20 Oh Dear

20. OH DEAR Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And that doesn't really cover it. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR. You would have thought that you had heard the worst of it, wouldn't you, that Hiccup had had all that he could take. But, OH DEAR. It's the little details we should not forget, the little things that catch us up, and trip us. The Warriors of the Wilderwest always set the dragon-traps in twos. so that if some other poor dragon landed beside to help another, then it would get caught too. SNAP! The second trap snapped shut, catching the Deadly Shadow in its cruel jaws. The Deadly Shadow put back its heads and howled the truly dreadful howl that a dragon howls when it is caught in a trap. It is an awful sound, for a dragon is a wild creature of the air, and so its horror of being trapped is such a ghastly wail of ultimate despair it is almost unbearable. These howls were multiplied three times, and the dragon sent out great bolts of lightning all around it –north, south, east and west– with such randomness that Hiccup and Camicazi had to duck behind the

sand-yacht. (Not that this would have been much good to them if the Deadly Shadow had scored a direct hit with a lightning bolt, but it's a sort of automatic reaction thing.) The dragon howled and thrashed but it could not work its foot free. Hiccup put his head above the edge of the sand- yacht and shouted, 'I can free your foot from the dragon-trap if you let me come near!' And then ducked as a lightning bolt came singing over the top of his head, and there was a smell of burnt hair. There was silence for a second, apart from the sound of the dragon heads arguing among themselves. At last Patience called out, 'Come closse then…' Hiccup stepped gingerly forward. The Deadly Shadow was lying on its side. It was trembling. Hiccup swallowed as he saw the trap. It was immense and one of the most complicated he had ever seen, a fiendish contraption of clockwork complexity. It was far more complicated than it even needed to be to do its dreadful work, almost as if its maker had been showing off when he designed it. Hiccup stroked the dragon's shining side soothingly.

'I can do this…' he said. 'I can do this…' Thank Thor he had spent the last six months learning how to undo dragon-traps. Hiccup took off his waistcoat and knelt by the trap. Camicazi drew both swords, and started pacing around the Deadly Shadow, just as he had paced around Hiccup and Camicazi, earlier in the day.