the Ghastly, more than one hundred years before. So
now he looked back through time to remember that
dreadful man, and what that look told him was that
Grimbeard was the trickiest trickster since the great
trickster god Loki put his Particularly Tricky Hat on.
‘Hmm…’ said the Wodensfang. It did seem
exactly the sort of thing that Grimbeard would do. And
suddenly a maze of mirrors seemed an unlikely thing
to be finding in Prison Darkheart, which was probably
furnished on the basic side.
Then the Wodensfang raised a cunning eyebrow.
‘But it could be a double-bluff…’
‘So,’ said the soft gentle voice of the raggedy
Windwalker, ‘if the Dragon Jewel isn’t in the Amber
Slavelands, where then exactly is it?’
‘That’s why it’s not so simple,’ said Hiccup,
waving wide his arms. ‘It could be anywhere!’
31
At that moment, there
was a definite rustle from above,
as the hidden Warrior and the
hidden dragon craned forward with
interest to see what was written on
Hiccup’s map.
The effect on the four
companions below was
immediate.
The Wodensfang shot up a
foot in the air, its tattered ears
turning electrically rigid and
purply red and pointing first
west, then south, then east,
then north.‘
‘Danger!’
squeaked the
Wodensfang in
the loudest whisper he
could whisper. ‘Danger!
Quick! Hiccup, get your helmet
on!’
‘Oh… no, guys, really…
it’s far too big… I find it
easier to fight without it…’
But the dragons
ganged up on him, three
to one.
‘You need
it!’ whispered
the Wodensfang.
‘Remember back on Danger-
Brute Island when you
nearly lost your ear? And
that poison dart that just
missed you when you were
undoing the Visithug
dragon-traps?’
‘And what about the Head-lopping incident with
the Head-loppers over in Nowhere?’ The Windwalker
padded anxiously back and forward.
‘A helmet wouldn’t save you from having your
head lopped off,’ argued Hiccup.
‘The Wodensfang is r-r-right!’ agreed Toothless,
who was agreeing with the Wodensfang more and more
these days. Squeaking, the Wodensfang and Toothless
lifted the detested helmet from the back of Hiccup’s
rucksack and with the help of the Windwalker they
tenderly jammed it on Hiccup’s head.
It was an old Visithug one that they had burgled a
couple of weeks ago, and it was a very bad fit.
‘It’s really uncomfortable,’ grumbled Hiccup.
‘Plus the big feather thing-y makes me very
memorable. I’m supposed to be undercover you know.
An Outcast has to melt into the background…’
‘Sssh…’ The Wodensfang put his wing to his lips.
‘I told you,’ said the Wodensfang, ‘I’ve had this
really bad feeling that the Dragon Furious has sent
some new dragon to assassinate you… Something
really terrifying…’
‘Yes, Wodensfang,’ said Hiccup. ‘You’re always
getting these feelings, but listen, it’s all gone quiet.’
‘That’s the thing about this new dragon,
though,’ whispered the Wodensfang. ‘It’s almost
undetectable. It’s one of those tracker dragons.’
The four companions stretched their ears
out into the white muffled world of
trees-and-snow.
Nothing.
‘Maybe it was a
false alarm,’ whispered
Toothless.
Up in the treetops the
Warrior and the dragon sat still
as stones. Not a leaf moved,
the forest seemed to hold its
breath…
And then…
With a scream as loud as a charging baboon, the
Warrior hidden in the tree-canopy above exploded into
action, erupting from the foliage and descending from
above in a shower of leaves and broken branches like
some swooping noble nightmare of revenge.
Sssssppppppppppooooooooow! Zzzzziiiiiiiinggggg!
If Hiccup and the Windwalker hadn’t been living
on their nerves for the past six months, they might
not have dodged backward so fast, and Hiccup would
have been deader than a dodo.
For the Zzzzing! that zinged past Hiccup’s nose
was the zing of an arrow that missed him by inches
and buried itself in a tree trunk a couple of feet
behind him.
CLANG! The dodging backwards brought his
visor clanging down, where it jammed tight shut.
Uh-oh, thought Hiccup, who was an intelligent
boy. This person wants to kill me.
BONG! BONG! BONG! Three more arrows came
40
raining harmlessly off the detestable helmet.
Thanks, guys. The helmet was a good call, thought
Hiccup as he jumped onboard the Windwalker, who
shot off through the trees.
And then he couldn’t believe his eyes when he
looked over his shoulder and saw the dragon that was
following them.
Oh for Thor’s sake.
You couldn’t mistake that particular dragon.
It was the Silver Phantom.
Even though it was the dead of night, every silver
scale was lit up and shone brighter than was strictly
possible in real life. The Silver Phantom seemed to
give off its own light, like the moon. Its scream was so
high and so loud that it felt as if it was setting fire to
your ears.
And as it screamed it poured out a jet of bright
blue flame that blasted the trees in front of it, burning
their leaves as bright as green stars before dropping to
the ground in powdery black smithereens.
The Silver Phantom was absolutely unmistakable.
It was unique.
It also just so happened to be the riding-dragon
that belonged to Hiccup’s mother.
41
Which meant that the Warrior currently
re-loading her Northbow and taking careful aim at
Hiccup while guiding the screaming Phantom by the
strength of her Warrior knees alone – that particular
Warrior, was in fact…
42
... Hiccup’s own mother
Valhallarama.
~ STATISTICS ~
FEAR FACTOR: ..................... 10
ATTACK: .............................. 10
SPEED: ................................ 10
SIZE: .................................... 10
DISOBEDIENCE:................... 10
Some of the Air Dragons fly at such high alti-
tudes that humans have never even seen
them. A Silver Phantom is one such dragon:
glimpsed very rarely at
astonishingly high distances, these sorts of
dragons are sometimes known as ‘ghosts�
� and
some people doubt they exist at all.
2. A FEW LITTLE
COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
‘STOP! MOTHER! IT’S ME, HICCUP!’ shouted
Hiccup.
But of course the visor on the beastly helmet was
down, and so it came out more like: ‘Mff! Mff! Mff!’
Hiccup grabbed at the visor and tried to yank it
up, but it was jammed absolutely tight shut. It would
not budge.
Oh for Thor’s sake.
This was not a good situation. Apart from
anything else, Valhallarama was a truly magnificent
Hero, one of the very, very best, so they were in big
trouble if he couldn’t tell her who he was.
The thing was, Valhallarama was away questing a
lot.
Hiccup was never quite sure what she was
questing for exactly, but his father, Stoick the Vast,
always assured him it was very important.
As a result Hiccup hadn’t seen her in a very long
while, perhaps for as long as two years now. So she
very well might not be aware that her only son was
the one who was now known as the Outcast and the
Enemy of the Wilderwest. Let alone that Stoick was
46
now a slave, and Hiccup had the Slavemark himself,
and a whole load of other things Hiccup was hoping to
explain to her gently in a quiet moment.
He had hoped that if he ever did get a chance
to explain the whole thing to her, about how what he
was really trying to do was save all the dragons from
extinction, she might be one of the few people who
would actually be on his side. (Hiccup had a hopeful
nature.)
Because Valhallarama loved dragons.
Hiccup knew she loved dragons.
At least, he thought he knew she loved dragons.
It suddenly occurred to Hiccup, in that moment
as they were screaming through the forest at breakneck
speed in the dead of night with his mother shooting
arrows at him almost continuously, that perhaps he did
not really know his mother all that well.
She had been away questing a lot.
The Wodensfang and Toothless were both
exceptionally speedy so they were flying not at their top
speed but on either side of Hiccup’s head, like twin
dragonly guardian angels.
‘You have to admit he is a marvellous Warrior,’
quavered the Wodensfang admiringly.
47
‘How big do you think he is? Six foot three?
Six foot four? I don’t think I’ve seen a better
Warrior since Squidshanks the Frightening… It was a
bit before your time, maybe six hundred years ago...’
‘She’s a she! Not a he!’ Hiccup shouted back.
But through the helmet it just sounded like ‘Mff!
Mff! Mff!’
We’ve all been in this situation. Well, maybe not
precisely in this situation. But we all know what it’s
like to have something important to say to a
loved one, but something seems to be
getting in the way.
The truth is, it is often difficult
to explain things to a parent. And most
definitely it is particularly difficult when
your mother is hunting you at top speed
through a dark forest under the impression
that you are the Enemy of the Wilderwest.
The Windwalker had grown into an
exceptionally fast dragon, and it was smaller
than the Phantom, so its more manoeuvrable
size meant it could just about keep ahead,
flicking through the maze of trees.
But still the Phantom was gaining.
‘He’s going to catch us if we stay
down here,’ said Toothless. ‘Why d-d-
don’t we go up?’
Over the past
six months they had often
eluded dragon pursuers by
climbing up into the higher air, too
high for other dragons to follow. Most
dragons prefer shallow air, the air nearest the ground.
Very few can operate in the higher atmosphere.
Apart from the
Silver Phantom.
Hiccup wanted to tell
them that this would be pointless.
The Phantom was an Air Dragon.
They were among the best flyers
in the dragon world, and they flew
the fastest and the highest.
Valhallarama had trained herself not to pass out.
But of course he couldn’t tell them that because of the
jammed helmet.
The Windwalker slightly mistimed a slalom,
swayed crazily, and the pursuing Phantom caught him
by the leg, but didn’t quite get a good hold, so the
Windwalker wriggled desperately out of the grip and
shot upwards in a blind panic.
‘Oh no…’ breathed Hiccup, desperately trying to
get him to fly downwards again, but the Windwalker
was crazed with fear and panicking madly, so he just
climbed up and up and up.
51
Hiccup looked down. The forest was already a
dark smudge beneath them.
And out of that smudge burst the Silver
Phantom, shooting upwards in a glorious silver arc.
Up, up, it soared with two mighty swoops
of its silver wings. It was way too fast for the poor
Windwalker, and leapt o-o-o-over their heads in an
athletic silver leap, and as it leapt, Valhallarama leant
over and plucked Hiccup from the Windwalker’s back
with her left arm.
Down swooped the Phantom, with Hiccup
swinging from his mother’s arm, back through the
canopy of trees, landing on the forest floor.
Still holding Hiccup by the scruff of his
waistcoat, she bounded from the Phantom’s back,
leant Hiccup against a fallen tree trunk, removed the
map from within Hiccup’s waistcoat and threw it to
the Silver Phantom.
Oh for Thor’s sake, thought Hiccup. I really
should have hidden that map a bit better. What was I
thinking? Some undercover Outcast I am…
In a pouring silver motion, the Silver Phantom
caught the map in mid-air, and then shot up, up, out
of the trees and away.
While Valhallarama was momentarily distracted,
52
Hiccup wriggled out of his waistcoat and ran out
of reach. Valhallarama drew her sword, the mighty
Nevermiss, with a great swaggering swish.
Hiccup drew his own sword.
He was beginning to feel a little hurt that she
still hadn’t recognised him. He was her son, after all.
You’d have thought some kind of mother instinct
might have kicked in by now.
But then Valhallarama really hadn’t been
around that much, thought Hiccup bitterly, trying
to ignore the rising lump in his throat as he
remembered how many times he’d written to her as
a child asking for her to come back home for some
reason or another, and how many times she’d written
back to say how important her Quest was.
More important than me, thought Hiccup. No
wonder she doesn’t recognise me. I haven’t seen her in two
years.
&
nbsp; Valhallarama lunged at him.
Hiccup met the lunge directly and replied with
one of his own, rather more courteous and less deadly,
but a joy of sword-work nonetheless.
He could see the surprise in Valhallarama’s
bright blue eyes above him, which was a source of
satisfaction, however difficult the circumstances.
53
It is always gratifying when your mother realises you
are a worthy opponent.
Because swordfighting was the one thing he was
really gifted at. And over the past six months he had
had pretty much twice-daily practice against people
and dragons who weren’t just fooling around, they
really and truly hated him and wanted him dead.
So it was a hymn to the gods of war to watch
him now, like listening to a singer with the voice of
an angel.
54
Plus he was left-handed, and a good leftie always
has an advantage over a good rightie.
However his faithful dragon companions
weren’t leaving anything to chance.
They had now arrived on the scene, and
the Wodensfang, his eyes lit up with surprising
excitement at the battle, considering his great age,
shouted, ‘Number 4, guys! Number 4!’
Number 4 was one of the many manoeuvres
they had worked out during an exciting six months of
fighting in forests, among other places, and it was one
of the more successful ones.
‘Mfff, mfffff, mfff, mfff, mmmmmmmmmfffff!’
shouted Hiccup desperately. (Which meant: ‘Guys!
Please, no, guys! We don’t want to kill her! This is a
big misunderstanding! She’s my mother!’)
But his dragons had absolutely no idea what he
was saying, so they put Number 4 into action.
The Windwalker bounded around the two
fighters, barking excitedly, to confuse them.
And then Toothless dive-bombed
Valhallarama’s head, biting into her metal arm (giving
himself a gum-ache), while the Wodensfang set fire
to the bottom of a tree just behind her.
Even Hiccup’s incredible swordfighting skills
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How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 2