How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (Hiccup) (7 page)

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were all too chronically stupid to understand the peril of the situation ...

... when a large boulder mysteriously detached itself from the blackened hillside above.

[Image: A man and a dragon.]

It came crashing down toward Hiccup and would have squashed him entirely, and

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that would have been the end of Hiccup, if Humungous hadn't called out from above at the last minute:

Hiccup and Fishlegs flung themselves to the left and the right, and the rock came crashing down in between the two of them.

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"OhforThorssake ... ohforThorssake ... ohforThorssake ..." gasped Fishlegs, sprawled on the ground and looking up at the dust clouds stirred up by the gigantic stone that had nearly killed them both. "It's a sign, don't you see, it's a sign from Woden that we really ought to be getting out of here ... I'm going to go and check my packing again ..."

"Sorry, guys!" said Humungous, hurrying down from the mountain above. "My foot slipped and I must have knocked off a little bit of rock. Are you all right?"

"Well, we're still three-dimensional, and thank you for asking," replied Fishlegs sarcastically. "Oh, how I wish
I
had a nice smart Bardiguard all of my very own, to chuck rocks at me, and send me unarmed into one-to-one combat with teenage psychopaths."

It seemed that perhaps Fishlegs might be right about the signs, however, because all these misfortunes, one after another, seemed rather foreboding.

Only the very next day after the rock incident, Hiccup was sitting down to a supper of oysters with his father. Humungous the Bardiguard was standing to attention behind Hiccup's chair. Toothless was underneath the very same chair quietly gobbling up an entire chicken that he'd nicked from the larder.

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Stoick had finished his oysters before Hiccup had even
started
his, and was looking at his son's oysters, his mouth watering. His hands reached out for a particularly plump one ...

... and Humungous shouted out,
"DON'T
EAT THAT
OYSTER!"

Stoick looked at Humungous with Royal Disapproval. This guy was going TOO FAR this time. He'd got the whole Hooligan Tribe all decked out like girlies, and now he was trying to tell Stoick what to
eat.

"I SHALL
EAT WHATEVER
OYSTER I LIKE!"
roared Stoick the Vast, bringing the oyster up to his mouth. Humungous reached out and made a grab for the oyster.

Stoick the Vast hung on in fury. There was an undignified scuffle, and Humungous had to swallow the oyster
himself
to prevent Stoick from eating it.

[Image: A man]

"RIGHT, THAT'S IT!" boomed Stoick

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the Vast, rather relieved, actually, to have hit on an excuse to sack the irritatingly perfect Humungous. "YOU'RE FIRED!" Humungous finished swallowing. "Bad oyster ... very bad oyster ..." he gulped. "I could tell just by looking at it..."

"WOW!" gasped Hiccup. "He just saved YOUR life, now, Father. He ate the bad oyster that
you
would have eaten! What a Hero!"

"Oh, yes, very good ..." mumbled Stoick gruffly, thinking,
just by looking at it, who is this maddening superman?

"So he's not fired, is he, Father?" said Hiccup anxiously.

"No, I guess not," said Stoick, thinking,
curses.

"In fact, perhaps you should give him a MEDAL or something. Are you feeling all right, Humungous? "You're looking awfully green."

"I think perhaps I should just have a little lie-down ... for a moment, you know," said. Humungous, and he staggered out of the room, leaning on Hiccup's shoulder, with Hiccup chattering

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all the time, "that was SO BRAVE, Humungous, and how could you tell it was bad, is it like mushrooms or something? I do hope you're going to be all right..."

Stoick pushed the oysters moodily away from him. He had quite lost his appetite.

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Humungous was thoroughly ill for the next two days.

Which was just fine, as far as Stoick was concerned.

During this time, all the other Tribes began to arrive at the Meeting which the Vikings called The Thing, held to celebrate the midsummer Festival known as Sun'sday Sunday.

The Bog-Burglars, the Meatheads, the Peaceables, the Grim-bods, the Bashem Oiks, the Silents and the Glums, the Terrormongers, and the Frothifists.

Everybody, in fact, apart from the Outcasts, the Rudeboys, and the Lava-Louts, who were a totally lost cause.

Soon Hooligan Harbor was absolutely crammed with Viking ships, and the tiny island of Berk was jam-packed with tents of all colors of the rainbow. Market traders had set up shop in the sweltering, baking heat, trading ship-fulls of stuff, from octopus lollipops to hunting bugles, to open-toed sandals, to dragon-skin bootees for your Viking baby who has everything.

The night before Sun'sday Sunday, Hiccup lay awake in the suffocating warmth for what seemed like ages and ages, as floating in through the window came

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the sounds of the Bashem-Oiks and the Bog-Burglars partying, and the shriek and scratch of dragon-fights.

Down at Hiccup's feet, Toothless lay awake too, his claws stuck into his ears, wriggling and complaining, so wafting up in a muffled way from underneath the sheet came the sound of "Issssssssss r-r-ridiculous, R-R-IDICULOS... b
-b-
barbarians... H-h-humans... s-s-so noisy... so s-s-selfish..."

But after a while the bedclothes fell silent, and the only sign of Toothless's presence was a warm little mound at Hiccup's feet that gently rose and fell, and the odd soft sleep-filled murmur of "Isss r-r-ridiculous," accompanied by a little indignant smoke ring that crept out from under the sheet.

Hiccup watched the smoke rings as they rose up to the ceiling, or drifted slowly out the window into the sultry star-crammed night, and eventually he, too, fell asleep.

He dreamed uneasily, of fire, and omens, and dragons with talons like swords that pursued him through the hot feverish night.

[Image: A man]

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In the middle of the night, Hiccup woke up with a silent scream.

There, standing beside the bed, stood the terrible figure of Humungously Hotshot, standing over Hiccup like an Executioner, his two swords raised, poised to come down on Hiccup, his head in darkness.

He was muttering to himself loudly, in a voice that was awful to hear. "Should I
do
it? Should I NOT? Should I do it? Should I NOT?"

"What are you doing?" asked Hiccup in terror. "Bardiguard ... STOP! What are you doing? Humungous! Humungous!"

Humungous appeared not to hear him. He went on talking to himself, in that awful voice, over and over again, something about a promise he had to keep.

He was wearing the hood of his Fire Suit rolled down, so you couldn't see his face, or his eyes, which made it more awful still, and the moonlight glittered on the razor-sharp metal of his swords.

It was a dreadful moment.

Humungous's hands were shaking.

He brought them down.

[Image: A man]

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He stopped them.

"I should NOT," said Humungous, with decision.

Something shot out from the sheet and bit Humungous heavily on the thigh with sharp, sleepy little gums.

Humungous let out a cry of pain and dropped one of his swords on his foot.

"ISSS R-R-RIDICULOUS!" snorted Toothless, sleep-flapping round the room for a bit. "CAN'T A D-D-DRAGON GET ANY S-S-SLEEP AROUND HERE? YOU HUMANS SO N-N-NOISY! SO SELFISH! KEEPING POOR T-T-TOOTHLESS AWAKE ALL NIGHT..."

Toothless then crawled back under the covers and dropped off to sleep again.

Hiccup leapt out of bed, grabbing his sword from his scabbard as he did so.

Humungous hopped around the room holding his foot and his thigh.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ..." cried Humungous.

The moment had passed.

All the fight had gone out of Humungous.

He peeled off the hood of his Fire Suit, and now

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that Hiccup could see him in the moonlight, he didn't look scary anymore.

He was still rather green from his illness and he looked very tired.

"I can't do it," said Humungous. "I gave my solemn, Hero's promise that I would kill you, but I can't do it. It doesn't feel right..."

"So you mean," said Hiccup in astonishment, "you're my Bardiguard, and you've been trying to
kill
me?"

"That's right," said Humungous. "I made a promise."

Hiccup gave a slightly hysterical laugh.

Somehow it was very like Stoick to accidentally hire a Bardiguard who was supposed to be looking
after
his son, but was, in fact, trying to
kill
him.

"But WHO did you promise to kill
me for?"
whispered Hiccup. "And why?"

Humungously Hotshot sighed. "I see I will have to tell you my story," he said.

And in the quiet stifling darkness of the nighttime (for even the Bog-Burglars and the Bashem-Oiks had fallen asleep by now), Humungous the Bardiguard began to tell his tale.

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7. THE TALE OF HUMUNGOUSLY HOTSHOT THE BARDIGUARD

"A long, long time ago, it seems like a lifetime away now, "
said Humungously Hotshot,
"I was happy. I was a young Hero who fell in Love with a beautiful young woman. "

"Uh-huh," said Hiccup cautiously. He wasn't very interested in stories about Love.

"Oh, but she was beautiful!"
sighed the Bardiguard.
"Her lovely fat, white, muscly legs! Her thunderous thighs! Her soft little beard! Her excellent sword-arm!"

"Yes,
yes," said Hiccup hurriedly.
"Do
get on with it."

"She loved me back (or so I thought), but her father had some ridiculous idea that she should marry somebody CLEVER, I have no idea why THAT was important, so he set me an Impossible Task, which, if I completed, the reward would be her hand in marriage.

"The Impossible Task he set me, "
said Humungously Hotshot,
"was to steal the Fire-Stone from Lava-Lout Island, and the reason that this is

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impossible is that the Lava-Louts have been looking for the Fire-Stone for many many years.

"Before I set off on the Impossible Task, my Love and I met in secret. My little double-chinned Sweetheart had a singularly beautiful ruby, shaped like a heart, that she always wore around her neck. She had cut this ruby in half, and she gave one half to me, and kept the other.

"'Go on this Quest if you must, ' whispered my Darling. 'But I have an awfully bad feeling about this, and if by any chance you happen to be captured by those pigs-in-pajamas, the Lava-Louts, just send this ruby to me in the mouth of Xellence, your hunting dragon, and I will come to rescue you. '

"My Love, you see, was not half bad at Questing herself.

"I promised her, and rode off on my white dragon to carry out the Impossible Task, but by terrible bad Fortune I got caught by the Lava-Louts, just as my Love had feared, and my white dragon and I were thrown into chains, and into a jail on Lava-Lout Island.

"Even worse luck, my faithful hunting dragon, Xellence, was killed during the Quest, and so I could not send the half-a-heart ruby to tell her I needed rescuing.

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"For a couple of months I worked in those Lava Jail Mines, utterly in despair. And then I made friends with this prison guard. His name was Terrific Al. He was such a nice guy, Hiccup. So smiley and sympathetic. I told him my story, and I asked him to take the ruby heart to my ladylove and explain that I needed her to come and spring me from jail as quick as her dear, fat little legs could carry her. "

Humungously Hotshot's voice deepened and saddened. His face looked green and ill in the moonlight.

"Terrific Al said that he would do this for me, if I promised to do him a favor at some point in the future. He took the ruby heart and I waited in hope, Hiccup, in the heat of the mines, peering out of my barred window in the nighttime, y earning for her to come. Days turned to Months. Months turned to Years. Hope turned to Despair. She never came. Fifteen years I waited, Hiccup. Fifteen years. And then, a couple of months ago, imagine my surprise when Terrific Al turned up on Lava-Lout Island as a prison guard again. One night he sought me out, and he told me what had happened to my ruby heart. "

[Image: A heart.]