Chapter 24: Your Only Hope...

''King Harthacnut's attack on Berk, in addition to costing the lives of dragon-riders in the first recorded battle on dragon-back (featuring human belligerents against the dragon-riders; Haddock's battle against the Green Death belongs to a different category), set the stage for the events that followed. Within a matter of months, the entirety of Europe had heard of the event, and the awareness that dragons could be tamed set off what could only be called an arms race among the European kingdoms as they sought to replicate the feat, or defend themselves against dragons being used against them. This was, of course, exacerbated by the fact that the continental European dragon populations had crashed due to human predation over the preceding centuries.

—A History Of The Isles, Oxford, England, 1591

Foreshadowing
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Epigraph Tie-In

 * The epigraph talks about Harthacnut's attack on Berk. The chapter shows the first part of that battle.

Links to the Chapter
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