a second, crouched down low.
And then she exploded into action,
screaming.
‘WHAT ARE YOU
WAITING FOR, YOU IDIOTS?
SEARCH HIGH, SEARCH LOW,
SEARCH EVERYWHERE!
FIND THE HICCUP BOY!’
229
12. THAT TREASONOUS
TRAITOR OF TRAITORS
Alvin rushed out of the door in a demented frenzy,
followed by the witch and the Alvinsmen with drawn
swords.
Leaving the cages with the captured
Dragonmarkers openly whispering and then shouting
to each other: ‘What happened? They’ve got the last
Lost Thing? But is Hiccup still alive? Or did he die?
That treasonous traitor of traitors Snotface Snotlout
betrayed us all…’
That treasonous traitor of traitors, Snotface
Snotlout, had not left the room with the others. He was
still standing in the shadows. Even if you could have
seen his face, you would not be able to read it.
‘Boo!’
‘BOOOOOOO!’
The room reverberated with the sound of the
shouting, furious Dragonmarkers rattling their cages,
and it was dreadful indeed to hear their condemnation.
‘TURNCOAT! TRAITOR! LOWEST OF THE
LOW! DISGRACE TO YOUR TRIBE!’
There was shame in Snotlout’s flushed face as
all around him his former Companions cursed his
231
name and howled furious
contempt.
He would never
be trusted again. Not
even Alvin and the witch
trusted him. He had
nowhere to go.
It was a far greater
disgrace for a Viking to lose his
honour than to lose his beard.
A single tear rolled down Snotlout’s cheek.
Once upon a lifetime ago, Snotlout had been
Gobber the Belch’s favourite pupil. Now it was
Gobber the Belch’s powerful bellow that reverberated
around the room in rolling echoes, like the honk of an
outraged walrus.
‘YOU HAVE DISHONOURED THE NAME
OF HOOLIGAN! YOU HAVE SHAMED THE
GOOD NAME OF YOUR FATHER AND OF YOUR
FATHER’S FATHER’S FATHER! SAGAS WILL
BE TOLD OF YOUR IGNOMINY FOREVER!’
roared Gobber.
Snotlout stood perfectly still.
And then out loud, he said to himself: ‘Hiccup
knew that I was going to betray him. He knew.’
Only two Alvinsmen were left in the room. They
232
were kneeling around the trapdoor, peering down into
the sea, shivering and with swords drawn, as if that
magical Hero, Hiccup the Outcast, might in some final
act of superhuman sorcery rise up out of the sea and
strike them down.
With a quickness Gobber would have been proud
of in the old days, Snotlout walked up behind them,
removed the keys from their belts and shoved them
into the water.
The bellows from the cages of the Dragonmarkers
died down.
What was the traitor doing?
Why had he attacked
the Alvinsmen?
What in Valhalla was
going on?
Snotlout ran to
Gobber’s cage and put the
key in the lock.
‘What are you
doing, Snotlout, you
villain?’ cried Thuggory
the Meathead in
bewilderment.
‘What does it look
like, O Dumbo-brain Meathead?’ said Snotlout as the
door to Gobber’s cage swung open. ‘I’m helping you to
escape.’
There was a murmur of astonishment along the
cages.
Vikings were strong Warriors, tough soldiers.
But they were not all of them quick on the uptake.
They might have been taught Spying and Treachery in
their Pirate Classes, but most of them, to be honest,
were not very good at it. What they really liked was
to know exactly who their enemies were, preferably
colour-coded, with the same helmets, or a similar style
of furry cloak or something, to avoid confusion in
battle.
So this unexpected move on the part of Snotlout
really flummoxed them.
‘Hang on,’ said Thuggory the Meathead
plaintively, ‘I thought you were on the other side?’
‘Me too,’ complained Grabbit of Grim. ‘The
witch thanked you and everything… Why are you
freeing us? What’s going on?’
‘Look here, Snotlout,’ demanded Boily of
Bashem. ‘Let’s be absolutely clear. Are you on that
rotter Alvin’s side or not?’
‘You won’t believe me, whatever I say,’ replied
234
Snotlout. ‘You already told me I’m a double-crossing
worm.’
Gobber’s cage door was still hanging open. But
the great giant within, with his arms crossed, refused to
move.
‘I don’t accept help from Traitors, or disgraces to
their Tribe!’ roared Gobber furiously.
‘Oh for Thor’s sake, stay if you want to! You
always were a stubborn old warthog,’ muttered
Snotlout. He tossed the keys through the door of the
nearest cage so that the others could free themselves,
and ran out of the room.
The Dragonmarkers did not waste any further
time trying to work out Snotlout’s motivation, and
passed the keys along from cage to cage. Psychology
had never been their strong point.
Fighting, however, was their forte.
With cries of joy, the freed Dragonmarkers armed
themselves with swords, javelins, spears, whatever they
could find in the armoury.
Even Gobber realised it might be better to
swallow his pride and join the fray. He left his cage,
shaking his head in confusion.
235
13. MEANWHILE, UNDER THE
FLOORBOARDS…
How did Camicazi and Hiccup escape from the box
and the rope? Well, it wasn’t quite the miracle that the
watching Dragonmarkers and Alvinsmen thought it
was.
Let us go back to earlier on, under the
floorboards of the floating city, where a terrified
Hiccup had whispered ‘Plan B! Plan B!’ down to
Fishlegs and slammed down the hatch, leaving Fishlegs
sitting on the upturned hull of a boat in the darkness
with six dragons: the Deadly Shadow, Stormfly, the
Hogfly, Windwalker, the Hurricane and Wodensfang.
‘Oh, for Thor’s sake,’ moaned Fishlegs. ‘Plan B!
Plan B means that the Lost Things aren’t there!’
The ears of the Wodensfang were bright purple
and quivering as if electric currents were running
through them, which was always a sign that terrible
peril was near.
‘I told Hiccup,’ wheezed Wodensfang, ‘I’ve seen
the Lost Things in my dreams. They’re underwater
somewhere. But I admire Hiccup’s courage in trusting
Snotlout. It’s just a shame…’
236
Fishlegs swallowed and finished the sentence for
him.
<
br /> ‘It’s just a shame that Snotlout has betrayed him
again?’
As if to confirm this, Snotlout’s Hurricane dragon
took off from the submerged boat and flew off.
‘Where’s he going?’ asked Fishlegs.
And then he answered his own question.
‘He must be joining his treacherous master.
‘This is fine,’ said Fishlegs to himself. ‘I’m on my
own here, but it’s fine.’ He was trying not to panic.
His asthma often got worse in times of stress.
Luckily Deadly Shadows give off a calming
hormone in their smoke when they are in an action
situation, and breathing in the milky clouds of steam
drifting out of the three heads of the gentle giant
beneath him gave Fishlegs the strength to remain calm
and to focus.
Fishlegs pushed his broken glasses more firmly
on to his nose. He did not want to look like a coward
in front of his mother’s dragon. If his mother could be
brave, then so could he.
‘OK,’ said Fishlegs, making himself think
reasonably, ‘according to Plan B, we now have to
surreptitiously rescue Hiccup. But how do we rescue
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him if we have no idea where he is?’
Two hundred yards away, a hatch opened in
the long platform of the ceiling above them, letting
a brilliant shaft of light down into the dark sea. The
sound of the shouting and the stamping of feet became
so loud, Fishlegs shrank behind the Deadly Shadow’s
back spines, for fear they had been discovered.
‘HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP! HIC-CUP!’
And then the witch’s voice, clear and loud:
‘LOWER HIM THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR!’
Something was dumped through the trapdoor
and into the sea. With horror, Fishlegs recognised
Hiccup’s helmet.
‘O… K…’ said Fishlegs. ‘There he is… That’s
Hiccup… let’s rescue him…’
Windwalker had left Fishlegs’s side before
Fishlegs had even finished speaking, flying towards
the spot where Hiccup had been dumped. In two flaps
of his wings, Fishlegs could see from the bubbles that
Windwalker had reached Hiccup underwater, closely
followed by Wodensfang, Stormfly and the Hogfly.
Fishlegs hovered near the spot on the back of the
Deadly Shadow.
‘Get him up! What are you guys doing?’ he
whispered desperately from the shadows. ‘Why aren’t
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you getting him out of there? There are Winterfleshers
down there and everything…’
He could see the quick black silhouettes of the
heavily-fanged Winterfleshers being chased hither and
thither underwater by the hunting dragons.
The Alvinsmen pulled on the chain again. It drew
taut, and UP the blue dripping figure of Hiccup was
hauled, and Fishlegs watched, open-mouthed.
SPLASH!
Up rocketed Wodensfang, out of the water.
‘Why didn’t you rescue him?’ whispered an
agitated Fishlegs.
‘He didn’t want us to,’ replied Wodensfang. ‘He
kept on pointing up towards the Great Hall. I think he
doesn’t want us to rescue him until he can get Camicazi
out too.’
‘Oh thank Thor,’ breathed Fishlegs. ‘So Camicazi
is alive?’
‘We’re just trying to keep him warm and
alive,’ continued Wodensfang, ‘and scare away the
Winterfleshers. Windwalker is blowing air into him so
he doesn’t drown.*’
SPLASH!
Down Hiccup was thrown again, and Fishlegs
could see the large shadow of the Windwalker flying
* Windwalker was acting like a dragon aqualung. Hiccup first describes doing
this with Toothless in How to Be a Pirate when he was stuck in Grimbeard the
Ghastly’s underground cavern. Hiccup and Windwalker had practised this in
happier times and warmer waters, when they went diving together for crabs in
long ago summers in Hooligan Harbour.
underwater like a giant ray, sending the little dark
slivers of the Winterfleshers shooting off in all
directions in alarm. Again and again, Hiccup was
hauled back up through the trapdoor, again and
again he was thrown into the sea – and each time
he was left underwater for longer and longer.
‘Oh what shall I do?’ Fishlegs whimpered to
himself, ‘This can’t be good for him… Plan B was
always over-ambitious… How on earth is Hiccup
going to rescue Camicazi when he’s all tied up in
chains and everything?’
Fishlegs’s question was answered when
SPLASH! The large box crashed into the
water, and this time Windwalker attacked
the box, and to Fishlegs’s passionate relief,
Camicazi came gasping to the surface. He
reached out an arm to pick her out, and she climbed up
behind him on the Deadly Shadow, and sat shivering
on the dragon’s warm back, steaming lightly.
The fourth time, when Hiccup dived through the
trapdoor by himself, the Windwalker changed tactics.
Camicazi was safe, so it was time to rescue Hiccup
now.
Windwalker got a good grip on Hiccup’s collar
under the water, like a cat holding a kitten, and hauled
with all his strength on the chain attached around
Hiccup’s ankle, the one that Alvin and the Alvinsmen
were holding at the other end.
That was the mystical tug of war that had so
impressed the Alvinsmen and Dragonmarkers in the
Great Hall.
With a final HEAVE, the chain broke, and with
smooth powerful strokes of his wings, Windwalker
brought Hiccup, gasping, to the surface and deposited
him on the boat beside Camicazi.
‘Thank you, Camicazi,’ gasped Hiccup.
‘I told you,’ said Camicazi, ‘I would never Turn
My Back on you again.’
Hiccup grinned. ‘Windwalker, Hogfly, Wodensfang
and I will find Toothless and the Things… Fishlegs and
Camicazi and the others, cause a Diversion…’
242
He had barely finished the sentence before
Windwalker flew off, carrying Hiccup like a limp doll in
his mouth, with Wodensfang and the Hogfly anxiously
following.
‘Excellent news!’ said Camicazi joyfully. ‘Apart
from Burgling and escaping from impossible prisons
and possibly surfing on dragonback, DIVERSIONS
are a Bog-Burglar’s favourite thing!’
She sat back on the Deadly Shadow, unpacked
her backpack and put on a large blond moustache.
‘Camicazi,’ said Fishlegs, ‘no one is going to
mistake you for a very small Alvinsman.’
Camicazi ignored him.
‘Now,’ she said, holding up a finger, ‘we’re going
to have to be a little bit careful because I reckon
there must be thousands and thousands
of Bullguards and Alvinsmen up
there…’
‘And there are four of us…’ bleated Fishlegs.
‘Six!’ corrected Camicazi optimistically. ‘Your Deadly
Shadow counts as three. Which is why I need my
super-dangerous secret weapon. Now, where did I put
it?’ Camicazi rummaged away at the bottom of her
Escape Artist backpack, pulling out ropes and keys and
all sorts of extraordinary equipment.
‘You have a super-dangerous secret weapon?’
Fishlegs clutched at the faint hope of what a
‘super-dangerous secret weapon’ offered.
Ideas of battering rams, and spear launchers, and
those gigantic Roman catapults swam into his head,
and made him feel a little braver.
But no, it would have been hard to fit a battering
ram into that teeny weeny little backpack.
Camicazi whooped in triumph as she finally
located the super-dangerous secret weapon, and held it
up so that Fishlegs could see it.
There was a short silence.
‘Camicazi,’ said Fishlegs. ‘The four— no,
sorry, six of us are about to face Alvin’s entire
heavily-armed army, and that is a small glass
jar filled with pebbles.’
It was indeed a small glass jar filled
with pebbles.
244
Small, grey, and very normal-looking pebbles.
‘Ah yes,’ said Camicazi craftily, ‘but these are
no ordinary pebbles. My mother burgled them off a
Chinese ship she raided when she was out east a while
back, and I sort of borrowed them. Trust me, Fishlegs,
these things are quite something.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fishlegs sarcastically, ‘those little
pebbly souvenirs that your mother got on her holidays
are really going to make the difference…’
‘Now, we are a little outnumbered, I have to
admit,’ said Camicazi, frowning, and pulling out
her lassos and her ropes, and borrowing some of
Fishlegs’s bow and arrows, ‘so we have to seem like
there are more of us. We need to make those rotten,
haddock-stinking, twister-evil Alvinsmen think they’re
245
being attacked by Valhallarama’s whole Dragonmarker
army. Can I borrow your helmet a second, Fishlegs?’
Without waiting for an answer, Camicazi
whipped it off his head.
‘Watch this, Fishlegs, I think you’re going to like
it…
How To Train Your Dragon: How to Betray a Dragon's Hero Page 12