9 Scarers

9. SCARERS Up until that point, Fishlegs had really been doing very well. All on his own he had flown into the Woods That Howled. Under the protection of his Berserk mood, he hadn't felt frightened at all of flying through the dark forest. Brave as a lion, he had filled five pots of honey from five different honey trees, without dropping a single jar on to the forest floor below. He had been stung three times by bees and he didn't even care. But then, just as he had placed the fifth and final jar in his rucksack, and with joyous excitement was about to get the Chickenpoxer soaring out of the Wood, his heart singing, 'I'm a Hero! I'm a Hero!'– just at that moment… …something happened. Who knows what it was, a strange noise perhaps, a sudden cloud drifting over the moon so that he was

in absolute blackness for a moment. But whatever it was that spooked him caused the sudden disappearance of his Berserk mood as quickly and mysteriously as it had descended upon him. Fear stole upon Fishlegs as he sat in the heart of that wood, and as soon as he began to get frightened, that was when the Scarers came. Scarers are blind. And a little deaf. But they like to feed upon blood that is filled with the adrenaline caused by fear. And so when a human or an animal is filled with fear, that is when they smell them, and gather in thick, cloudy black swarms called 'flutters', tens of thousands strong. Fishlegs and the Chickenpoxer stayed absolutely still as the Scarers settled upon them. And instinctively they had hit on the right thing to do. For if they stayed still, and calmed their panic, the Scarers might scuttle all over them and then move on, deciding they were a tree, or something else inedible. Oh for Thor's sake… oh for Thor's sake… what do I do? thought Fishlegs. And that was when he met Hiccup's eyes, and realised Hiccup was sitting on the hovering Windwalker, only twenty feet or so away. Fishlegs was always pleased to see Hiccup.

But never in his life had he been more pleased to see him than now. Hiccup knew all about dragon behaviour. 'What shall I do?' mouthed Fishlegs. 'You're doing the right thing,' hissed Hiccup. 'Don't move a muscle…' Hiccup and Toothless and the Windwalker also froze. Hiccup could feel the horrible Scarers landing on his neck, on his arms, on his legs, on his chest, on his face, even starting to crawl sluggishly down the back of his collar. Trembling violently, Fishlegs tried to force himself to stay calm, not to react. But if YOU have ever been crawled over by spiders, by bats, or by a swarm of angry bees, YOU will know how very very hard it is not to panic. Even if a single wasp lands on your arm, it can be hard not to jerk it away instinctively, even though you know that is not the right thing to do. So just imagine how difficult it would be if thousands and thousands of Scarers were swarming all over your body, all over your face even, and maybe they would climb up your nostrils or in your ears… It was this thought that made Fishlegs lose it completely, and who can blame him, frankly.

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'AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed, and at exactly the same moment, three Scarers bit the Chickenpoxer on the bottom, and the Chickenpoxer wasn't the kind of dragon to take this lightly. He gave a violent swish of his tail, and a maddened buck, and he careered off through the jungle like a fat little Chickenpoxer chunk of lightning, narrowly missing two trees, with Fishlegs screaming wildly and flapping away with his arms on the Chickenpoxer's back. The Scarers buzzed away in a frenzy and a froth of whirling excitement, before swarming after them in zooming black clouds. And Fishlegs losing it tipped Hiccup over the edge, and he too started screaming, and the Windwalker bucked in the air before following the others in maddened out-of-control pursuit. Oh… for… Thor's… sake… thought a terrified Hiccup as he slalomed the Windwalker between the trees. This is going to end in DISASTER just like Fishlegs crashing head-first in the training practice. Flying for your life at top speed in the black of the night through the forest of Berserk was a VERY different matter, Hiccup discovered, from that little saunter through the trees in the Almost Wood.

Quite apart from the skill needed to avoid the densely grown trees of the forest, there was the little matter of the swarms of excited Scarers in hot pursuit. Hiccup realised the Scarers were actually shouting out as they followed through the darkness in their weird sing-song scary voices: 'We're going to ge-e-et you…' 'We can see-e-e-e-e you…' (Not strictly true, because they were blind, but frightening nonetheless.) That, of course, made the boys and the dragons even more scared, and so they gave off even more fear hormones, which the pursuing Scarers smelt and that turned them even more crazy and drunk and buzzing in a perfect fever of wild hunting excitement, and they swarmed after the boys with a high-pitched screaming whine that woke up more Scarers to join in the pursuit, and all in all it was a mad crazy body-chemical-fuelled dragon-chase that zig-zagged and zoomed hysterically through the dark trees of the Woods That Howled that moonlit summer night. 'Thank… you… for… following… me… Hiccup…' yelled Fishlegs as they charged like maniacs through the forest, breaking off twigs and branches and scattering shoals of Squirrelserpents as they went. 'No… problem…' Hiccup shouted back. 'I'm… not… interfering… am… I?' he said anxiously as