12-第十章：谁才是王？(21)

Barbara spoke for all of them. They were Vikings, but they were afraid. Not just of losing their own lives, but of losing their whole world. ‘In order to do what you want to do, Hiccup,’ Barbara finished with a kind of weary desperation, ‘Destiny would have to be on your side in a very big way. Perhaps Alvin’s way is the only way now. And perhaps that is why Destiny has given Alvin the King’s Things.’ Do not be too hard on the peoples of the Archipelago, dear reader. You cannot know how you would react in the same situation, if put to the same terrible test. They were homeless and hungry, and the testing fires of War had burnt them so ragged that they were not themselves any more. They had lost all hope and arrived at a place of despair. And once you are in that place of despair, it is harder to get out than you might think. The tired peoples of the Archipelago did not want the extinction of dragons. They loved their dragons. Until you have ridden on the back of a dragon, and felt the wind through your hair, and seen the world laid out beneath you in miniature, you haven’t really lived. But…

Even though they were Vikings they were