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yesterday, has had the Bad Luck to have been bitten by a Venomous Vorpent --"
"That IS Bad Luck," said Norbert the Nutjob with satisfaction. "Certain death, I'd say. I can't say I'm surprised, you know, he seemed like just the sort of little weirdo that Fate would have it in for." "Fishlegs is not a little weirdo!" interrupted Hiccup. "The point is, Norbert, I have been told that this potato of yours is the only antidote to Vorpent venom, and I wonder if you could possibly spare it to save my friend's life. It would be the kindest thing you've ever done."
Norbert the Nutjob was flabbergasted.
"And what," whispered Norbert the Nutjob, "would you do with my Papa's Precious Vegetable after I gave it to you?"
"Well," said Hiccup, "I guess my friend would eat it."
For a second Norbert the Nutjob stared into space.
Then he was livid with rage, whirling his double-headed axe around his head. "EAT IT????" roared Norbert the Nutjob. "YOU SHOOT ME IN THE BOTTOM AND THEN YOU WANT TO
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DIVIDE UP AND EAT MY DEAR DEAD PAPAS PRECIOUS AMERICAN VEGETABLE????? KILL HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM!!!!"
After a short struggle, he calmed down again, and turned to Hiccup with great dignity, holding up his arms. "I could," said Norbert the Nutjob, "kill you right now, you Evil Vegetable Murderer ... but we Hysterics are not like that. We Hysterics are CIVILIZED. We never execute before we have given lousy potato-savaging criminals an absolutely fair trial. And on Hysteria" -- Norbert the Nutjob gave a nasty mad leer -- "the Trial you face is Trial by Axe." Oh, crumbs thought Hiccup.
Norbert the Nutjob strode over to the middle of the room where there was a large tree trunk, lopped off at the base.
"Fate herself shall decide your Fate," said Norbert the Nutjob. "I shall throw my axe high into the air ... and if it lands with the golden side burying itself into the wood, I shall allow you to live. But if it lands on the dark side" -- Norbert the Nutjob stroked
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the dark side lovingly -- "if it lands on the dark side, I shall kill you with this very axe, on the spot. I hope you're feeling lucky..."
Norbert stepped back dramatically. He gazed up at the heavens ... "COME, GREAT POWERS OF FATE AND DESTINY" Yelled Norbert the Nutjob. "I SWEAR TO DO AS YOU TELL ME. LIFE OR DEATH?"
The axe soared toward the ceiling, spinning slowly through the air. It began to fall, first the bright side down, then the dark.
[Image: An axe.]
Hiccup was not as tough as the other boys, but his
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eyesight was very good. He could see the axe was going to land dark side down, and he leaped in between the dark and bright blades, and caught the axe with its wooden handle just before the dark side landed in the wood.
The Hysterics gasped.
High up on a beam in the ceiling, Camicazi gasped too.
Hiccup heaved the axe above his head and drove the bright blade deep into the tree trunk.
"BRIGHT SIDE WINS, NORBERT THE NUTJOB," shouted Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, his hands on his hips.
Nobody knew quite what to do.
Norbert the Nutjob's mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water.
"You CHEATED!" screamed Norbert the Nutjob.
"Fate must have let me cheat," Hiccup pointed out. "Now set me free like you promised."
Norbert looked as if he was about to explode. He was used to terrified adults who cowered down before him and his terrible Axe of Fate.
He WASN'T used to bossy small boys who told him to defrost his Precious Potato and bury his Papa, and who caught his Axe before it landed.
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But what if Hiccup was right, and Fate had really meant to LET Hiccup cheat?
Norbert did not dare annoy FATE herself.
"SEIZE HIM!" screamed Norbert. "He can live, but he can live out his days in prison! That will teach him to shoot arrows at NORBERT THE NUTJOB!"
Four or five burly Hysterics grabbed Hiccup and dragged him to a small cage suspended by a single chain from a beam in the rafters above. They pushed him in and locked the cage, returning the key to Norbert, who put it in his pocket.
And then the Hysterics forgot about Hiccup, and partied long, long into the night, laughing and singing and eating and drinking too much.
Hiccup sat silently in the small cage, trying to think of a Cunning Plan to get out of this situation.
It didn't look too good.
Even if he could escape from the locked cage, steal the potato and get away without a single Hysteric noticing, he could hear some ominous creaking noises coming from the ice outside.... Loud cracking and knockings like the striking of an enormous sword upon a stone.
The ice was beginning to melt, and once the
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Doomfang was free again there would be no way out of Hysteria ...
As the long night wore on, one by one the Hysterics fell asleep in their chairs or on the floor, or, in the case of one fat Warrior, on top of the table hugging the remains of the roasted boar. Norbert the Nutjob slumbered on his throne, his thumb in his mouth, cradling his double-headed axe. High up in the ceiling of the Great Hall Camicazi was sleeping, clinging to her beam like a little black cat. Time ticked on, and Hiccup struggled to keep awake, but eventually the gentle rocking of the cage, and the cloudy heat and fumes of alcohol in the room overpowered him, and he too nodded off.
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[Image: A man in the cage.]
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VIKING DRAGONS AND THEIR EGGS
SQUEALERS
Squealers are strange Blobby, slug like creatures who are so lazy they have developed an interesting method of stunning their prey with a single shriek. A pack of Squealers can strip their victim to the bone quicker than a shoal of piranha fish.
--STATISTICS--
COLORS: Slug black.
ARMED WITH: Scream so loud it can knock a smaller dragon unconscious. Piranha-like jaws and fangs... 8
POISON: None......0
HUNTING ABILITY: ... 7
SPEED: Hardly move at all.....0
FEAR AND FIGHT FACTOR: Scary if you are wounded or are on the small side.... 7
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12. WILL TOOTHLESS SAVE THE DAY?
Meanwhile, up on the roof, Toothless and One Eye had flapped off and hidden in The American Dream when they heard the noise of Hiccup falling into the Onion Soup, and the Hysteric Warriors charging outside to look for other Assassins.
When things grew quiet again, they flew back to the chimney. Both dragons were cold, hungry, and tired. One Eye's eye gleamed golden-yellow in the darkness.
"Shall we leave them?" One Eye mused to himself. "It look like they haven't found the cure for Vorpentitis after all...and I'm not hanging around here just to save the skin of a couple of stinking Humans..."
"S-s-selfish Humans! grumbled Toothless. They n-n-never think of poor, cold H-H-H-HUNGRY Toothless!"
One Eye snorted. "Well, I don't blame them for that. You're
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just a lap-dragon, an overgrown rat. And YOU shouldn't be hungry anyway. Who ate all the snacks in the sleigh on the way here, I'd like to know?"
"...I'll give them till morning," One Eye decided, letting the rope attached to his leg flop down the chimney and into the Great Hall again, and settling himself in the snow to sleep on the roof. "My aunt Snaggletooth died of Vorpentitis, and it's a nasty way to go."
"Toothless not s-s-sieeping here!" moaned Toothless, outraged. "Iss too cold! Toothless D-D-DELICATE, sensitive ..." He checked whether the big dragon was really asleep. One Eye gave a deep rumbling snore and Toothless carried on, "... not like YOU, you big, white, gormless mountain gorilla..." One Eye's one eye snapped open, and his big Saber-Toothed jaws lashed out toward Toothless ... but they shut on thin air, for Toothless had the reflexes of a bluebottle, and he had already tumbled down through the hole in the roof. Toothless soared into the Great Hall, over the
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heads of the sleeping
, mumbling Hysterics, and landed on top of Hiccup's cage. The cage swung violently to the right, and Hiccup's head banged sharply on one of the bars, waking him up.
"Ow!" protested Hiccup, looking straight into the upside-down greengage eyes of his pet dragon. "Toothless!" he whispered joyfull.
"Thank Thor you're here; you see how right I was to bring you--you can save the day!" "HA!" grunted Toothless crossly. "Just flap over to that big frozen Viking over there, will you and steal the potato, and then we'll be off..." whispered Hiccup.
Toothless looked where Hiccup was pointing, to Norbert's Papa, Bigjob, and the casket, and gave a shriek of terror.
[Image: Dragons.]
"S-s-squealers!" he gasped, and jumped into the cage, burying his face in Hiccup's leg.
"Oh, goodness, yes, I'd forgotten. Squealers can kill a dragon as small as you, can't they?" remembered Hiccup, soothing the little dragon by
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stroking him on the back. "OK, don't steal the potato, but the key to this cage is in Norbert the Nutjob's pocket, and if you could just flap off and get it ..."
But Toothless had smelled the Onion Soup on Hiccup's leg, and he gave it a lick. "Onion S-s-soup!" said Toothless accusingly. "You bin eating Onion S-s-soup!"
"Yes, Yes," said Hiccup hurriedly, "I fell in the soup, but about the key --" But this was the last straw as far as Toothless was concerned. He was FURIOUS, and he swelled up to nearly twice his size with anger, and flew out of the cage like an infuriated little balloon.
"SNOT fair! SNOT fair!" snorted Toothless.
"You been stuffing yourself with Onion S-s-soup and poor T-t-toothless STARVING and now you want Toothless to f-f-face a whole load of Squealers with no food in his t-t-tummy? TYPICAL! Well, you can
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just WAIT, that's all...Toothless'll have his supper and THEN maybe he'll help you out ..."
"TOOTHLESS!" whispered Hiccup, as loud as he dared, "THIS IS IMPORTANT! GET THAT REY RIGHT NOW OR I'LL...I'LL...I'LL..."
"You'll what?" jeered Toothless cheekily, flapping out of Hiccup's way as he desperately tried to grab Toothless's tail through the bars of the cage.
Sticking out his little pink forked tongue, Toothless hopped down onto the banqueting tables and tucked into the roast buffalo pie, ignoring Hiccup's furious, frustrated whispers from the cage swinging a couple of meters above.
"Toothless can't hear!" sang Toothless through a mouthful of pumpkin. "Got s-s something in his ear!
Oooooh, that rhymes ...Toothless ca-a-an't he-ar, got something in his e-ar! Toothless ca-a-an't he ar, got something in his e-ar!"
And for the next five minutes, Toothless pretended to be quite deaf, and took his time hopping from plate to plate, gorging himself on
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deep-fried mackerel, turkey wings, and sweetcorn fritters.
Eventually, he swallowed the last remains of the pie, took a big swig of the Homemade Nettle Champagne, burped, and rubbed his stomach contentedly.
"That's b-b-better. Toothless can hear now. Wossat you saying?"
"WILL YOU GET THAT KEY FROM
NORBERT THE NUTJOB'S POCKET BEFORE HE MURDERS US?" hissed Hiccup at the top of his whisper.
"S-s-say pretty please pretty please ...," sang Toothless.
"Pretty please," whispered Hiccup through gritted teeth.
"OK, OK, keep your hair on," said Toothless, and he took off (rather wobbly, because he had eaten so much), and crash-landed on Norbert the Nutjob's chest. Luckily, Norbert was so dead to the world he merely grunted, and hugged his axe a little closer.
Giggling, Toothless snipped off both of Norbert the Nutjob's fancy mustaches with two bites of his sharp little gums, and then he staggered into Norbert's pocket and pulled out the key.
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Toothless marched across the banqueting table with the key in his mouth, spitting it out every now and then to make pointed remarks to Hiccup.
"Is TYPICAL," snorted Toothless. "T-t-typical. Poor old starving T-t-toothless, woken up from his H-h-hibernation Nap just to save the day YET AGAIN."
Toothless put the key back in his mouth, and this time, his large, overfull belly prevented him from seeing exactly where he was putting his feet, and he tripped over a knife lying in the middle of the table.
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Toothless lurched forward, knocking a candle off the table and onto the floor, where it promptly set fire to a polar bear rug. He did a couple of somersaults, spinning over and over until he landed bottom first in the wild boar stew, and ... swallowed the key.
[Image: Dragons.]
[Insert: gulp Gulp.]
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13. THE GREAT POTATO BURGLARY
"AAAARGH! raged Hiccup, shaking the bars of his cage. "Typical! Five minutes ago I was just locked in a cage in a room full of Hysteric Warriors. NOW you've swallowed the key and set fire to the room! Flap up and wake up Camicazi and then PUT OUT THAT FIRE!"
"S-s-say pretty please ...," choked Toothless defiantly.
"PRETTY PLEASE!" howled Hiccup in the loudest whisper he could whisper.
Toothless flew unsteadily up to the beam where Camicazi was sleeping, and woke her up by shrieking softly, "No key! No key!" in her ear, before flying back to deal with the fire.
Camicazi took charge of the situation from the moment she opened her eyes. She got up, calmly balancing on the beam, for all the world as if she was safely down on the ground rather than almost twenty meters up in the air.
She unwound another rope from around her
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waist, and threw the metal end of it so that it wrapped around the beam from which Hiccup's cage was suspended. She pulled to check it was secure, and then swung out, clinging to the rope, and landed on the top of Hiccup's cage.
Camicazi wriggled down the outside of the cage, and looked hard at the lock on the door. She felt in her pocket and brought out a long pin like instrument, and stuck it in the lock, wiggling it expertly from side to side.
"That was so brave of you!" she whispered. "For a boy, of course.... Leaping down into the soup like that! We'd NEVER have found out where they kept the potato if you hadn't done that..."
Hiccup considered telling her it had all been a total accident, and then thought better of it. "Oh, you know ...," he whispered modestly back. "It was nothing. I do that kind of... leaping all the time. What are you doing?"
"Picking the lock," replied Camicazi airily. "Locks are nothing to us Bog-Burglars ... no prisons can hold us. We're as wriggly as eels. We're as jumpy as crickets."
The lock suddenly clicked loudly, and the door of Hiccup's cage swung open.
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"Your exit, my lord," grinned Camicazi.
Hiccup scrambled out of the cage, and dropped down onto the banqueting table below, unable to believe his luck.
'And now," frowned Camicazi, "for the Vegetable-That-No-One-Dares-Name. We haven't got a lot of time."
Indeed they hadn't.
Toothless had tried to snuff out the fire on the polar bear rug by smothering it with his wings, and when that didn't work, he threw Homemade Nettle Champagne on it.
The flames sprang up a meter high and the fire spread to a nearby chair.
"Oh d-d-dear!" wailed Toothless
"Toothless m-m-messed up...all Toothless's fault...ohdearohdear..."
"Toothless," Hiccup ordered, "stop making that fire WORSE and come over here. We're going to need YOUR help to steal the potato."
Toothless flapped over, his guilt making him unexpectedly obedient.
"I want you to melt the ice in the casket," said Hiccup.
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"B-b-but tie Squealers?" whimpered Toothless.
Hiccup wound his scarf around the little dragon's ears, to act as earplugs.
"Wait until Toothless has finished melting the ice, just in case you DO set off the Squealers," he explained to Camicazi. "The sound could STUN a dragon as titchy as Toothless if he's too close."
"T-t-titchy?" huffed Toothless
. "Toothless not like tie word TITCHY."
"You're looking at the burglary EXPERT," said Camicazi. "There's no way I'm going to set off those Squealers."
By some miracle, all the Hysterics were so dead to the world that not even all this noise and commotion, and a large fire blazing in the middle of their Great Hall, had woken them up. They snored on, oblivious.
Trembling with terror (and flying rather erratically because he was weighed down by his fur coat, his large meal, and the scarf around his head that was slipping 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 bodies with the piranha teeth, and to a dragon as
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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 fire holes seized up, and he couldn't breathe out a single flame, only clouds and clouds of blue-grey smoke.
"Relax...," whispered Hiccup from the table. "Breathe deeply... no ppressure... you've got all the time in the world ..." Hiccup was trying to sound as calm as he could even though half the room was on fire.
[Image: Toothless with Hiccup's scarf wound around his head, to act as earplugs.]
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"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.
How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse (The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup the Viking) Page 7