How to train your dragon (14 page)

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Halfway through the boys' cheering, Fireworm let out a terrible noise. "DESERT!" she shrieked. "Desert, desert, desert, desert!"

The head of the corpse of the Green Death was slowly lifting up and turning in their direction.

"Uh-oh," said Hiccup.

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Chapter 16. THE FIENDISHLY CLEVER PLAN GOES WRONG

Hiccup had been listening for the Green Death's Death Song, but he wasn't singing it yet.

The Green Death was dying, but he wasn't dead yet.

What he
was
was very, very angry indeed.

Out of his bleeding mouth he hissed weakly,
"Where is he?"

And then he heaved himself on to his feet, and hissed a little more strongly, "WHERJE is he? Where IS tie Little Supper? I knew I recognized him, he was my doom, on wonder. Tie Little Supper has made a Supper of ME, tie Green. Death himself!"

As the Dragon spoke, he was inching forward very slowly and painfully, his eyes fixed on the cliff top, where he could see little human beings beginning to run inland again.

The Dragon threw back his head and SCREAMED a blood-chilling scream of pure horrid REVENGE, dark and torturous.

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"I'LL supper HIM before I go, I will," said the Dragon, and he leaped forward.

"R-U-U-U-N!" shouted Hiccup, but everybody was already running, as fast as they could.

In the distance, Hiccup could see four hundred warriors from the tribes of Hooligan and Meathead coming toward them from the Highest Point. They must have wondered at the boys' absence and come out to find them.

But they won't get here in time,
thought Hiccup,
and even if they do, what can they do?

Just then, the Dragon landed with a crash on the cliff top and suddenly the sun was blotted out.

Twenty boys ran toward the shelter of the ferns.

The Dragon picked up the nearest with one claw and turned him over.

It was Dogsbreath. By the time the Dragon had tossed him aside, muttering "Not you," the other boys had disappeared into the bracken.

The Dragon was sick, but he laughed weakly. "You're not safe there, oh no, for though I can't see you to kill you, I can use my... FIRE!"

The bracken caught fire with the Dragon's first breath and the boys ran out of it as fast as they could.

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Hiccup stayed in a little longer because he knew the Dragon was waiting for him.

Finally the heat became unbearable and he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and ran out into the open.

He had run hardly a hundred yards before two of the Dragon's talons closed around his middle and he was lifted up. Way, way up, so the other boys looked like little specks beneath him.

The Dragon held Hiccup up in front of him.

"We are BOTH Supper now, little Supper," he said, and he tossed Hiccup high, high into the air.

As Hiccup somersaulted for the second time he thought to himself,
Now THIS, this really IS the worst moment of my life.

Then he was falling.

He looked down. There was the Dragon's mouth, wide open like a great, black, cavernous tunnel.

He was going to fall into it.

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[Image: Mouth of the dragon]

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Chapter 17 IN THE MOUTH OF THE DRAGON

Hiccup fell into the Dragon's mouth, and its teeth snapped shut behind him like prison doors.

He was falling through complete darkness, surrounded by a smell so awful it was suffocating.

He jerked to a sudden halt as the back of his shirt caught on something and held.

Hiccup hung there in the darkness, swaying gently. By a thousand-to-one chance his shirt had caught on a spear still stuck in the Dragon's throat since his Roman banquet. Hiccup's foot brushed against the wall of what he presumed was the Dragon's throat. The Dragon's digestive juices stung like acid, and he snatched his foot away.

Above him, Hiccup could hear the Dragon's great tongue sloshing and lunging about his mouth, trying to find Hiccup so he could crunch him to death. . . . He hadn't intended to swallow him whole.

A disgusting river of green goo dripped down the puffy red insides of the Dragon's throat. Just across

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from where Hiccup was hanging, greeny-yellow steam was puffing out of two small holes in the slimy wall. Every now and then a small explosion sent little flickers of flame shooting out of the holes.

How interesting,
thought Hiccup, who was strangely calm, because he couldn't quite believe that this was really happening.
Those must be where the fire comes from.

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Viking biologists had wondered for years where the fire that dragons breathed came from. Some said the lungs, others the stomach. Hiccup was the first to discover the fire-holes, which are too small to see with the naked eye in a normal-sized dragon.

Way down below him, Hiccup could hear the distant rumbling of singing from the Dragon's previous meal. A Seadragonus Giganticus obviously takes a long time to digest, thought Hiccup.

It was indeed still going strong:

Humans can be bland,
but if you have some salt to hand, A little bit of brine,
will make them taste div-I-I-I-ne. . . .

The spear was gradually bending over with Hiccup's weight. It was only a matter of time before it broke and he fell to join the breezy optimist in the stomach below. . . .

What was worse, the fumes and the heat and the smell were starting to confuse Hiccup so that he no longer really CARED. The terrible noise of the Dragon's heart beating had entered into Hiccup's

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chest and forced his own heart to follow the same rhythm.

A Dragon has to live, after all,
he found himself thinking. And then he remembered the Dragon's words to him as he stood on the cliff top: "You'll find that you come round to my point of view once you're inside me...."

Oh no!
thought Hiccup.
The Dragon's digestion! It's already working!

"I need to live, I need to live," he repeated to himself, over and over again, trying desperately to block out the Dragon's thoughts.

There was a horrible creaking noise as the stout Roman spear began to split in two. . . .

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Chapter 18. THE EXTRAORDINARY BRAVERY OF TOOTHLESS

And that would have been the end of Hiccup, if it had not been for the extraordinary bravery of a certain Toothless Daydream.

Toothless, if you remember, had refused to join in the battle at Death's Head Headland. He was intending to fly off somewhere down the coast a bit and lie low till all was safe again, but he stayed at the Highest Point for a while, terrorizing birds and rabbits.

He must have been having a lovely time doing this, for he did not hear the approach of Stoick and the entire Tribes of Hooligan and Meathead until Stoick grabbed him around the neck.

"WHERE IS MY SON?" asked Stoick.

Toothless shrugged his shoulders rudely.

"WHERE IS MY SON???" bawled Stoick with an awe-inspiring yell so loud that Toothless's ears trembled.

Toothless pointed to Death's Head Headland.

"SHOW ME," said Stoick grimly.

I90

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Under Stoick's fierce eye, Toothless reluctantly flapped off toward Death's Head Headland, followed by the two Tribes.

They arrived just in time to see the Terrible Monster throw Hiccup high in the air and catch him in his mouth like a whelk.

So much for the Fiendishly Clever Plan,
thought Toothless.

He was about to use the opportunity of Stoick's obvious distraction to sneak off to a place of safety when something stopped him.

Nobody knows what that something was.

It was a moment that changed the whole world-view of the Hooligan Tribe. For centuries we had believed it was impossible for dragons to consider a selfless thought or a generous action. But what Toothless did next is impossible to explain as being in his own best interests at the time.

All his fellow domestic dragons were now flying somewhere over the Inner Ocean. As soon as they heard Fireworm's cry of "Desert!" those who were hiding in caves or between crevices or crouched in the ferns rose up in a great swarm and abandoned their former Masters as fast as their wings could carry them.

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The wild dragons from Wild Dragon Cliff had left hours before.

But something kept Toothless from flying after them -- maybe it was Stoick's heartrendingly powerless cry of "N-N-N00000!!!" that caused him to pause. Or maybe somewhere in that self-centered green dragon heart of his, he really was fond of Hiccup and grateful for the hours that he had spent looking after him, not shouting at him, telling him jokes and giving him the biggest and juiciest lobsters.

"Dragons are S-S-SELHSH," argued Toothless to himself. "Dragons are heartless and have no m-m-makes. That's what m-m-makes us s-s-survivors."

Nonetheless SOMETHING made him turn right

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around and SOMETHING made him fold his wings back and fly like a dragon blur to the Great Monster on the cliff tops. Which
really
was
not
in Toothless's best interests, as I said before.

Toothless flew right up the Monster's left nostril and started flying up and down the inside of his nose, tickling it with his wings.

The Sea Dragon lunged up and down, wrinkling his nose like crazy and bellowing.

"A-A-A-AAAAAAAH..."

The Creature stuck his great talon up his nose in a disgusting fashion and tried to winkle out the tickling flea that was irritating him.

Toothless didn't quite get out of the way of the talon in time and it scratched him on the chest. He hardly felt it though, he was so excited, and carried on tickling regardless, dodging the probing dragon claw.

"A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAH..." bellowed the Sea Dragon.

Meanwhile Hiccup was being thrown this way and that inside the Dragon's throat as it shook its head from side to side. He was trying desperately to hang on to the spear, which was in danger of becoming dislodged any second.

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[Image: Toothless diving]

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"...
choooooooooooi
"

The Dragon finally sneezed and Hiccup, the spear, Toothless, and a great deal of perfectly revolting Snot were scattered over the surrounding countryside.

Toothless remembered, as he was shooting through the air, that boys can't fly.

He folded his wings and dived after Hiccup, who was rapidly heading toward the ground.

Toothless grabbed hold of Hiccup by the arm and tried to take his weight. Dragons' talons are extraordinarily strong and he was able to break Hiccup's fall, not entirely, but enough so that when Hiccup crashed into the heather he was traveling reasonably slowly.

Stoick came plunging frantically through the grass.

He picked up his son and faced the Monster, holding his shield over Hiccup's unconscious body.

Toothless hid behind Stoick.

The Green Death had recovered from his sneezing fit. He shuffled forward, bleeding horribly from fatal wounds to his chest and throat. He lowered his terrible head till it was on a level with the cliff top, and his evil, yellow eyes looked straight at Stoick.

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"Time to did for
all
of us," purred the Green Death. "You can't save hi
s
life now, you know. You are quite, quite helpless. My FIRE will melt that shield like butter...."

The Green Death opened his mouth. He slowly sucked in a breath. Stoick tried to grab on to chunks of heather to hold them fast, but Stoick, Hiccup, and Toothless were being dragged slowly but surely toward the gigantic black tunnel that was the Monster's open jaws.

The Green Death paused for a moment before he blew out again, enjoying their terror.

"This is what h-h-happens if you don't listen to tie Dragon Law. ..." shrieked Toothless to himself in horror as he peered around the side of Stoick's cloak.

The Monster puffed out his cheeks and Stoick and Toothless waited for flames to consume them.

But no fire came out.

The Green Death looked very surprised. He puffed out his cheeks and blew a little harder.

And again, no fire.

He tried once more, and now his head seemed to be turning a strange purplish color with the effort of blowing, and it seemed to be swelling, bigger and bigger,