Hiccup looked around the table, and around the
whole courtyard.
He was looking for Fishlegs, and Fishlegs didn’t
seem to be there.
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‘Um… Stoick the Vast, sir,’ said Hiccup politely.
‘Is there a boy called Fishlegs in the Company of the
Amber-Hunters?’
Stoick looked uncomfortable and sad.
‘Fishlegs?’ he said. ‘No, I’ve never heard of a boy
called Fishlegs, have you, Gobber?’
Gobber the Belch shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never
heard that name before, either.’
Never heard of Fishlegs?
What were they talking about?
Fishlegs had been memorably bottom of
absolutely everything in Gobber’s Pirate Training
Programme for about five years – Bashyball, Badd
Speling, the lot.
Gobber used to say that he was going to get
Fishlegs up to Warrior status or die in the attempt.
Hiccup’s father had spent most of Hiccup’s life a
little annoyed that Hiccup had such a little weirdo as
a friend. How could they possibly say they’d never
even heard of him?
There was something very odd going on round
here.
Hiccup was about to ask another question when
Snotface Snotlout, the new Chief of the Hooligan
Tribe, came strolling up to the table.
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Snotlout was
looking in excellent
shape.
If he hadn’t been
such an unpleasant
character, it would
have been a pleasure
to see him come into
his own like this.
Snotlout had always
wanted to be a Chief and now
that Fate had given him his dearest
wish he was loving every second of it.
In the sunshine of everyone’s admiration, he
seemed to have grown about a foot. He swaggered
around, joking with his friends,
glowing with a new relaxed
consequence.
‘Nice fighting against the
dragons yesterday, Snotty!’
called out one of Snotlout’s
mates, Vandal the Visithug.
‘How many did you kill,
was it nine?’
‘I think it was eleven,’
beamed Snotlout carelessly. ‘But everyone did well.’
So when Snotlout strolled over to the Amber-
Hunters’ table, his words were not, at the start at least,
deliberately intended to offend, because Snotlout was
in a very good mood.
It was just that Snotlout was not accustomed
to thinking about the feelings of anyone other than a
certain Snotface Snotlout.
‘Eat up there, guys,’ was all Snotlout said,
smiling, off-hand.
But Stoick and Gobber and Baggybum did take
offence. They flinched at the casual command given
by one who was so much their junior; one who was
Baggybum’s son, Stoick’s nephew and Gobber’s pupil,
and who should be showing them considerably more
respect, particularly since the reversal of fortune on
both sides.
Hiccup could not
really look at the hurt
expression on their
faces and the
sad sinking
of their
shoulders.
This was the world turned upside-down indeed.
‘Snotlout,’ asked Hiccup, hurriedly changing
the subject, ‘have you seen a boy called Fishlegs
anywhere here?’
‘It’s Chief Snotlout to you, slave,’ Snotlout
corrected, instantly guarding his dignity, his good
mood fading. He didn’t recognise Hiccup either,
flicking his eyes over him dismissively, wrinkling his
gigantic nose at the smell. ‘Yes, Fishlegs is one of
the Lost – he disappeared in the Seeking a couple
of weeks ago. Not before time, he was a total weed.
Nothing worth bothering about. A bit of a weakling
like you, but without the powerful pong.’
Nothing worth bothering about…
Baggybum the Beerbelly carefully put down
his spoon. He looked at his son and quietly said the
words that Hiccup most dreaded his own father
would say to him.
‘Snotlout,’ said Baggybum the Beerbelly, ‘I am
ashamed to be your father.’
Snotlout turned white, shocked. For just one
instant, he shrank in front of their eyes and became
the small boy he once was, standing in front of his
father, his uncle, his teacher – the three men whose
approval he most desperately sought.
96
And then Snotlout composed himself, put on
his arrogance once again, and narrowed his eyes for
the fight.
‘You have no reason to say that. I may have
made that runt Fishlegs a slave, but I did not make
you slaves. You did that to yourselves, by not
showing our King Alvin enough respect.’
‘We acted out of loyalty to Stoick. But you did
not try to intervene with our so-called King Alvin
on our behalf, did you, Snotlout?’ said Gobber
thoughtfully.
‘Why should I when you act like fools?’ snorted
Snotlout.
‘Ashamed of me? I should be ashamed of you,
and you should be proud that I am a Chief. You were
never a Chief, Baggy, were you?’ sneered Snotlout.
‘You were not really Chief material.’
He patted his father on the shoulder and
sauntered off.
OK, so this wasn’t all right. This wasn’t all right
at all.
Hiccup’s hand was shaking as he picked up his
mussel and continued eating.
Lost in the Seeking? What did that mean?
Where on earth was Fishlegs?
97
A little girl was sitting beside him,
with huge doom-y eyes, a bear-suit with all the
buttons done up in the wrong button-holes and very
dark straggly hair that stuck straight out of her head at
odd angles. She seemed to read his mind.
‘Shh,’ said the little girl. A lot of her teeth had
recently fallen out and she was very serious for such
a small person. ‘We’re not allowed to talk about the
Lost. It’s not good for morale.’
Lost????? What do you mean, Lost?????
But now the little girl said in an interested
fashion, ‘Warty McSmelly, your waistcoat is on fire.’
Aaagh!
98
Hiccup looked
down, and there, indeed, was
grey smoke drifting out of the top of his waistcoat.
Toothless, who had been scratching away at Hiccup’s
tummy in an I-need-food sort of way for the past five
minutes, had given up waiting, and was now resorting
to the desperate tactic of sending up smoke signals.
Hiccup clamped his waistcoat to his chest to stop
more smoke coming up. What possible excuse could
he have for his waistcoat being on fire?
Eventually he spluttered, ‘Must have got caught
by a spark from one of those explosions out in the
courtyard… don’t worry! I’ve put
it out now!’
And then in one desperate swoop Hiccup
picked up the last of the bread, cheese and mussels
99
and pretended, slightly theatrically, to drop one of the
mussels on the floor (‘Whoops!’) and dived under the
table…
… where he took Toothless and the Wodensfang
out of his waistcoat, scolding Toothless in a furious
gritted-teeth whisper. ‘Toothless, you must not set fire
to my waistcoat! If anybody found out I had dragons
on me, you would be dead.’
‘Was an accident,’ lied Toothless. ‘Hunger
makes Toothless’s fireholes leak…’
‘Now, Toothless,’ whispered Hiccup, showing
him the mussels and bread that he held in his clenched
fist. ‘There’s not much to go round so before I give
these to you remember your manners… Be polite…
Share… Leave some for Wodensfang too.’
In the darkness of Prison Darkheart, it is even
more important than usual to keep up your standards.
Toothless nodded his head, repeating, ‘Oh yessee,
yessee, me coglet, Toothless will share… Toothless
very p-p-polite…’
Hiccup opened his hand.
Toothless opened his mouth so wide and moved
so quick that he misjudged his lunge, and wrapped his
little gums not just around the mussels, cheese and
bread, but around Hiccup’s entire hand.
100
Which was of course too big for him to swallow.
Hiccup looked down at him in disbelief.
Goodness gracious, you wouldn’t have thought
that a dragon so small would be able to open his
mouth that wide.
Slowly, with his tail stuck between his legs and
his huge eyes apologetic, Toothless backed off the
hand, leaving the food there.
‘W-w-wodensfang first,’ said Toothless
piously, pretending that had not just happened. And
he let the Wodensfang have a couple of dainty little
picks before charging in to gobble up the lot.
‘S-s-sorry, mussels,’ said Toothless, with his
mouth full. ‘S-s-sorry, bread… Sorry cheese…’
‘Yes, lovely apologising, Toothless,’ whispered
Hiccup, ‘but you don’t really have to apologise to
your food… Although it’s a nice idea, Toothless,
don’t get me wrong.’
Suddenly there was absolute dead silence in the
great hall.
All the chattering ceased in a moment, like when
small delicious furry animals freeze into quietness
when wolves enter the wood.
And then, as he was crouched under the table,
with the Wodensfang and Toothless eating mussels on
101
the ground beside him, there came a sound that made
Hiccup’s neck crawl with fear as if beetles had crept
underneath his collar, and every single individual hair
on his head spike upwards as though they were the
quills of a porcupine…
Step TAP, step TAP, step TAP, step TAP…
… along the floor of the suddenly silent
courtyard.
And with a cold trickle of dread, Hiccup saw
from underneath the table, the legs of a man come
striding into view and stop right in front of him, so
close that he could have reached out and touched
them.
To be more precise, one leg was made out of
flesh.
The other was made out of ivory.
Sadly Hiccup could not see the rest of
him, for Alvin the Treacherous, King-in-
Waiting of the Wilderwest, was a handsome
sight indeed, a villain in the very flower and
blossom of his villainy, blooming with warts
like a tree in fruit, skeleton and snake
tattoos writhing gloriously over his gigantic
muscles and all the remaining parts of him that
were still human.
Which was not as many parts as the rest of
us have, for Alvin was currently missing an arm, a
leg, a nose and an eye, all replaced with splendid
attachments made of the very best ivory, gold and iron
that a King-in-Waiting could lay his hook on in the
middle of a war.
Behind the tapping and the ticking of Alvin’s
progress across the courtyard, was a horrible rustling
sound, like rats scuttling, and there
was something running across
the floor like a big white
bony dog.
It wasn’t a dog.
It was a witch as
white as bone.
A witch that walked on all fours
like an animal.
The witch Excellinor, Alvin the Treacherous’s
mother.
Her poisoned iron fingernails scraping on the
flagging, made that rat-scratch of a sound.
She stopped dead in front of Hiccup.
And then slowly, like an automaton, she turned
her head.
And stared… right into Hiccup’s eyes.
105
6. THE WITCH
EXCELLINOR IS A
LITTLE ANNOYED
OH FOR THOR’S SAKE.
Hiccup’s heart melted within his chest
as the witch’s hollow eyes looked straight at
him. She was like a living skeleton, a shock
of hair streaming out behind her, all human
kindness dead within her. Twenty years of living
in the darkness of a tree trunk had bleached all
the light out of her, and she was whiter than a
slug, and meaner than a snake, and bowled into a
hoop by the prison of the trunk.
They were caught red-handed.
She had been tearing up the
Wilderwest in her hunt for this very
same boy for the past six months.
And there Hiccup was,
under the table not two feet
away from her quivering white
nose, frozen in the act of feeding
two banned dragons, both of them
hovering, petrified, in mid-air.
The witch sniffed once, twice.
‘Dragons…’ she hissed in horror.
‘Dragons…’
She looked straight at him, and barked
like a dog.
But the witch was so blind she could
barely see a foot in front of her nose.
She did not see them.
At that distance she could only sense
movement.
Don’t move, Toothless, thought Hiccup,
teeth gritted in terror. Don’t move…
The witch carried on looking at them
for what seemed like a lifetime.
And then her long pointed nose,
sharp as a knife, sniffed in disgust.
‘That’s weird,’ said the witch
dismissively. ‘I thought I smelt
dragons but it’s just Slaves. They smell disgusting.’
And scuttle, scuttle, off she bounded, followed by
the step TAP, step TAP of Alvin.
Thank Thor for the Stinkdragon stink.
Shaking with relief, Hiccup stuffed the
Wodensfang back into his waistcoat.
The wart on the end of his nose fell off and he
only just got to it in time because Toothless was about
to eat it. Thoroughly rattled, he fastened it back on, put
Toothless
in his waistcoat with the Wodensfang, and
popped back up to the top of the table.
The girl with the black hair and the big eyes was
now sitting where he had been sitting.
Oh dear, those big doom-y eyes were rather
alarming, they gave him quite a shock.
‘You’ve been under there for a really long time,’
said the girl solemnly.
‘Yes, well, I was resting,’ said Hiccup, feeling a
little desperate.
‘My name’s Eggingarde,’ said the little girl.
‘Pleased to meet you, Eggingarde,’ said Hiccup,
108
shaking her hand in a slightly frazzled way.
‘Eggingarde, what is this Seeking thing, and
how do you get Lost?’
‘Us slaves of the Amber Slavelands go out on
the Seeking every day,’ said Eggingarde. She spoke
in a very grown-up way for such a very little girl. ‘At
the first hint of low tide the bugle sounds and out we
go on to the red sands, to seek the amber Jewel that
the witch and her son Alvin are looking for, the one
that is not there. For I have been out on the sands
every day since I can remember, and I can tell you the
Jewel is not there.’
Oh, great.
‘Then the second bugle sounds,’ said
Eggingarde, in a scared deep whisper, ‘and we return
to Prison Darkheart. Unless…’
‘Unless?’
‘We are taken by the tide or…’ Eggingarde
stopped and opened her eyes even wider, ‘…
something else.’
Something about Eggingarde’s doom-y eyes
reminded Hiccup of someone, but he didn’t know
who.
‘Eggingarde?’ asked Hiccup. ‘How long have you
been in this prison?’
109
‘For as long as I can remember,’ replied
Eggingarde.
Poor Eggingarde.
For as long as she could remember.
That was a long time.
‘It’s OK,’ said Eggingarde. ‘I’m not scared,
because I am a Wanderer, and Wanderers are wild.’
Eggingarde pulled up the hat of her bearsuit,
held up her ten fingers and made them into claws,
making a hissing sound.
Hiccup pretended to be frightened and
Eggingarde looked pleased.
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Page 5