How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (Hiccup) (12 page)

"NEVER!"
yelled Hiccup.

Alvin the Treacherous leaped at Hiccup.
"YOU

CATCH THE OTHER TWO, EXTERMINATOR, ALIVE, MIND YOU -I NEED THAT FIRESTONE -AND LEAVE HICCUP TO ME!"

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The Exterminator swooped forward toward Camicazi and Fishlegs with a savage growl, and reared up on its hind legs, its ten sword-claws spread out in front of it.

Hiccup held up his sword, Endeavor, in the very nick of time, and it caught the Stormblade as Alvin brought it down toward Hiccup's chest with terrifying ferocity.

Camicazi and Fishlegs were fighting a Great Black Monster with ten swords to their two. The Creature used its claws just exactly as if it were sword-fighting, and its fingers were so flexible and bendy that they moved like arms, thrusting delicately in and out.

It wasn't under orders to kill them, thank Thor, only capture them, and within about two minutes it had done just that to Fishlegs, with its left arm.

One finger sent Fishlegs's sword spinning up into the air to disarm him. With its left leg it knocked Fishlegs down, and then it pinned Fishlegs to the ground with its five sword-fingers, two above his shoulders, and two below his arms.

It had more trouble with Camicazi, for Camicazi was a wonderful sword-fighter, and she chatted the entire time she fought, which was even more off-putting than the sword-fighting itself.

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"Take
that,
you Slowpoke, Serpent-Tongued, See-Through-Chested Hand-bag!" she cried, leaping through its swords and tweaking its whiskers. The Exterminator howled in pain and fury.

"Crybaby!" cried Camicazi joyfully. "Does the ickle Dwagon-Monster want his ickle Mumsie to kiss it better for him den?"

A look came into the Exterminator's eyes, which said as plain as day, "Maybe I should kill this little gnat after all, WHATEVER my Leader says."

The Exterminator swelled up in fury and redoubled the slashing and thrusting of his five razor-sharp blades, and eventually he broke through her guard, picked her up, kicking and screaming, and pinned her down with his five sword-fingers plunged into the ground around her, just like he had done with Fishlegs.

The Exterminator wasn't so bothered by her insults now that she was at its mercy, and it lay down its gigantic, oozing, pantherish body in between Fishlegs and Camicazi, and folded up its great black wings to watch the fight between Hiccup and Alvin.

[Image: Suitcase.]

"Humungous was right," said Fishlegs to Camicazi gloomily. "There
is
no point in having me in the Team. I did TRY to make myself go

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Berserk, but it only works when I don't want it to. At least
you
put up a fight, and you burgled the Stone and everything.
I've
done nothing helpful at all. I might just as well have run away like the others."

This wasn't quite true.

Sometimes we can be helpful in ways that are not totally obvious, and if Fishlegs had run away like the others, he would have taken his Running-Away Suitcase with him, and that Suitcase, as we shall see, was about to come in extremely useful.

Alvin had been practicing his sword-fighting since the last time Hiccup fought him, on top of the mounds of Treasure in the Caliban Caves.

But then Hiccup had been practicing too, and had been getting extra sword-fighting lessons with Gormless the Grim, because it was the only thing on the Pirate Training Program that he was at all good at.

[Image: An umbrella.]

And although Alvin was taller and had longer arms than Hiccup, he did have the disadvantage of the ivory Sharkworm-tooth leg, which made him stagger about the mountaintop, cursing horribly, while Hiccup was very light on his feet and quick to dodge even the most violent of thrusts.

It was very evenly matched. But Alvin had one

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other advantage over Hiccup, which was that he was a big CHEAT.

It is not considered good sportsmanship, in Barbarian Culture, to make a huge swipe at your child-opponent with your hook while sword-fighting. Nor is it thought to be part of the Viking Code to trip the preteen up with your Sharkworm-tooth leg as he dodges out of the way.

[Image: Fighting.]

However, Alvin had never been a good sport, and

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he did both those things in quick succession, without so much as a twinge of guilt.

Hiccup sprawled onto his backside, arms and legs flailing.

With a howl of triumph, Alvin the Treacherous hauled the sword, Endeavor, out of Hiccup's hand, and threw it far out of reach.

[Image: Fighting.]

As Alvin wrenched the sword from Hiccup's hand and raised the Stormblade for the final blow, a flash of

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sunlight caught the bracelet writhing around Alvin's good arm. This would have been the end of Hiccup's Quest, had he not had the good fortune to have landed right in the middle of the spilled contents of Fishlegs's Running-Away Suitcase.

Still sprawled on his back, Hiccup grabbed hold of the nearest thing to him, which happened to be a box of Fishlegs's tooth powder, and flung the entire contents of the box up into Alvin's face.

"Yoooooooooooowwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!" screeched Alvin. Fishlegs's tooth powder was one of Old Wrinkly's most popular medicines, a mixture of extract of seaweed, gull droppings, and spearmint for the taste. I don't know what actual good it did for the
teeth,
but it certainly stung like crazy as it worked its way into Alvin's one good eye.

While Alvin stood there, momentarily blinded, Hiccup jumped up and pulled the bracelet off Alvin's arm. It took a few mighty tugs, for it was stuck fast to the Fire Suit, but Hiccup was desperate, and pulled with a strength he didn't know he had. He threw the bracelet up to Toothless, shouting, "Take that to Humungous!"

Toothless caught the bracelet, heavy as it was, and sank like a stone, nearly to the ground.

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Mouth full of bracelet, he began to stammer out "W-w-why???"

"JUST DO IT!!!! DON'T ARGUE FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE!" howled Hiccup.
"FAST!!!"

[Image: A dragon.]

So the little dragon pointed himself down toward the tiny speck of
The Peregrine Falcon
floating in the bay, and shot toward it, the weight of

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the golden bracelet helping him sink through the air even faster.

Meanwhile, Alvin could now just about see out of his streaming red eye and he was after Hiccup again, as mad as a snake with a toothache.

Hiccup held up the suitcase as a shield as Alvin rained down blow after blow, finally cutting the thing practically in two. Hiccup rolled out of the way just in time.

Alvin grabbed hold of his waistcoat, and Hiccup wriggled out of it, hitting Alvin on the nose with a sightseeing book called
Visiting Rome for the First Time.

"You
should have learned a lesson from your silly old grandfather.
He's
learned not to try and interfere with Fate. And he thought he was clever enough to hold the Fire-Stone!" snarled Alvin.

"All HIS meddling, his silly Quests, achieved were to break his daughter's heart... I wish you could have seen how Valhallarama cried when I told her that Humungous was dead ... Oh, it was tragic."

"Liar! Traitor! Villain!" shouted Hiccup, dodging yet another of Alvin's lunges and looking about him for something else that could be used as a weapon.

[Image: A bottle.]

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"Oh, BOO-HOO," sneered Alvin the Treacherous, creeping forward, his eye glittering, "stop, you're going to make me CRY."

And then Hiccup threw one thing at him after another, the entire contents of Fishlegs's Running-Away Suitcase, that were now lying all around them on the mountainside.

Fishlegs's belt, whose heavy gold buckle caught Alvin full in the forehead, six pairs of clean knickers, several pairs of trousers, a bottle of asthma medicine, which made both of them sneeze, and Fishlegs's pillow, which burst on the end of the Stormblade, and showered the two of them in a rain of goose feathers.

"Ow, ow ow!" screeched Alvin, as Fishlegs's hairbrush landed bristle-side up on Alvin's sensitive chin, and one of Fishlegs's vests got caught around his ivory leg.

But although Hiccup put off his defeat for vital minutes, particularly with a spirited fight using Fishlegs's umbrella instead of a sword, the end was never really in doubt.

[Image: One of Fishlegs's vests caught around Alvin's leg.]

Alvin was determined that Hiccup was not

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going to slip out of his fingers this time. Stumbling and staggering, his eye watering, and spitting out goose feathers, he chopped the umbrella in half and finally got Hiccup in a hold he couldn't wriggle out of.

"Now!" gloated Alvin, bringing the Stormblade down to Hiccup's face. "Where is the Fire-Stone?"

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15. I DIDN'T MEAN TO COME HERE

Meanwhile, Humungous had spent an anxious half hour down on
The Peregrine Falcon,
shading his hands over his eyes and trying to spot the progress of the three young Vikings as they slowly climbed the Volcano Mountain.

What he discovered was that it was FAR more tense watching somebody else performing a Quest than it is to do the Quest oneself. He felt quite sick with nerves.

Most of the time he was talking to himself as he peered upward, trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing.

"Now, I was
right
not to tell Hiccup that Terrific Al wanted that Stone too, wasn't I? And nobody could expect me to go with them, could they? ... After fifteen years of slavery on this very island ... but I guess nobody else is going to do it, but for Thor's sake," Humungous slung his bow and arrows around his shoulders, "a guy should get to retire SOMETIME, shouldn't he? UP now, White Dragon ... I mean, why is it always ME who has to be the Hero?

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"It's ... not... my... fight..." complained Humungous, taking his foot out of the stirrup again.

He turned his face to the heavens and howled up to the uncaring sky, shaking his fist in frustration:

"WHAT...SHALL...I...DO????"

And as if in answer to his question, out of the clear blue sky, DOWN swooped an exhausted little Toothless, and dropped upon the deck a golden something.

A something that rolled around the deck in ever-decreasing circles, and came to rest with a clatter.

Humungous bent down and picked up the something.

It was the golden dragon bracelet that twisted around Alvin's good arm. He knew it well, for he had made it for Alvin himself, in the Jail-Forges when he was supposed to be making swords, as a thank-you after Alvin agreed to take the ruby heart's stone to Valhallarama many many years ago. This was the first time in a long while that he had seen it close up.

And as he picked it up, he thought,
That's funny, there's something in the dragons eye. I didn't put that there when I made it...

And as he held it closer, a blast of lightning lit up

I78

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the sky, and the flash of light caught the bracelet, and the dragon's eye winked at him.

One small, sly, red wink, as if it were amused.

The dragon's eye was his ruby heart's stone.

In that single moment the Truth rushed upon Humungous all at once.

She
had
loved him.

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She had never got the message.

Terrific Al had never given it to her.

He had kept the ruby heart's stone ... he had even had the cheek to fit it into the bracelet that Humungous had made him, which he had then been wearing right under Humungous's nose the
entire time...
which made him a whole lot less Terrific than Humungous had thought.

Maybe it even made him the Treacherous Villain that Hiccup had been describing ... and perhaps throwing him to the Sharkworms was a THOROUGHLY good idea and what a shame they had only taken his leg and hadn't gotten rid of him completely.

A fifteen-year-old memory popped into his head.

It was a memory of his Love, handing him this very stone so very many years ago.

With these words:

"When you hold this stone, you hold my heart. But if you find yourself captured or in trouble, send me this stone in the mouth of your hunting dragon, and I will come and rescue you."

Humungous gave a half laugh, half cry, as he looked first at the heart's stone, and then down at Toothless, collapsed on the deck in exhaustion.