"YOU," hissed Fireworm, her ears dangerously back as she crept forward through the air like a leopard about to spring, "are a little LIAR."
"Anil Y-Y-YOU," said Toothless calmly, "are a r-r-rabbit-hearted, s-s-seaweeh-brained, w-w-winkle-eating SNOB."
Fireworm went for him.
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Toothless streaked off, as quick as lightning, and Fireworm's massive jaws snapped together with a sickening crunch on nothing but thin air.
Chaos ensued.
Fireworm completely lost control. She plunged wildly through the air, claws out, biting anything that moved, and letting out great bursts of flame.
Unfortunately, in the process she accidentally scratched Killer, a dragon with a very short temper. Killer then attacked any Hooligan dragon within biting distance.
Soon the dragons were involved in a full-scale, rip-roaring dragonfight, with the boys running around shouting at them to stop and trying to pull them apart without getting killed themselves. The dragons took absolutely no notice whatsoever, however hard the boys yelled -- and Thuggory and Snotlout were very red in the face after some pretty impressive yelling.
Gobber the Belch went ballistic on the sidelines.
"CANSOMEBODYTELLMEWHATINTHORAND-WODEN'SNAMEISHAPPENING?"
Toothless was in his element in this kind of chaos, dodging Fireworm's angry lunges with ease, nipping in with a lively bite at Alligatiger here and a
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scratch at Brightclaw there, obviously enjoying the fight enormously.
Even Horrorcow showed a great deal of spirit for a dragon who was supposedly vegetarian. She managed to give Fireworm a truly impressive bite on the bottom as Fireworm and Killer rolled through the air biting chunks out of one another.
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Gobber the Belch entered the fray, grabbing hold of Fireworm's tail. Fireworm gave a howl of outrage, squirmed round, and set Gobber's beard on fire. With one massive hand Gobber swatted out the fire and with the other he clamped Fireworm's jaws together so she could neither bite nor burn. He tucked the furiously enraged animal under one arm, still holding her mouth closed.
"SSSTOPPP!!!!!" screamed Gobber the Belch with a hair-raising, skin-crawling, fang-dropping yell that reverberated off the cliffs, bounced off the sea, and whose faint echoes could be heard on the Mainland.
The boys stopped their useless screaming. The dragons stopped in mid-air.
There was an awful silence.
Even the watching crowd went quiet.
This had never happened before. All twenty boys
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had shown themselves to be completely out of control of their dragons during the Initiation Test.
Technically, this meant that all of them should be thrown out of their Tribes into exile. And exile in this horrid climate could mean death. Food was scarce, the sea was dangerous, and there were certain wild Tribes in the Isles who were rumoured to be cannibals. . ..
Gobber the Belch stood, lost for words, his beard still smoking.
When he eventually spoke, his voice was deep with the horror of the situation.
"I will have to speak with the Elders of the Tribes," was all he said. He dropped Fireworm on the ground. She had come to her senses and now slunk toward Snotlout, her tail between her legs.
The Elders of the Tribes were Mogadon and Stoick, Gobber himself, and a few more of the more fearsome warriors, such as Terrible Tuffnut, the Vicious Twins, and the Hairy Scary Librarian from the Meat-head Public Library. The crowd and the boys stood absolutely still as the Elders consulted in the traditional Elder Huddle, which looked a bit like a rugby scrum.
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Meanwhile, the storm was getting worse. Huge claps of thunder burst over their heads, the rain poured down, and they couldn't have been much wetter if they had all jumped into the sea.
The Elders consulted for a long time. Mogadon got angry at one point and swung a fist at Tuffnut. A Twin held on to each of his arms until he calmed down again. Eventually Stoick came out of the Huddle and stood before the boys, who were hanging their heads in shame, their dragons at their feet.
If Hiccup had been able to look at his father, he would have seen that Stoick was not his normal, merry, violent self. He looked very solemn indeed.
"Novices of the Tribes," he bellowed grimly, "this
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is a very bad day for all of you. You have FAILED the Final Test of the Initiation Program. By the fierce Law of the Inner Isles this means that you should be cast out from the Tribes into exile FOREVER. I do not want to do this, not only because my own son is among you, but also because it will mean that a whole generation of warriors is lost from the Tribes. But we cannot ignore our Law. Only the strong can belong, in case the blood of the Tribes should be weakened. Only Heroes can be Hooligans and Meatheads."
Stoick jabbed a fat finger at the heavens. "Furthermore," he carried on, "the god Thor is really very angry. This is not the moment to weaken our Laws."
Thor let out a great crash of thunder as if to underline this point.
"Under normal circumstances," said Stoick, "the ceremony of exile would start now. But going to sea in weather like this would mean certain death for all concerned. As an act of mercy, I will allow you one more night of shelter under my roof, and first thing tomorrow morning you will be set ashore on the Mainland to fend for yourselves. From this moment forth, you are all banished and may not talk to any other member of your Tribe."
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The thunder crashed all around the boys as they stood, heads bowed, in the rain.
"Pity me, for this is saddest thing I have ever had to do, to banish my own son," said Stoick sadly.
The crowd murmured sympathetically, applauding the nobility of their Leader.
"A Chief cannot live like other people," said Stoick, looking almost pleadingly at Hiccup. "He has to decide what is for the good of the Tribe."
Suddenly Hiccup was very angry.
"Well, don't expect ME to pity you!" said Hiccup. "What kind of father thinks his stupid Laws are more important than his own son? And what kind of stupid Tribe is this anyway, that it can't just have ordinary people in it?"
Stoick stood looking down at his son in surprise and shock for a moment. Then he turned round and trudged off. The Tribes were already running off the beach and scrambling up the hillsides toward the shelter of the Village, lightning coming down all around them.
"I'm going to kill you," hissed Snotlout at Hiccup, Fireworm snarling menacingly from his shoulder. "First thing after we're banished, I'm going to kill you," and he ran off after the others.
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"I've lost my t-t- tooti," Toothless com- plained whinily. "C-c-came out when I hit that F-f-fireworm dragon."
Hiccup took no no tice. He looked up at the heavens, beside himself with fury as the wind scooped up seawater in handfuls and flung it straight into his face.
"JUST ONCE," yelled Hiccup. "Why couldn't you let me be a Hero JUST ONCE? I didn't want anything amazing, just to pass this STUPID TEST so I could become a proper Viking like everybody else."
Thor's thunder boomed and crackled above him blackly.
"OKAY, THEN ," screamed Hiccup, "HIT ME with your stupid lightning. Just do something to show you're thinking about me AT ALL."
But there were to be no bolts of lightning for Hiccup. Thor clearly didn't think he was important enough for an answer. The storm moved on out to sea.
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[Image: storm]
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Chapter 11. THOR IS ANGRY
The storm raged through the whole of that night. Hiccup lay unable to sleep as the wind hurled about the walls like fifty dragons trying to get in.
"Let us in, let us in," shrieked the wind. "We're very, very hungry."
Out in the blackness and way out to sea the storm was so wild and the waves so gigantic that they disturbed the sleep of a couple of very ancient Sea Dragons indeed.
The first Dragon was averagely enormous, about the size of a
largeish cliff.
The second Dragon was gobsmackingly vast.
He was that Monster mentioned earlier in this story, the great Beast who had been sleeping off his
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Roman picnic for the past six centuries or so, the one who had recently been drifting into a lighter sleep.
The great storm lifted both Dragons gently from the seabed like a couple of sleeping babies, and washed them on the swell of one indescribably enormous wave onto the Long Beach, outside Hiccup's village.
And there they stayed, sleeping peacefully, while the wind shrieked horribly all around them like wild Viking ghosts having a loud party in Valhalla, until the storm blew itself out and the sun came up on a beach full of Dragon and very little else.
The first Dragon was enough to give you nightmares.
The second Dragon was enough to give your nightmares nightmares.
Imagine an animal about twenty times as large as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. More like a mountain than a living creature -- a great, glistening, evil mountain. He was so encrusted with barnacles he looked like he was wearing a kind of jeweled armor but, where the little crustaceans and the coral couldn't get a grip, in the joints and crannies of
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him, you could see his true color. A glorious, dark green, it was the color of the ocean itself.
He was awake now, and he had coughed up the last thing he had eaten, the Standard of the Eighth Legion, with its pathetic ribbons still flying bravely. He was using it as a toothpick and the eagle was proving very useful for teasing out those irritating little pieces of flesh that get stuck between your twenty-foot back teeth.
The first person to discover the Dragons was Badbreath the Gruff, who set out very early to check how his nets had fared in the storm.
He took one look at the beach, rushed to the Chief's house, and woke him up.
"We have a problem," said Badbreath.
"What do you mean, A PROBLEM?" snapped Stoick the Vast.
Stoick had not slept at all. He had lain awake worrying. What kind of father did put his precious Laws before the life of his son? But then what kind of son would fail the precious Laws that his father had looked up to and believed in all his life?
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By morning Stoick had made the awesome decision that he was going to reverse the solemn pronouncement he had made on the beach, and un-banish Hiccup and the other boys. "It is WEAK of me, WEAK," said Stoick to himself, gloomily. "Squid-face the Terrible would have banished his son in the twinkling of an eye. Loudmouth the Gouty would have positively enjoyed it. What is the matter with me? I should be banished myself, and no doubt that is what Mogadon the Meathead is going to suggest."
All in all, Stoick was not in a state to deal with any more problems.
"There are a couple of humungous Dragons on the Long Beach," said Badbreath.
"Tell them to go away," said Stoick.
"You tell them," said Badbreath.
Stoick stomped off to the beach. He returned again looking very thoughtful.
"Did you tell them?" asked Badbreath.
"Tell IT," said Stoick. "The larger Dragon has eaten the smaller one. I didn't like to interrupt. I think I shall call a Council of War."
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The Hooligans and the Meatheads woke that morning to the terrible sound of the Big Drums summoning them to a Council of War, only used in times of dreadful crisis.
Hiccup awoke with a start. He had hardly slept at all. Toothless, who had crept into bed with Hiccup the night before, was nowhere to be seen and the bed was stone cold, so he had obviously been gone for some time.
Hiccup dragged his clothes on hurriedly. They had dried overnight, and were so stiff with salt that it was like putting on a shirt and leggings made out of wood. He wasn't sure what he was meant to do, as this was the morning he was supposed to go into exile. He followed everybody else to the Great Hall. The Meatheads had spent the night there anyway, because it had not been the weather for camping.
On the way he bumped into Fishlegs. He looked as if he had slept as badly as Hiccup. His glasses were on crooked.
"What's happening?" asked Hiccup. Fishlegs shrugged his shoulders.
"Where's Horrorcow?" asked Hiccup. Fishlegs shrugged his shoulders again.
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Hiccup looked around at the crowd pushing its way toward the Great Hall and noticed that there was not a domestic dragon to be seen. Normally they were never far from their Masters' heels and shoulders, yapping and snarling and sneering at each
other. There was something faintly sinister about their disappearance. . . .
Nobody else had noticed. There was a tremendous babble of excitement, and such a crush of enormous Vikings that not everybody could get in to the Great Hall, and there was a big jumble of barbarians shouting and shoving outside.
Stoick called for silence.
"I have called you here today," boomed Stoick, "because we have a problem on our hands. A rather large Dragon is sitting on the Long Beach."
The crowd was deeply unimpressed. They were hoping for a more important crisis.
Mogadon voiced the general disapproval.
"The Big Drums are only used in times of ghastly deadly peril," said Mogadon in amazement. "You have summoned us here at a horribly early hour" (Mogadon had not slept well, on the stone floor of the Great Hall with only his helmet for a pillow), "just because of a
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DRAGON? I do hope you are not losing your grip, Stoick," he sneered, hoping that he was.
"This is no ordinary Dragon," said Stoick. "This Dragon is HUGE. Enormous. Gobsmackingly vast. I've never seen anything like it. This is more of a mountain than a Dragon."
Not having seen the Dragon-mountain, the Vikings remained unimpressed. They were used to bossing dragons about.
"The Dragon," said Stoick, "must of course be moved. But it is a very big Dragon. What should we do, Old Wrinkly? You're the thinker in the tribe."
"You flatter me, Stoick," said Old Wrinkly, who seemed rather amused by the whole thing. "It's a Sea-dragonus Giganticus Maximus, and a particularly big one, I'd say. Very cruel, very intelligent, ravenous appetite. But my field is Early Icelandic Poetry, not large reptiles. Professor Yobbish is the Viking expert on the subject of dragons. Perhaps you should consult his book on the subject."
"Of course!" said Stoick. "How to Train Your Dragon, wasn't it? I do believe that Gobber burgled that very book from the Meathead Public Library. ..." He gave a naughty look at Mogadon the Meathead.
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"This is an outrage!" boomed Mogadon. "That book is Meathead property. ... I demand its instant return or I shall declare war on the spot."
"Oh, put a sock in it, Mogadon," said Stoick. "With wimpy librarians like yours, what can you expect?"
The Hairy Scary Librarian blushed a delicate pink and shook in his size eighteen shoes.
"Baggybum, hand me the book from the fireplace," yelled Stoick.
Baggybum stretched out one of his great octopus arms and picked the book off the shelf. He lobbed it across the heads of the crowd and Stoick caught it, to much cheering. Morale was high. Stoick bowed to the hordes and handed the book to Gobber.
"GOB-BER, GOB-BER, GOB-BER," yelled the crowd. It was Gobber's moment of triumph. A crisis demands a Hero and he knew he was the man for the job. His chest swelled with self-importance.
"Oh, it was nothing really . . .," he bellowed modestly, "a bit of Basic Burglary you know . . . Keeps me in practice. ..."
"Ssssssh," hissed the crowd like sea snakes, as Gobber cleared his throat.
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"How to Train Your Dragon," announced Gobber solemnly. He paused.
"YELL AT IT."
There was another pause.
"And . .. ?" said Stoick. "Yell at it, and . .. ?"
"That's it," said Gobber. "YELL AT IT."
"There's nothing in there about the Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus in particular?" asked Stoick.
Gobber looked through
the book again. "Not as such," said Gobber. "Just the bit about yelling at it, really."
"Hmmm," said Stoick. "It's brief, isn't it? I've never noticed before, but it is brief. . . brief but to the point," he added hastily, "like us Vikings. Thank Thor for our experts. Now," said Stoick, in his most Chieflike manner, "since it is such a large Dragon --"
"Vast," interrupted Old Wrinkly happily. "Gigantic. Stupendously enormous. Five times as big as the Big Blue Whale."
"Yes, thank you, Old Wrinkly," said Stoick. "Since it is, indeed, on the rather large side, we're going to need a rather large yell. I want everybody on the clifftops yelling at the same time."
"What shall we yell?" asked Baggybum.
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[Image: Baggybum]
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"Something brief and to the point. GO AWAY," said Stoick.
The Tribes of Meathead and Hooligan gathered at the top of the cliffs of the Long Beach and looked down at the impossibly vast Serpent stretched out on the sand, smacking its lips as it devoured the last morsels of its late unfortunate companion. It was so big that it seemed unlikely that it could be alive, until you saw it move like an earthquake or a trick of the eyes.
There are times when size really is important, thought Hiccup to himself. And this is one of them.
Dragons are vain, cruel, and amoral creatures, as I've said. This is all very well when they are a lot smaller than you are. But when a dragon's bad nature is multiplied into something the size of a hillside, how do you deal with it?