fighting as Hiccup. Her arm moved so quickly you
could hardly see it. She turned cartwheels between
moves. And she TALKED constantly throughout,
which made it difficult to concentrate.
‘FIGHT, you nano-eating, locust-baking, toga-
wearing, Jupiter-worshipper! Ooooh you’re actually
quite good at this – for a boy – I’ve been getting SO
bored, you have no idea…’
‘Can’t we just have a quiet talk about this?’
asked Hiccup breathlessly. ‘There really is no
need for us to be fighting…’
But the
little girl took
absolutely no
notice of him and
carried on talking.
‘I see you know
the Grimbeard’s
Grapple, and the
Flashcut Lunge, and
the Deathwatch Parry,
and the—’
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‘Will you STOP!’ panted Hiccup, frantically
parrying all of these moves, and getting his sleeve cut
off in the process. ‘My name really is Hiccup… I really
am a Hooligan…’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said the little girl. ‘You’re a
Roman SPY! Admit it, or I will UNZIP you from your
BREADBASKET to your OYSTERGOBBLER!
Oooooooh your defence is a bit WEAK, you know, you
should really work on that… otherwise, a person could
just nip through – and…’
She made a perfectly executed lunge which
Hiccup parried at the last minute but which cut off his
second sleeve.
‘Whoops!’ crowed the little girl joyfully. ‘There
goes the other one!’
‘I – AM – NOT – A – ROMAN…’ gasped
Hiccup, his back against the wall.
‘Well, a Hooligan isn’t much better,’ said the
little girl, pausing for a second and then carrying on.
‘My mother says the only good Hooligan is a dead
Hooligan.’
‘That’s funny,’ panted Hiccup, ‘because my
father says that the only good Bog-Burglar is a dead
Bog-Burglar – and the really amusing thing is, unless
we join together, in about two weeks’ time, we are
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both going to be VERY GOOD, and VERY DEAD.’
‘Oh BOTHER,’ sighed the girl, stopping at
last. Now that she wasn’t moving around so much,
Hiccup could see that she really was quite a small girl,
at least a head shorter than he was. ‘I was really
looking forward to spilling some blood.’
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She grinned at Hiccup. ‘You’re not a bad
swordfighter, actually, for a boy, of course…’
‘Thanks,’ said Hiccup, still trying to catch his
breath.
The little girl stuck out her hand for a
handshake. ‘My name’s CAMICAZI, the Heir to the
Bog-Burglars. Nice to meet you. What are you doing
here, anyway?’
‘We got kidnapped just like you,’ replied
Hiccup. ‘And we’re also looking for a dragon that I’ve
lost. He’s about so high, green eyes, a Common-or-
Garden…’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Camicazi. ‘The soldier who
brings the food told me about HIM. He bit the
Prefect on the nose when they brought him in!’
‘Good old Toothless,’ said Hiccup.
‘The Prefect really doesn’t like HIM,’ said
Camicazi.
‘Yes I know,’ said Hiccup. ‘Toothless once did a
poo in his helmet, and a Treacherous never forgives.’
‘They’ve put him in Level Seven, Top Security.’
‘Oh poor, poor Toothless,’ said Hiccup. ‘I can’t
bear to think of him being trapped. He hates small
spaces – he can’t even go down rabbit holes, despite
rabbit being his favourite food; he stays at the
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entrance shrieking his head off—’
But at that very moment the door to the prison
cell opened again. It was a stout soldier carrying a
small green ball in one hand.
‘I’ve got a present for Hiccup Horrendous
Haddock the Third from the Prefect,’ leered the
He threw the ball roughly at Hiccup and it
struck him heavily in the stomach, winding him
severely. The little ball unrolled itself with a furious
‘D-d-d-do you m-m-mind?’ and with a sudden burst of
happiness Hiccup realised who it was.
‘Toothless!’ he exclaimed joyfully, once he had
got his breath back. ‘TOOTHLESS!’
He bent down to pick up his dragon. The poor
little animal had lost so much weight he was all skin
and bones. Hiccup could feel his ribs sticking out, and
his tail had gone all floppy and lost its pointy fork
which is what happens if a dragon is imprisoned or
deeply unhappy.
For a moment Toothless pretended that he
didn’t care – ‘Y-y-yucky – put me down!’ – and then
he put his little dragon arms around Hiccup’s neck
and hung on for dear life, whispering in Hiccup’s ear,
so that only he could hear, over and over again ‘Th-th-
thank you… thank you… T-T-Toothless would have
died if he spent one more hour in that h-h-horrible
place… TH-TH-THANK YOU…’
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143
12. THE MASTER-ESCAPER
It may not sound like much, but one of the first facts
you learn about dragons is that they are hardly ever
grateful. This was the first time in Toothless’s life he
had thanked Hiccup for anything.
He soon recovered himself, and to make up for
this moment of weakness he gave Hiccup an
embarrassed nip on the ear.
He then became thoroughly over-excited and
twirled himself around Hiccup’s neck three times,
before diving down Hiccup’s shirt and running all over
his chest and round his back and under his armpits,
which made Hiccup laugh a lot, because the light
pattering of a dragon’s feet and the swirl of its tail is
almost unbearably ticklish.
‘Stop it!’ shouted Hiccup, in between gasps of
laughter. Toothless emerged from the shirt and
scurried on to Hiccup’s head, his little green paws
making Hiccup’s hair stand up on end even more than
it did already. Sitting high up on Hiccup’s forehead,
Toothless puffed out his chest and crowed three joyful
‘Cock-a-Doodle-Doos’ of triumph.
Camicazi watched all this with interest,
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particularly the strange pops
and whistles that Hiccup
made with his mouth when
talking back to Toothless in
Dragonese.
‘Oh, I’ve heard about you,’
she said. ‘You’re the geek who
talks to dragons…’
‘Talking to dragons is not
geeky,’ said Hiccup crossly.
‘Dragonwhispering is a very ancient
and rare skill.’
‘OK,’ said Fishlegs. ‘So if we’ve
rescued Toothless, I have just one
question – who’s going to rescue US?’
‘We’re going to rescue OURS
ELVES, of
course!’ cried Camicazi, drawing her sword again. ‘We
ESCAPE or we DIE!’ she shouted with a mad gleam
in her eye. ‘As it happens, I am the master escaper, this
isn’t the first time I’ve been kidnapped, you know.’
‘The MASTER ESCAPER,’ snorted Fishlegs,
‘You Bog-Burglars are very pleased with yourselves.
Who’s kidnapped you before?’
‘Oh… other Viking Tribes, mostly,’ replied
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Camicazi carelessly. She hummed a little tune and
happily swung her sword around her head.
‘The Meatheads… the Visithugs… us Bog-
Burglars are always quarrelling with EVERYBODY…
we have anger issues… anyway, I escaped from the
Visithugs, no problem…’
‘No problem?’ said Fishlegs. The Visithugs were
supposed to be TOUGH.
‘I think you’ll have a problem escaping from a
Roman Fortress,’ said Hiccup, stroking Toothless who
was beginning to purr. ‘Roman Fortresses are built to
be impossible to get into and impossible to get out of.
Have you noticed the four perimeter fences? The four
observation balloons? The guards at every
watchtower? Not to mention the bars on this cell and
the locked door. I don’t think you’ve got a hope of
escaping.’
Camicazi smiled confidently. ‘Nothing is
beyond the powers of a master escaper,’ she assured
them. ‘You can’t keep a Bog-Burglar under lock and
key. No prisons can hold us – we’re as wriggly as
eels…’
‘So why are you still here then if you’re such a
great escaper?’ said Fishlegs.
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‘I suggest that we wait for my father to send a
War Party to rescue us,’ said Hiccup.
‘He didn’t send a War Party to rescue
Toothless,’ Fishlegs pointed out.
‘Yes but I nearly persuaded him to,’ replied
Hiccup eagerly. ‘I think I really got through to him…
And I am his SON after all, and not just a dragon…’
Toothless gave him a reproachful bite.
‘He’ll come, I know he will,’ said Hiccup. ‘I
think I’ll just sit here and wait for him.’ And Hiccup
sat down on a stool by the barred window that looked
out over the sea in the direction of Berk. It was
raining, a dull never-ending sort of rain that would
have you soaking wet in two seconds if you went out
in it. ‘He will come, I’m telling you.’
But Hiccup was anxious. His father had been so
disappointed with Hiccup's report. Maybe his father
thought that Snotlout, who always got 10 out of 10 in
everything, would make a better Heir than Hiccup…
Maybe his father was relieved Hiccup had gone….
Maybe, just maybe, his father wasn't coming at all…
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13. BACK ON BERK
Back on Berk, Stoick the Vast sat in front of the table
in his Chiefly Hut with his head in his hands.
‘A Chief feels no pain…’ he was saying to
himself over and over again. ‘A Chief feels no fear… A
Chief is above mere weak personal feelings…’
But oddly enough this didn’t seem to make
him feel any better.
‘There will be other sons…’ he said to himself.
And the wind howling across the ocean and through
the wet bracken and blowing open the doors in a
flurry of rain seemed to call back to him…
‘… but not like Hiccup.’
What kind of a Chief am I? he thought to
himself wretchedly. Grimbeard the Ghastly would never
have hesitated like this! Grimbeard the Ghastly would
know it was the Bog-Burglars’ fault yet again. He’d have
been over there bashing those Bog-Burglars all the way to
Valhalla by now…
But then he caught sight of the Roman helmet,
and doubts started to creep in.
Could it possibly be that Hiccup was right and
the Romans had found their way into the Inner Isles
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149
and were trying to make trouble?
Sighing, he picked up the piece of paper sitting
on the table in front of him. On it he had written:
Plan A: Sale to the land of the Bog-Burglars
and starte bashing everybody.
He picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink and wrote:
Plan B: Send a War Partty to look for A
Romman Forte.
But which was the right thing to do?
Being a Chief was a lonely business.
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14. CAMICAZI’S ESCAPE
PLANS
For the next week Hiccup sat by the barred window
looking out for his father’s War Party.
Toothless came and sat on Hiccup’s head. This
was a familiar ritual to both of them, as it was
Toothless’s usual seat when Hiccup was
dragonwatching at the Wild Dragon Cliff. Hiccup
would draw and write in his Dragonese book, while
Toothless perched on his head, one eye shut, the other
half open, watching out for careless rabbits or small
mice that he could catch. They
could sit there for hours in
happy, companionable silence.
Now they sat looking out the window, searching,
searching, for the boats that were not there.
They were being held in a barred tower room
high in the air. The one good thing about being held
prisoner was that they didn’t have to go outside.
Because outside it was raining. Not your
ordinary, average kind of spitty little rain, but rain such
as you only really get in the Barbaric Archipelago, one
of the wettest
places on this
good green
earth. For
the whole week
it rained as if the
sky above was one
big endless bucket of
water, pouring
down without
stopping on the poor souls beneath.
The Romans are excellent travellers, but they are
not used to this kind of weather. Nobody is. Hiccup
watched with interest from his tower window high
above as the soldiers’ training grounds turned into one
big puddly mess of black mud. The Consul’s heated
swimming baths overflowed into the horses’ exercise
yards. The kitchens were knee deep in water. Even the
Tower itself seemed to sink a few centimetres as its
foundations softened and oozed.
The one good thing about the rain was that it
silenced the screeching dragons being held prisoner in
the giant cages down below. Dragons tend to sleep
through rain. Their skin is waterproof, so they put up
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their wings like umbrellas, and sleep underneath them.
Inside the Tower room, although it was bare, it
was at least dry. The young Vikings were allowed to
keep their swords and shields to practise for their
appearance in the arena on Saturn’s day Saturday.
A soldier brought them food every day. There was
lots of it, although it was all a bit too rich for Hiccup’s
liking. Pig stuffed with dormice st
uffed with baby frogs
carbonara and oysters fried in cream is a bit of an
acquired taste. They all refused to eat it when it was
fried dragon pie or Common-or-Gardens in batter.
Toothless hardly ate at all. Hiccup tried to
persuade him but Toothless put his nose up.
‘Roman f-f-food YUCKY,’ he said. ‘Too much g-
g-garlic. Want some good f-f-fish. Want mackerel.’
Camicazi carried on with her escape plans. They
were all completely crazy.
For the first one she persuaded Hiccup and
Fishlegs to help her knit their waistcoats into two
ropes and she attached one end of a rope to a fish
head and the other to one of the bars in the window.
She then spent three nights in a row throwing the fish
head out the window, hoping for a passing dragon to
catch it. Finally her patience was rewarded when it
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was snapped up by a hungry Gronckle
who flew off with it, the rope pulling
out the bar in the window before it
snapped.
Camicazi squirmed out
the window and down the
rope, which dangled twenty
metres above the ground.
She held on for as long as
she could, but eventually
had to let go, and
landed on a fat soldier
playing dice under an
umbrella with a dozen
fellow soldiers
below.
They were
then moved to
another, supposedly
more secure, cell
on the ground
floor.
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Camicazi wasn’t about to give up with this little
setback, though. She spent four days tunnelling her
way out of their new prison with Hiccup’s helmet.
Unfortunately the tunnel came out right slap bang in
the middle of the Consul’s bathroom. A naked Fat
Consul screeched for reinforcements and they were
moved back to the Tower room again, where the
window had been repaired.
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Her third plan was the craziest of all.