8 Hunting for the Amber in the Amber Slavelands

8. HUNTING FOR THE AMBER IN THE AMBER SLAVELANDS Very early the next morning, the slaves gathered in the prison courtyard for the Seeking. Toothless was very tired and very scared, peering out of Hiccup's waistcoat. 'Toothless not want to go on this Seeking.' Nor did Hiccup. 'OPEN THE DOORS TO THE AMBER SLAVELANDS!' cried Alvin the Treacherous. C-CCREAK! The great doors opened on the east side of the courtyard of Prison Darkheart and Hiccup got his first view of the sands of the Amber Slavelands. It was the volcanic rock that had turned them that extraordinary bright scarlet red, like blood, and with the sinking of the tide they stretched out for miles, encircled by the arms of the Slaveland walls, as far as the eye could see and beyond. 'DIG FOR YOUR LIVES! HUNT TILL YOUR EYES DROP OUT! BUT TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES FOR THOR'S SAKE… We've been losing a lot of slaves recently,' cried Alvin the Treacherous, and the cold clear note of the bugle rang

out. 'THE SEEKING BEGINS!!!' All around the edges of the courtyard, tucked away behind the crazy jumble of weaponry and dragon-traps, were rows and rows of sand-yachts. The crowds of slaves rushed and jostled for them now, for the witch's prize of freedom was far more precious than her punishment of death. 'Calmly, Amber-Hunters!' said Stoick the Vast, holding up his great hand. 'Calmly! There is plenty of time.' So the Amber-Hunters got to the sand-yachts after the first undignified rush. Eggingarde showed Hiccup his sand-yacht. 'This one hasn't got an owner,' said Eggingarde. Hiccup swallowed. 'What happened to the last owner?' asked Hiccup, although he already knew the answer. 'I really can't say,' said Eggingarde, but her eyes seemed to say 'Lo-o-o-o-st…' 'Don't tell me, it's bad for morale,' Hiccup finished for her. The sand-yacht was a wobbly, skew-whiff thing, with a basket balanced on one end to put the amber in, and a long pole, again slightly skew-whiff, to pole along the sand with.

In his mind Hiccup called this little yacht The Hopeful Puffin 2, because it reminded him so much of The Hopeful Puffin, the little boat he used to have on Berk, long ago. Before the war… To give himself courage, and to remind him of that happy time he hoped would come again, he took out a piece of chalk from his rucksack, and drew a picture of The Hopeful Puffin on the side of the sand-yacht. 'You have to take care of your sand-yacht,' explained Eggingarde, 'because if your sand-yacht breaks a mast or something, there's no way you can get back to Prison Darkheart without the tide catching you.' Every team had a prison guard. Alvin had put Snotlout in charge of the Amber-Hunters. 'But I'm a Chief and a dragon-fighter!' complained Snotlout furiously. 'I'm not a slave or a guard! I should be out there, beyond the prison walls, killing dragons for you, King. I'm way too important to this war effort for you to lose me on the sands.' 'Silence!' yelled Alvin. 'Are you disrespecting my orders, Chief Snotlout?' Snotlout was silent. He was not a fool. He knew what happened

to people who disrespected Alvin's orders. 'Thank you,' purred Alvin. 'We've lost a lot of prison guards recently and we have to find that Jewel soon, my mother has seen it in her dreams, and Mother's dreams must be obeyed.' So it was Snotlout who addressed the Amber-Hunters' party before they left. 'RIGHT, you 'orrible lot! You heard what Alvin said: hunt until your eyes drop out! And Stoick, Baggy and Gobber, please keep up. I don't want you old guys holding up the whole team,' he sneered. So they followed the great army of yachts on to the sands.

Every now and then one little team ahead of them broke off to begin working on one of the pointless holes, or hunting for the amber, so as they travelled farther and farther east across the sand, the army of yachts grew smaller and smaller. Until it was just the Amber-Hunters. For hours and hours they sailed. They had long left the islands and the land behind. The tide made a strange kind of sucking noise as it sank, and it seemed as if it was bubbling, bursting, and maybe it was Hiccup's imagination playing tricks on him, but it seemed as if there really might be something DOWN there, something that was incubating, that the sands were about to give birth to something dreadful… There could be Brainless Leg-Removers down there… There could be Rocket-Rages… There could be something even worse than these… The scary thing was that all the other slaves seemed to think the same thing. They were very, very jumpy, looking over their shoulders all the time. Toothless and the Wodensfang peered anxiously out of Hiccup's waistcoat. 'Do you think Eggingarde is right and there

is that Monster down there?' asked Toothless, querulously. 'Now, Toothless,' said the Wodensfang. 'If there is a Monster, we shall just have to try and reason with it. Us dragons are just as capable of evolving into more civilised beings as humans are…' Yes, that was all very well, thought Hiccup, but I would put a bet on that dragon not being very reasonable. Chief Snotlout found it hard to keep up with the Amber-Hunters. The prison guards had wider, bigger sand-yachts and Snotlout hadn't yet mastered the rhythm of his. Even Hiccup was faster than Snotlout, despite the fact the falling-apart The Hopeful Puffin 2 was impossible to steer in a straight line, and wobbled its way forward in desperate zig-zags. (And in this it was very like The Hopeful Puffin 1, a valiant little boat, but it tended to go round in circles.) 'Stop! Slow down! Wait for me!' shouted Snotlout, waving his whip. But nobody bothered waiting for Snotlout. He fell further and further behind. So when they finally reached the most evil of the Evil Reaches, way, way to the east, it was Stoick who