thumping with horror. He tilted his head and tried to
peer over the edge of the rock through his one good
eye, through the smoke and the fog…
And then he saw them.
Eyes.
Dragon eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Oh, for Thor’s sake.
He was being hunted.
2. YOU SEE, IT JUST GOT
WORSE AGAIN LESS THAN
FIVE MINUTES INTO THE
STORY
‘What’s going on?’ whispered Hiccup to the
Wodensfang. ‘Who are these dragons? Why do they
want to kill me?’
The Wodensfang’s eyelids were drooping in a
worrying way, as if he was about to lose consciousness.
‘I told you…’ he squeaked. ‘Those are Dragon
Rebellion dragons and they want to stop you from
becoming King because you are the Hero who finds
the Lost Things…’
‘What?’ yelled Hiccup, as…
Z-Z-I-I-ING!!!
… many more darts shot briskly past the rock
they were hiding behind.
‘Oh dear,’ gabbled the Wodensfang, very, very
quickly, for he could feel himself falling asleep. ‘It’s a
very long story, Hiccup, but it’s so important that
you understand everything… Where shall I start?
A long time ago, on the island of Tomorrow, King
Grimbeard the Ghastly killed his son Hiccup the
43
Second, because
he thought that his son
was leading a Rebellion against
him, and imprisoned his son’s
dragon, the Dragon Furious, in a
forest prison—’
‘We haven’t got time for the
WHOLE story!’ shouted Hiccup, as
darts sang Z-Z-ZING Z-ING ZING over
their heads. ‘Just tell me the important
bits!’
‘ALL of the bits are important!’
squealed the Wodensfang in a total panic.
‘I’m going to have to find somewhere
a bit safer for us to hide,’ said Hiccup. ‘This
rock isn’t big enough—’
At that point, so completely out of the
blue that Hiccup nearly had a heart attack,
something wriggled at the back of his neck and
something said in a deep little voice:
‘Where’s the biscuit?’
‘AAARGGHHH!’ yelped Hiccup,
flapping desperately at the back of his head,
under the understandable impression that
something was attacking him from behind,
44
and had got him by the neck.
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry,’ said the Wodensfang
soothingly, ‘that’s just another little dragon, you must
have put him in your backpack to protect him when
the boat sank, but don’t worry, he’s no danger, he’s
on our side… He must have just woken up…’
Sure enough, Hiccup was wearing a small, very
bashed-about backpack, and out of the backpack
buzzed a small, circular lapdragon that bore a
remarkable resemblance to a happy little pig.
It was a Hogfly.
Hogflys are the stupidest, most good-natured
dragons in the Archipelago, far more likely to lick
your enemies than to bite them, and much more of a
hindrance than a help.
‘Woof, woof!’ barked the happy little Hogfly
enthusiastically. (The Hogfly was under the impression
that it was a dog.) ‘Hello, Mother! Is it teatime? I can
help! I can be tremendously helpful!’
‘Oh dear… yes, I’m sure you can,’ said
Hiccup, feeling a little hysterical, ‘but
in the meantime just stay
here with us behind this
rock and try not to
get SHOT.’
‘Back to
the story,’ said
the Wodensfang.
‘Grimbeard the Ghastly
repented, and declared there
would never be a King of the
Wilderwest again, unless the King
could be a better King than he was. He
created an
Impossible Task, by hiding ten
Lost Things. Only a true Hero can gather the
Things together and become the next King of the
Wilderwest…’
Hiccup wasn’t really listening to the story. He
was peering over the rock to look up at the bluff of the
beach.
Dark shapes were beginning to slink over the
bluff and down on to the sandy beach. They dug into
the sand until only the fins on the top of their heads
were showing, and then the shark-like fins moved
through the sand, as easily as if it were water.
Every now and then the creatures would
thrust their heads above the sand to fire
their drugged darts…
This is ridiculous! thought
Hiccup.
Here he was, with that
funny little brown dragon
saying he was this great
Hero, and Hiccup could
feel how weak he was,
how defenceless. He could barely move, let alone fight
off a pack of shark-like dragons.
At this point, a memory popped up at him out of
nowhere, like an uncontrollable jack-in-a-box.
Sand-Sharks.
He knew what these dragons were, they were
Sand-Sharks.
He didn’t know how he knew; he just knew.
And, as it turned out, he didn’t just know a little
bit about Sand-Sharks.
He knew everything about them.
He knew that they were pack-animals about
the size of a dog or wolf. They could hunt prey much
larger than themselves by using their darts to send their
victims to sleep. Once they’d shot a number of darts
into their target, it would fall unconscious, and they
could swarm all over it, and kill their prey without it
putting up a fight.
‘Most unfortunately,’ squeaked the Wodensfang,
desperately carrying on with the story, even though
no one was listening, ‘although you of course found
all the Lost Things, Hiccup, Alvin the Treacherous
has stolen the Things from you, and he is about to
be crowned King, and once he is crowned, he will
be told the secret of the Dragon Jewel, which has
the power to destroy all dragons forever… Are you
concentrating on this story, Hiccup?’
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 2