How to train your dragon (9 page)

Please let me be a bit of a Hero, just this once,
Hiccup and Fishlegs each thought to themselves. Nothing too spectacular or anything, just to get through this Test.

"STAND TO ATTENTION, WITH YOUR DRAGONS ON YOUR RIGHT ARMS!"
yelled

Gobber the Belch.

Gobber walked down the row of boys for the inspection.

"Beautiful turnout." Gobber congratulated Thuggory the Meathead on his Nightmare dragon, Killer, who spread out his shining wings to show off a wingspan of about four feet.

Gobber stopped abruptly when he got to Hiccup.

"And
WHAT
in the name of Woden," demanded Gobber, blanching a little, "is
THIS?"

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"It's a Toothless Daydream, sir," muttered Hiccup.

"Small but vicious," added Fishlegs, helpfully.

"Toothless Daydream???" blustered Gobber. "That's the smallest Common or Garden I have ever seen. What do you think I am, an idiot?"

"No, no, sir," murmured Fishlegs reassuringly, "just a little on the slow side."

Gobber glowered dangerously.

"A Toothless Daydream," explained Hiccup, "looks exactly like a Common or Garden except for the characteristic wart on the end of its nose."

"SILENCE!" said Gobber, in a very loud whisper. "Or I shall throw you all the way to the Mainland. I HOPE," he continued, "that this dragon hunts better than it looks. you and your fishy friend here are the worst candidates for Initiation I have ever had the displeasure of teaching. But you are the future of this Tribe, Hiccup, and if you shame us in front of the Meatheads, I, personally, will never forgive you. Do you understand?"

Hiccup nodded.

Each boy then stepped forward to bow and hold up his dragon for the spectators to applaud.

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There was huge clapping for Snotface Snotlout and his dragon, Fireworm, rivaled only by the mighty cheering for Thuggory the Meathead and his dragon, Killer.

"I give you, last but not least," Gobber the Belch was trying to put a bit of enthusiasm into his yelling, "the fearsome . . . the terrible . . . the only son of Stoick the Vast... HICCUP THE USEFUL AND HIS DRAGON TOOTHFULL!"

Hiccup stepped forward and held up Toothless as high as he could to make him look a bit bigger.

There was a slightly appalled silence.

People had seen dragons this small before, of course, normally scampering about after field mice in the wild, but NOT as noble hunting dragons competing in Initiation.

"SIZE ISN'T EVERYTHING!" boomed Stoick, so loudly that you could have heard him several beaches away, and he banged his great hands together to start the applause.

Everyone was terrified of Stoick's famous temper, so they joined in with polite wild cheering.

Toothless was still in a mood, but he was

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delighted to be the center of attention, and he puffed out his chest and bowed solemnly to left and right.

A few of the Meatheads snickered.

I've changed my mind,
thought Hiccup, closing his eyes,
THIS is the worst moment of my life so far.

"Okay, Toothless," he whispered into the little dragon's ear, "this is our Big Chance. Catch lots of fish here and I will tell you more jokes than you have ever heard in your life. Which will make that big red Fireworm dragon
really
cross."

Toothless took a sideways glance at Fireworm. She was sharpening her nails on Snotlout's helmet with the smug certainty of a dragon who knows she's about to win the prize for Most Promising Dragon.

"P-PPAKP!"

The Test began.

Toothless didn't do too badly in the early obedience exercises, though he clearly thought it was extremely dull. It was now raining quite hard and Toothless hated the rain. He wanted to go home and relax in front of a nice warm fire.

Fireworm and Killer were "going" and "fetching" as soon as Snotlout and Thuggory commanded, and

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they were diving and breathing out fire as they did so, just to show off. Fireworm did some fancy acrobatic somersaults that had the crowd screaming and stamping their feet.

"START YOUR HUNTING!" yelled Gobber the Belch.

Every dragon except Toothless flew out to sea.

Toothless flapped back to Hiccup's shoulder.

"T-T-Toothless got a t-t-tummy-aeie," he complained. Hiccup tried not to see his father looking surprised on the sidelines. He tried not to notice the crowd whispering to each other: "That's Stoick's son over there -- no, not the tall one with the skeleton tattoos who looks like a pig, the small skinny one who can't even control his minuscule dragon."

"Don't forget, Toothless," said Hiccup through gritted teeth, "tie FISH. I'm going to tell you all tie jokes I've ever hearh., remember?" "T-t-tell me NOW," said Toothless.

Help came from an unexpected quarter.

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Snotlout broke off from yelling "KILL, FIREWORM, KILL" to lean over and sneer at Hiccup. "What ARE you doing, Hiccup? You're not TALKING to that newt with wings, are you? Talking to dragons is against the rules and forbidden by order of Stoick the Vast, your wimpy father. ..."

"N-n-newt with wings?" repeated Toothless. "N-N-NEWT WITH WINGS???"

"You're not a newt with wings, are you, Toothless?" said Hiccup. "You're tie best hunter in tie world, aren't you?"

"Too RIGHT I am," said Toothless, grumpily.

"You SHOW that Snotface Snotlout and Ms snobby dragon what a REAL hunting dragon can do," said Hiccup urgently.

"OKAY, then," said Toothless.

Hiccup heaved a huge sigh of relief as Toothless took off in shambolic fashion in the general direction of the sea.

"This is too good to be true," Hiccup said to himself ten minutes later as Toothless returned from a second trip, clearly too bored for words but dropping a couple of herring at Hiccup's feet. "In about half an

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hour, I, Hiccup, will become a fully paid-up member of the Hairy Hooligan tribe."

It
was
too good to be true. Fireworm was just flying back to Snotlout with her twentieth fish, her green cat's eyes snapping with triumph, when Toothless called out:

"S-s-sloppy. snob."

Fireworm stopped in mid-air. Her head whipped round, her eyes narrowing.

"WHAT did you say?" hissed Fireworm.

"Oh no," said Hiccup. "No, Toothless, no, don't

do it...."

"S-s-sloppy. snob," jeered Toothless. "Is that the best you can do? It's p-p-pathetic. Hopeless. U-u-use-iess. You N-N-Nightmares
think
you're so cruel but you're s-s-sloppy as scallops."

"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.