Cressida Cowell_How to Train Your Dragon_04 (10 page)

Hiccup was getting into the swing of things. He tipped an entire bowl of maple syrup on the floor, sending the Hysterics slipping and sliding all over the place. He winded another Warrior with a watermelon.

He pelted them all with onions. Now that the Squealers had stopped squealing, Toothless flew down from the roof to join in the battle. He found a bowl of chestnuts, sucked up a whole mouthful so that his cheeks were bulging like a hamster, and zoomed over the heads of the Warriors, spitting out fire and red-hot roasted chestnuts like a barrage of flaming bullets.

Chaos reigned in the Great Hall. Vegetables flew in all directions.. Hysterics who had been woken by a 
fat overripe tomato splattered in their faces assumed that this was all just a merry midnight food fight, and enthusiastically attacked their fellow Hysterics.

"Hurry up, Camicazi!" screamed Hiccup, slapping another opponent around the cheek with a large flat flounder, and running up the other end of the table.

Camicazi had problems of her own. She was defending herself against Norbert the Nutjob, who was livid with rage and lashing out at her with his sword.

Norbert the Nutjob had had a trying couple of days. His bottom was still throbbing from the arrow wound, Hiccup had made a fool out of him in the Ordeal-by-Axe, somebody appeared to have bitten off his beloved mustaches, and the Hooligans were even now stealing his Papa's American Vegetable.

And they hadn't even had the decency to send some proper adult Assassins! This third Assassin was even smaller than the first two. To add insult to injury, he, Norbert the Nutjob, noble Chief of the Hysteric Tribe, and Master Swordsman, was finding it difficult to defeat this
tiny little blond Assassin
in one-to-one combat. She just wouldn't stay still.

She met every lunge he made, carelessly singing 
the Bog-Burglar national anthem as she did so. She performed cartwheels between moves. She even picked up a piece of wild boar sandwich off the floor and started to eat it, while still fighting. She talked CONSTANTLY.

"I hope you don't mind me eating on the job," she said chattily, easily deflecting his Grim beard's Grapple sword-thrust, and throwing in a Piercing Point of her own. "I know it's rather rude to fight with my mouth full, but I'm absolutely STARVING, haven't eaten a thing all evening ..."

Norbert the Nutjob gave a grim smile and sprang forward with a particularly violent sword-thrust.

She dodged it, leapt up, swung on his beard while she wiped her sticky fingers on his shirt-front, and sprang back down again.

"I'm going to KILL you ..." panted Norbert the Nutjob, his eyes watering with the pain of having his beard pulled. "First with my sword, and then with my axe, and then I'm going to feed you to the Squealers."

"You clever,
clever
boy!" sang Camicazi, delightedly spotting her rope dangling just behind his head. "But you'll have to CATCH me first, you know..."

And with that, she somersaulted right between his legs, came up the other side, and squirmed up her rope with astonishing speed, pulling the end of it up behind her.

Norbert the Nutjob looked down at his legs for a dazed moment, and then through them, and then he swung around to find that Camicazi had apparently vanished into thin air.

He whirled around again. She wasn't there either. How
completely extraordinary...

Camicazi, swinging centimeters above Norbert the Nutjob's head, removed his crown so gently,
so
softly, with her pickpocketing, burglaring fingers, that he never felt a thing.

She then bashed him on the head as hard as she could with the frozen potato.

Norbert staggered a bit, swayed this way and that, and then fell to the floor, unconscious. As he lay prone, Camicazi dropped back down to the ground again and patted him reassuringly on the shoulders.

"Practice, Norbert, that's what you need," she said condescendingly. "You're never too old to learn."

"CAMICAZI!!!!!" shrieked Hiccup from the banqueting table, knocking out a Hysteric with a leg of roasted buffalo, shoving a carrot up the nose of another, and spraying three more with Homemade Nettle Champagne. "GET OVER HERE!" Camicazi swung across and landed on the table beside him.

Most of the table was now in flames, and the fire had spread to ALL the polar bear rugs.

Most ominous of all, the Squealers were actually MOVING to get out of the Hall. Squealers are so lazy that they only move when they are in mortal danger. They wriggled toward the door like disgusting fat, bloated slugs, their nails waving frantically, leaving a trail of snotty slime.

The rope that snaked up to the chimney in the ceiling, the other end of which was attached to One Eye's great leg, dangled between Camicazi and Hiccup.

They both grabbed hold of it, coughing from the smoke, and tugged three times.

Just the second before One Eye dragged them up and out of danger, Hiccup leaned down and picked up a metal food tray from the table.

And then they were up and away, the Hysteric swords just brushing their heels as they rose swiftly to the ceiling and out through the hole in the roof.

14. THE POTATO-BURGLARS' RUN

They appeared, blinking like moles, into the daylight, for night had turned into morning while they were in the Hysterical Great Hall; the sky was no longer black but the blue-grey of a seagull's back, and the sun was coming up fast from behind the Mazy Multitudes.

Down below they could hear the roar of the Hysterics, the loudest of all being Norbert the Nutjob shouting, "MY VEGETABLE! THEY'VE GOT MY VEGETABLE!"

The Hysterics were already stampeding toward the door, in pursuit.

Hiccup knew they hadn't a hope of getting away on foot, and they didn't have time to find their skis again.

In such situations, being tough is not necessarily the way to stay alive, because
however
tough you are, if there are five hundred Hysterics on skis and only FOUR of you, you are not going to win the battle.

What you need in THIS kind of situation is a 
Clever Idea, and luckily Hiccup was good at Clever Ideas.

Hiccup put the food tray down on the roof and sat on it.

"Come on, Camicazi, you sit behind me," ordered Hiccup.

"Oh, goody," said Camicazi, her eyes lighting up.

The roof of the Great Hall hung slightly over the village walls. From there a steep slope ran all the way down to the harbor.

So when the Hysterics poured out of the doors of the Great Hall in a shouting, angry river they had an excellent view of Camicazi and Hiccup tobogganing 
down the roof and sailing over the walls of the village on board one of their silver food trays.

"AAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!" screamed Hiccup and Camicazi as they soared through the air.

By some miracle they landed the right way up on the slope below.

And then the lightning descent began.

Take it from me, there is nothing on earth that moves faster than two children going down a practically vertical slope on a highly polished silver food tray.

Hiccup had sledded before, but never on a hill so steep that it was practically a cliff. And in fact the exact descent that they made has now become an annual competition on Hysteria. It is known as the Potato-Burglars' Run, and it follows the same route that Hiccup and Camicazi took, starting, as they did, on top of the roof of the Great Hall, and ending, less than two minutes later, in Hysteria Harbor.

The Potato-Burglars' Run is the most dangerous toboggan run in the Inner Isles, and for those brave enough to try it, accidents are common.

Hiccup and Camicazi were lucky not to break their necks. They screamed down that hillside, wildly out of control, yelling at the tops of their voices.

One Eye and Toothless couldn't possibly keep up with them, for it was like trying to catch a speeding arrow.

When they hit the ice of the harbor two bottom-bruising, hair-raising, eye-popping minutes later, they were going so fast that they wildly overshot the sleigh they had left there, and
The Hopeful Puffin
patiently waiting for their return.

They scrambled off the food tray and raced toward the sleigh. One Eye came soaring down, and they hurriedly hitched him up and set him going at a brisk trot toward the Harbor Exit.

"Oh my goodness," panted Camicazi, looking 
back up at the Hysterical Village, where the Great Hall was now a gigantic bonfire. "Those Hysterics are going to be SO CROSS."

"My congratulations," growled One Eye to Hiccup, as he pulled them rapidly forward. "You are the first Human I have ever met who uses his brain and not just his museles."

"If he really use his b
-b-brain,"
complained Toothless, catching up and collapsing, exhausted, on the seat of the sleigh, "we
not h
ere in. the first p-p-place."

In that very same instant, over the brow of the hill came the Hysterics.

They had put their helmets on and they were on skis, howling the Hysterical Howl like a pack of speeding wolves. They were already shooting arrows in their direction, trying to hit the sleigh. But they were too late. Once their skis hit the ice they traveled for a while, and then came to a halt. Hiccup and Camicazi were nearly at the Harbor Exit by now, and the arrows shot by the Hysterics fell harmlessly on the ice.

Looking over her shoulder at the furious Hysterics, Camicazi let out a whoop of joy as One Eye galloped out of Hysteria Harbor.

"We made it!" she yelled.

"We haven't made
it yet"
said Hiccup nervously. That sharp noise of cracking, like axes on a tree trunk, was even louder now that they were on the ice. And Hiccup was looking out for the Doomfang.

"Here's the Vegetable," said Camicazi, handing Hiccup the Frozen Potato with the arrow stuck in it. "And this other thing I found in the casket -- I'm sorry, I shouldn't have taken it as well, but once you start burgling, it's difficult to stop."

Hiccup took the Potato and the Other Thing, and stuffed them in his breast pocket, not really concentrating, for the great shadow of the Doomfang had appeared under the boat, and was following them under the ice.

"If we
can just
get to the Open Sea before the ice cracks we'll be all right," muttered Hiccup to himself. "The Doomfang won't leave the Wrath of Thor. The Doomfang hasn't left the Wrath of Thor in fifteen years ..."

The walls of the cliffs raced past them on either side. The Doomfang, dark and terrible, stretching out forever, swam slowly beneath them. And they reached the edge of the Open Sea without the ice cracking.

"You see!" grinned Camicazi. "We
did
it!"

15. THEY MIGHT JUST MAKE IT, NOW

It seemed like they had INDEED done it, as they burst into the Open Sea, One Eye pulling into that Great White Wilderness at terrific speed, the Wrath of Thor left behind them, the potato safely in Hiccup's breast pocket, and Berk only a three-hour sleigh ride away.

And then everything went wrong.

"What's th-th-that???" stammered Toothless, pointing with one wing to a shape on the ice behind them, coming closer by the second.

That
was an enormous, leaping Driver Dragon, far bigger and faster than One Eye, pulling a gigantic sleigh with one man in it. A very
cross
man, with an arrow wound in his bottom, a lump on his head, chewed-off mustaches, and a double-headed axe in one hand.

In fact it was Norbert the Nutjob.

Before Hiccup had time to think, Norbert was upon them.

His sleigh drew alongside the galloping One Eye. And then he reached over, and with one blow of his axe, he cut the reins and tackle attaching One Eye to the sleigh.

One Eye bounded on, but the sleigh, and
The Hopeful Puffin
behind it, came to a shuddering halt.

"Oh,
suffering scallops"
moaned Hiccup.

There they were, as still as a stone, in the middle of a Great White Desert that stretched for miles and miles and miles. In front of them, Norbert the Nutjob was pulling on his Saber-Tooth's reins to wheel his sleigh around for the attack. Below them was the Doomfang. For the first time in fifteen years, the Doomfang had left the Wrath of Thor.

It, too, had stopped when the sleigh stopped. In fact the sleigh had come to rest right in the center of its terrible green eye, as if it were a target.

And a target it was, for Norbert the Nutjob. Norbert leaped into their sleigh, tall and terrible and COMPLETELY CRAZY.

"AHA!" roared Norbert the Nutjob, his tic dancing for pure horrible murderous joy. "I'VE CAUGHT YOU, YOU REVOLTING LITTLE BLOND ASSASSIN! AND NOW I SHALL TEACH YOU NOT TO HIT PEOPLE
OH
THE HEAD WITH THEIR OWN VEGETABLE!"

Norbert the Nutjob raised his axe over Camicazi, and he was about to bring it down, when Hiccup said loudly, "I wouldn't do that, Norbert."

Hiccup felt in his breast pocket, and drew out the potato with the arrow still stuck in it. It was warmer this morning, and the potato, snuggled down the front of Hiccup's furry waistcoat, was no longer frozen.

Norbert glanced at Hiccup, and then gasped in astonishment, as right in front of Norbert's eyes ...

... HICCUP PULLED THE ARROW OUT OF THE POTATO.

For as Hiccup had suggested earlier to Norbert, the arrow slid out perfectly easily now that the potato had defrosted.

Hiccup pushed it in and out of the potato several times just to drive the point home. Norbert the Nutjob dropped his axe.

"My father's Prophecy!" screamed Norbert the Nutjob, his head in his hands. "I don't believe it.... It can't be true! You ... you revolting little Hooligan Vegetable-Burglar ...
you ...
are the Chosen One? ...
You
will lift the Curse and rid us of the Doomfang ... ?"

Hiccup nodded solemnly, thinking,
nutty as a fruitcake.