How To Train Your Dragon: How to Betray a Dragon's Hero
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nasty burn and turned her lips blue.
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The Guardian inspected the last Thing, the
Dragon Jewel, at painstaking length and with reverent
care, before laying it back down on the Throne.
He raised his arms in the air.
The Vikings on the beach leaned in, eyes wide,
backs stiffened, in dread of the Druid Guardian’s
judgement. Unconsciously Alvin cringed backwards,
with his hook and arm protecting his face as if
expecting to be attacked.
There was a tense pause.
‘The Things are REAL!’ cried the Druid
Guardian.
The Guardian’s impassive face split with
emotion, like a stern stone cliff suddenly struck by an
earthquake.
‘After ninety-nine years of failure, ninety-nine
years of searching, ninety-nine years of guarding the isle
of Tomorrow, the Things are REAL! The Impossible
Task has been completed!’
The Alvinsmen on the beach erupted with
excitement.
The witch burst into tears.
She threw herself into Alvin’s arms, punching
the air with one emaciated skinny fist. ‘I knew it!’ she
screamed, beside herself with triumph. ‘I knew it!
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‘Twenty years…’ panted the witch, ‘twenty years
imprisoned inside that tree trunk, that little circle of
hell. Twenty years I sang my spells, I mixed my poisons,
I wove my tapestries of destiny out of rat guts and
mice bones. Twenty years of longing, dreaming and
murdering for you to be King… and you will be! MY
ALVIN IS THE KING!’
‘GUARDIAN PROTECTORS OF
TOMORROW!’ called the Guardian in a great
joyful bellow, addressing the Guardians, those
dragons-or-something-else lurking beneath the Singing
Sands.
‘In twenty-four hours, when this King is crowned,
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we shall be let loose from ninety-nine years of bondage!
We shall be free to roam the skies and seas of the
Archipelago, on airy careless wings and feet, with no
limit, no boundary, no limitation…
‘And I,’ and here the Guardian’s voice really did
crack, ‘I shall be able to take off this bandage that
lies across my eyes at last, and see the shining colours
of this Archipelago, as bright and new as if freshly
painted!’
Something extraordinary happened next.
All around the Guardian’s outstretched arms, the
sand began to sing.
The Alvinsmen were too busy celebrating to
notice, and the Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war too
depressed.
But the Singing Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift
were singing once again.
It was as if each little grain of sand were rubbing
against its neighbour, like a million happy crickets
singing a joyful hymn of praise.
There was an innocent longing to that sound that
brought tears to the eyes.
‘At last the Impossible Task has been
completed…’ cried the Druid Guardian.
‘At last our bondage ends…
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‘At last WE HAVE FOUND OUR HEIR!’
‘It’s going to be me!’ sang Alvin joyfully, as the
witch capered by his side. ‘It’s going to be ME! ME ME
ME ME! And what an excellent choice that is!’
‘He who gathered these Things together must be
a truly great Hero indeed,’ said the Druid Guardian.
‘But wait… I can hear other humans landing on the
beach…’
‘Wait?’ said the witch, instantly terrified. ‘What
do you mean, wait? We have all the Things, don’t we?’
‘HOLD ON THERE, MR DRUID
GUARDIAN!’
The Dragonmarker ships had indeed landed on
the beaches now. Hiccup’s father, Stoick the Vast,
great Chief of the Hooligan Tribe, vaulted over the
edge of his boat, The Blue Whale, and on to the Singing
Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift.
The Guardian turned as Stoick came running
forward, splashing through the shallows. Even in his
late middle age, Stoick was an impressive figure, built
in traditional Viking chieftain mould, with a belly like a
battleship and a beard like a flaming gorse bush.
Stoick was followed by thousands and
thousands of Dragonmarkers, including Bertha of the
Bog-Burglars, Humungously Hotshot the Hero, his
fellow Hero Tantrum O’UGerly and his eleven fiancées,
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Snotlout’s father Baggybum the Beerbelly, and Old
Wrinkly, Hiccup’s grandfather.
‘WAIT!’ cried Stoick the Vast, out of breath.
Running on sand is hard work, particularly once you
have reached a certain age.
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‘Who are you?’ asked the Druid Guardian sternly.
‘We are the Dragonmarkers,’ Stoick puffed. ‘We
represent half the Tribes of the Archipelago… and this
man Alvin must never be our King!’
The arriving Dragonmarkers cheered
simultaneously, a great rousing shout from thousands
of throats, to show the Guardian how many of them
there were.
‘It sounds like you have more than a few little
dissenters,’ said the Guardian to Alvin. ‘If these are
half the Tribes of the Archipelago…’
‘But they are the less important half, Your
Honour…’ replied Alvin.
‘We, the Dragonmarkers,’ puffed Stoick, ‘have a
claim to the Throne. We maintain that my son Hiccup
Horrendous Haddock the Third is the true King of the
Wilderwest!’
‘You have a son called Hiccup?’ asked the Druid
Guardian with interest.
‘Don’t read anything into it!’ howled the witch,
forgetting to be polite to the Guardian. ‘Just because
he was called Hiccup, like Grimbeard the Ghastly’s
son, doesn’t mean anything at all!’
‘Hiccup actually found the Things,’ said Stoick,
‘every single one of them, and this thief Alvin here, and
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that devil his mother, stole them!’
‘Nonsense and cat-nerves!’ screeched the witch,
spitting like a cobra.
‘My wife Valhallarama set out to reclaim the
stolen Things from this horrible pair,’ explained Stoick,
‘and she will meet us here, along with Hiccup, whom
we put into hiding in case these Alvinsmen killed them.
Hiccup should be here any minute, along with the Last
Lost Thing, the toothless dragon…’
Stoick stopped.
He had been so busy explaining, that he had only
just noticed that the Things were already sitting there
on the beach.
‘The Things are already here!’ said Stoick in
astonishment.
‘Yes, they are, Stoick,’ smiled the witch
condescendingly. ‘Well spotted.’
Stoick was not the brightest barbarian in the
business, so it took a while for this to sink in. His brow
furrowed.
‘But where is my wife Valhallarama?’
‘Poor stupid Stoick…’
the witch said
contemptuously. ‘Always late, always slow on the
uptake. We caught your dear wife Valhallarama in the
act of burglary and revolution in the early hours of this
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morning, and I very kindly brought her along so she
could have the pleasure of witnessing Alvin’s triumph
before we executed her.’
The witch snapped her fingers, and her Alvinsmen
staggered over carrying a box on their shoulders. It was
the same broken box that Camicazi had been kept in
earlier, hastily mended, and wound round untidily with
chains, which one of the Alvinsmen unlocked.
Valhallarama exploded out of the box. She was
a little crumpled, for a middle-aged woman (even one
as fit as Valhallarama) is a little old for being folded up
into boxes, but she still had her Warrior dignity intact.
Stoick whitened. He saw for the first time, the
Dragonmarker prisoners-of-war standing dejectedly in
chains on the edges of the crowd.
‘Gobber… my dear fellow, what has happened
to your beard? Valhallarama… my love, I don’t
understand,’ said Stoick, bewildered. ‘Have you… have
you… failed?’ he asked wonderingly, for it was unlike
Valhallarama, that splendid Hero, to fail at anything.
‘Our son did not stay in the underground
treehouse. He raided the witch and Alvin’s war bunker
to retrieve the Things himself. He did not recognise
me in my Alvinsman disguise and he took the Things
from me just as I was in the act of reclaiming them,’
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explained Valhallarama.
Stoick beamed. ‘Oh well done, Hiccup! Very
rude and disobedient of him, but after all, if he’s going
to be a King, he can’t have his parents doing everything
for him. I’m proud of the boy—’ He stopped, and his
brow furrowed again, and he said:
‘But then… then why are the Things here? And
where is Hiccup?’
Valhallarama’s face was very, very grim.
She turned her face to the witch.
‘Perhaps the witch will be able to answer both
those questions,’ said Valhallarama, and her gaze was
as cold and as implacable as iron.
Yes,’ smiled the witch, purring with pleasure, ‘I
can answer both those questions. I fear you are a little
behind the times, Stoick. For you see, us Alvinsmen
have ALL the Things now.’
She whipped the black cloth from Toothless’s
cage.
Stoick recoiled as if he had been bitten, and the
Dragonmarker crowd gave a sigh of distress.
The exhausted little dragon was sleeping inside
the cage, a pathetic sight with his wings shivering
and dark circles under his eyes from the trauma of
separation from Hiccup.
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‘The Druid Guardian here has just examined all
the Things, he has found them to be correct, and he
has declared my Alvin to be Grimbeard the Ghastly’s
Heir. We will be crowning him tomorrow, on the
Doomsday of Yule.’
‘That is true,’ acknowledged the Druid Guardian.
‘NO!’ cried Stoick, eyes round with horror.
Howls and moans from the Dragonmarkers.
‘But, then… my Hiccup?’ said Stoick. ‘Where is
my Hiccup?’
The witch gave an infinitely nasty smile. ‘Your
Hiccup is not coming “any minute”. He will never be
coming back, I am afraid.’
Valhallarama, proud Valhallarama, dropped to
her knees. ‘No! Hiccup! No!’
She had never collapsed before. Stoick leant
down to support her…
… and Old Wrinkly, Hiccup’s grandfather,
looked thoroughly bewildered. ‘I don’t understand it,’
he said.
‘Your soothsaying was always a little suspect,
Wrinkly,’ sneered the witch rudely.
‘It was Snotlout,’ said Gobber flatly, standing
chained at the back of the crowd. ‘Snotlout betrayed
us all.’
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‘Traitor!’ cried Grabbit of Grim. Boos and
catcalls from the Dragonmarkers. ‘That treasonous
traitor of traitors!’
Baggybum the Beerbelly, Snotlout’s father, put
his head into his hands and whispered, ‘I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry. I’m ashamed to be his father.’
‘So you see how ridiculous it was of you
Dragonmarkers to come here trying to steal Alvin’s
Throne from him!’ sneered the witch. ‘You have
nothing, nothing! And the Hero you are waiting for is
dead.’
Valhallarama of the White Arms was whiter than
a corpse, her hands clasped together.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘I saw the arrow hit him full in the chest myself,’
said the witch. ‘But as a precaution we have had our
Bullguards and Ravenhunters diving for his body in the
Bay ever since, so that we can prove that the runt is
finally dead. They have not recovered it yet, but what
they have found is this…’
She produced Hiccup’s helmet, like a conjuror,
from under her cloak.
‘No…’ begged Valhallarama and Stoick, and
Stoick dropped to his knees too.
The two great Warriors knelt together in the
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sand, as if they were getting married once
again, holding the helmet, silent tears creeping
down their old Warrior cheeks.
Valhallarama then jumped to her feet
and shook her fist fiercely.
‘YOU killed him!’ she roared at the
witch. ‘You fiend!’
‘All’s fair in love and war,
Valhallarama,’ cooed the witch. ‘Did you
not try and kill my own son Alvin with
your very own arrow back in the Amber
Slavelands? Perhaps you should have
given your son triple-depth chest
armour, and maybe he would be
alive today… but then maybe
you are more of a careless
mother than I am myself.
You were never around
much, were you?’
The witch
had much to pay
Valhallarama back
for, and that
particular poison
dart really hit
home. The poor crushed Warrior showed the hurt in
her wounded blue eyes.
Valhallarama whirled around, and in one flowing
movement, she swiped an axe from an Alvinsman
standing behind her.
She raised the axe above her head, and roared:
‘BLOOD FEUD!’
The massed crowds of Dragonmarkers drew their
own axes in sympathy. A battle between the Alvinsmen
and the Dragonmarkers was about to take place.
Until, with surprising agility and extraordinary
strength for one of his age, the Druid Guardian leapt
forward, removing Valhallarama’s axe from her hand
just before she could kill the witch.
He stretched to the height of his full seven feet
and spread wide his arms, bellowing in a voice of
electric command:
‘In the name of Tomorrow, STOP! OR SO
HELP ME THOR, I SHALL CALL UPON THE
GUARDIAN PROTECTORS OF TOMORROW
AND THEY SHALL CARRY YOU UP INTO
THE OUTERMOST REACHES OF OBLIVION
AND YOU SHALL NEVER SET FOOT ON THIS
SWEET EARTH AGAIN!’
A speech which in itself caught the attention,
even without the Guardian’s fingers twitching on the
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end of his outspread arms, and the sand underneath
the warring humans beginning to bubble and sink
beneath their feet as if something were happening
under there…
Anger turned to fear in an instant.
‘Put down your swords!’ ordered the Guardian.
‘This is sacred land! You are quarrelling on the Singing
Sands of the Ferryman’s Gift, and if you are not careful
I shall give you a gift that you most certainly haven’t
asked for and that you will never be able to return!’
Both sides grew quiet, mute with terror at this
invocation of the supernatural, and as they did, the
sinking sands fell silent and were still and firm beneath
their feet again.
‘That is better,’ said the Guardian.
‘I am in command here on these Sands and on
Tomorrow. Until such time as the King is crowned,
my word is absolute, and if my wishes are disobeyed,
my punishment is total. In my capacity as a private
individual, I can be very reasonable, but unfortunately
my role as Guardian takes me beyond the reach of
reason, and I act only as the Law.’
Everyone stayed very quiet.
‘Madam.’
The Guardian turned to Valhallarama.
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‘I understand the rage and fury of a mother’s grief,
but you must put this aside now. The Dragon Furious
has grown too strong, and the very existence of the
Archipelago is at stake.’
He did not speak loudly, but he spoke with
such authority that it seemed to come from the gods
themselves.
‘We Vikings are known for our proud
independence and our quarrelsome natures. It is the
very essence of our beings. But now the Dragon has
come, we must give up our personal sorrows, our petty
blood feuds, and stand together against a common