13 Yikes

13. YIKES The drill whirred furiously, and the three young Vikings were showered with splinters of wood as they all three hung on to the door. The Driller-Dragon heaved back his mighty head and the door was ripped out of the Vikings' hands, and swung wide open again. 'Now, now!' sang the Stormfly. 'No rough stuff!' The Driller-Dragon gave a roar of savage triumph and sprang forward, jaws agape. And Hiccup picked a frozen Poisonous Piffleworm off the top of the tunnel, and threw it in the Driller-Dragon's face. One second the dragon was this magnificent pouncing carnivore. The next he was a mewling baby, gibbering with fear. The Poisonous Piffleworm fell to the floor like a dragon made out of stone. But still, all four of the Driller-Dragons reared up on to their hind legs in horror, and turned around squealing, fighting to be the first to get out of the room.

Fishlegs slammed the bookshelf door. They knelt on all fours, surrounded by an entire nest of unimaginably venomous frozen Piffleworms, the tunnel echoing with their pants of relief. Hiccup shuffled on his knees to the end of the tunnel. They weren't as high up as they had been when the Stealth Dragon had dropped them off, but it was nonetheless a very long, long, way down, and Hiccup tried not to look. He leaned out and called as loudly as he dared for the Stealth Dragon. 'Please, please let the Stealth Dragon hear us,' he prayed to Thor as he called. Thor must have been listening–it has to be said, Thor has been very good to Hiccup over the years–for one second there was just bright blue sky in front of them, the next the sky had darkened slightly, in the ghostly form of the Secret Weapon. 'Ready to go, Sir?' asked the Stealth Dragon politely, hovering next to their tunnel. 'Well hello…' smirked the Stormfly, batting her eyelashes. 'Where did YOU spring from, gorgeous?' Toothless swelled up with furious jealousy. 'Snot gorgeous! Is a g-g-great big invisible goody-goody!'

Fishlegs was delighted to make the dangerous crawl along the Stealth Dragon's outstretched hovering wing, so deeply relieved was he to get out of that Library. 'Where to, Sir?' asked the Stealth Dragon, when all three of them had fastened their seatbelts. 'Next stop the ISLE OF BERK,' said Hiccup. The Stealth Dragon wheeled around on his albatross wings, and for the first time Hiccup realised that there was a most unpleasant smell of rotten eggs in the air, and they were not alone in the Archipelago skies. The air was full of dragons, dragons as far as the eye could see. An entire Dragon Army was descending on the little Isle of Forget Me. These were large riding-dragons, but in this case, because this was an attack operation, they weren't being RIDDEN exactly. Each dragon had a heavily armed Viking Warrior dangling from his claws. The Warriors had their swords drawn, and they were screaming the Murderous War Cry at the tops of their lungs. The Murderous Tribe was storming the Meathead Public Library. It was rather beautiful to watch the precision

of their attack. The dragons swooped down to the Library Entrance, and let the Warriors go at exactly the right moment so that they could hit the ground running, and could launch immediately into fighting the Meatheads, who poured out to greet them. A pitched battle was taking place, and the Murderous Tribe were winning, because they are some of the best barbarians in the business. 'HA!' whispered Fishlegs to Camicazi. 'So much for this Stealth Dragon being un-trackable! Five minutes later and Madguts would have caught us red-handed!' 'MMMmmm, you could be right,' admitted

Camicazi guiltily. 'We'd better tell my mother she needs to get rid of it as soon as possible.' Hiccup got the Stealth Dragon to fly on a lower flight path than normal back to Berk. And it seemed as if the entire way, above them was this steady stream of Murderous Dragons flying in the other direction. 'That disgusting smell,' mused Stormfly, wrinkling her beautiful nostrils and peering upwards as she flew, 'it really reminds me of something and I can't think what…'

There is a narrow gap called the Slice of Death that separates the North Meathead Island from the South Meathead Island. Most Vikings tend to avoid it, because there are shoals of dangerous reefs all the way along. But Camicazi steered straight towards it, and once they had entered the canyon, the Stealth Dragon didn't bother to fly any higher above the waves. He just swerved to avoid the rocks as if he were doing a slalom in the air. The impossibly high walls of the Cliff of Forever soared up to their left. The improbably high walls of the Cliff of Eternity stretched up to their right. And the Stealth Dragon swivelled his way through the rocks at the bottom of this tunnel of cliff like he was threading a needle through the treacherous surf. By the time they shot out of the Slice of Death, all three Vikings and their dragons were drenched with spray. Even Fishlegs forgot about the disgusting smell sufficiently to join the others in whooping with excitement as they were soaked by another wave, drenched in salt, and ears blown backward in the wind. He might not have felt so happy if he could have seen the sinister dark figure standing in front of the