You don’t have to read the Hiccup books in order.

But if you want to, this is the right order:

ABOUT HICCUP

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was

an awesome swordfighter, a dragon-whisperer,

and the greatest Viking Hero that ever lived.

But Hiccup’s memoirs look back to when

he was a very ordinary boy, and finding

it hard to be a Hero.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,

living or dead, is coincidental.

Text and illustrations copyright © 2006 by Cressida Cowell

Cover design by Kristina Iulo

Cover © 2010 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading,

and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful

piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the

book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the

publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First ebook edition: June 2014

ISBN 978-0-316-33567-6

E3

~ CONTENTS ~

1. The Hunting-with-Bows-and-Arrows-on-Skis

Expedition ........................................................15

2. Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons...............................29

3. The Hunters Become the Hunted........................48

4. Is There Something Wrong with Fishlegs?...........67

5. Smashsticks-on-Ice............................................79

6. What Old Wrinkly Said.......................................89

7. The Quest for the Frozen Potato........................100

8. The Wrath of Thor..............................................110

9. Back on Berk.....................................................118

10. Freya’sday Eve on Hysteria.............................120

11. In the Soup......................................................131

12. Will Toothless Save the Day? ..........................151

13. The Great Potato Burglary...............................158

14. The Potato-Burglars’ Run.................................176

15. They Might Just Make it, Now..........................182

16. The Doomfang..................................................186

17. The Quest is Over.............................................196

18. Fishlegs...........................................................207

19. The Final Chapter.............................................214

Epilogue.................................................................233

1. THE HUNTING-WITH-

BOWS-AND-ARROWS-ON-SKIS

EXPEDITION

Winters were always cold in the Viking Lands.

But this winter was the coldest in a hundred

years. It was so cold that the Sullen Sea had frozen over,

and all the islands in the Inner Isles were now joined

together by a great flat desert of solid ice, two

metres thick in places.

On this particularly cold

morning several hours before

breakfast, it was as if the whole

15

world was holding its breath, frozen in time. The air was

as sharp as broken glass, no sound disturbed the pure

snowy silence.

No sound, that is, apart from an appalling, mad

screaming coming from somewhere out in the middle

of the ice.

For a small party of young boys and their

teacher from the Hooligan Tribe had set out from

the little Isle of Berk where they lived to the Island of

Villainy to the south.

Not in a boat, of course, for you cannot sail

across a frozen sea.

16

They were speeding far too fast across the ice

in an enormous wooden Viking SLEIGH, pulled by six

pure white Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons larger than lions

and faster than cheetahs.

The dreadful mad yelling was coming from the

man driving the sleigh, Gobber the Belch. Gobber was

the teacher in charge of the Pirate Training Programme

on Berk, and he was an enormous monster of a man

wrapped up in furs who could easily have been

mistaken for a grizzly bear with a dirty red beard and

an attitude problem.

‘GEDDONWITHIT YOU MISERABLE

WHITE WORMS!’ roared Gobber at the Sabre-Tooth

Dragons, cracking his whip above their heads. ‘I’VE

HAD SNAILS THAT HAVE MOVED QUICKER

THAN YOU LOT! MY GRANNY COULD SKIP

FASTER THAN THIS AND SHE’S A HUNDRED

AND FOUR! YEEEEEEHAAH!!’

One gigantic furry arm lashed out with a whip

that curled through the air like a great black serpent,

the other shook the reins in a lunatic frenzy that sent

the Driver Dragons bounding forwards in terrible

uncontrolled leaps.

Behind Gobber on the sleigh sat twelve of

his pupils.

17

Ten of these boys were ugly young thugs yelling

as loudly in crazy excitement as their teacher.

‘YEEEEEEEHAAAAH!’ they whooped, as the

sleigh hit a snowbank and sailed ten metres through

the air and then slammed back down on the ice with

stomach-churning violence.

‘YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAH!!’

The last two boys were smaller than the rest and

a lot less excited.

‘I’m glad,’ gasped Hiccup Horrendous Haddock

the Third, as the sleigh tipped over wildly on one

runner with an awful screech and spray of ice, ‘I’m glad

I didn’t have breakfast because I think it would have

come up again…’

Hiccup is, in fact, the Hero of this story, although

you would never have guessed it to look at him. He

was small, and red-haired, and very, very ordinary.

Hiccup’s best friend Fishlegs, a skinny runner-

bean of a boy with asthma and a squint, wasn’t

really listening. He was praying to Thor with his eyes

squeezed tight shut.

‘Please, Thor,’ begged Fishlegs, ‘please make it

stop…’

Fishlegs’s prayer was about to be answered.

The sleigh was approaching the great black cliffs

18

of the Visithugs Territories far too impossibly fast for it

to stop in time…

‘Don’t open your eyes, Fishlegs,’ advised Hiccup.

Gobber the Belch reared up and with a mighty

roar of ‘WOOOOOOAH!!!’ leant back so far pulling

on the reins that he was nearly horizontal. The Sabre-

Tooths came to a plunging halt so sharply that the

sleigh wheeled round in a mad arc… they were going

to slam into that cliff at such a speed they would all be

smashed to splinters…

‘AAAAARGH!’ yelled Hiccup, shutting his

eyes too.

The sleigh screeched to a quivering halt. Hiccup

opened his eyes again. Astonishingly, they were still

alive. But the smooth black wall of the cliff was only

centimetres away from Hiccup’s cheek. Hiccup held on

to the rock for a second to help himself stop shaking.

‘RIGHT!’ bellowed Gobber, clambering out of

the sleigh entirely unconcerned. ‘WHAT ARE YOU

ALL DOING SKULKING IN THERE? GET OUT

AND STAND TO ATTENTION YOU PATHETIC

DRIBBLES OF EARWIG DROPPINGS!’

Yawning and chattering, all twelve boys

unpacked skis from the back of the sleigh, and

attached them to the bottom of their furry boots.

For six months of the year the Vikings lived

under SNOW… so a Viking Warrior had to be just as

good at SKIING as he was at SAILING.

This was a Hunting-with-Bows-and-Arrows-

on-Skis Expedition. The boys had to ski down Mount

Villainy, the largest mountain in the Inner Isles,

shooting with their arrows as many Semi-Spotted

Snowpeckers as they could.

‘I’m going to get at least FIFTY,’ boasted

Snotface Snotlout, a tall thug of a boy with huge

nostrils and a moustache like a little furry caterpillar

squirming on his upper lip.

20

‘SILENCE!’ screamed Gobber, cracking his

whip.

There was absolute silence immediately. It’s

a curious fact, but a heavily armed, mad, six-and-a-

half-foot teacher holding a whip tends to get his class’s

attention.

‘I will be staying here to guard the sleigh,’ yelled

Gobber. ‘Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third will

be in charge of the Hunting Party when you get to the

mountain.’

Ten of the boys groaned and turned round to

look furiously at Hiccup.

ALL of them reckoned they would make better

leaders than Hiccup.

Snotlout had won the Senseless Violence Cup

three years in a row. Wartihog could smash chairs to

pieces with his bare fists. Dogsbreath the Duhbrain

burped so loud he shattered glass.

Small, skinny and unimportant, only Hiccup

looked like he had no leadership skills whatsoever. He

stood on one leg apologetically and this made his skis

cross and he fell over.

‘Why does HICCUP get to be in charge

AGAIN?’ demanded Snotface Snotlout through

gritted teeth.

22

‘Because Hiccup is the son of the CHIEF and

one day he will be in charge PERMANENTLY, Thor

help us all…’ explained Gobber, helping Hiccup to his

feet and dusting the snow off him with one hairy hand.

‘Any questions?’ boomed Gobber.

Fishlegs put up his hand. ‘Just a small point, sir,’

he said. ‘How are we going to climb up the mountain in

the first place?’

‘The Sabre-Tooth Dragons will DRAG you to

the top ON your skis,’ replied Gobber. ‘It shouldn’t take

more than half an hour.’

Fishlegs and Hiccup looked dubiously at the

great white creatures crouching dangerously on the

ice, tongues spilling out over teeth as sharp as swords,

cat-like eyes gazing at their small human Masters with

the purest hatred.

23

‘So that’s that, then,’ said Gobber. ‘I shall wait

for you here and see you all in three hours’ time… I

really need a NAP… way too early for me…’

Gobber settled himself on the furs of the sleigh

and gave an enormous yawn. ‘Oh, and one more thing…

as you know, nobody lives on the island of Villainy, but

the island of Hysteria is just next door and I should

warn you that at this time of year there may be Hysterics

about…’

24

‘HYSTERICS???’ squeaked Fishlegs, somewhat,

well, hysterically. ‘But the Hysterics are trapped safely in

Hysteria, aren’t they?’

HYSTERICS, I should explain, were a

particularly bloodthirsty and lunatic Tribe of Vikings.

Even tough Tribes like the Visithugs were scared of the

Hysterics. Hiccup had never actually met a Hysteric, but

he knew they were renowned for killing you first, and

asking questions later.

Normally they didn’t trouble the other Tribes,

however, because three-quarters of the island ended in

dizzyingly high cliffs plunging straight into deep seas,

and on the north coast was the Wrath of Thor, where

an impossibly huge and monstrous Sea Dragon called

the DOOMFANG lived.

The good news about this was that nobody

could get into Hysteria, and even more importantly, the

Hysterics could not get out.

Except at this time of year…

‘Because at this time of year,’ boomed Gobber

happily, ‘the Wrath of Thor is all frozen over, and the

Doomfang is trapped under two metres solid of ice. So

if you do happen to come across a Hysteric – and I’m

SURE you won’t, it’s far too early in the morning – I

suggest you ski like fury in the opposite direction.’

And just like that, Gobber fell asleep.

26

Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons

Sabre-Tooths are enormous lion-like dragons that

do not hibernate, and are therefore very useful

to the Vikings for pulling their sleighs, and

dragging them up mountains during the winter.

They have been known to eat their owners.

~STATISTICS~

COLOURS: Always white

ARMED WITH: Sabre-Teeth and spikes on head.

FEAR FACTOR:.................6

ATTACK:...........................7

SPEED:.............................7

SIZE:................................7

DISOBEDIENCE................6

2. SABRE-TOOTH DRIVER

DRAGONS

Gobber’s enormous snores rang out like a walrus calling

out to another walrus some fifty icebergs away.

As if they were all a part of the same creature, the

pack of Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons settled themselves

down on the ice and refused to move. By Woden’s Armpit,

but those Drivers were BIG.

The boys looked at them.

‘Well come on, then, Hiccup,’ grunted Wartihog

impatiently. ‘Take charge!’

Hiccup cleared his throat and used his most

reasonable voice. ‘OK, guys,’ he said in Dragonese.* ‘I

don’t want any trouble…’

‘Oh look, it talkssss…’ hissed a particularly large

and savage-looking Sabre-Tooth. He was missing an eye,

and from the specially royal way he held himself, seemed

to be the Leader of the Pack. ‘The little Human

Tadpole is speaking the noble Dragon tongue…’

The other Drivers laughed jeeringly.

‘We all know what we’re supposed to be doing

here...’ Hiccup continued.

30

‘We know what WE’RE going to be doing,’

sneered the Driver, closing his one eye and settling

himself comfortably. ‘WE’RE going to have a nice

long sleep right here while you sweat it up the

largest mountain in the Inner Isles…’

‘Oh for Thor’s sake!’ exploded Snotface Snotlout.

‘That girly “speaking Dragonese” stuff isn’t going to

work with these brutes!’

Snotlout grabbed the black whip from Gobber’s

relaxed hand, and cracked it.

Snnnnnnaaaap!

The Driver Dragons blinked open their eyes.

Snotlout cracked the whip again, this time

letting the end of it lash the face of the Sabre-Tooth

with the one eye. The Driver sprang to his feet with

a yowl of pain and the rest of the pack followed him,

furious but respectful. The boys cheered.

‘That’s the way to do it!’ grinned Snotlout,

whipping another of the dragons for the pure pleasure

of it. The animal howled and Snotlout laughed. ‘Disobey

ME, would you, you SNIVELLING CRAWLING

PIECES OF FORKED-TONGUE RUBBISH! This’ll

learn you!’

‘Don’t do that, Snotlout,’ said Hiccup quietly.

Hiccup didn’t normally stand up to Snotlout, but he

31

couldn’t bear to see an animal as proud and dignified

as a Sabre-Tooth Driver made to dance about like a

monkey.

Snotlout stopped what he was doing to turn on

Hiccup.

‘What’s this?’ sneered Snotlout. ‘Is Hiccup the

Useless trying to tell Snotlout the HERO what to do?

Face it, Hiccup, the snow will turn as blue as Gobber

the Belch’s nose before YOU become the Chief of the

Hooligan Tribe.’

Snotlout snapped the whip, and it curled cruelly

forward at Hiccup, hitting him on the chest.

It would have been a very painful lash, if it hadn’t

been for the fact that sleeping down Hiccup’s waistcoat

was Hiccup’s small, disobedient hunting dragon,

Toothless.

The cutting edge of the whip hit Toothless on

the hard, horny skin of his behind, and woke him out of

his hibernation sleep.

Toothless climbed up out of Hiccup’s collar, sat

on his shoulder and puffed out his neck in fury.

‘S-something hit T-t-toothless on the b-b-

bottom! H-h-how can T-t-toothless s-s-sleep

with things hitting him on the b-b-bottom!’

‘Why isn’t your ridiculous pinprick of a hunting

32

dragon hibernating like all the others?’ blustered

Snotlout.

‘I was worried he was getting too cold,’ replied

Hiccup, soothing Toothless by scratching him softly

in between the horns. ‘He didn’t dig himself a deep

enough Hibernation Hole, and if a dragon gets too cold

he can stay asleep for centuries. So I dug him up and

I’ve been carrying him around with me to keep him

warm.’

‘And now T-t-toothless woken up too

EARLY!’ raged Toothless. ‘Issa f-f-freezing!’

‘What,’ scoffed Snotlout, ‘what is your pathetic

pinprick of a dragon,’ (for Toothless was the smallest

hunting dragon anybody has ever seen, before or since)

‘what is your ridiculous frogspawn of a reptile wearing?’

Toothless was wearing a fur coat.

Hiccup had made it in a desperate attempt to

keep the little dragon warm.

‘Oh this is too good – hold me up, Dogsbreath!’

snorted Snotlout. ‘Hiccup has made his ickle teeny

dwagon an ickle teeny furry DRESS!’

‘Issa c-c-coat!’ hissed Toothless. ‘Issa C-C-

COAT!’

‘A dragon in a dress!’ squealed Snotlout.

‘HA HA HA HA!’ roared the boys. ‘A dragon in

a dress!’

33

Even the Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons joined in.

‘Oh my Claws and Jaws,’ drawled

One Eye. ‘I do believe that is the

smallest hunting dragon I have EVER

seen dressed up in HUMAN

WRAPPINGS! Has it no

shame?’

Poor Toothless

stood up very straight and

stiff on Hiccup’s shoulder.

Beginning with his horns and

spreading slowly downwards, he turned

a delicate shade of pink. He closed his

jaws tightly and smoke rings blew out of

his ears.

‘Issa v-v-very stylish winter COAT,’ he

said gruffly. ‘Yer all j-j-jealous.’

Snotlout started barking out orders. OK,‘ we’ve

wasted enough time here… everybody get themselves

into pairs and grab on to the harness of one of these

Sabre-Tooth Brutes… you two LOSERS,’ he pointed at

Hiccup and Fishlegs, ‘can have the half-blind one.’

‘You don’t like us humans much, do you,

One Eye?’ said Hiccup, as he and Fishlegs shuffled

themselves into position behind the enormous

Sabre-Tooth.

34

One Eye spat a great

burst of fire into the snow.

‘Don’t like you?’ he hissed. ‘I

LOATHE you with every drop of

my pure green blood…You

Humans are treacherous,

ignorant, greedy and

violent. I have been

Leader of my Pack for

forty years through good

times and hard. What

does Snotlout know about

TRUE Leadership?

He’s just a pig with a whip in his hand. My fangs

ACHE with my hatred… my claws ITCH to scratch

out every single Two-Legged, Mud-Bound, Jaw-

Flapping Human on this entire planet…’

‘Oh great,’ said Fishlegs nervously. ‘We have

a Driver Dragon who

HATES us. This morning

just gets better and better…’

By the time they got

going, with One Eye dragging

them VERY SLOWLY up

the gorge, and through

a thick pine forest,

there was no sign of the

other boys.

The forest ended as suddenly as it had begun,

and on the final sheer climb to the top of Mount Villainy

they did not pass a single tree. One Eye halted at the

peak of Mount Villainy. A lone boulder marked the

Highest Point. Hanging on firmly to this rock to prevent

the wind, or the sheer dizzying pull of the abyss, from

carrying him over the edge, Hiccup peered down

the other side of the mountain into the Wrath

of Thor.

Normally, the sea and the Doomfang roared

and raged through that spiteful slit, whirlpooling and

spiralling and crashing into each other. Now the crack

was still and frozen as Death itself, and the only sign of

the Doomfang was a dreadful moaning that drummed

in the ears like a headache, and a dark shadow moving

slowly under the ice, like a gigantic cloud building up

before a thunderstorm.

‘Let’s get out of here as quickly as we can,’

shivered Fishlegs. ‘There are a lot of grim, creepy places

in the Barbaric Archipelago, but THIS has got to be the

GRIMMEST and the CREEPIEST.’

I don’t know whether YOU have ever tried

Hunting-with-Bows-and-Arrows-on-Skis, but it is

really quite a complicated skill. Skiing downhill itself

is difficult enough, and then you have to concentrate

on actually HITTING the pesky little Semi-Spotted

Snowpeckers, not too easy because they flit about like

humming-birds.

On top of the basic difficulties of the sport,

Fishlegs was the most appalling skier and a terrible shot.

His bow whirled around like a windmill as he tried to

keep his balance, and even if his hands had been as

steady as a rock, a dreadful squint meant that his eyes

were as crossed as his skis, and frankly, any chance of

him hitting ANYTHING AT ALL would be a matter of

38

pure fluke. He wobbled forwards, knees bent as if sitting

on the lavatory, skis pointing inward in the snowplough

position, and at the first hint of a little bump in the snow

he fell over and his skis fell off.

Hiccup wasn’t as bad as Fishlegs, but any sport

is not just about skill, it is also about HEART. And

Hiccup’s heart wasn’t really in this. He was

secretly on the side of the Semi-Spotted

Snowpeckers, charming little birds that

Hiccup often watched from his window.

They built themselves interesting little

nests like tiny igloos.

So after an hour and a half, despite the fact

that Semi-Spotted Snowpeckers were jumping all around

them like fleas on a cow’s back, Hiccup and Fishlegs had

shot not a single bird.

‘Bother, bother, bother!’ exclaimed Hiccup, as he

missed yet another one.

One Eye seemed hugely amused by the whole

thing.

‘You ARE interesting Humans,’ he drawled.

‘I’ve never met Vikings like this before… You’re

tiny and not very tough. You can’t ski. You can’t

hunt. You can’t yell for toffee.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ snapped Hiccup crossly.

39

40

Fishlegs had fallen over

exactly fifty-four times. He was now

covered with snow and wet through

and his aim was not improved by a

violent shivering. On top of all this, he

seemed to be catching a nasty cold.

‘Oh this is HOPELESS!’ he exclaimed.

‘Absolutely HOPELESS! A-A-ACHOOO! Snotlout

and Dogsbreath will have probably murdered half the

bird population in the Archipelago by now and we can’t

even get ourselves one measly Snowpecker corpse!

Why won’t the wretched little birds stay still for just a

MILLISECOND?’

As Hiccup helped Fishlegs to his feet for the

fifty-fifth time, he thought he heard something almost

like deep human laughter. It seemed to be coming from

some distance below them, from behind a snowdrift.

Leaving Fishlegs leaning on one of his poles,

warning Toothless to be quiet, Hiccup peered cautiously

over the top of the snowdrift.

And there, a hundred metres down the side of

yet another slope, was a sight that sent a nasty trickle of

fear down Hiccup’s spine.

41

HYSTERICS.

Behind Hiccup’s left shoulder, One Eye the

Sabre-Tooth growled grimly. The spines on his muscly

back all stood up, his eyes narrowed. His tail with the

spiky point swayed dangerously from side to side. ‘Now

THOSE Humans,’ he hissed, ‘THOSE Humans

really ARE Badder than most…’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Fishlegs, wiping his

runny nose on his sleeve, and rubbing his bottom, sore

from falling over so often.

‘Hysterics…’ whispered Hiccup. ‘Get down…’

There were six Hysterics dressed in black sitting

on the slopes below them. Five enormous stags lay dead

on the ground beside them, their blood very red against

the white snow. The Hysterics had clearly stopped for

breakfast before the long ski back to the Hysterical

Village on the other side of the Wrath of Thor. They

had built a small fire, and were eating bits of deer

in their fingers.

Their skis and their bows and arrows were jammed in

the snow behind them.

‘Thank Thor they haven’t seen us,’ breathed

Hiccup to Fishlegs. ‘Come on, we’ll just ski quietly back

the way we came.’

This would have been an excellent plan.

But something weird was happening to Fishlegs.

He was already looking terrible, his eyes

streaming and his nose running with snot. He was

shaking a little with fever, and now as he watched the

Hysterics, his face turned first pink, and then a brilliant

red. He snorted furiously. ‘The Big Brainless Muscle-

Bound Idiots!’ he muttered.

‘Yes, yes,’ whispered Hiccup, ‘but come on…’

‘The murderers… they’ve only gone and killed

those poor deer in broad daylight… the great Stinking

Gormless Brutes…’

‘This is all true,’ said Hiccup, ‘but we need to get

out of here before they kill us…’

But before Hiccup could stop him, Fishlegs had

staggered to his feet and drawn his sword, crying out

‘COWARDS!!!!’ at the top of his lungs.

The Hysterics stopped eating. They looked up in

astonishment.

They couldn’t have been more flabbergasted than

44

Hiccup, as Fishlegs set off down the hill straight at the

band of fearsome Warriors, in his lunatic uncontrolled

slowplough. His ski-poles flailed around frantically, his

arrows flew out of their quiver like a hedgehog shedding

needles, he was gaining speed every second, and

shouting at the top of his voice:

‘YOU MISERABLE MOLLUSCS! YOU

WHINGEING WIMPERING WINKLES! I COULD

TAKE YOU FRITTERING FAIRY FOLK WITH

ONE HAND BEHIND MY BACK! STAND

AND FIGHT LIKE MEN, YOU COWARDLY

COWERING CUTTLEFISH!’

46

47

3. THE HUNTERS BECOME

THE HUNTED

Open-mouthed, almost in a trance, Hiccup watched

the furious frantic progress of his friend down the

mountainside.

‘YOU HORRIBLE HALITOSIS HADDOCK!’

shrieked Fishlegs in a frenzy. ‘YOU PATHETIC

PIECES OF PLANKTON! I CAN SEE YOU –

YOU’RE BLUBBING LIKE BABIES AT THE

THOUGHT OF FIGHTING A REAL VIKING!’

One Eye, the Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragon, was

watching Fishlegs with something approaching awe.

‘You know, I underestimated your friend,’ he

grunted respectfully. ‘I thought he was a complete

weed, but I have to admit, that is BRAVE…

Suicidal, of course, but definitely brave…’

The Hysterics were so completely amazed to

find themselves being attacked out of the blue by a

single, undersized, under-age member of another Tribe

that for a moment they just froze, jaws hanging open,

hands filled with deer halfway to their mouths.

Fishlegs skied straight at the Hysterics, swinging

his sword furiously when he got amongst them,

48

but missing of course, and skiing straight over their

campfire and on down the hill. For a moment his furs

caught on fire, but the wind blew them out again.

The Hysterics paused for one second in their

astonishment as they watched the small shrieking

figure careering down the mountainside. They then

looked at one another, and you didn’t need to see

their faces to know that it was a grim, Let’s-Murder-

Him-Now sort of look. They fastened on their skis in a

businesslike, unhurried fashion, hoisted their bows on

to their enormous hairy shoulders, and set off after him.

‘Oh, by the Bouncing Buttocks of Beaming

Baldur,’ panicked Hiccup, setting off down the slope

after Fishlegs, ‘they’re going to kill him, aren’t they?

What am I going to do?’

‘Do?’ asked One Eye, bounding beside Hiccup

in long easy strides. ‘There’s nothing you can do…

your friend is as good as dead… he’s what we in the

Sabre-Tooth Pack would call a Walking Corpse… or

a SKIING Corpse in his case. There’s nothing you

can do, and if you ski in this direction YOU may end

up dead too…’

It looked like the dragon was right. Hiccup was

working hard to keep up with the Hysterics. Hysterics

are enormous and very strong skiers indeed.

49

And Fishlegs was travelling at a very fast speed himself,

on account of not doing anything fancy like TURNING,

admittedly totally out of control, and it was amazing he

hadn’t fallen over already. Hiccup could see him twisting

his head every now and again to shout more insults over

his shoulder.

The Hysterics were gaining, and one Big

Brute carrying a gigantic, double-headed,

black and gold axe, fastened an arrow to his

bow.

Hiccup screeched to a stop, sending out a fan of

snow. He fixed an arrow to his own bow.

‘Oh my horns and whiskers!’ squealed

Toothless. ‘He’s going to d-d-do something! Don’t d-d-

do it, Hiccup! Don’t do it!’

Hiccup took careful aim, and let go of the arrow,

which sailed through the air, and hit the Big Brute with

the Axe who was about to shoot Fishlegs, right bang

splat in the bottom.

51

It was the first successful

hit Hiccup had had all

morning.

‘Good shot!’

roared One Eye, enjoying

himself hugely.

The Big Brute with the Axe let out a roar, and

his arms flailed around wildly. He let fly his own arrow,

which, in a streak of glorious luck, soared in a perfect

arc… straight into the bottom of the Hysteric skiing in

front of him.

‘Oh, this is too good…’ breathed One Eye.

‘Pinch me… it must be my birthday…’

That Hysteric then screamed in pain, and pitched

forward into a complete somersault, taking out the

Hysteric in front of him, who slid on his back into the

legs of the last three Hysterics, upturning them like

skittles, and all SIX Hysterics ended up in a groaning,

tangled, furious, snowy heap.

‘Good, good,’ muttered Hiccup. ‘Now, please

make all six of them follow me, not Fishlegs.’

‘I think they will!’ cried One Eye, crying with

laughter, ‘Oh, I think they will…’

‘OVER HERE!’ yelled Hiccup, making quite sure

they saw who had caused their downfall, and then for

52

good measure, ‘IF YOU’RE NOT AFRAID OF

BEING SHOT, YOU… WRIGGLING RUFFIAN

RUBBISH!’

‘Look what you’ve d-d-done!’ moaned

Toothless. ‘Those Hysterics are going to be so m-m-

mad!’

Mad those Hysterics certainly were, as mad as

fire, and Hiccup set off down the mountain like a little

bolt of lightning.

‘We’ve got a head start,’ panted Hiccup, skiing

faster than he ever had done in his entire life.

‘But it’s not going to be enough,’ gloated One

Eye with relish. ‘You’ve got half the mountain to ski

down, and they’re going to catch up.’

Sure enough, a horribly short time afterwards,

Hiccup could hear the Hysterics beginning their pursuit

behind him.

Five of the Hysterics were howling the Hysterical

Howl like a pack of insane high-pitched wolves, and the

sixth, the one with the Axe, was screaming more

personal insults.

‘How DARE you assault MY Royal Buttocks,

you midget Hooligan Assassin! We Hysterics are the best

Hunters in the entire world, and when I get hold of you

I shall chop you with my Chopper and feed you to the

53

Doomfang, I shall

shoot you full of

arrows and use you

as a colander!’ yelled the

Hysteric with the Axe.

‘Charming!’ grinned One Eye.

‘Fond of visitors, are they, the Hysterics?’

Hiccup headed straight for the

woods, thinking they would find it harder

to shoot him in there.

Now, skiing through a thickly forested area is

dangerous hard work, and the first rule you should

follow in normal circumstances is to go SLOWLY.

These were not normal circumstances, and

Hiccup screamed through that forest, madly twisting

and turning, far too fast for safety.

‘B-b-be careful!’ warned Toothless helpfully.

‘M-m-mind the trees!’

‘Oh thank you, Toothless,’ panted Hiccup

sarcastically, as he swerved violently this way and that,

‘I never thought of that…’

Dragons have quicker reflexes than humans,

so One Eye and Toothless followed with ease. But the

Hysterics weren’t doing too badly either. Hiccup did

hear one crash, as one of the Hysterics didn’t turn in

time and smashed into a tree.

But that left five Hysterics still chasing after him,

and from the sound of their spine-creeping Hysterical

Howls, getting closer by the second…

‘You cannot get away!’ screamed the Big Brute

with the Axe. ‘When I get hold of you, I shall tear you

limb from limb and use your wishbone as a toothpick!’

Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the gorge,

Gobber had woken from his nap, and ten of his young

pupils had returned from their hunting trip.

56

Gobber had harnessed five Sabre-Tooth Drivers

to the sleigh, and was waiting for the return of Hiccup

and Fishlegs.

‘I shot ninety Snowpeckers,’ boasted Speedifist

to an impressed Wartihog.

‘That’s NOTHING,’ crowed Snotlout. ‘I got two

hundred and four… easy-peasy lemon squeezy, it was

like shooting fish in a barrel. Even Hiccup the Useless

and his ridiculous Fishlegged friend must have got a few

today, they can’t be THAT pathetic.’

‘WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THOSE

NUMBSKULLS?’ roared Gobber, beginning to feel a

little uneasy. For Hiccup was the son of the Chief, Stoick

the Vast, O Hear His Name and Tremble, Ugh, Ugh, and

Stoick had a nasty temper and wouldn’t be too pleased

if anything had happened to his only son.

‘Maybe they got ambushed by Snowpeckers?’

sneered Snotlout.

There was a shouting from the gorge, and down

it like an erratic snowploughing rocket came Fishlegs,

arms whirring like windmills. Fishlegs was going so fast

he couldn’t possibly stop. He went on past the sleigh,

past the open-mouthed Gobber and the boys, and on

and on for fifty metres until he eventually came to a

stop, and collapsed on the ice.

57

Gobber ran after him, with a very nasty feeling

now in the bottom of his stomach, and picked

Fishlegs up.

Fishlegs looked terrible, purple and sweaty and

trembling.

‘HICCUP?’ shouted Gobber. ‘WHERE is

HICCUP?’

‘Hysterics…’ gasped Fishlegs. ‘A…a…a…cchoo!

Hysterics…’

Gobber turned as white as a Semi-Spotted

Snowpecker.

Up above, Hiccup shot out of the cover of the

trees like an arrow from a bow.

Directly below him was the gorge… he could

see the little speck of Gobber’s sleigh, and little dots

moving around it. The other boys must have made it

back, then…

Hiccup knew that if he skied down the gorge,

he would never make it. The Hysterics were so close

behind him now they would shoot him or catch him

before he reached the bottom.

He had to make a split-second decision.

Instead of heading towards the gorge, he set his

teeth grimly and pointed his skis to the right, down the

slope that led directly to the clifftop.

58

‘What are you d-d-doing?’ shrieked Toothless.

‘This w-w-way issa two hundred metre cliff! You

going to d-d-die!’

Behind him, the Hysterics burst out of the

woods. When they saw where Hiccup was going, they

didn’t even bother to start shooting. They just swooped

after him, shouting out jeeringly:

‘Where do you think you’re going, Hooligan

SCUM?’

‘Say hello to Valhalla for me, because that’s

where you’ll end up!’

59

They could see the edge of the cliff now, where

the snow ended, and it was just an endless drop into

nothingness.

‘Stop!’ shrieked Toothless. ‘S-S-STOP!!’

‘Why?’ asked Hiccup. ‘I haven’t got any choice.

You think those Hysterics are going to give me a big

warm hug and let me go?’

‘N-n-no!’ screamed Toothless. ‘But you can’t ski

off a c-c-cliff! Issa long way D-D-DOWN!’

‘That’s why I need your help, One Eye,’ said

Hiccup to the great Sabre-Tooth Dragon, who was

bounding alongside.

‘And what makes you

think,’ sneered One Eye, ‘that I

WANT to help you? I hate Humans.

One less of you little pink slave-drivers isn’t

going to trouble ME.’

‘That’s true,’ said Hiccup, ‘but if I die, the

next Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe will be…’

Hiccup had run out of slope. He launched

himself off the cliff, throwing his weight forward, skis

wide apart. One Eye followed, unfolding his great wings.

‘Will be who?’ said One Eye urgently. ‘Will be who?’

For one moment Hiccup soared up into that glorious

infinity of blue sky like a bird.

And then he plunged DOWN.

61

yelled Hiccup

as he fell.

Hiccup screamed

towards the ice at a hundred

and fifty miles per hour.

Gobber the Belch, watching from

below as the precious son of his Boss was about

to fall to his death, screamed as well.

In three seconds Hiccup would smash into the

ground and that would be the end of him.

After one second Hiccup was pretty sure One

Eye would save him.

After two seconds he wasn’t so sure.

And in fact the great Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragon

was only just in time. For vital milliseconds his hatred of

humans held him back…

But then he folded back his wings and dived

after Hiccup.

62

A Sabre-Tooth can dive more swiftly and

beautifully than a peregrine falcon. One Eye caught

Hiccup around the waist with his great talons in the nick

of time, and then swept upwards, wings stretched out

like a great white kite. Hiccup gave a whoop of joy.

Down below, the watching boys cheered, and

started the Hooligan Hurrah. Gobber practically fainted,

such was his relief.

‘Snotface Snotlout,’ said One Eye, as he spread

his wings wide. ‘Is he the tall red-headed boy with a

face like a pig?’

‘That’s the one,’ crowed Hiccup happily.

‘Then you’re right,’ replied One Eye, soaring

even higher. ‘Perhaps you are one Human worth

saving…’

Up on the clifftops, the Big Brute of

a Hysteric with the Axe was so angry he

snapped his ski-poles like twigs. His

furious voice floated up to them:

‘YOU’RE NOT SAFE

YET! YOU’RE NOT SAFE

EVER!’ screamed

the Big Brute,

completely

beside himself.

‘WHEREVER YOU GO I SHALL FIND YOU! I

SHALL FOLLOW YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE

EARTH, TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN,

IN THE GOD-LIKE HEIGHTS OF THE SKY!

I PROMISE YOU, YOU HOOLIGAN COCKROACH,

THAT YOU WILL REGRET THE DAY YOU SHOT

AN ARROW IN THE BOTTOM OF NORBERT THE

NUTJOB!!’ and then the sound became too faint for

them to hear any more.

‘Remind me,’ Hiccup said to Toothless as they

flew along, ‘not to come back to Hysteria any time

in the next twenty years…’

‘E-e-ever,’ replied Toothless passionately. ‘Not

come back EVER.’

Sabre-Tooth Drivers are so bulky and muscular,

they can only fly short distances, so One Eye dropped

right down and placed Hiccup in the sleigh of a very

relieved Gobber the Belch. Gobber took one look at the

Hysterics on the clifftops, shaking their fists and howling

the Hysterical Howl, and judged it might not be a good

idea to stick around. He loaded Fishlegs and the other

boys back on to the sleigh and, cheering and singing, they

followed the flying Sabre-Tooth all the way back to the

little Isle of Berk.

64

4. IS THERE SOMETHING

WRONG WITH FISHLEGS?

Hiccup did not sleep well that night. Every time he

dropped off, Norbert the Nutjob found him in his

dreams, screaming, ‘I will GRIND YOU INTO SAND!

I WILL CHOP YOU WITH MY CHOPPER!’ and

Hiccup would wake up again, burningly hot and sweaty.

The following day, Toothless woke up in a furious

temper because he still wasn’t back in Hibernation Sleep.

He’d done everything he should have done the night

before. He’d taken lots of exercise, drunk a milky drink

at bedtime; all for nothing. On the dot of five o’clock the

next morning, his greengage eyes opened up, SNAP, like

a scallop opening its shell, and that was it for the day, no

more sleeping.

And that was it for Hiccup too.

Toothless crawled up from his place at Hiccup’s

feet, like a small, enraged hot-water bottle. He stormed

up Hiccup’s body, digging his sharp little claws into

Hiccup’s tummy as he went, up to Hiccup’s forehead,

where he sat and hissed furiously.

‘Toothless a-a-awake AGAIN… ’Snot fair…

’Snot fair… WHY Toothless awake? Everyone else

a-a-asleep…’

67

It is not much

fun being woken up

at five o’clock in the

morning by a dragon

sitting on your head

and hissing angry

smoke rings straight

up your nostrils.

‘Well I’M awake now too,’ grumbled Hiccup,

coughing sleepily. ‘Could you blow those smoke rings

somewhere else, I’ve already got a sore throat…’

‘Oh you,’ fumed Toothless, blowing out great

clouds of furious smoke. ‘You’re j-j-just a H-h-human,

you don’t count… us d-d-dragons s-s-sensitive… we

n-n-need our sleep.’

‘Thank you, Toothless,’ said Hiccup through

a huge bout of coughing, ‘but we don’t have to get up

now, you know, we can just doze for a bit…’

Hiccup turned over on to his other side and

snuggled the furs more cosily around his shoulders, so he

could snooze for a bit longer.

But once Toothless was awake he was AWAKE.

The little dragon made a half-hearted pretence of

snuggling down next to his Master, and then he bounced

up again.

68

‘Toothless get UP now…’ he said, flapping

around Hiccup’s head, tweaking his hair and blowing

raspberries in his ears. ‘Issa l-l-lovely morning…

come on… come on… Toothless h-h-hungry…

Hiccup make Toothless b-b-breakfast…’

And when that didn’t work, Toothless stood on

Hiccup’s shoulder, held his ear lobe tenderly with one

claw, and shrieked right down his ear hole, ‘MAYDAY

MAYDAY! Toothless need to make p-p-pee-pee

RIGHT NOW!’

Hiccup sat bolt upright like he’d been shot

with an arrow. ‘Oh jumping jellyfish, not right now,

Toothless, not on the bed again… hang on there,

Toothless, just hang on…’

Hiccup jumped out of the bed in one hop, on to

the freezing cold stone floor, and threw on four layers of

furs, with Toothless flapping round his head squawking,

‘RIGHT NOW, RIGHT NOW, Toothless need pee-

pee RIGHT NOW.’

‘Just hang on!’ begged Hiccup. He had to take

his mittens off to undo the big bolts on the front door,

Toothless shrieking, ‘Right now! Right now! Right

now!’

Hiccup dragged open the door, and the day

outside was still as dark as night-time and very, very cold,

69

so cold that the air was like an icy bucket of water being

thrown in your face.

Toothless flew out, still shrieking, ‘Right now!

Right now!’ and squatted down on the snow a metre

out of the front door.

‘Well done for hanging on, Toothless,’

said Hiccup, banging his hands together to warm

them up. Toothless squatted down, a look of pretend

concentration furrowing his horns, but nothing seemed

to be happening.

After a while Toothless got up. ‘Toothless NOT

need p-p-pee-pee after all…’ he said decidedly.

Hiccup clapped his mittened hand to his forehead

in frustration.

Sometimes being the owner of a dragon was

VERY HARD WORK.

There was no point going back to bed now that

he’d got up so Hiccup fixed himself breakfast, and while

he did this he had plenty of time to think.

Hiccup was worried about Fishlegs. Why had

Fishlegs attacked those Hysterics? It was very out of

character. Normally Fishlegs would only have to get a sniff

of something like a Hysteric and he would snowplough as

quickly as possible in the opposite direction. OK, maybe

all that falling over had set off his Berserk tendencies, but

still, it was a bit peculiar…

70

And Fishlegs hadn’t been looking too well, lately,

either. Lots of sneezing and shivering, and that couldn’t

be caused by being a Berserk. It was almost like there

was something WRONG WITH HIM…

An hour or so later, the door was flung open so

wildly it nearly fell off its hinges, and Hiccup’s father,

Stoick the Vast, stomped into the room looking for his

breakfast, like a six-and-a-half-foot earthquake, yawning

so wide you could see his tonsils. Stoick the Vast was

exactly what you might expect a Viking to be – loads of

beard and not a lot of neck, masses of muscles but not a

lot going on in the BRAIN department.

‘Made some porridge, have you, son?’ he roared.

‘Excellent, excellent.’ Stoick didn’t bother putting the

porridge into a bowl. He simply removed the cauldron

from the fire, sat down at the table, and drank the

porridge straight from the pot.

‘Father?’ said Hiccup.

‘Mmm?’ said Stoick absent-mindedly, as he

tipped his great head back and drank the last dregs of

porridge, a lot of it running down his beard in a sticky,

lumpy river.

‘I wonder if you can help me… I’ve been

worrying about Fishlegs…’ said Hiccup.

Stoick finished the porridge with a great

71

smacking of the lips and threw the cauldron into the

fireplace with cheery violence.

‘Is Fisheggs your odd little friend with the face

like a depressed haddock?’ boomed Stoick, grabbing a

mackerel off the table and swallowing it, tail and head and

eyes and all, in one gulp like a sword-swallower swallowing

swords.

‘That’s right,’ said Hiccup, ‘and his name isn’t

Fisheggs, it’s Fishlegs…’

‘Well, there’s a coinci-thingummy,’ bellowed

Stoick.

‘Do you mean coincidence?’ asked Hiccup politely.

‘Whatever!’ roared Stoick. ‘I’VE been worrying

about Fisheggs too.’

‘You have?’ asked Hiccup, in surprise. It wasn’t

like Stoick to worry about anything.

‘I have,’ said Stoick solemnly. ‘And I need to talk

to you about something VERY SERIOUSLY. Come

here, Hiccup.’

Hiccup went and stood in front of his father. Chief

Stoick put his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked

into his eyes very seriously. Hiccup tried to look serious

too, but it is quite hard to take your father totally seriously

when he seems to have a beard made entirely out of

porridge.

73

‘Son,’ said Stoick the Vast, ‘you are the son of

a Chief, and the Heir to the Hooligan Tribe. A man is

judged by the company he keeps, and I am sorry to have

to tell you, but Fisheggs is the weirdest little weirdo I

have ever seen. You must give him up, Hiccup, give

him up…’

‘But, Father,’ protested Hiccup. ‘Fishlegs is

my friend.’

‘SILENCE!’ roared Stoick. And then more

gently, ‘I know it is hard, son, but a Chief is a public

figure. We Hooligans need to be FEARED by the other

Tribes, so they don’t start thinking they can sneak along

and invade us… Fisheggs is a… well, let’s face it, son,

he’s a bit ODD. You stand too near Fisheggs, son, and

the Meatheads, and the Visithugs, and the Bog-Burglars

and the Hysterics will start thinking YOU’RE a bit odd

too… a bit soft, a bit WEAK, and then you’re putting

the whole Tribe in peril.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Hiccup miserably.

‘You need to start working on being

TERRIFYING, Hiccup.’ Stoick patted his son on the

shoulder, peering sympathetically at his sad face. This

was hard, but it was for Hiccup’s own good. ‘And

Fisheggs isn’t helping. Give him up, son. Your cousin,

Snotlout, now, there’s a suitable friend for you. Got an air

74

of terrible danger about him. You stand shoulder to

shoulder with Snotlout and you’ll be feared throughout

the Archipelago. Does that answer your question?’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Hiccup, very sadly.

Stoick the Vast clapped his son heartily on

the back. ‘Good boy,’ roared Stoick. ‘I knew you’d

see sense. And now, we’d better get ready for the

Freya’sday Fete… we don’t want to be late now, do we?

Old Wrinkly has given me a tip for the Young Heroes

Smashsticks-on-Ice Competition… he’s done some

soothsaying,* and he tells me us Hooligans are going

to win ten to two so I’ve put a bit of a bet on. Run and

fetch your stick and skates, quick, boy.’

Slowly, Hiccup went and fetched his Smash stick.

Sadly, he picked up his ice-skates.

‘Old Wrinkly isn’t very good at looking into the

future,’ he warned his father, but Stoick wasn’t listening.

Stoick rarely listened.

75

LEARNING TO SPEAK DRAGONESE

TOILET TRAINING

You: Toothless, ta COGLET me wantee ta

cack-cack in di greenclaw crapspot…

Toothless, you KNOW I want you to poo in the

dragon toilets…

Dragon: O yessee yessee, me coglet…

Yes, yes, I know…

You: (pointing at large poo in the middle of

Stoick’s bed) Erg… questa SA?

So what, then, is THIS? PAUSE

Dragon (hopefully): Ummm… un chocklush

snik-snak?

Er… a chocolate biscuit?

You: Snotta chocklush snik-snak, issa

CACK-CACK, issa cack-cack di Toothless

NA in di greenclaw crapspot, may oopla

bang splosh in di middling di sleepy-slab

di pappa.

This isn’t a chocolate biscuit, it’s

a POO, it’s one of YOUR poos,

Toothless, and it ISN’T in

the dragon toilets, it’s

right bang splat in the

middle of my father’s

bed.

77

5. SMASHSTICKS-ON-ICE

The Freya’sday Fete took place every year on Freya’sday

Eve, which was the Viking holiday celebrating the end of

winter and the coming of spring.

This year the Fete was being held out in the

middle of the frozen sea in Hooligan Harbour. It was

strange to think that only six months before the Harbour

had been filled with a grey, surly ocean. Now there were

red and white stripy tents pitched higgledy-piggledy all

over the ice. Roaring fires burned high, grilling Semi-

Spotted Snowpeckers for the Vikings to munch on as

they wandered round stalls selling octopus lollipops, or

listened to story-tellers telling tall stories, or watched

open-mouthed as the giants on skates balanced dwarves

on their heads.

There was a big pitch marked out for the

Smashsticks-on-Ice Competitions. Smashsticks-on-Ice

was a very rough and complicated game played with

bats, balls and ice-skates. Nobody was quite

sure of the rules, which meant that

people tended to make them up as

they went along, and then anybody

who complained would start a fight.

The Young Heroes were

79

supposed to go first, followed later on by the Adult

Warriors. They would be playing against another Tribe,

the Bog-Burglars, who had been invited over to join in

the Celebrations for the day.

The Bog-Burglars were a Tribe of fearsome

female Warriors who lived on an island some way to the

west. Their Chief, Big-Boobied Bertha, stood nearby,

80

gulping down mugs of beer

and scratching her chin

stubble.

Her daughter,

Camicazi, a very small girl

with a swagger and the

tangliest hair in the Inner

Isles, was practising swinging her

Smashstick.

Camicazi was a friend of

Hiccup’s, and he wandered over to

ask her if she had seen Fishlegs that morning.

‘Nope,’ said Camicazi cheerily. ‘But I hope you

Hooligan boys are feeling lucky. Us Bog-Burglars are

going to MURDER you weedy little BOYS in the

Smashsticks. I bet you Hooligans are hopeless at it –

apart from you, of course, Hiccup,’ she added. Camicazi

had a great admiration for Hiccup, ever since he had

rescued her from being eaten by Sharkworms in Fort

Sinister.*

81

Snotlout happened to be skating past at that

moment and he nearly fell over, he laughed so much

at this. ‘Hiccup???’ jeered Snotlout. ‘Hiccup will get

as many goals as he shot Semi-Spotted Snowpeckers

yesterday. I shot more than two hundred. How many did

you shoot, again, Hiccup? What was it – none??’

82

Hiccup blushed. Camicazi looked very surprised.

‘P-P-ARP! The Young Heroes Smashsticks-on-

Ice Match is about to begin! Please could both teams

make their way to the Pitch…’ shouted Gobber the

Belch from the centre of the ice.

Gobber had changed into his shortest shorts to

be the referee. The Bog-Burglars (apart from Camicazi

of course) were big, rough, mean-looking girls with

wonky plaits, broken noses, and thighs like tree-trunks.

Fishlegs staggered on to the pitch at the last

minute. He looked even more terrible than the last time

Hiccup saw him. He was sneezing and shivering hard,

and he could hardly stand, and was using his Smashstick

to hold himself up. He had put his ice-skates on the

wrong feet.

Hiccup put up his hand to try and get Gobber’s

attention. ‘Sir, I think Fishlegs isn’t well,’ he said.

‘NONSENSE!’ roared Gobber. ‘Vikings don’t

get SICK! Flu is for softies! Colds are for babies!

Plagues are for girlies! I’VE never had a day’s sickness in

all my life, not even a sore throat. I don’t want to hear

ANOTHER WORD.’

Hiccup and Fishlegs skated out on to the pitch,

Hiccup supporting Fishlegs, who could hardly put one

skate in front of another.

83

‘You ought to be at home,’ worried Hiccup. ‘You

look awful.’

Fishlegs laughed sarcastically. ‘Didn’t you hear

Gobber? Vikings don’t get SICK… I’m not ill, I’m just

shivering with EXCITEMENT to be out here on this

frost-bitingly cold day…’

Gobber blew the whistle, threw the puck into

the Smashstick Scrum and all hell broke loose.

Ten boys and girls fell on top of each other in

an untidy hairy mess, clonking each other on the head

with their wooden sticks. Within two minutes Wartihog,

Clueless, Lovethug and Deadly Doris were lying

stretched out on the ice, and Camicazi had somehow

broken free of the scrum and was skating towards

Hiccup and Fishlegs at breakneck speed. Fishlegs moved

in to tackle her, and she pulled his helmet over his eyes

so he couldn’t see anything, before skilfully shooting the

puck between the goalposts.

And as the Bog-Burglars merrily cried out,

an extraordinary change came over Fishlegs.

He tore off his helmet and he snorted like a bull

about to charge.

‘Uh oh,’ said Hiccup. He had seen that look

somewhere before. ‘Now hang on a second, Fishlegs,

don’t do anything rash…’

‘FOUL!’ bellowed Fishlegs.

Fishlegs skated towards the gigantic figure of the

referee, Gobber the Belch, like a crab slipping on soap.

‘GOBBER, YOU BIG, STUPID, BARBARIAN

BABOON, ARE YOU BLIND? SHE FOULED ME!’

Gobber started, as surprised as if a small pink

prawn on a plate had suddenly leapt up and bit him.

‘WHAT did you say, Fishlegs????’ roared

Gobber in astonishment.

‘SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR

EARS AS WELL AS YOUR EYES?’

screamed Fishlegs. ‘I’VE MET SHEEP MORE

INTELLIGENT THAN YOU ARE! I’VE MET

JELLYFISH WHO COULD OUTPLAY YOU IN A

GAME OF CHESS!’

Gobber swelled up like a balloon about to

explode.

‘I’LL DEAL WITH THIS, BELCH!’ yelled

Stoick the Vast, skating ponderously over to this

extraordinary scene.

Stoick the Vast looked down at Fishlegs from

the giant height of six-and-a-half-feet. ‘YOUNG MAN,’

he roared, ‘YOUR CHIEFTAIN IS SPEAKING

TO YOU. THIS IS A SPECIAL OCCASION…

THERE ARE BOG-BURGLARS PRESENT.’ Stoick

pointed to the Bog-Burglars, who were killing themselves

laughing.

Fishlegs was silent for a second, looking up at his

86

Chieftain. And then…

‘FATTY!’ shrieked Fishlegs.

Stoick the Vast stared.

‘LARDY-BUM!’ shouted Fishlegs.

‘WHO’S BEEN HAVING TOO

MANY SECOND HELPINGS, CHIEF

GREEDIGUTS OF THE JELLY-BELLIES??’

Stoick the Vast turned as red as a lobster.

‘HOW DARE YOU TALK TO YOUR CHIEF IN

THIS RUDE AND IMPERTINENT MANNER?’

Fishlegs opened his mouth to scream some more

insults, but Hiccup interrupted.

‘He’s not well, Father,’ whispered Hiccup

urgently. ‘I think his Berserk thingy has gone wrong…

please, Father… I’ll take him home, he’s not well…’

‘Take him home, then,’ growled Stoick to

Hiccup. ‘But I’m warning you, son, that boy isn’t fit to

be a Hooligan, let alone a friend to the son of the Chief.’

At first Fishlegs didn’t want to be dragged away,

but while he was struggling, he fell over, and the cold

shock of landing in the snow brought him back to his

senses again.

Hiccup was really worried now, and he decided

to take Fishlegs to Old Wrinkly, to see whether HE

knew what was wrong…

87

6. WHAT OLD WRINKLY SAID

Old Wrinkly was Hiccup’s grandfather on his mother’s

side. He lived in a large untidy house on the beach. He

was delighted to see them, and he fed them all porridge.

Toothless snoozed in front of the blazing fire in his

fireplace, while the snowy clothes of Hiccup and Fishlegs

dripped dry on chairs.

‘What can I do for you, little Hiccup?’ wheezed Old

Wrinkly, lighting a big fat pipe.

‘It’s my friend, Fishlegs,’ explained Hiccup. ‘He’s

not very well.’

Old Wrinkly looked at Fishlegs, who was shaking

like a leaf in a high wind.

‘Oh come on, Hiccup,’ said Fishlegs irritably. ‘I keep

telling you, it’s just a NASTY COLD…’

Old Wrinkly tut-tutted.

Old Wrinkly was the wise man and soothsayer of

the Hooligan Tribe. If you were ill, you would go to Old

Wrinkly and he would examine you, consult the gods,

and then give you some perfectly disgusting medicine like

rabbits’ droppings in limpet goo that might or might not

make you better. (Doctoring and looking into the future are

complicated businesses – to tell the truth, Old Wrinkly did

not always get them right.)

89

Old Wrinkly put his ancient old hand on

Fishlegs’s forehead, and tut-tutted again. ‘Very hot, very

hot,’ he muttered to himself, ‘and sweaty.’ He listened

to Fishlegs’s heart with a strange trumpet-like instrument

and tut-tutted some more.

And then he threw some twigs on to the fire, and

poked the flames with a long metal stick.

‘Oh dearie me!’ gasped Old Wrinkly as he stared

at the red embers.

‘That sounds cheerful,’ shivered Fishlegs.

‘The fire seems to be telling me that your

friend has VORPENTITIS, caused by the sting of a

VENOMOUS VORPENT,’ said Old Wrinkly sadly.

‘Have you met any Venomous Vorpents recently?’

There was a nasty cold feeling in the bottom of

Hiccup’s stomach.

‘We did meet a Venomous Vorpent…’ Hiccup

said slowly. ‘A couple of months ago… a Vorpent fell

on to Fishlegs’s hand when we were escaping from Fort

Sinister…’

‘But it didn’t sting me!’ Fishlegs said eagerly. ‘I

didn’t feel anything sting me!’

Old Wrinkly shook his head. ‘The Vorpent numbs

the skin before it stings. It’s very clever really. You

wouldn’t have felt a thing. And then nothing happens,

90

until a couple of months later, when you fall ill with

Vorpentitis.’

‘What are the symptoms of Vorpentitis?’ asked

Hiccup.

‘Fever… runny nose… episodes of madness…’

replied Old Wrinkly gloomily.

Hiccup’s stomach was now as cold as ice, but he

tried to sound cheerful. ‘And how do we get him better?’

Old Wrinkly sounded gloomier still. ‘Weeeell…’

he croaked, ‘that’s the tricky part… The sting of the

Venomous Vorpent is pretty much always FATAL.’

There was a nasty silence.

‘The good news is,’ continued Old Wrinkly,

‘we have until ten in the morning tomorrow to find the

antidote* before your friend dies.’

‘Oh good,’ said Hiccup, hugely relieved. ‘So there

IS an antidote…’

Fishlegs had been listening with an open mouth.

‘But all I’ve got is a NASTY COLD!’ he protested. ‘A

nasty cold – and you tell me I’ve only got one day to

live!’

Hiccup ignored him. ‘What’s the antidote?’ asked

Hiccup.

‘This is where the tricky part gets trickier…’

wheezed Old Wrinkly. ‘The antidote to the sting of the

Venomous Vorpent is the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-

Name.’

‘What, you mean the POTATO?’ gasped Hiccup.

‘Sssssh,’ whispered Old Wrinkly, desperately

flapping his hands. ‘You’re not supposed to name it! It’s

bad luck!’

‘But the POTATO is an imaginary vegetable!’ said

Hiccup, who thought all this talk of bad luck was just

superstition. ‘It doesn’t really exist!’

‘There are those that say the Vegetable-that-No-

one-Dares-Name can be found in a great country to the

west known as America…’ Old Wrinkly pointed out.

‘But most people say,’ said Hiccup slowly, ‘that

there’s no such place as America. Most people say

that it’s an imaginary land that only crackpot weirdos

believe in. Most people think that the earth is as flat as

a pancake, and if you sail too far to the west you will fall

off the end of it.’

‘That is what most people say,’ admitted Old

Wrinkly, shrugging his shoulders and carrying on puffing

his pipe.

‘And even if there WAS such a thing as this

so-called potato in this so-called land called America,’

argued Hiccup, ‘we’re never going to be able to sail to it

and find the antidote in only ONE DAY. In one day

you’d hardly be out of the Sullen Sea… the thing you’re

suggesting is IMPOSSIBLE.’

‘There’s no such thing as im-POSSIBLE,

Hiccup,’ snorted Old Wrinkly, ‘only im-PROBABLE.

The only thing that limits us are the limits to our

imaginations… and I used to think of you as an

imaginative boy. Give up, if you want to… but I used to

think of you as the sort of boy who would NEVER give

up, however bad things looked.’

‘OK, then,’ said Hiccup crossly. ‘Give me one

reason not to give up.’

‘I will give you a reason,’ said Old Wrinkly.

‘There is a chance that Norbert the Nutjob, Chief of the

Hysterics, may have the antidote to Vorpentitis.’

Hiccup jumped. ‘NORBERT THE NUTJOB??’

said Hiccup. ‘Why does HE have a POTATO? Where

did he get it from?’

‘I will explain by telling you the story of Norbert

the Nutjob’s father and the Doomfang,’ said Old

Wrinkly.

‘You do that,’ said Hiccup, already feeling

anxious at the mere mention of Norbert the Nutjob.

Old Wrinkly relit his pipe. ‘I have to warn you,

Hiccup,’ wheezed Old Wrinkly between puffs, ‘that, like

a lot of stories, this may or may not be true…’

93

94

The Story of Norbert the Nutjob’s Father

and the Doomfang

‘Fifteen years ago,’ began Old Wrinkly, ‘the Chief of

the Hysterical Tribe was Norbert the Nutjob’s father,

Bigjob... The Hysterics have never believed that the world

is flat, and that if you sail too far to the west you will fall

off the end of it. The Hysterics think this is poppycock.

Bigjob believed that the earth was as round as the moon,

and he set out to prove it.

‘Bigjob built the greatest Viking ship you have ever

seen, a ship called The American Dream, and he sailed far,

far to the west through storms as black and wild as Woden’s

nightmares. He sailed past icebergs higher than a ship’s great

mast and on and on over the Great Green Sea Desert, and

however far he sailed he never came to the end of the world,

for the world is as round as a circle, and a circle has no end.’

95

Hiccup could contain himself no longer. ‘Is this

true?’ he burst out. ‘Is the world really a circle that has

no end?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied Old Wrinkly calmly. ‘As I

told you, this is a story. Be quiet and I’ll tell you the end.

‘After a journey so long it seemed like for ever,

Bigjob at last found the land that he had dreamed about,

the land called America. This was a glorious country, full

of natural Treasures like the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-

Name, and friendly natives that Bigjob called “Feather

People”. Bigjob spent a happy couple of months there before

returning home to the Inner Isles.

‘Norbert’s father decided to take back with him a

FROZEN VEGETABLE-THAT-NO-ONE-DARES-

NAME, so that everybody would believe that he really

had been to America. On the journey back, Bigjob had

an extraordinary feeling the ship was being FOLLOWED.

At first he thought it was a great whale or a shark, but

eventually he realised it was something far, far worse. It was

a tremendous Sea Dragon called a DOOMFANG.’

‘That is strange,’ interrupted Hiccup. Hiccup

knew a great deal about dragons, and this was very odd

behaviour for a Doomfang. Doomfangs are heavily

armed, terrifying creatures, but they normally just ignore

humans.

96

‘Will you stop interrupting?’ said Old Wrinkly.

‘This dreadful animal followed them all the way

from America like a Curse. It was only when they reached

the Wrath of Thor that the animal attacked, and tried to

swallow the boat. Bigjob was very brave. Riding his dragon

the Thunderer, he shot arrow after arrow at the Doomfang.

These specially sharp arrows had been given to Bigjob by

the Feather People, who are very expert at making arrows.

Bigjob was down to his last arrow when the Doomfang

finally killed him. Ever since that day, the Doomfang has

never left the Wrath of Thor. For fifteen years, no one has

been able to get into Hysteria, and no one can come out.

The Chief of the Hysterical Tribe is now Bigjob’s son,

Norbert the Nutjob, and he has never got over the death

of his father. It is said that he keeps the frozen Vegetable-

that-No-one-Dares-Name in a casket, and it is in as good

condition as it was fifteen years ago.

‘So there you are,’ said Old Wrinkly, ‘That is the story

of Norbert the Nutjob’s father and the Doomfang. Of

course, at this time of year, the Wrath of Thor is frozen

over, and the Doomfang is trapped under the ice. And

Hysteria is only a three-hour sleigh ride from here.’

Hiccup jumped to his feet. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘We

were there only yesterday. We haven’t got a moment to

97

lose… I must go to Hysteria and bring back the

antidote.’

Fishlegs’s mouth dropped open. ‘I can’t believe

I’m hearing this… you’re thinking of GOING BACK

TO HYSTERIA??? The creepiest, grimmest, scariest

place I have ever been to in all my life, and you’re going

to go there in the DARK?’

‘The Hysterics won’t see me coming in the dark,’

Hiccup pointed out.

‘You shot Norbert the Nutjob in the bottom

with an ARROW!’ howled Fishlegs. ‘You think you can

just ask him politely to give you his precious American

vegetable and he’s just going to HAND IT OVER??’

‘Burglary may be involved,’ admitted Hiccup.

‘And all because of Old Wrinkly’s

SOOTHSAYING? Everybody knows that Old Wrinkly

is nearly as hopeless at soothsaying as you are at

Frightening Foreigners.’

‘Thank you,’ murmured Old Wrinkly.

Fishlegs hadn’t finished yet. ‘I keep on telling

you… I have just got a BAD COLD… A… a… a…

tish-yoo! Actually, I’m not feeling that well… would you

mind if I lay down for a moment?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Old Wrinkly. ‘You can have

my bed… and I’ll make you some hot lemon and honey.

98

Don’t forget, Hiccup, you have until ten in the morning

tomorrow, before Fishlegs dies… TEN in the morning,

mind…’

So Hiccup left Old Wrinkly looking after his

great friend Fishlegs, and ran out of the door. He had

finally realised he might not have much time left…

And although he didn’t know it at the time,

those were the first steps he took towards the scariest,

the most alarming and ghastly adventure of his life so

far. He was indeed setting out on a quest… a quest that

would be a race against time and lead him to a terrifying

monster and icy peril, which would be sung about by

bards ever after as the Quest for the Frozen Potato.

7. THE QUEST FOR THE

FROZEN POTATO

Hiccup marched out of Old Wrinkly’s house back to the

Celebrations in the Harbour, followed by a grumbling

Toothless. For about six hundred metres he was

absolutely certain about what he was going to do.

He would go and explain to his father what had

happened, and ask him to set up a quest for the Frozen

Potato. The Hooligans were always going on quests.

But when he eventually found his father, who was

trying his luck in the Frozen Lucky Dip, he suddenly

didn’t feel quite so sure of himself.

Stoick wasn’t as pleased to see his only son as

he normally was. He had just lost a big bet because

the Bog-Burglar Young Heroes had WHIPPED the

Hooligan Young Heroes in the Smashsticks-on-Ice

Competition, fourteen goals to nil. So Stoick was not in

the best of moods.

‘Bother that Old Wrinkly and his stupid

soothsaying. An EASY WIN for the Hooligans, he said.

Put all your money on it, he said. And what happens?

The Bog-Burglars win fourteen – NIL. I

should have known it,’ Stoick muttered to

100

himself, as he drew a large frozen object from the lucky

dip and tried to work out what it was. Fish? A useful

axe? A small chair?

‘Father,’ said Hiccup determinedly, ‘I want to set

out on a quest.’

Stoick looked at his son with surprise. ‘What sort

of quest?’

‘You remember my friend Fishlegs?’ said Hiccup.

Stoick rubbed his nose crossly and grunted.

‘Old Wrinkly says the reason he attacked you

was because he has been stung by the Venomous

Vorpent and he is in the first stage of Vorpentitis, and

that causes episodes of madness, you know… and the

thing is, Father, unless we can find the antidote in time

Old Wrinkly says Fishlegs may DIE…’

Stoick looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to

be sad or happy… but then he saw his son’s face and

hurriedly looked sad.

‘Um… yes… oh dear…’ said Stoick.

‘So I want to set out on a quest for the antidote,’

announced Hiccup.

‘What is the antidote?’ asked Stoick the Vast.

‘Old Wrinkly says the antidote is the potato,’ said

Hiccup.

‘SSSSSShhhh!’ said Stoick. ‘You’re not supposed

101

to name it! And the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-

Name is an imaginary vegetable – surely you know that,

Hiccup?’

‘Old Wrinkly says that the Hysterics went to

America and brought back a frozen potato,’ continued

Hiccup stubbornly. ‘So I want to FIND the potato and

save Fishlegs’s life.’

‘I FORBID YOU TO DO ANY SUCH

THING!’ roared Stoick.

‘If we don’t believe in the potato Fishlegs may

DIE!’ Hiccup yelled right back at his father.

Stoick the Vast lost his temper and waved the

Unidentified Frozen Object (U.F.O.) around his head.

He roared at his son so loudly poor Hiccup’s

ears rang.

‘YOUR FRIEND FISHLEGS IS A LITTLE

WEIRDO WHO JUST CALLED ME A JELLY-

BELLIED LARDY-BOTTOMED GREEDIGUTS!’

Hiccup flinched as if he had been struck, and

then Stoick felt ashamed, and controlled himself. He

reached out and patted his son on the shoulder, and he

tried to speak more reasonably.

‘Look, son, I know this is difficult for you,

because you are fond of your friend, but let’s just say

that for once in a blue moon Old Wrinkly is right. Even

102

then, as the Chief I WILL NOT risk the life of my only

son for the sake of a little weirdo that Fate has got it in

for.’

‘Isn’t it the Chief’s job to do that?’ said Hiccup

steadily. ‘Fishlegs has no one else to look after him.’

‘You WILL NOT do it,’ said Stoick, very

meaningfully indeed. ‘Because I FORBID it, and that

is an order, son. An order from your CHIEF.’ Stoick

put the U.F.O. on his head (he had decided it was a

HELMET) and stalked off.

The unfortunate thing about going on a quest to

save the life of your sick best friend is that you have no

best friend to go with you. Hiccup watched his father

stalking off with what looked very like a frozen chair on

his head, and wondered miserably what his chances were

if he went on the quest for the Frozen Potato alone.

Not im-POSSIBLE, he thought sadly, but, let’s

face it, im-PROBABLE.

Camicazi stuck her head out from underneath

the Lucky Dip table.

‘Did I hear someone mention the word quest?

When do we get started?’

‘Oh, Camicazi... You really shouldn’t listen in on

other peoples’ conversations,’ said Hiccup.

Camicazi wriggled out from underneath the table

103

and started doing handstands. She still had her ice-

skates on.

‘Us Bog-Burglars always listen in on other

peoples’ conversations,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s one

of the reasons I’m going to be so helpful to you on the

quest for the Frozen Potato.’

‘YOU are not going on the quest for the Frozen

Potato,’ said Hiccup. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’

‘Dangerous? PAH!’ boasted Camicazi. ‘Why,

I’ve burgled whole flocks of SHEEP off the

Visithugs… I’ve picked the pockets of the Perilous

Pirates… I’ve stolen the helmet right off the head of

Madguts the Murderous, and you want me to steal one

measly little vegetable?? No problemo, Hiccup, watch

and learn, my boy, watch and learn.’

Hiccup raised his eyes to the heavens. If

Camicazi had a fault, it was that she was very, very

pleased with herself. But it had to be admitted, she was

an excellent burglar.

‘There’s this Madman with an Axe…’ Hiccup

pointed out.

‘Better and better,’ said Camicazi. ‘There’s

nothing I enjoy more than teasing Madmen with Axes.

It’s my favourite sport. If you don’t let me join in I’ll tell

your big fat cross father where you’re going.’

105

‘But that’s blackmail!’ protested Hiccup.

‘You see,’ grinned Camicazi, ‘we Bog-Burglars

have no morals at all. It’s very useful to us.’

Hiccup gave up, and said she could come if she

wanted to.

Camicazi rushed off to get her burglary

equipment, and Hiccup prepared a small sleigh to take

them to Hysteria.

He also pulled down his boat, The Hopeful Puffin,

to drag on runners behind the sleigh.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Camicazi, returning

with her arms laden with ropes and oddly-shaped pointy

metal objects.

‘It’s getting so near to springtime, the ice may

start cracking when we’re out there. And if it does we’re

going to need some way of getting back across the

Sullen Sea,’ replied Hiccup, trying not to think about

what would happen if the ice REALLY DID melt. That

might mean they had to face the Doomfang, on top of

all their other problems.

Hiccup went off to look for One Eye, and

explained his problem, and the big Driver laughed

sneerily.

‘Look, revolting little Human boy, I don’t

know why you think I might want to help you. I am

106

not your mummy. I HATE humans. One thing I will

absolutely SWEAR to you. I will NEVER, repeat

NEVER, waste a tear crying over the death of one of

you Human No-Brainers.’

‘Ah,’ said Hiccup cunningly, ‘but the

antidote isn’t just going to save the life of

my friend, Fishlegs, is it? The Vorpent stings

dragons as well as humans. Thousands of

DRAGONS die of Vorpentitis every year. When

I bring back the frozen potato, I shall plant

potatoes all over Berk, and no dragon shall die

of Vorpentitis ever again.’

Well, that got One Eye, of course, because his

hatred of humans was only matched by his love for

his fellow dragons, and five minutes later Hiccup was

hitching the big Sabre-Tooth Dragon up to his sleigh.

Hiccup told Stoick on the way that he was going

to spend the night at Snotlout’s house and Stoick was

delighted.

‘Excellent, my boy,’ roared Stoick, ‘so you’ve

decided to take my advice, and find yourself a better

friend. Well done, Hiccup.’

‘So now,’ said Hiccup, sitting down in the sleigh

next to Camicazi, ‘we can nip to Hysteria, steal the

potato, and get it to Fishlegs without my father even

knowing we’ve gone.’

108

Only Snotlout noticed the small Sleigh-Dragging-

a-Boat sneaking out of Hooligan Harbour, on its way to

Hysteria on the quest for the Frozen Potato.

Snotlout hoped that wherever Hiccup was going,

it was somewhere dangerous, and that he would NEVER

COME BACK.

109

8. THE WRATH OF THOR

One Eye pulled the sleigh across the ice at a crazy speed.

Once or twice Hiccup tugged on the reins to try and

get him to slow down, but the big Driver ignored him,

and so in the end, Hiccup gave up trying. ‘The quicker

we get to Hysteria, the better, anyway,’ he reminded

himself. The burningly cold wind slammed into his face,

tearing at his eyelids as they careered across the ice.

The Hopeful Puffin bounced crazily behind them

like an ugly duckling desperately trying to keep up with

its demented mother. Luckily, although she was not an

attractive-looking boat, she was sturdy and used to the

odd knock or two. Hiccup had brought along snacks for

everybody that were supposed to last the whole journey,

but Toothless finished all of them in the first three

minutes, littering the sleigh with crumbs, chicken bones

and winkle shells.

‘Toothless c-c-cold…’ he wailed. ‘Toothless

h-h-hungry… Toothless BORED. Ow ow ow ow…

110

Camicazi s-s-sitting on my ta-a-ail… Are we nearly

there yet?’

‘We only left five minutes ago!’ exclaimed

Hiccup.

‘Toothless play I-Spy,’ said Toothless firmly.

At first Camicazi was horribly cheerful, chatting

constantly, and singing loudly, her bright blue eyes

prickling with excitement.

But as the long hours wore on, and as they played

their fifty-second game of I-Spy with Hiccup translating

for Toothless, and as the sky turned pink and grey with

the coming of the evening, and as they passed the Mazy

Multitudes to their left and began to hear the first moans

of the Doomfang under the ice, even Camicazi fell silent.

Hiccup made One Eye wait for the evening

to grow darker before they turned the corner into the

Wrath of Thor, so the Hysteric lookouts wouldn’t spot

them coming.

For a tense, stomach-churning half-hour they

waited, until Hiccup judged it was safe, and gave a pull

on One Eye’s reins to get him going again.

The gigantic sea cliffs of Villainy and Hysteria

loomed above them scarily in the darkness. One Eye

bounded into the Wrath of Thor, and the cliffs leapt up

on either side of the little sleigh as it raced along, like

111

dizzyingly high prison walls.

The eyes of dragons shine

in the dark, and so One Eye’s great

eye acted as a searchlight, showing

them the way. The ice in the narrow

gorge was so clear that it was almost

transparent, and in the beam of One Eye’s

eye, you could see right through it, as if it were a two-

metre-thick pane of frosted glass, down into the sea

below. How interesting, thought Hiccup as he looked

over the edge of the sleigh, I can even make out a shoal

of mackerel down there…

The mass of tiny fish went on for ever,

swimming slowly in their millions way down

below them, until suddenly they scarpered,

shooting away like tiny sparks in an explosion,

as a great dark shape, infinitely large, suddenly

appeared under the ice. It was the

gargantuan shadow of a dragon

the size of an underwater

mountain, and it easily kept

up with the speedy little

sleigh, its long tail lazily

powering it along,

its wings nearly

brushing the edges of

the Wrath of Thor as it beat

them slowly to swim underneath.

‘Issa D-d-doomfang!’ whispered

Toothless into Hiccup’s ear. ‘Let’s go

h-h-home…’

Hiccup gazed downwards in fascinated horror

as the great dragon turned its head to one side

and Hiccup found himself staring into an

enormous, bloodshot, green dragon eye, as long

as the sleigh itself.

It was as if all the green in the

world, of peas, of grass, of spinach, of

leaves, of beans and frogs, had been

concentrated in that one eye and

given it the intensity of a pure green

acid. It was like looking straight

into the sun at midday, through a great

green microscope, and Hiccup was so

dazzled he nearly fell off the sleigh,

until he was brought back to his senses by a

terribleTHUD! and the ice below them jumped up like

The DOOMFANG

The Doomfang is a gigantic predator of the

Open Ocean, very rarely seen by humans.

It is armed not only with fearsome fangs and

claws, but also a strange blue fire that ‘freezes’

its victims to death.

~STATISTICS~

COLOURS: Always as black as your darkest

nightmare.

ARMED WITH: Terrible jaws and fangs. Also

have unusual frozen fire breath, with blue

flames that kill by FREEZING you.

FEAR FACTOR:..............9

ATTACK:.......................9

SPEED:.........................9

SIZE:............................9

DISOBEDIENCE:............9

an earthquake. The sleigh jumped too, and One Eye

soared briefly into the air with a complaining yowl.

THUD! went the ice again as the Doomfang

butted his head against the thick transparent wall. With

terrified relief, Hiccup realised the ice was so deep that

it was holding strong, although it was now shot through

with tiny little white cracks.

The sleigh raced towards the entrance to Hysteria

Harbour like a mouse streaking towards a mousehole.

The dragon followed, thudding the ice underneath as

they went, with terrible blows from its battering-ram

head. When One Eye turned into the harbour, he was

going so fast the momentum from the boat behind

almost turned them round in a great screeching circle.

The sleigh balanced wildly on one runner, before

slamming back down and carrying on.

Hiccup looked over his shoulder. The Doomfang

was too large to fit through the narrow harbour entrance.

It pushed its great head through and Hiccup could see,

though not hear, its huge mouth opening in a roar of

rage, its paw with the terrible talons tearing at the water.

It blew out a great gush of underwater blue flame that

shot out underneath the speeding sleigh and streaked

forward in a straight line right up to the shoreline, almost

as if it were a bright blue road telling them where to go.

115

‘He’s not pleased,’ grinned Camicazi, as the sleigh

raced along the bright blue road. ‘That is one Doomfang

in a VERY BAD MOOD.’

‘Let’s hope the ice holds long enough for us to

steal the potato and get out of here,’ shivered Hiccup.

‘That creature would kill us with one snap of its jaws!’

When One Eye finally came to a plunging halt at

the ice’s edge and Hiccup clambered out of the sleigh,

his legs wobbling like jellyfish, the evening had become

night. The bright blue road had turned palest turquoise,

and was gradually fading entirely.

The harbour, thank Thor, was entirely deserted.

Pulled up on to the rocks, half buried in snow, were

hundreds of Hysterical boats. Even in their snow-covered

state, you could tell these were ghost ships, that hadn’t

rocked on salt water for fifteen years. Rags of sails hung

from drooping masts, oars and rudders jutting from the

snow were rotting or snapped in half.

Hiccup sent Toothless off to have a look at

the Hysterical Village, and the little dragon reluctantly

flapped off into the darkness.

‘Why does T-t-toothless always have to do

this?’ complained Toothless.

‘Because you’re the one with wings, Toothless,’

Hiccup explained for the umpteenth time, unhitching

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One Eye. Camicazi unpacked her burglary equipment,

humming happily, shoving interesting-looking pointy

instruments into her pockets, putting on her special shoes

with spikes on the soles, winding length after length of

stout rope around her middle.

Hiccup’s usual companion on adventures was

Fishlegs, who was always terrified and asking what

on earth they were doing in YET ANOTHER life-

threatening disaster? So it was quite a change to have

Camicazi treating the whole thing as if it were an

enjoyable outing.

They put on their skis and waited for Toothless

to return from his trip to find out the whereabouts of the

Hysterical Village. He gave them a shock when he flapped

out from nowhere, and landed on Hiccup’s shoulder.

‘Iss s-s-scary out there,’ panted Toothless,

his eyes glowing luminously in the darkness. ‘Them

Hysterics is having a b-b-banquet for Freya’sday

Eve… looksa SCRUMMY.’

Hiccup explained what Toothless had said to

Camicazi, and she got up. ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Hopefully

they’ll be so distracted they won’t notice us. Let’s get

going.’ The little party set off up the cliff path, One Eye

pulling them, his one eye burning bright in the darkness.

117

9. BACK ON BERK

Back on Berk, Fishlegs was hot as fire, weak as a fly

caught in a spider’s web, and talking nonsense. Old

Wrinkly quietly bathed his head with cool water, and

tried to feed him some watery tea.

‘Stop it… you withered old… dried-up crab

claw,’ fretted Fishlegs feebly, trying to twist away from

the old man’s hand, but hardly strong enough to move.

‘They must get here before ten in the morning,’

muttered Old Wrinkly to himself. ‘He’s dying fast.’

‘Don’t worry,’ whispered Fishlegs, looking

straight into Old Wrinkly’s concerned old eyes. ‘Hiccup

will make it. Hiccup always makes it… Thor only

knows how,’ and then he drifted off into nonsense

again.

Out in the middle of the Sullen Sea, strange

noises could be heard, like the creaking of an old man’s

knee, or the rapping of a gigantic knuckle on a door.

The ice was beginning to crack.

118

119

10. FREYA’SDAY EVE ON

HYSTERIA

When they reached the top of the cliff, the ground

kept on rising up to Mount Hysteria, on which was

perched the shadowy outline of the Hysterical Village, all

in darkness.

One Eye dragged them right up to the bottom

of the village walls, where Camicazi got out her ropes.

She threw up the rope with the metal hook

attached, and on the first attempt it caught hold of the

top of the wooden wall. She squirmed up it like a little

blonde monkey and disappeared over the top. One Eye

spread wide his wings and flew after her.

Hiccup took a deep breath, grabbed hold of

the rope, and climbed up, trying to ignore the skulls

grinning at him from the top of the battlements.

They were the only visitors to the Hysterical

Village in fifteen years.

The village seemed at first to be deserted.

There was no one in the streets, no light in

the windows.

But the Great Hall was blazing with light. Smoke

billowed out of several chimneys, music and chatter and

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laughing poured out of the windows.

Weirdly, beside the Great Hall, lying on great

tree-trunks, there stood the largest Viking ship Hiccup

had ever seen. It did seem a trifle strange to keep a ship

so far from the sea, but Hiccup supposed the Hysterics

hadn’t been doing any sailing at all for the last fifteen

years, so perhaps the centre of town was as good a place

to keep a boat as any.

And what a ship it was…

It was more the depth and length of a Roman

galleon and it was the only Viking longboat Hiccup had

ever seen with not one but three masts. On its prow the

figurehead dragon was a snarling Monstrous Nightmare,

and Hiccup’s heart beat a little faster with excitement

as he read the name painted on its side in big flowing

letters: The American Dream. Perhaps the story Old

Wrinkly told him really WAS true…

In stark contrast to the ships Hiccup had seen

in the harbour, this boat was in tip-top condition. The

rest of the village was two metres deep in snow, but The

American Dream was spotless, her decks entirely snow-

free. She was freshly painted, the Hysterical flag flew

cheerily from her central mast and her oars were all out,

just as if she were about to set sail for distant shores at a

moment’s notice.

121

‘We’ll climb up on to the roof of the Great Hall,

and see if we can overhear what’s going on,’ whispered

Camicazi. Camicazi didn’t even bother to use a rope

this time. She just shinned up the sheer wall, appearing

to cling to it with invisible suction like a frog. Once she

reached the roof, she let down a rope for Hiccup, and

One Eye hauled him up with it.

The roof was thigh deep in snow, and Hiccup

had to crawl through it, following the path made by

Camicazi. She wriggled through to the central chimney,

which had no smoke coming out of it, and she and

Hiccup peered down into the room below.

A blast of heat so strong Hiccup had to close his

eyes poured out of the chimney. Hiccup’s hands burned

as they began to warm up. Eventually his watering eyes

adjusted to the heat and the light.

Down below, the Hysterics were enjoying a truly

magnificent banquet. The long central table was loaded

high with fish, flesh and fowl cooked in every possible

manner, whole stags, entire pigs, and brimming cups

of beer and wine. A big drunken chap was

dancing a jig on the table at one end,

and the Hysterics were laughing,

and throwing bits of food and

chair legs at him.

Fires blazed in six huge fireplaces. Enormous

white rugs made out of the skin of polar bears were

strewn about the floor. Hanging on the walls were the

heads of dragons of every possible size, colour and

description. And also the heads of a couple of animals

Hiccup had never seen before, one that looked like

an enormous, depressed deer, and another that

resembled a gigantic bull with black curly hair.

A map of the Barbaric World drawn

on deerskin was hanging in a great curtain

against the north wall. On the west of

the map, someone had scribbled out

the great tumbling waterfall which on

most Viking maps was marked ‘End

of the World’, and replaced it with

a crude charcoal drawing of an

island it called AMERICA.

With a sinking of the

heart, Hiccup recognised a big

blond bearded bloke sitting on

a throne as the Chief, Norbert

the Nutjob. It was definitely

the Big Brute who Hiccup

had shot with an arrow in the

bottom the day before.

124

His throne had a couple of plump cushions on it, but he

was shifting from buttock to buttock as if in some pain.

In one hand he held a very unusual, enormous,

double-headed axe. The axe was different in that one

blade was a bright and shiny copper gold, but the other

blade was rusted and blackened, and deeply scarred.

There was no sign of the potato.

Suddenly Hiccup felt a bit foolish. He had

somehow expected it to be displayed somewhere obvious,

preferably with a big sign underneath it labelling it clearly

as THE POTATO.

Because, of course, he did not have any idea what

a potato looked like, whether it was orange, or green, or

large or small. Hiccup had somehow imagined it as RED

with little black spots, and kind of oblong, or triangular,

just because it sounded so exotic. Purple, perhaps? Really,

he hadn’t a clue.

‘OK,’ whispered Camicazi, ‘I’m going to have to

go down there to try and find out WHERE they keep the

potato… it could be absolutely anywhere.’

She unwound one of the ropes from round her

waist, and Hiccup suggested that they should tie it around

One Eye’s leg. ‘That way, if you get into any trouble, you

can yank on it three times, and One Eye can haul you

up sharpish.’

127

One Eye objected strongly to having anything tied

round his leg, and only agreed when Hiccup reminded

him what a HERO he was going to be in the Dragon

World when they returned to Berk with the antidote to

Vorpentitis.

The little girl then lowered herself down through

the hole in the roof.

It was completely dark and very quiet on top of

the Great Hall.

Waiting by the hole, Hiccup felt rather like he

had as a small boy going ice fishing with his father, when

Stoick cut a hole in the ice, and let down the line, and

then all there was to do was wait… and wait… and wait.

Toothless scratched behind his ears. One Eye

picked at his teeth. And Hiccup shivered with anxiety.

‘Hurry up, Camicazi…’

At any moment Hiccup expected a great crack

to appear in that huge flat expanse of frozen sea, and

then they would never get home… and Fishlegs would be

lost.

Or perhaps Camicazi had got into trouble

down there?

Hiccup peered down through the hole. Camicazi

was clinging to her rope like a spider, two metres below

them. Hiccup leant down a little farther to try and see

128

what was happening…

… And then, to his absolute horror, the edge of

the chimney, already buckling under the weight of the

snow, gave way beneath him and with a shriek, Hiccup

FELL into the Hall.

11. IN THE SOUP

Camicazi watched with round, scared eyes as Hiccup fell

past her, arms flailing wildly.

In ordinary circumstances, that would have been

the end of Hiccup, for the Great Hall was fully twenty

metres high, and he SHOULD have broken his neck

falling all the way from the very top.

But, in a series of tremendous strokes of luck,

the traditional Freya’sday Eve dish was Onion Soup, and

on Hysteria it was served in a truly gigantic cauldron,

two metres wide and a metre deep. This pot was sitting

on the table directly below the falling Hiccup, and he

plunged straight into it, bottom first.

If the soup had been any hotter, Hiccup would

have been burned to death, but it had been on the table

for some time, and had cooled to a pleasant swimming

temperature.

If the Hysterics had been any fonder of Onion

Soup, it would not have been deep enough to break

Hiccup’s fall, but the Hysterics only served Onion Soup

because it was the traditional thing to do, and had hardly

touched it.

So Hiccup merely bumped his bottom gently

on the bottom of the cauldron, and rose to the surface,

131

coughing and spluttering, his hair full of onions. There

was a shocked silence. Nothing puts a quicker stop

to a jolly meal than a stranger and a great deal of

snow suddenly falling on to the banqueting table. The

Hysterics sat, amazed, spitting snow out of their beards,

staring at the unexpected visitor gasping in their soup.

Norbert the Nutjob was the first to recover,

shaking the snow off and leaping to his feet.

‘ASSASSINS!’ he screamed. ‘SEIZE HIM!’

Twenty Warriors sprang on to the table. Hiccup

tried to swim out of trouble, but his back-stroke couldn’t

make up for the fact that he was entirely surrounded.

Two large Hysterics dragged

him out of the soup, and

dropped him, dripping and

gloopy, in front of Norbert

the Nutjob.

‘Are there more

of you?’ barked

Norbert the Nutjob,

brandishing the

blackened blade of

his axe in front

of Hiccup’s

face.

132

Hiccup shook his head, spraying soup in all

directions.

Norbert the Nutjob and his Warriors peered

upwards. Camicazi was hanging way up in the darkness

of the ceiling, and her black clothes came in handy, for

they could not see her.

‘SEARCH THE ROOF AND THE VILLAGE!’

screamed Norbert the Nutjob.

He turned to face Hiccup again. Norbert the

Nutjob had a tic in his left eye, and it was jerking around

frantically like a fly doing a jig.

‘I’m sure I recognise you…’ he said, using the

edge of a nearby Warrior’s cloak to wipe the soup off

Hiccup’s face. ‘Great Thumbnails of Thor! It’s the

revolting Hooligan worm who shot an arrow in my Royal

Bottom yesterday!’

This wasn’t a very good start.

‘How do you do?’ gulped Hiccup politely.

‘I DO NOT VERY WELL!’ screamed Norbert

the Nutjob. ‘MY BUTTOCKS ARE BURNING!’

The Warriors came panting back into the

Hall, and said they had searched both the roof

and the village, and there were no more Assassins

to be found. One Eye and Toothless must have

flapped off to hide in the darkness.

Norbert the Nutjob looked rather cross. ‘You’re

a very SMALL Assassin,’ he said huffily, removing

Hiccup’s sword and stuffing it in his own sword-belt.

‘And so, come to think of it, was the one who attacked us

with you yesterday, the one who skied like a grandmother

with knee trouble. I know I’ve been out of the loop for

the last fifteen years, but do the Hooligans really think

they can assassinate me with CHILDREN?’

‘I’m not an Assassin,’ pleaded Hiccup quaveringly.

‘LIAR!’ screeched Norbert the Nutjob, and he

lurched forward as if to kill Hiccup with the axe right

there and then. And then he calmed himself, and smiled

again, and settled himself back on his throne with a

wince.

‘So if you’re not an Assassin,’ smiled Norbert,

‘what are you doing here on Hysteria, shooting me with

arrows, and poisoning my soup?’

‘I’m looking,’ said Hiccup, ‘for THE POTATO.’

There was an astonished silence.

‘Ssssssh!’ said Norbert the Nutjob, looking over

his shoulder as if walls had ears. ‘You’re not supposed to

NAME the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-Name…’

‘Of course,’ said Hiccup craftily, ‘now that I’m

here I realise that it was all just fairy stories. There’s no

such thing as a potato, is there? Because there’s no such

135

place as America… the earth is as flat as a pancake, and

if you sail to the west eventually you just fall off the end

of it…’

‘RUBBISH!’ shrieked Norbert the Nutjob.

‘KILL HIM!’ he screamed, his eyes bulging, his mouth

foaming, before, with an enormous effort, he gained

control of himself again. ‘No, educate him, then kill him!’

said Norbert the Nutjob, twiddling his fancy moustaches

to soothe himself.

‘The earth is as round as a circle, and a circle has

no end,’ explained Norbert carefully. ‘There is such a

thing as America, I know because I’ve been there… and

as for the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-Name… I don’t

know what you’re talking about…’

‘That’s because there’s no such thing,’ repeated

Hiccup.

‘There IS such a thing,’ insisted Norbert, trying

to keep his temper.

‘Isn’t,’ said Hiccup.

‘Is!’

‘Isn’t.’

‘IS!’

‘Isn’t.’

‘IS, IS, IS, IS, IS!!!!!’ yelled Norbert the

Nutjob, twiddling his fancy moustaches so hard they got

136

all tangled in a knot.

‘Prove there is,’ challenged

Hiccup.

‘I know there’s no such a thing as a

Vegetable-that-No-One-Dares-Name… because the

Vegetable-that-No-One-Dares-Name… is right here in

this room!’ cried Norbert the Nutjob. He ran over to

the wall where the map of America was hanging.

With two grand sweeps of his axe he threw

aside the curtain.

‘VERY SMALL ASSASSIN,’ announced

Norbert the Nutjob proudly, ‘SAY HELLO TO

PAPA…’

‘Oh whoops!’ breathed Hiccup.

Norbert the Nutjob was clearly madder than a

Mad March Hare having a nervous breakdown.

For there, on a stand, larger than life, stood

what looked horribly like the frozen body of Norbert

the Nutjob’s Papa.

He was standing proud and upright, every

whisker frozen solid, mouth open in a soundless

YELL, a scary monumental sight. One hand was on his

hip, and in the other he held a casket with glass sides,

filled with ice.

137

On top of the ice sat the round, rather

disappointing shape of a lumpy brownish vegetable.

Surely THAT can’t be the magical, wondrous POTATO,

thought Hiccup. Sticking out of the vegetable was a

single arrow.

Norbert’s Papa was surrounded by a carpet of

unusual dragon-creatures, called SQUEALERS.

These weird animals are often used as primitive

burglar-alarm systems. They have no legs to chase

after their prey, so they lie on their backs waving their

extra-long nails gently in the air. Any animal that comes

into contact with those nails causes the whole pack of

Squealers to scream unbearably loudly. The sound is

so piercingly noisy that it actually kills smaller dragons

(who have much better hearing than humans) stone

dead on the spot. The Squealers then devour their

victim, and rather like piranha fish, they can strip an

animal to the bone in sixty seconds flat.

‘But, Norbert,’ gasped Hiccup. ‘I thought

your father was supposed to be DEAD?’

‘Oh, he’s dead all right,’ smiled

Norbert. ‘He’s as dead as a doornail… but

as I was keeping the potato frozen anyway,

I thought I’d freeze Papa too.’

139

‘You could give your father a proper

Viking funeral,’ shuddered Hiccup. ‘He looks

untidy standing there… and a bit spooky…’

‘MY FATHER HAS HIS

FUNERAL ON THE DAY THE

DOOMFANG DIES!’ shouted Norbert the

Nutjob. ‘That’s why I froze him. Just before

my father breathed his last, he stuck into the

potato the only arrow he had left given to him

by the Feather People, and made me promise

to use this to get rid of the Doomfang.’

‘That’s impossible,’ objected Hiccup.

‘You can’t kill a whopping great creature like

a Doomfang with one tiddly little arrow!’

‘Not im-POSSIBLE, weird little red-

haired boy,’ corrected Norbert the Nutjob.

‘Just im-PROBABLE. And made more

improbable by the fact that we can’t get the

arrow OUT of the Vegetable-that-No-one-

Dares-Name… Take a look at the inscription

on the casket.’

Hiccup looked at the casket Bigjob

was holding. In it, frozen by the ice, was

the disappointingly boring vegetable called

the potato. And stuck in this potato was the

140

gaudy little arrow, decorated with brilliant feathers

taken from birds Hiccup would not have recognised.

American birds that once flew about in undiscovered

American skies.

On the front of the casket was written in flowing

script the following inscription:

Whomsoever removes the Arrow from this Vegetable

Shall Rid Us of the Doomfang and Prove Himself

Right True Hero and Ruler of all the Viking Tribes.

‘We can’t get the arrow OUT of the Precious

Vegetable…’ said Norbert the Nutjob, sadly. ‘We

practise all year round with constant arm-wrestling, and

every year our strongest Champions try and pull it out.

Even I do not seem to be able to do it, although the verse

is obviously referring to ME. The arrow is stuck in the

vegetable, and we are stuck on Hysteria, until the death

of my father is avenged.’

Hiccup looked at the potato.

‘You can’t get the arrow out of the potato because

it is frozen solid. If you DEFROSTED the potato, a child

could pull it out,’ Hiccup suggested.

The tic was back in Norbert the Nutjob’s eye.

‘My dying father gave me this arrow for a reason,’

snapped Norbert the Nutjob. ‘It’s supposed to be a

test to find out who is strong enough to defeat the

Doomfang. What would be the point of the test if just

ANYBODY could do it? Who are you, anyway, you

small boy, and how dare you ask ME all these questions?’

‘Now, I’m very glad you brought that up,

Norbert,’ said Hiccup soothingly. ‘I am Hiccup

Horrendous Haddock the Third, only son of Stoick the

Vast, and my friend Fishlegs, who you also met yesterday,

has had the Bad Luck to have got bitten by a Venomous

Vorpent—’

142

‘That IS Bad Luck,’ said Norbert the Nutjob

with satisfaction. ‘Certain death, I’d say. I can’t say I’m

surprised, you know, he seemed like just the sort of little

weirdo that Fate would have it in for.’

‘Fishlegs is not a little weirdo!’ interrupted

Hiccup. ‘The point is, Norbert, I have been told that this

potato of yours is the only antidote to Vorpent venom,

and I wonder if you could possibly spare it to save my

friend’s life. It would be the kindest thing you’ve ever

done.’

Norbert the Nutjob was flabbergasted.

‘And what,’ whispered Norbert the Nutjob,

‘would you do with my Papa’s Precious Vegetable after I

gave it to you?’

‘Well,’ said Hiccup, ‘I guess my friend would

eat it.’

For a second Norbert the Nutjob stared into

space.

Then he was livid with rage, whirling his double-

headed axe around his head. ‘EAT IT????’ roared

Norbert the Nutjob. ‘YOU SHOOT ME IN THE

BOTTOM AND THEN YOU WANT TO DIVIDE

UP AND EAT MY DEAR DEAD PAPA’S

PRECIOUS AMERICAN VEGETABLE????? KILL

HIM, KILL HIM, KILL HIM!!!!’

143

After a short struggle, he calmed

down again, and turned to Hiccup with great

dignity, holding up

his arms.

‘I could,’ said Norbert the Nutjob, ‘kill you right

now, you Evil Vegetable Murderer… but we Hysterics

are not like that. We Hysterics are CIVILISED. We

never execute before we have given lousy potato-

savaging criminals an absolutely fair trial. And on

Hysteria,’ Norbert the Nutjob gave a nasty mad leer,

‘the Trial you face is Trial by Axe.’

Oh, crumbs, thought Hiccup.

Norbert the Nutjob strode over to the middle of

the room where there was a large tree trunk, lopped off

at the base.

144

‘Fate herself shall decide your Fate,’ said Norbert

the Nutjob. ‘I shall throw my axe high into the air…

and if it lands with the golden side burying itself into the

wood, I shall allow you to live. But if it lands on the dark

side,’ Norbert the Nutjob stroked the dark side lovingly,

‘if it lands on the dark side, I shall kill you with this very

axe, on the spot. I hope you’re feeling lucky…’

Norbert stepped back dramatically. He gazed up

at the heavens…

‘COME, GREAT POWERS OF FATE AND

DESTINY,’ yelled Norbert the Nutjob. ‘I SWEAR

TO DO AS YOU TELL ME. LIFE OR DEATH?’

The axe soared towards the ceiling, spinning

slowly through the air. It began to fall, first the bright

145

side down, then the dark.

Hiccup was not as tough as the other boys, but

his eyesight was very good. He could see the axe was

going to land dark side down, and he leapt in between

the dark and bright blades, and caught the axe with

its wooden handle just before the dark side landed in

the wood.

The Hysterics gasped.

High up on a beam in the ceiling, Camicazi

gasped too.

Hiccup heaved the axe above his head and drove

the bright blade deep into the tree trunk.

‘BRIGHT SIDE WINS, NORBERT THE

NUTJOB,’ shouted Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the

Third, his hands on his hips.

Nobody knew quite what to do.

Norbert the Nutjob’s mouth opened and shut

like a fish out of water.

‘You CHEATED!’ screamed Norbert the Nutjob.

‘Fate must have let me cheat,’ Hiccup pointed

out. ‘Now set me free like you promised.’

Norbert looked as if he was about to explode. He

was used to terrified adults who cowered down before

him and his terrible Axe of Fate.

He WASN’T used to bossy small boys who told

146

him to defrost his Precious Potato, and bury his Papa,

and caught his Axe before it landed.

But what if Hiccup was right, and Fate had really

meant to LET Hiccup cheat?

Norbert did not dare annoy FATE herself.

‘SEIZE HIM!’ screamed Norbert. ‘He can live,

but he can live out his days in prison! That will teach him

to shoot arrows at NORBERT THE NUTJOB!’

Four or five burly Hysterics grabbed Hiccup and

dragged him to a small cage suspended by a single chain

from a beam in the rafters above. They pushed him in

and locked the cage, returning the key to Norbert, who

put it in his pocket.

And then the Hysterics forgot about Hiccup, and

partied long, long into the night, laughing and singing

and eating and drinking too much.

Hiccup sat silently in the small cage, trying to

think of a Cunning Plan to get out of this situation.

It didn’t look too good.

Even if he could escape from the locked cage,

steal the potato and get away without a single Hysteric

noticing, he could hear some ominous creaking noises

coming from the ice outside… Loud crackings and

knockings, like the striking of an enormous sword upon

a stone.

147

The ice was beginning to melt, and once the

Doomfang was free again there would be no way out of

Hysteria…

As the long night wore on, one by one the

Hysterics fell asleep in their chairs or on the floor, or, in

the case of one fat Warrior, on top of the table hugging

the remains of the roasted boar. Norbert the Nutjob

slumbered on his throne, his thumb in his mouth,

cradling his double-headed axe. High up in the ceiling

of the Great Hall Camicazi was sleeping, clinging to her

beam like a little black cat. Time ticked on, and Hiccup

struggled to keep awake, but eventually the gentle

rocking of the cage, and the cloudy heat and fumes of

alcohol in the room overpowered him, and he,

too, nodded off.

149

SQUEALERS

Squealers are strange

blobby, slug-like creatures

who are so lazy they have

developed an interesting

method of stunning their prey with a single

shriek. A pack of Squealers can strip their

victim to the bone quicker than a shoal of

piranha fish.

~STATISTICS~

COLOURS: Slug black.

ARMED WITH: Scream so loud it can

knock a smaller dragon unconscious.

Piranha-like jaws and fangs.

FEAR FACTOR: ......3

ATTACK: ........3

SPEED: .............1

SIZE: ...................2

DISOBEDIENCE: .......5

12. WILL TOOTHLESS SAVE

THE DAY?

Meanwhile, up on the roof, Toothless and One Eye had

flapped off and hidden in The American Dream when

they heard the noise of Hiccup falling into the Onion

Soup, and the Hysteric Warriors charging outside to look

for other Assassins.

When things grew quiet again, they flew back to

the chimney. Both dragons were cold, hungry and tired.

One Eye’s eye gleamed golden-yellow in the darkness.

‘Shall we leave them?’ One Eye mused to

himself. ‘It looks like they haven’t found the cure for

Vorpentitis after all… and I’m not hanging round

here just to save the skin of a couple of stinking

Humans…’

‘S-s-selfish Humans!’ grumbled Toothless.

‘They n-n-never think of poor, cold H-H-H-

HUNGRY Toothless!’

One Eye snorted. ‘Well, I don’t blame them

for that. You’re just a lap-dragon, an overgrown rat.

And YOU shouldn’t be hungry anyway. Who ate

all the snacks in the sleigh on the way here I’d like

to know?

151

‘… I’ll give them till morning,’ One Eye

decided, letting the rope attached to his leg flop down

the chimney and into the Great Hall again, and settling

himself in the snow to sleep on the roof. ‘My aunt

Snaggletooth died of Vorpentitis, and it’s a nasty

way to go.’

‘Toothless not s-s-sleeping here!’ moaned

Toothless, outraged. ‘Iss too cold! Toothless D-D-

DELICATE, sensitive…’ He checked whether the big

dragon was really asleep. One Eye gave a deep rumbling

snore and Toothless carried on, ‘… not like YOU, you

big, white, gormless mountain gorilla…’

One Eye’s one eye snapped open, and his big

Sabre-Tooth jaws lashed out towards Toothless… but

they shut on thin air, for Toothless had the reflexes

of a bluebottle, and he had already tumbled down

through the hole in the roof. Toothless soared into the

Great Hall, over the heads of the sleeping, mumbling

Hysterics, and landed on top of Hiccup’s cage. The cage

swung violently to the right, and Hiccup’s head banged

sharply on one of the bars, waking him up.

‘Ow!’ protested Hiccup, looking straight into the

upside-down greengage eyes of his pet dragon.

‘Toothless!’ he whispered joyfully. ‘Thank Thor

you’re here, you see how right I was to bring you –

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you can save the day!’

‘HA!’ grunted Toothless crossly.

‘Just flap over to that big frozen Viking over

there, will you, and nick the potato, and then we’ll be

off…’ whispered Hiccup.

Toothless looked where Hiccup was pointing, to

Norbert’s Papa, Bigjob, and the casket, and gave a shriek

of terror.

‘S-s-squealers!’ he gasped, and jumped into the

cage, burying his face in Hiccup’s leg.

‘Oh, goodness, yes, I’d forgotten. Squealers can

kill a dragon as small as you, can’t they?’ remembered

Hiccup, soothing the little dragon by stroking him on the

back. ‘OK, DON’T steal the potato, but the key to

this cage is in Norbert the Nutjob’s pocket, and if you

could just flap off and get it…’

But Toothless had smelt the Onion Soup on

Hiccup’s leg, and he gave it a lick.

‘Onion S-s-soup!’ said Toothless accusingly. ‘You

bin eating Onion S-s-soup!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Hiccup hurriedly, ‘I fell in the

soup, but about the key—’

But this was the last straw as far as Toothless was

concerned. He was FURIOUS, and he swelled up to

nearly twice the size with anger, and flew out of the cage

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like an infuriated little balloon.

‘SNOT fair! SNOT fair!’ snorted Toothless.

‘You been stuffing yourself with Onion S-s-soup and

poor T-t-toothless STARVING and now you want

Toothless to f-f-face a whole load of Squealers with

no food in his t-t-tummy? TYPICAL! Well, you can

just WAIT, that’s all… Toothless’ll have his supper

and THEN maybe he’ll help you out…’

‘TOOTHLESS!’ whispered Hiccup, as loud as

he dared, ‘THIS IS IMPORTANT! GET THAT

KEY RIGHT NOW OR I’LL… I’LL… I’LL…’

‘You’ll what?’ jeered Toothless cheekily,

flapping out of Hiccup’s way as he desperately tried to

grab Toothless’s tail through the bars of the cage.

Sticking out his little pink forked tongue,

Toothless hopped down on to the banqueting tables

and tucked into the roast buffalo pie, ignoring Hiccup’s

furious, frustrated whispers from the cage swinging a

couple of metres above.

‘Toothless can’t hear!’ sang Toothless through

a mouthful of pumpkin. ‘Got s-s-something in his ear!

Oooooh, that rhymes… Toothless ca-a-an’t he-ar, got

something in his e-ar! Toothless ca-a-an’t he-ar, got

something in his e-ar!’

And for the next five minutes, Toothless

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pretended to be quite deaf, and took his time hopping

from plate to plate, gorging himself on deep-fried

mackerel, turkey wings and sweetcorn fritters.

Eventually, he swallowed the last

remains of the pie, took a big swig of the Home-made

Nettle Champagne, burped and rubbed his stomach

contentedly.

‘That’s b-b-better. Toothless can hear now.

Wossat you saying?’

‘WILL YOU GET THAT KEY FROM

NORBERT THE NUTJOB’S POCKET BEFORE

HE MURDERS THE LOT OF US?’ hissed Hiccup

at the top of his whisper.

‘S-s-say pretty please…’ sang Toothless.

‘Pretty please,’ whispered Hiccup through

gritted teeth.

‘OK, OK, keep your hair on,’ said Toothless,

and he took off (rather wobbly, because he had eaten so

much), and crashlanded on Norbert the Nutjob’s chest.

Luckily, Norbert was so dead to the world he merely

grunted, and hugged his axe a little closer.

Giggling, Toothless snipped off both of Norbert

the Nutjob’s fancy moustaches with two bites of his

sharp little gums, and then he staggered into Norbert’s

pocket and pulled out the key.

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Toothless marched

across the banqueting table with

the key in his mouth, spitting it out every now and then to

make pointed remarks to Hiccup.

‘Is TYPICAL,’ snorted Toothless. ‘T-t-typical.

Poor old starving T-t-toothless, woken up from his H-

h-hibernation Nap just to save the day YET AGAIN.’

Toothless put the key back in his mouth, and this

time, his large, overfull belly prevented him from seeing

exactly where he was putting his feet, and he tripped over

a knife lying in the middle of the table.

Toothless lurched forwards, knocking a candle

off the table and on to the floor, where it promptly set

fire to a polar bear rug. He did a couple of somersaults,

spinning over and over until he landed bottom first in

the wild boar stew and… swallowed the key.

‘G-g-gulp…’ said Toothless.

13. THE GREAT POTATO

BURGLARY

‘AAAARGH!’ raged Hiccup, shaking the bars of his

cage. ‘Typical! Five minutes ago I was just locked in

a cage in a room full of Hysteric Warriors. NOW

you’ve swallowed the key and set fire to the room!

Flap up and wake up Camicazi and then PUT OUT

THAT FIRE!’

‘S-s-say pretty please…’ choked Toothless

defiantly.

‘PRETTY PLEASE!’ howled Hiccup in the

loudest whisper he could whisper.

Toothless flew unsteadily up to the beam where

Camicazi was sleeping, and woke her up by shrieking

softly, ‘No key! No key!’ in her ear, before flying back to

deal with the fire.

Camicazi took charge of the situation from

the moment she opened her eyes. She got up, calmly

balancing on the beam, for all the world as if she was

safely down on the ground rather than almost twenty

metres up in the air.

She unwound another rope from around her

waist, and threw the metal end of it so that it wrapped

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around the beam from which Hiccup’s cage was

suspended. She pulled to check it was secure, and then

swung out, clinging to the rope, and landed on the top of

Hiccup’s cage.

Camicazi wriggled down the outside of the cage, and

looked hard at the lock on the door. She felt in her pocket

and brought out a long pin-like instrument, and stuck it in

the lock, wiggling it expertly from side to side.

‘That was so brave of you!’ she whispered. ‘For

a boy of course… Leaping down into the soup like that!

We’d NEVER have found out where they kept the potato

if you hadn’t done that…’

Hiccup considered telling her it had all been a total

accident, and then thought better of it. ‘Oh, you know…’

he whispered modestly back. ‘It was nothing. I do that

kind of… leaping all the time. What are you doing?’

‘Picking the lock,’ replied Camicazi airily. ‘Locks

are nothing to us Bog-Burglars… no prisons can hold us.

We’re as wriggly as eels. We’re as jumpy as crickets.’

The lock suddenly clicked loudly, and the door of

Hiccup’s cage swung open.

‘Your exit, my lord,’ grinned Camicazi.

Hiccup scrambled out of the cage, and dropped

down on to the banqueting table below, unable to believe

his luck.

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‘And now,’ frowned Camicazi, ‘for the Vegetable-

that-No-one-Dares-Name. We haven’t got a lot of time.’

Indeed they hadn’t.

Toothless had tried to snuff out the fire on the

polar bear rug by smothering it with his wings, and

when that didn’t work, he threw Home-made Nettle

Champagne on it.

The flames sprang up a metre high and the fire

spread to a nearby chair.

‘Oh d-d-dear!’ wailed Toothless. ‘Toothless m-m-

messed up… all Toothless’s fault… ohdearohdear…’

‘Toothless,’ Hiccup ordered, ‘stop making that

fire WORSE and come over here. We’re going to need

YOUR help to steal the potato.’

Toothless flapped over, his guilt making him

unexpectedly obedient.

‘I want you to melt the ice in the casket,’ said

Hiccup.

‘B-b-but the Squealers?’ whimpered Toothless.

Hiccup wound his scarf around the little dragon’s

ears, to act as earplugs.

‘Wait until Toothless has finished melting the ice,

just in case you DO set off the Squealers,’ he explained to

Camicazi. ‘The sound could STUN a dragon as titchy as

Toothless if he’s too close.’

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‘T-t-titchy?’ huffed Toothless. ‘Toothless not

like the word TITCHY.’

‘You’re looking at the burglary EXPERT,’ said

Camicazi. ‘There’s no way I’m going to set off those

Squealers.’

By some miracle, all the Hysterics were so dead

to the world that not even all this noise and commotion,

and a large fire blazing in the middle of their Great Hall,

had woken them up. They snored on, oblivious.

Trembling with terror (and flying rather erratically

because he was weighed down by his fur coat, his large

meal, and the scarf around his head that was slipping

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over his eyes) Toothless flew over the waving nails of the

Squealers. This was very brave of him, for if he looked

down he could see their horrible black bobby bodies with

the piranha teeth, and to a dragon as small as Toothless,

it was like wandering casually in front of a pack of lions

with open jaws.

Hovering above the casket, he was so scared that

for a moment his fireholes seized up, and he couldn’t

breathe out a single flame, only clouds and clouds of

bluey-grey smoke.

‘Relax…’ whispered Hiccup from the table.

‘Breathe deeply… no pressure… you’ve all the time

in the world…’ Hiccup was trying to sound as calm as

he could even though half the room was on fire.

‘All the time in the world…’ sang Hiccup

nervously. ‘Just relax… go to your happy place…’

The nails of the Squealers began to twitch as

they sensed the smoke.

‘HA!’ puffed Toothless furiously, practically

disappearing he was making so much steam.

‘Toothless’s h-h-happy place! Happy place N-N-

NOT here!’ and to Hiccup’s intense relief, Toothless’s

final indignant snort ended in a big breath of fire that

engulfed the entire casket.

‘Don’t set fire to the potato!’ Hiccup

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reminded him.

‘S-s-set fire to this! DON’T set fire to that!’

complained Toothless. ‘Mister Hiccup just stop being

such a B-BOSSY-BOOTS and give a dragon a

chance!’

But he made his flame smaller, and directed it

steadily at the ice around the potato, and slowly, surely,

the ice began to melt.

Meanwhile, Camicazi climbed back up to the

ceiling again, and wriggled along the beams until she was

directly above Norbert’s Papa.

She let herself down on another rope, so that she

was hanging, like a little spider, about a metre above the

casket, and then she wound the rope around her ankle

and flipped upside down.

She waited until Toothless had finished melting

the ice, and had flapped off back to the safe distance of

Hiccup’s shoulder.

Right in front of Norbert’s Papa’s frozen staring

eyes, Camicazi reached into the casket and carefully,

delicately, removed the potato with the arrow stuck in it

from the bed of ice.

Hiccup held his breath. If the casket was booby-

trapped, this would be the moment that something might

happen…

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But there did not seem to be any booby-traps.

Camicazi swung there, potato in one hand.

Norbert’s Papa wobbled for a second on his stand, but

he was still grinning ferociously, his eyes staring straight

ahead at nothing. (He was DEAD, after all.) The snores

of the sleeping Hysterics rumbled peacefully through the

quiet Hall.

Camicazi put the potato in her pocket.

‘She’s done it, she’s done it, she’s done it…’

whispered Hiccup to himself.

Camicazi was about to turn herself the right

way up again and climb the rope, but then she spotted

something else in the casket.

‘Uh oh…’ whispered Hiccup.

Camicazi couldn’t resist. She reached in and

picked the something else out of the casket…

For one second it seemed like it still might be all

right again.

But it turned out that the frozen body of

Norbert’s Papa was very carefully balanced, and when

this second weight was removed from the casket, it

began to tip s-l-o-w-l-y backwards, and then gathering

speed, until the entire body crashed like a great tree

trunk into the waving forest of Squealers down below.

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screeched the Squealers.

The noise they made was simply ear-splitting.

The glass of the frozen casket shattered into

pieces, and the ice inside fell to the floor.

All over the room, the Hysterics sat bolt upright

as if electrified, blearily opening their eyes and saying,

‘Wossat? Wassgoing on?’ to each other. Even with

the scarf and Hiccup’s hands over his ears, poor old

Toothless nearly fainted from the loudness of the noise.

‘Watch out, Camicazi!’ yelled Hiccup. Norbert

the Nutjob woke up, and threw his double-headed axe

straight at Camicazi, dangling from her rope. Camicazi

saw the axe coming, and let herself drop.

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The axe missed, and Camicazi landed on the

floor, or, more precisely, on the gigantic wobbly stomach

of a Hysteric who was so dead to the world he didn’t

even wake up.

Norbert the Nutjob ran to drag his frozen father

out of the mass of shrieking Squealers. Stiff and ice-cold

as he was, they still tried to eat him, blunting their teeth

on his hard frozen legs, slashing their horrible long nails

on his solid-frozen moustaches. Once he had pulled

his Papa to safety, the Squealers stopped screaming as

abruptly as they had begun. Norbert the Nutjob drew his

sword and strode towards Camicazi, with a murderous

expression on his face…

‘GET OUT OF HERE!’ screamed Camicazi.

‘I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me!’

Hiccup was standing right in the middle

of the table. About twenty large Warriors were

already advancing towards him, swords,

axes and daggers drawn. The odds

were not on Hiccup’s side…

and Hiccup was completely and

entirely unarmed.

He had no bow and arrow,

no dagger. He did not even have

his sword, for Norbert the Nutjob

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had taken it from him earlier, if you remember. (Which

was a shame, because Hiccup was good at sword-

fighting.)

So, in absence of his sword, Hiccup picked up

two large, sloppy, creamy pumpkin pies, and crashed

them like cymbals on either side of another Warrior’s

face. The Hysteric fell backwards, a sticky, dripping,

pumpkin mess, and promptly sat down on the smaller

Warrior behind him.

Meanwhile, dodging Hysteric sword-thrusts,

Hiccup grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which

happened to be a gigantic half-eaten TURKEY

carcass, and shoved it over the head of the closest

Warrior. The Hysteric’s arms were pinned by his sides,

muffled shouting noises came from within the turkey,

and he staggered off, like a grotesquely large dead

chicken with human legs.

Hiccup was getting into the swing of things.

He tipped an entire bowl of maple syrup on the floor,

sending the Hysterics slipping and sliding all over the

place. He winded another Warrior with a watermelon.

He pelted them all with onions. Now the

Squealers had stopped squealing, Toothless flew down

from the roof to join in the battle. He found a bowl

of chestnuts, sucked up a whole mouthful so that his

cheeks were bulging like a hamster, and zoomed over

the heads of the Warriors, spitting out fire and red-hot

roasted chestnuts like a barrage of flaming bullets.

Chaos reigned in the Great Hall. Vegetables

flew in all directions. Hysterics who had been woken by

a fat overripe tomato splattered in their faces assumed

that this was all just a merry midnight food-fight, and

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enthusiastically attacked their fellow Hysterics.

‘Hurry up, Camicazi!’ screamed Hiccup, slapping

another opponent around the cheek with a large flat

flounder, and running up the other end of the table.

Camicazi had problems of her own. She was

defending herself against Norbert the Nutjob, who was

livid with rage and lashing out at her with his sword.

Norbert the Nutjob had had a trying couple of

days. His bottom was still throbbing from the arrow-

wound, Hiccup had made a fool out of him in the

Ordeal-by-Axe, somebody appeared to have bitten off

his beloved moustaches, and the Hooligans were even

now stealing his Papa’s American Vegetable.

And they hadn’t even had the decency to send

some proper adult Assassins! This third Assassin was

even smaller than the first two. To add insult to injury,

he, Norbert the Nutjob, noble Chief of the Hysteric

Tribe, and Master Swordsman, was finding it difficult

to defeat this tiny little blonde Assassin in one-to-one

combat. She just wouldn’t stay still.

She met every lunge he made, carelessly singing

the Bog-Burglar national anthem as she did so. She

performed cartwheels between moves. She even picked

up a piece of wild boar sandwich off the floor and

started to eat it, while still fighting.

171

She talked CONSTANTLY.

‘I hope you don’t mind me

eating on the job,’ she said chattily,

easily deflecting his Grimbeard’s

Grapple sword-thrust, and

throwing in a Piercing Point

of her own. ‘I know it’s

rather rude to fight with

my mouth full, but I’m

absolutely STARVING,

haven’t eaten a thing

all evening…’

172

Norbert the Nutjob gave a grim smile and sprang

forward with a particularly violent sword-thrust.

She dodged it, leapt up, swung on his beard while

she wiped her sticky fingers on his shirt-front, and sprang

back down again.

‘I’m going to KILL you…’ panted Norbert the

Nutjob, his eyes watering with the pain of having his

beard pulled. ‘First with my sword, and then with my

axe, and then I’m going to feed you to the Squealers.’

‘You clever, clever boy!’ sang Camicazi,

delightedly spotting her rope dangling just behind his

head. ‘But you’ll have to CATCH me first, you know…’

And with that, she somersaulted right between

his legs, came up the other side, and squirmed up her

rope with astonishing speed, pulling the end of it up

behind her.

Norbert the Nutjob looked down at his legs for

a dazed moment, and then through them, and then

he swung round to find that Camicazi had apparently

vanished into thin air.

He whirled around again. She wasn’t there either.

How completely extraordinary…

Camicazi, swinging centimetres above Norbert

the Nutjob’s head, removed his helmet so gently, so

softly, with her pick-pocketing, burglaring fingers, that he

never felt a thing.

She then bashed him on the head as hard as

she could with the frozen potato. Norbert staggered a

bit, swayed this way and that, and then fell to the floor,

unconscious. As he lay prone, Camicazi dropped back

down to the ground again, and patted him reassuringly

on the shoulders.

‘Practice, Norbert, that’s what you need,’ she said

condescendingly. ‘You’re never too old to learn.’

‘CAMICAZI!!!!!’ shrieked Hiccup from the

banqueting table, knocking out a Hysteric with a leg of

roasted buffalo, shoving a carrot up the nose of another,

174

and spraying three more with Home-made Nettle

Champagne. ‘GET OVER HERE!’ Camicazi swung

across, and landed on the table beside him.

Most of the table was now in flames, and the fire

had spread to ALL the polar bear rugs.

Most ominous of all, the Squealers were actually

MOVING to get out of the Hall. Squealers are so lazy

that they only move when they are in mortal danger.

They wriggled towards the door like disgusting fat,

bloated slugs, their nails waving frantically, leaving a trail

of snotty slime.

The rope that snaked up to the chimney in the

ceiling, the other end of which was attached to One

Eye’s great leg, dangled between Camicazi and Hiccup.

They both grabbed hold of it, coughing from the smoke,

and tugged three times.

Just the second before One Eye dragged them up

and out of danger, Hiccup leant down and picked up a

metal food tray from the table.

And then they were up and away, the Hysteric

swords just brushing their heels as they rose swiftly to the

ceiling and out through the hole in the roof.

14. THE POTATO-

BURGLARS’ RUN

They appeared, blinking like moles, into the daylight,

for night had turned into morning while they were in

the Hysterical Great Hall; the sky was no longer black

but the bluey grey of a seagull’s back, and the sun was

coming up fast from behind the Mazy Multitudes.

Down below they could hear the roar of the

Hysterics, the loudest of all being Norbert the Nutjob

shouting, ‘MY VEGETABLE! THEY’VE GOT MY

VEGETABLE!’ The Hysterics were already

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stampeding towards the door, in pursuit.

Hiccup knew they hadn’t a hope of getting

away on foot, and they didn’t have time to find their

skis again.

In such situations, being tough is not

necessarily the way to stay alive, because

however tough you are, if there are five

hundred Hysterics on skis and only

FOUR of you, you are not going to

win the battle.

What you need in THIS

kind of situation is a Clever Idea,

and luckily Hiccup was good at

Clever Ideas.

Hiccup put the food tray

down on the roof and sat on it.

‘Come on, Camicazi, you sit behind me,’ ordered

Hiccup.

‘Oh, good-ee,’ said Camicazi, her eyes

lighting up.

The roof of the Great Hall hung slightly over the

village walls. From there a steep slope ran all the way

down to the harbour.

So when the Hysterics poured out of the doors

of the Great Hall in a shouting, angry river they had an

excellent view of Camicazi and Hiccup tobogganing

down the roof and sailing over the walls of the village on

board one of their silver food trays.

‘AAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!’ screamed Hiccup

and Camicazi as they soared through the air.

By some miracle they landed the right way up on

the slope below.

And then the lightning descent began.

Take it from me, there is nothing on earth that

moves faster than two children going down a practically

vertical slope on a highly polished silver food tray.

Hiccup had sledged before, but never on a hill

so steep that it was practically a cliff. And in fact the

exact descent that they made has now become an annual

competition on Hysteria. It is known as ‘the Potato-

Burglars’ Run’, and it follows the same route that Hiccup

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and Camicazi took, starting, as they did, on top of

the roof of the Great Hall, and ending, less than two

minutes later, in Hysteria Harbour.

‘The Potato-Burglars’ Run’ is the most dangerous

toboggan run in the Inner Isles, and for those brave

enough to try it, accidents are common.

Hiccup and Camicazi were lucky not to break

their necks. They screamed down that hillside, wildly out

of control, yelling at the tops of their voices.

One Eye and Toothless couldn’t possibly keep

up with them, for it was like trying to catch a speeding

arrow.

When they hit the ice of the harbour two bottom-

bruising, hair-raising, eye-popping minutes later, they

were going so fast that they wildly overshot the sleigh

they had left there, and The Hopeful Puffin patiently

waiting for their return.

They scrambled off the food tray and raced

towards the sleigh. One Eye came soaring down, and

they hurriedly hitched him up and set him going at a

brisk trot towards the Harbour Exit.

‘Oh my goodness,’ panted Camicazi, looking

back up at the Hysterical Village, where the Great Hall

was now a gigantic bonfire. ‘Those Hysterics are going to

be SO CROSS.’

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‘My congratulations,’ growled One Eye to

Hiccup, as he pulled them rapidly forwards. ‘You are

the first Human I have ever met who uses his brain

and not just his muscles.’

‘If he really use his b-b-brain,’ complained

Toothless, catching up and collapsing, exhausted, on the

seat of the sleigh, ‘we not here in the first p-p-place.’

In that very same instant, over the brow of the

hill came the Hysterics.

They had put their helmets on and they were on

skis, howling the Hysterical Howl like a pack of speeding

wolves. They were already shooting arrows in their

direction, trying to hit the sleigh. But they were too late.

Once their skis hit the ice they travelled for a while, and

then came to a halt. Hiccup and Camicazi were nearly

at the Harbour Exit by now, and the arrows shot by the

Hysterics fell harmlessly on the ice.

Looking over her shoulder at the furious

Hysterics, Camicazi let out a whoop of joy as One Eye

galloped out of Hysteria Harbour.

‘We made it!’ she yelled.

‘We haven’t made it yet,’ said Hiccup nervously.

That sharp noise of cracking, like axes on a tree trunk,

was even louder now that they were on the ice. And

Hiccup was looking out for the Doomfang.

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‘Here’s the Vegetable,’ said Camicazi, handing

Hiccup the Frozen Potato with the arrow stuck in it.

‘And this other thing I found in the casket – I’m sorry, I

shouldn’t have taken it as well, but once you start burgling,

it’s difficult to stop.’

Hiccup took the Potato and the Other Thing, and

stuffed them in his breast pocket, not really concentrating,

for the great shadow of the Doomfang had appeared under

the boat, and was following them under the ice.

‘If we can just get to the Open Sea before the ice

cracks we’ll be all right,’ muttered Hiccup to himself. ‘The

Doomfang won’t leave the Wrath of Thor. The Doomfang

hasn’t left the Wrath of Thor in fifteen years…’

The walls of the cliffs raced past them on either

side. The Doomfang, dark and terrible, stretching out for

ever, swam slowly beneath them. And they reached the

edge of the Open Sea without the ice cracking.

‘You see!’ grinned Camicazi. ‘We did it!’

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15. THEY MIGHT JUST

MAKE IT, NOW

It seemed like they had INDEED done it, as they burst

into the Open Sea, One Eye pulling into that Great

White Wilderness at terrific speed, the Wrath of Thor left

behind them, the potato safely in Hiccup’s breast pocket,

and Berk only a three-hour sleigh ride away.

And then everything went wrong.

‘What’s th-th-that???’ stammered Toothless,

pointing with one wing to a shape on the ice behind them,

coming closer by the second.

That was an enormous, leaping Driver Dragon,

far bigger and faster than One Eye, pulling a gigantic

sleigh with one man in it. A very cross man, with an arrow-

wound in his bottom, a lump on his head, chewed-off

moustaches and a double-headed axe in one hand.

In fact it was Norbert the Nutjob.

Before Hiccup had time to think, Norbert was

upon them.

His sleigh drew alongside the galloping One Eye.

And then he reached over, and with one blow of his axe,

he cut the reins and tackle attaching One Eye to the

sleigh.

182

One Eye bounded on, but the sleigh, and The

Hopeful Puffin behind it, came to a shuddering halt.

‘Oh, suffering scallops,’ moaned Hiccup.

There they were, as still as a stone, in the middle

of a Great White Desert that stretched for miles and

miles and miles. In front of them, Norbert the Nutjob

was pulling on his Sabre-Tooth’s reins to wheel his sleigh

round for the attack.

Below them was the Doomfang.

For the first time in fifteen years, the Doomfang

had left the Wrath of Thor.

It, too, had stopped when the sleigh stopped. In

fact the sleigh had come to rest right in the centre of its

terrible green eye, as if it were a target.

And a target it was, for Norbert the Nutjob.

Norbert leapt into their sleigh, tall and terrible

and COMPLETELY CRAZY.

‘AHA!’ roared Norbert the Nutjob, his

tic dancing for pure horrible murderous joy. ‘I’VE

CAUGHT YOU, YOU REVOLTING LITTLE

BLONDE ASSASSIN! AND NOW I SHALL

TEACH YOU NOT TO HIT PEOPLE ON THE

HEAD WITH THEIR OWN POTATO!’

Norbert the Nutjob raised his axe over Camicazi,

and he was about to bring it down, when Hiccup said

loudly, ‘I wouldn’t do that, Norbert.’

Hiccup felt in his breast pocket, and drew out

the potato with the arrow still stuck in it. It was warmer

this morning, and the potato, snuggled down the front of

Hiccup’s furry waistcoat, was no longer frozen.

Norbert glanced at Hiccup, and then gasped in

astonishment, as right in front of Norbert’s eyes…

… HICCUP PULLED THE ARROW OUT OF

THE POTATO.

For as Hiccup had suggested earlier to Norbert,

the arrow slid out perfectly easily now the potato had

defrosted.

Hiccup pushed it in and out of the potato several

times just to drive the point home.

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Norbert the Nutjob dropped his axe.

‘My father’s Prophecy!’ screamed Norbert the

Nutjob, his head in his hands. ‘I don’t believe it…

It can’t be true! You… you revolting little Hooligan

Vegetable-Burglar… you… are the Chosen One? … You

will lift the Curse and rid us of the Doomfang…?’

Hiccup nodded solemnly, thinking, nutty as a

fruitcake.

At that very moment, the sun came over the

horizon…

Rays of sunlight bounced off the snow and ice all

around them, and off the Doomfang’s Great Green Eye

and dazzled Hiccup, so that he had to fling up an elbow

to shield himself from the glare.

A sound like a million whips rang out, or a trillion

axe blows, or a thousand of Thor’s thunderbolts rolled

into one.

The ice cracked from side to side.

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16. THE DOOMFANG

A great jagged split appeared in the white frozen sea,

a split that ran all the way from the Outcast Lands to

the north, down to the Bog-Burglar islands in

the south.

The world broke open like a

big white egg.

‘Aaaaaargh!’ screamed

Hiccup. ‘Quick! Get into The

Hopeful Puffin!’

Norbert the Nutjob, Camicazi and

Hiccup bolted out of the sleigh, and leapt into

the little boat, the ice giving way beneath their feet.

‘LET DOWN THE SAIL!’ screamed

Hiccup, cutting the rope tying the boat to the sleigh.

The sail flopped down and the wind caught it,

sending it billowing outward like a plump cushion. There

was another enormous CRACK! and the ice in the

Sullen Sea splintered into millions of tiny pieces. The

sleigh slipped gently into the grey-green water and was

seen no more, and The Hopeful Puffin was afloat.

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Through the jagged jigsaw of ice, between them

and the Isle of Berk on the horizon, up rose the

Doomfang.

It reared out of the sea, showering The Hopeful

Puffin with water and shards of ice, telescoping upwards

to its immense height, which was impossibly,

RIDICULOUSLY high, blotting out the newly risen sun.

The SOUND it made was unutterably awful, a

sadness so extreme it made you want to weep yourself,

a sound that crept up the spine like spiders’ feet,

and scuttled over the scalp, sending each

individual hair on Hiccup’s head prickling

upwards like the spines on a hedgehog. It

was the glossy black of a gigantic, muscly

panther, and when it opened its awful

Cavern jaws to roar, its serrated teeth were

as green as its eyes, and the

yellow frothy scum of its

saliva steamed and

smoked in the cold

morning air.

Indeed, its whole body seemed boiling hot, and

like the flanks of a horse that has galloped for miles,

great clouds of smoke rose up from its tremendous

gleaming bulk and into the sky.

‘It’s come for me…’ moaned Norbert the Nutjob,

in a tremble of fear.

‘No it hasn’t,’ said Hiccup. ‘It’s come for ME.’

And the Doomfang did seem to be looking

directly down at Hiccup.

It was as if Hiccup had always known that

this was going to happen, that somehow he was never

going to get in and out of Hysteria without meeting the

Doomfang face to face.

‘Don’t look into its eyes,’ warned One Eye.

You should never look into a dragon’s eyes. But

in this case it was difficult not to – they were so large

and so close, like a couple of green suns. Hiccup was

hypnotised for a moment, and his head spun so that he

nearly lost his balance and dropped off the boat.

‘What do you WANT?’ Hiccup yelled

desperately in Dragonese.

The Dragon opened its great mouth and tried

to speak. But all that came out was a terrible unearthly

howl of horror and SADNESS, and the foam dripped

from its jaws in a revolting bubbly waterfall. It tried

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again, and the terrible sound came out again, only

louder.

‘What is it?’ asked Hiccup.

But the creature could not say, and its struggle to

speak made it angry, and it began shooting out with its

blue flames, nearer and nearer to Hiccup. ‘What does it

want me to do?’ asked Hiccup frantically.

‘We’re done for,’ despaired Norbert, wringing his

hands.

Camicazi patted the moaning Norbert soothingly

on the back. ‘We’ll be all right,’ she repeated over and

over again, ‘we always are, Thor only knows how…

Hiccup’ll have a Cunning Plan…’

‘Oh that’s right,’ remembered Norbert. ‘Of

course! My father’s Prophecy! He is the Chosen One,

and he alone can rid us of the Doomfang!’

But for once in his life, Hiccup did NOT have a

Cunning Plan.

‘What do you want?’ asked Hiccup again, more

to himself, this time.

The Doomfang made one last terrible attempt to

communicate, coming out with a truly dreadful, garbled

cacophony of noise, and then opened its jaws wide,

sucking in its breath.

Hiccup did not know what they had done for the

189

creature to have it in for them.

Perhaps it had gone crazy and turned into a Man-

Eater? It had certainly killed Norbert’s Papa, fifteen years

ago, and was it now going to kill them too?

Because now it was aiming directly for them, and

Hiccup braced himself for the Monster to breathe out its

flames and set the boat alight like a little barbecue.

But what shot out of the creature’s mouth was not

a Terrible Burst of Fire, not the frozen flames that would

have sent all three of them, and Toothless too, straight to

Valhalla in a heroic bonfire.

Curling and unfurling, quick and flexible as a

gigantic muscly snake, out of the Doomfang’s mouth came

the Doomfang’s TONGUE.

One hundred metres long, pink and pulsing, the

Doomfang’s TONGUE sped straight to Hiccup’s

left hand, and the wriggling, squirming,

revoltingly WET forked end of it

burrowed its way into his palm

and wrapped itself round

the potato.

Hiccup nearly dropped the potato there and

then. But then he realised what the creature wanted.

He dropped the arrow, and grabbed hold of the

potato with both hands. The juices of the Doomfang’s

tongue foamed disgustingly over his hands.

Hiccup p-u-l-l-e-d.

The Doomfang p-u-l-l-e-d.

There was only one potato, and both of them

wanted it. Both of them NEEDED it. Desperately,

Hiccup tried to get a better grip on the potato, slimy and

greasy with the yucky bubbly saliva. He wasn’t going to

lose the quest, and Fishlegs’s life, NOW, not when they

were so close to home, not when the shadow of Berk

was so tantalisingly near.

He leant

right back, pulling with

a might he never knew he had. But the Doomfang

pulled too, and the chances of Hiccup, not more

than four stone, winning a tug of war against a Dragon

numberless stones heavier were very tiny indeed.

Not im-POSSIBLE, but, let’s face it,

im-PROBABLE.

192

Hiccup did not let go. He would never have let

go. He would have stood there all day and all night, if he

could have.

But one fork of the Doomfang’s tongue unpeeled

Hiccup’s desperate fingers, one by one, and the other

fork gave a horrible squirm, and with a final terrible

wrench, the Doomfang’s tongue wrested the potato out

of Hiccup’s hands.

As Hiccup fell backwards into the bottom of the

boat, he saw with more despair than he had ever felt

before in his short adventurous life, the revolting tongue

retreat with a flick as quick as a toad catching flies, back

into the Doomfang’s mouth. The jaws shut over it with

awful finality.

The Doomfang swallowed the Potato.

The quest was over.

17. THE QUEST IS OVER

Tears pouring down his face, Hiccup watched as the

Doomfang threw back its head and screamed as loudly as

if it had been shot with a gigantic spear.

It sent a great sheet of freezing blue flame like an

uphill waterfall shooting up into the sky. These flames

shot so high they hit a small cloud up above, instantly

freezing it, and turning it bright blue. And then, just

like that, the Doomfang sank slowly beneath the waves,

leaving nothing behind but a whirlpool of gigantic ripples,

spreading wider and wider.

They spread towards The Hopeful Puffin, rocking

it violently up and down. They spread wider still, and

lapped the shores of Hysteria itself, and carried on down

the Wrath of Thor.

Hiccup sat in the bottom of the boat, unable

to believe that the Doomfang wouldn’t rear up again,

and maybe spit out the potato, or give it back in some

way. But eventually the ripples got smaller and vanished

entirely, and so too did Hiccup’s last hope.

This really was the end.

The nearest potato was now thousands and

thousands of miles away, in the great country to the west,

196

known as America to those who believe in such a place.

‘Issa g-g-g-gone!’ whispered Toothless in

amazement.

Up on the clifftops, the long line of watching,

silent Hysterics began to shout: ‘THE DOOMFANG IS

GONE! THE DOOMFANG IS GONE! HURRAH

FOR THE WEIRD LITTLE RED-HAIRED BOY,

THE DOOMFANG IS GONE!’

And softly, and silently, snow as blue as Gobber

the Belch’s nose rained down from the frozen cloud

above Hiccup’s head.

The blue snow rained down like confetti at a

coronation, settling in Hiccup’s hair, and on One Eye’s

white back, and in between Toothless’s horns.

‘YOU are the Chosen One,’ said Norbert the

Nutjob, still unable to believe it. ‘YOU have rid us of

the Doomfang. YOU have lifted the Curse of Hysteria?’

Hiccup was suddenly furiously angry.

Not with Norbert, but with the gods.

For six long months he had been longing for

spring to come, praying to Thor for the ice to melt, and

now, just when he and Camicazi had been through

so much, and nearly achieved the impossible, just at

precisely the wrong moment, Thor had made the ice

crack and freed the Doomfang.

197

And this ridiculous blue snow was just the icing on

the cake. What was it Snotlout had said?

The snow will turn as blue as Gobber the Belch’s nose

before YOU become the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.

The gods were laughing at him now, playing with

him for their sport.

Hiccup shook his fist at the Heavens.

‘I don’t WANT to be the Chosen One!’ he

howled at the blue sky above. ‘I don’t WANT to be the

Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe! I didn’t WANT to lift

Norbert’s stupid Curse! I wanted to cheat the Curse on

Fishlegs! All I want is my FRIEND…’

The silly blue snow took no notice, and rained

down steadily from above.

Hiccup began to cry.

‘All I want is my friend…’ he sobbed. ‘Fishlegs

trusted me. He thought I would make everything all

right…’ He turned to Norbert in sudden hope.

‘Have you got ANOTHER potato?’ asked Hiccup.

Norbert the Nutjob shook his head. ‘My father

only brought back ONE of those Vegetables,’ he said

between gritted teeth. ‘This is what made it so precious…’

Norbert the Nutjob shifted his axe uncertainly

from hand to hand. The tic in his eye danced a wild

fandango.

198

‘I don’t know what to do!’ shrieked Norbert the

Nutjob. ‘You have shot me in the bottom, stolen my

American Vegetable, chewed off my moustaches, fed

Papa to the Squealers and burned down my Great Hall!’

His shaking hands reached out, almost of their

own accord, towards Hiccup’s neck… and then he

stopped himself just in time.

‘But on the other hand, it seems incredible, but

you HAVE lifted the Curse on Hysteria, and I cannot

199

ignore my father’s Prophecy. So THIS TIME, I shall let

you go free. But if you ever, EVER cross my path again,

I warn you I will kill you on the spot.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Hiccup sadly. ‘I’m not that

keen on seeing YOU again, either. I’m sorry about the

Hall, and the moustaches, and the bottom, and… I’m

sorry about EVERYTHING, really… I was just trying to

save the life of my friend.’

Norbert the Nutjob pulled Hiccup’s sword out of

his belt, and threw it down with a curse on the floor of The

Hopeful Puffin. He then climbed back on board his sleigh,

and sped back to Hysteria, a land which ships could now

sail in and out of as freely as they liked for the first time in

fifteen long years, all on

account of Hiccup lifting

the Curse, which wasn’t the

quest he set out to do in the

first place, but, there we are, these

things happen to a Hero-in-Training.

200

And hearts sorrowing and despairing, Hiccup

and Camicazi set out in The Hopeful Puffin towards the

distant little Isle of Berk.

Camicazi took the helm because Hiccup was too

depressed.

There was a brisk wind and The Hopeful Puffin

fairly flew over the waves. They had to dodge the

floating icebergs, and if Hiccup had been happier, he

could have enjoyed the warmness of the breeze now

blowing in their faces, for he had been waiting for this

moment for six months.

201

For six long months they had been trapped in

winter, and to Vikings who are used to being surrounded

by the never-ending rocking of the sea, this frozen white

stillness had been terribly eerie, as if time itself had

forgotten to tick and was caught in a Hibernation Coma.

There was nothing, no smell, no sound, no movement,

just a painted white world that stretched out for ever

and a cold that made Hiccup’s helmet burn against his

forehead as if it were made out of fire.

Hiccup had longed and longed for it to end,

and now spring HAD come and broken the spell. The

sea was alive again and the wind whirling through the

marshy grasses carried with it the catcalls and whoops of

Dragonese and the lovely fresh smell and taste of salt.

And Hiccup had never been so miserable in his life.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Camicazi, after they had

sailed in silence for half an hour. ‘Why did the Doomfang

eat the Vegetable-that-No-one-Dares-Name? Why did

it suddenly leave the Wrath of Thor when it had been

hanging out there for the past fifteen years? What just

happened?’

Hiccup sighed, raising his head from his chest for

a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t KNOW of course,

because, how can we know? But my guess is that the

DOOMFANG ITSELF HAD VORPENTITIS.’

202

Camicazi’s jaw dropped.

‘It had all the symptoms,’ continued Hiccup.

‘Crazy behaviour. Bloodshot eyes. Foaming mouth.

A very high temperature. Doomfangs can live to be

thousands of years old, so fifteen years is only two

minutes in the life of a Doomfang. It would explain how

desperate it was, and how ill it looked. And once it had

eaten the Potato, it was instantly cured, so it didn’t need

to hang around any more. That was it, end of Curse.’

‘Who is to say that your friend’s life is worth

more than a Dragon’s?’ said One Eye, who was taking

up most of the deck.

‘It’s worth more to me,’ said Hiccup. ‘Because I

didn’t know the Doomfang personally.’

The temperature was very pleasant, and for the

first time in six months Hiccup found he was sweating in

his furry overcoat. He took it off, and Toothless landed

on his shoulder, and started trying to tuck his head under

his wing.

‘It’s a bit late to go into Hibernation Sleep

now, Toothless,’ said Hiccup, scratching the little dragon

affectionately behind his horns. ‘It’s just about to be

spring again.’

Toothless grunted grumpily.

Hiccup squinted up at the sun. Now that it was

203

out, he could tell the time fairly accurately from the

sun’s position in the sky. They were at least two hours

away from ten in the morning, he reckoned. Not that it

mattered what time they got back now, of course.

Hiccup’s heart was beating fast in anxiety and

sadness, and he suddenly realised he could actually

HEAR it beating.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock went his heart.

How very peculiar, thought Hiccup.

And then he remembered the funny round metal

thing that Camicazi had found lying in the casket next to

the potato. He reached into his breast pocket and drew

it out.

TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK went

the metal thingummy.

It was a beautifully made, strange little object,

slightly smaller than the potato. The front was

transparent and hard, like ice, and behind it were all

these rune numbers set in different circles, and at least

seven arrows, all different colours. When he stared at

it for some time he realised that some of them were

actually moving, very slowly, but all on their own.

He opened up the back to see if it was a tiny

nanodragon making the ticking noise, and found inside

nothing but lots of little delicate metal wheels that all

204

seemed to be moving. Perhaps they too had been frozen

by the ice, and now that it was warmer again, they had

woken up…

‘WOW,’ breathed Camicazi, looking over his

shoulder. ‘What is it, do you think?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Hiccup, putting it back

in his pocket, where the ticking would be muffled. He

would think about it later. ‘It’s some kind of Hysterical

invention, I suppose. Those Hysterics are mad as

mackerel, but they are good inventors.’

205

Please, Thor, please, thought Hiccup to himself,

please let it be all right somehow after all…

It began to rain, and the rain melted the blue

snow, and it dripped like tears off the horns on Hiccup’s

helmet, down into blue puddles on the deck. The

American arrow lay, half drowning, on the edge of one

of these puddles, and Hiccup picked it up and put it

carefully in his arrow case.

Within five minutes, all the snow had gone, and

Camicazi, Hiccup, Toothless and One Eye all looked as

if they’d had some kind of weird accident with a lot

of blue paint. Their hair, coats, helmets and horns all

coated and streaked with the blue of the bluest of blue

skies.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock said the metal

thingummy in Hiccup’s pocket.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock went Hiccup’s heart,

hopeful in spite of itself.

Back on Hysteria, steaming through the pouring

rain, you could see the bright flame of fire and a

column of smoke coming from the Hysterical Great

Hall.

Norbert’s Papa was finally getting his proper

Viking funeral.

206

18. FISHLEGS

Stoick was waiting for them, in pouring rain, on the

Long Beach.

Stoick was FURIOUS.

He had only just found out that Hiccup had not

spent the night at Snotlout’s house, and Snotlout had

told him that he had seen Hiccup and Camicazi sneaking

away in a sleigh from the Freya’sday Eve Celebrations,

heading out on to the great sea of ice.

When Stoick demanded why Snotlout had not

told him this earlier, Snotlout could not answer.

Snotlout could hardly give the real reason, which

was that he had been rather hoping that Hiccup was

doing something STUPID and DANGEROUS, and

he didn’t want Stoick rushing out to save him at the last

minute.

But Stoick the Vast saw the real reason in

Snotlout’s eyes, and in the delighted way that Snotlout

looked out at the melted ice in the Harbour. Snotlout

was PLEASED that Hiccup could have drowned

somewhere out there in that grey, grim sea.

For the first time, Stoick realised that Snotlout

might not be the best choice of friend for his son

Hiccup.

207

I am afraid that Stoick the Vast gave Snotlout an

old-fashioned spanking.

This WAS the Dark Ages.

Stoick then ran to the Long Beach to see if he

could see what was going on, and, to his MASSIVE

relief, the first thing he clapped eyes on, picking through

the icebergs out to sea, was the tattered, round shape of

his son’s funny little boat, The Hopeful Puffin.

‘WHAT IN THOR’S NAME DO YOU

THINK YOU HAVE BEEN DOING?’ roared Stoick

the Vast, storming up to them as the nose of The Hopeful

Puffin landed on the sand. Hiccup, who appeared to

have turned an extraordinary blue colour, clambered out

of the boat and looked his enraged father straight in

the eyes.

‘I have been to Hysteria, to try and bring back a

Potato to save Fishlegs’s life,’ said Hiccup.

Stoick exploded.

‘I ABSOLUTELY FORBADE YOU TO DO

ANY SUCH THING!’ bellowed Stoick the Vast.

‘HOW DARE YOU DISOBEY, ME, YOUR CHIEF,

AND RISK YOUR LIVES LOOKING FOR A

VEGETABLE THAT NEVER EXISTED, ON A

WILD-GOOSE CHASE FOR NOTHING—’

Tears poured down Hiccup’s face. ‘The potato

208

DOES exist,’ he interrupted his father, ‘it DOES exist,

because we stole it, and Norbert the Nutjob nearly

chopped our heads off, but you are right, it WAS all for

nothing, because the Doomfang ate it and now Fishlegs

is going to DIE.’

Stoick the Vast’s anger could not last in the face

of the utter hopeless misery in his son’s eyes. His fury

melted away, like the snow dissolving into rain all around

them on the beach. He patted his son awkwardly on the

shoulder.

‘Now, now, son,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Of course

Fisheggs isn’t going to die…’

Hiccup pushed his father out of the way, and

stumbled over the sand to Old Wrinkly’s house, followed

by Stoick the Vast, Camicazi, Toothless and One Eye.

He flung open the door without knocking.

Old Wrinkly was standing in the middle of the

room, poking the fire with a metal stick.

For a moment, Hiccup couldn’t see Fishlegs, and

then he realised Fishlegs was on the bed. He was lying

completely still, his glasses off, white as a corpse.

209

Hiccup’s heart stopped.

And then to Hiccup’s unspeakable relief, Fishlegs

sat up and put his glasses on.

He was still alive, then.

Stoick the Vast, Camicazi, Toothless and One Eye

the Sabre-Tooth Driver filed into the room after Hiccup.

‘WELL?’ roared Stoick the Vast. ‘IS FISHEGGS

DYING, OR IS HE NOT?’

Old Wrinkly looked very embarrassed. He shifted

guiltily from foot to foot. ‘Ah, yes, Stoick, I’m so glad

you brought that up… yes, the thing is, I’m not sure that

Fishlegs is dying after all…’

‘WHADDYAMEAN, NOT DYING?’ yelled

Stoick the Vast.

‘I’m afraid my diagnosis wasn’t completely

210

correct.’ Old Wrinkly giggled nervously. ‘Soothsaying

from the fire is very complicated… I won’t go into the

details, but take it from me, it’s tricky… and, what with

one thing or another, it turns out that Fishlegs didn’t

have Vorpentitis after all. It was just a bad cold that set

off his Berserk tendencies. I nursed him back to health

with lots of bed-rest and lemon-in-honey.’

Fishlegs stood up, slightly wobbily, and gave

Stoick the Vast a big smile.

‘I’m fine!’ said Fishlegs happily, throwing wide

his arms.

Hiccup couldn’t believe it.

It was going to be all right after all.

‘HE’S ALIVE!’ cried Hiccup joyously, over

the moon at this uncomplicated happy ending, and he

rushed over to hug his friend.

Toothless gave Fishlegs a lick on the ear, which

was a big compliment from Toothless. One Eye drawled,

‘Well, well, that was all worth it, wasn’t it?’ and

Camicazi did a couple of celebratory cartwheels.

But Stoick wasn’t going to take this lying down.

‘DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME,’ roared

Stoick the Vast at Old Wrinkly, ‘THAT ALL

BECAUSE OF YOUR LOUSY SOOTHSAYING

MY SON HICCUP HAS GONE ALL THE WAY

211

TO HYSTERIA AND NEARLY GOT HIS HEAD

CHOPPED OFF BY NORBERT THE NUTJOB

AND FACED THE DOOMFANG ALL FOR

NOTHING?????’

‘Well, not for nothing, Stoick,’ explained Old

Wrinkly. ‘If you’ll just listen a moment, I’ll explain.

Soothsaying is a very tricky business and when I looked

in the fire—’

‘Did Fisheggs have Vorpentitis, or did he not?’

interrupted Stoick.

‘No he didn’t,’ admitted Old Wrinkly.

‘THEN THE QUEST WAS COMPLETELY

UNNECESSARY!’ roared Stoick.

‘Don’t give Old Wrinkly a hard time, Father,’

said Hiccup. ‘Why waste time getting angry

when all’s well that ends well…’

Hiccup started to laugh, but

something in the middle of the laugh

went wrong when Hiccup’s left arm

suddenly went dead.

Hiccup looked down at his

arm in surprise.

‘I can’t feel my arm,’ said

Hiccup.

And then the other arm went dead.

212

Hiccup had been feeling rather hot all day, but he

suddenly felt as if he were burning alive. Sweat poured

down his face, and great clouds of steam rose up off his

shoulders and chest.

And Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third’s

entire body went rigid as a statue, his eyes staring and

bloodshot, and he fell down lifeless on the very bed

Fishlegs had been lying on just two minutes before.

213

19. THE FINAL CHAPTER

Sometimes it is not until the Final Chapter that you

realise what a quest has REALLY been about all along.

Stoick’s face turned from red anger to pure

white terror.

‘The Doomfang…’ whispered Stoick the Vast

in agony, rushing to hold his stiff son in his arms. ‘By

Woden and Freya and Hairy Knuckled Thor, he did get

touched by the frozen flames of the Doomfang… and all

for a stupid useless quest for NOTHING…’

Enormous hairy Stoick the Vast burst into tears.

‘Oh for Thor’s sake, Stoick,’ cried Old Wrinkly,

bossily pushing Stoick out of the way. ‘Will you just

SHUT UP and listen to me? I’m really not that bad a

soothsayer. This has nothing to do with the Doomfang.’

He took Hiccup’s pulse, and looked under his eyelids,

and tapped his chest, which had turned as wooden as a

tree trunk. ‘This is VORPENTITIS.’

Stoick reeled back. ‘And what does that mean?’

he whispered through white lips.

‘It means,’ said Old Wrinkly, ‘that one little

weirdo looks very like another when you’re soothsaying

in a fire, and it was HICCUP who was bitten by the

Vorpent, and not Fishlegs. So HICCUP has Vorpentitis.

214

And that means that since it is now…’

(At this point Old Wrinkly reached into Hiccup’s

breast pocket, hoping to draw out the potato, and in fact

drew out the ticking metal thingummy. He looked at the

numbers on it and nodded his head.)

‘… oooh exactly five to ten in the morning on

Freya’sday Friday!’ continued Old Wrinkly, laying the

metal thingummy carefully on the bed beside Hiccup,

‘your son, Hiccup, who has Vorpentitis, has five minutes

to live.’

Old Wrinkly chuckled. This didn’t seem to be

worrying him much.

‘Which wouldn’t give a great deal of time for us

to find an antidote. But luckily,’ said Old Wrinkly, in

the spirit of a conjuror, ‘luckily, on your son’s so-called

stupid useless quest for NOTHING, he has brought

back the antidote with him ALREADY. Camicazi,

where is the potato? It doesn’t seem to be here in

Hiccup’s pocket… Have you got it?’

Camicazi was as white as One Eye’s back. She

shook her head numbly. ‘No… potato,’ she gasped.

Old Wrinkly’s mouth fell open, appalled.

‘NO POTATO?’ shrieked Old Wrinkly. ‘WHAT

DO YOU MEAN, NO POTATO? YOU MUST

HAVE THE POTATO!!!’

215

Camicazi shook her head again. ‘No potato,’ she

whispered.

‘But I was so sure,’ whispered Old Wrinkly. ‘I

was so sure you would bring back the potato… This is

the last time I believe a single word those beastly fires

say… they told me DEFINITELY that you would

get it…’

‘Oh, we got it all right,’ mumbled Camicazi

miserably. ‘It was just that the Doomfang ATE it.’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ gulped Old Wrinkly.

NO POTATO.

Suddenly Old Wrinkly looked every second of his

ninety-three years. His whole body crumpled up like an

old brown leaf.

Little did Hiccup know, when he was crying on

the boat for his friend Fishlegs, that he should have been

crying for himself.

For it was indeed HICCUP who had been stung

all those many months ago, escaping from the Fortress

of Sinister.

And it was Hiccup who was now moments away

from the death he feared for his friend Fishlegs.

‘WHAT CAN I DO?’ roared Stoick the Vast.

‘There must be other cures? Other medicines?’

Old Wrinkly shook his head. ‘The potato is the

only cure for Vorpentitis.’

‘I’LL BRING BACK THE POTATO!’ cried

Stoick the Vast, drawing his sword, a Man of Action to

the last. ‘JUST TELL ME WHERE TO GO AND

HOW LONG I’VE GOT!’

‘Well,’ said Old Wrinkly sadly, ‘the nearest potato

is now roughly three-and-a-half-thousand miles away

on the distant shores of the country known as America

to those who may believe in it. And you have…’ Old

Wrinkly checked the clock sitting next to Hiccup’s bed,

‘… exactly THREE minutes to find it.’

Even Stoick seemed to feel that perhaps this

might be a problem.

He strode round the room, tearing at his beard.

Old Wrinkly, Camicazi and One Eye sat at

Hiccup’s bedside.

One Eye didn’t seem as happy as he might have

been two days ago at the thought of one less Human in

the world.

A big tear rolled out of his one eye and down his

Sabre-Tooth and plopped on to the ground.

Hiccup was stiff as a board, and his body was

218

now red, and boiling hot. Toothless licked his poor red

face, to try to cool it down.

‘THE DOOMFANG!’ cried Stoick the Vast.

‘I COULD TRACK DOWN THE DOOMFANG

AND WRESTLE THE POTATO FROM HIM!’

‘You’re going to find the Doomfang in the vast

and trackless wastes of an immense and fathomless

Ocean,’ said Old Wrinkly wearily, checking the time

again on the clock, ‘in TWO minutes?’

‘Face it, Stoick,’ whispered Old Wrinkly. ‘What

you’re talking about is not just im-PROBABLE… it’s

im-POSSIBLE…’

Fishlegs had drawn back into the shadows, and

he was watching his friend’s face.

Hiccup was trying to say something, but his

frozen, burning mouth made it difficult for him to say

the words.

In fact he looked very like the Doomfang, when

he was trying to speak to Hiccup out on the Sullen Sea.

‘Ooot me…’ mumbled Hiccup desperately.

‘OOOOOT ME!’ and he tried to point, but his arms were

as stiff as if they were made out of wood.

Old Wrinkly patted his hand, and bathed

his forehead with water. Stoick’s shoulders heaved

with sobs.

219

‘OOOOT ME!’ cried poor Hiccup again.

Fishlegs tried to follow where his friend’s eyes

were looking, and it seemed like they were staring at the

table by the door.

On that table lay Hiccup’s furry coat and his

helmet, bow and arrows that he had thrown there when

he first came in the room.

‘One minute left,’ whispered Old Wrinkly.

‘OOOOOOOOOOT ME!’ repeated Hiccup

desperately.

Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows

what we mean when we try to speak.

Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us,

and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and

tries to understand.

Fishlegs understood.

He didn’t know why he was supposed to do what

he was about to do, but he trusted Hiccup, who always

seemed to know the right thing to do.

Fishlegs picked up Hiccup’s bow.

Out of the arrow-case he drew an arrow, a

singularly beautiful arrow, decorated with feathers from

birds Fishlegs had never seen before.

Fishlegs fitted the arrow to the bow, and pointed

the bow towards Hiccup.

220

Stoick looked up from his sobbing, in

amazement. Here was his son, moments away from

dying, and that weird fish-faced friend of his appeared to

be about to SHOOT him. TYPICAL. What a nutcase.

221

cried Stoick. ‘DON’T SHOOT!’

Stoick threw his vast bulk across the room in an

attempt to shield his son from the arrow.

223

Of course, he was trying to protect Hiccup’s heart and

chest. He didn’t realise what an appalling shot Fishlegs

was, so he jumped far too high.

Fishlegs let the arrow

go, and it soared in a wobbly

unsteady arc, finally landing in

Hiccup’s right big toe, piercing

through his wet boots, and into

the skin.

It was a bit of a miracle it hit

Hiccup at all. In fact, it may just be

the only time Fishlegs has EVER

hit something he was actually

aiming at.

The arrow that pierced the

skin of Hiccup’s big toe at ten o’clock

on the morning of Freya’sday Friday was the same arrow

that had been soaking for the last fifteen years in the

magical juices of THE POTATO.

Over the past decade and a half, those juices

had concentrated on the surface of the metal, and the

antidote now made its way into Hiccup’s bloodstream,

taking its cooling, healing work up every little vein, down

every little artery, into every little corner of Hiccup’s

poor, rigid, boiling little body.

224

In front of their eyes, Hiccup’s stiff arms

softened. His chest rose and fell. The breath blew out of

his nostrils, and his eyes opened.

‘Hello, Father,’ said Hiccup.

This was just too much for Stoick. He fainted

dead away, on the spot, all six-foot-seven and three feet

round of him, and it took a great deal more trouble to

revive HIM.

He was out cold, and Old Wrinkly slapped him,

and Hiccup shook him, and Camicazi tickled his feet,

and eventually it was Fishlegs who ran out and filled

an enormous bucket full of snow, and threw it right in

Stoick’s face. That brought him to his senses, and Stoick

sat bolt upright, spluttering and spitting snow out of

his beard.

‘You’re ALIVE!’ he shouted joyfully, and he

hugged his son so hard Hiccup thought his ribs might

crack. ‘By the Bristly Beard and Thunderous Thighs of

Great Goddess Freya, you’re ALIVE!’

‘He is alive,’ said Old Wrinkly pointedly, ‘and I

think some apologies are in order.’

Stoick’s brows lowered. However relieved and

happy he is, a Great Chieftain used to absolute power

does not like to apologise, but after a short struggle,

Stoick swallowed his pride.

225

‘You are right,’ said Stoick. ‘I have been

thoroughly wrong, and I am sorry. Old Wrinkly, you are

not the most pathetic soothsayer in the uncivilised world,

and I am sorry I ever said you were. Hiccup, you were

right to go on the quest for the Frozen Potato to try and

save the life of your odd little friend.’

Stoick turned to Fishlegs.

‘And most of all, FISHEGGS,’ he boomed

solemnly, ‘I have misjudged YOU.’

Fishlegs blushed. ‘No, no,’ he stammered.

‘Yes,’ said Stoick, holding up a hairy hand. ‘I

226

have. A Chief has to be big enough to admit it when he

is wrong. You are a little weirdo, it is true, but you are a

LOYAL little weirdo, and one day when my son is

Chief I have a feeling he will need some loyal people

about him.’

Meanwhile, Toothless, who really couldn’t stand

all this soppy hugging and apologising, flapped away to

find a nice warm spot by the fire.

‘Hiccup,’ Toothless called out sleepily, when he

had found himself a particularly cosy position, ‘issa

anyone else gonna d-d-die inna next f-f-five minutes?’

Hiccup laughed, and he asked Old Wrinkly.

‘No,’ said Old Wrinkly solemnly. ‘I have

examined the fire very carefully, and I can say,

absolutely DEFINITELY, that NOBODY is going to

die in the next five minutes. However, Gobber the

Belch, I’m afraid, will catch Fishlegs’s cold, and it’s a

nasty one.’

‘OK then,’ yawned Toothless. ‘Iffa no one need

T-t-toothless, Toothless go

back to sleep.’

So just when the

Inner Isles were waking up

from the coldest, longest

winter in a hundred years,

227

when the snow was melting, when all the other hunting

dragons were opening their eyes underground preparing

to burrow upward, and spring was eventually deciding it

was time to arrive, just at this moment, Toothless

FINALLY relaxed and went back into Hibernation Sleep.

One Eye settled down next to him, snoring like a

dinosaur with sinus problems.

Old Wrinkly began to explain to Stoick some of

the finer points of soothsaying.

And Hiccup and his good friends Fishlegs and

Camicazi wandered outside to spend the rest of the day

not doing very much at all – my favourite kind of day.

As for Gobber the Belch, why Gobber the Belch

woke up with a throbbing head and sore throat and a nose

that ran like a great green river.

So it appears that Vikings DO catch colds after all…

228

229

232

EPILOGUE BY HICCUP

HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE

THIRD, THE LAST OF THE

GREAT VIKING HEROES

I guessed, but never knew for sure, what had happened in

that strange frozen moment in my childhood, when the

Doomfang stole my potato.

But many years later, when I was a tall young man

in command of my first ship and we were just returning

home from some wild and dangerous adventure, we

suddenly realised that we were being followed by

something. For days and days it followed us, always

staying at the same distance behind the boat. I spent

hours up the mast watching the black pin-prick on

the horizon and trying to work out what it was, whale

or shark or dragon monster, friend or foe, with some

nagging feeling at the back of my mind that this was

something I recognised from somewhere in my past.

It wasn’t until we entered the Sullen Sea that the

creature came right up close. It was immediately clear

from its glossy dark colour that it was a Doomfang. It

didn’t attack us, as I had been secretly dreading, but

began to play with the boat, swimming alongside, diving

233

underneath and coming up the other side, getting nearer

and nearer with each circle that it made.

This is common enough behaviour in dolphins,

and even in humpback whales, who are fascinated by

boats, and will play like this for hours. But it is hugely

unusual in a Doomfang. Doomfangs normally have the

same attitude towards humans that we have toward

insects: they loftily ignore us.

But this Doomfang was different. Even though

it was clearly a fully grown animal, at least five times

as long and as big as our ship, it played with us like a

child, swimming round and round the boat, until finally

the great creature gave a mighty thrash with its tail and

soared out of the water, spreading wide its wings. It

jumped right over the ship, just clearing the mast.

My Warriors gasped in awe and fear and

amazement and wonder, as the great long body blocked

out the sun, and I gasped too, for I recognised the

animal at last. This was my Doomfang, not slain, not

dead, not gone away, but in the very pink of health, and

it seemed rather pleased with itself, and with me.

For when it entered the water on the other

side, the great Doomfang tucked its legs up neatly and

entered the water at exactly the right angle, so that it

would not cause a single ripple to rock our little boat.

234

And when the creature swam alongside, so close now

that we could reach out and touch its glistening raven

black sides, it rolled on to its back and moved its wing

almost like it was waving, and its terrible mouth seemed

to be grinning at me.

That very same Doomfang has followed my boat

ever after, not like a Doom or a Curse, but more like a

guardian angel.

I have lost count of the times when I have been

out at sea in the most dreadful peril (for we Vikings lead

dangerous and exciting lives) and just at the moment

when all hope is lost, the Doomfang has appeared.

That Doomfang has steered my boat through

the Great Storm that drowned a thousand ships in the

Restless West Sea, it has rescued me from shipwreck on

Cannibal Isle, it has fought great Monsters that had my

ship wrapped around with their squids’ tentacles like a

cat’s-cradle.

It has returned the favour I once did it of saving

its life in a cold, cold world, a hundred times over.

It is following me still, even though I don’t need

rescuing so much now I am old and slow as a great

sea turtle, and my hair is as white as a Semi-Spotted

Snowpecker.

You can Cheat a Dragon’s Curse.

235

You do not have to accept the hand that Fate has

dealt you.

Look at me, the skinniest, most unlikely Viking

ever, now known as this great Hero all around the world.

Again and again, I have the same dream. Norbert the

Nutjob has thrown the axe high, high into the air, it is

turning round and round, and the black side is going to

plunge into the ground first… Bad Luck will follow and

the Tribe will be DOOMED. Again and again I make

the same leap, I dodge the bright and black murderous

blades, I catch the axe before it lands, I make my

own luck.

If none of this had happened, the potato would

still be stuck frozen on Hysteria, of no use to anybody.

Instead of which, I buried the arrow which saved my life

in some muddy ground behind my house, and, miracle

of miracles! A single seed must have been sticking to

the metal!

For some time later, in the springtime, I noticed

a strange green plant in that particular spot, and I dug

the arrow up again. A new potato, larger than the one

I lost, had grown right around the arrow’s point. From

that new potato, I grew more potatoes, and now there

are potatoes growing all over Berk and the whole of the

Barbaric Archipelago, and not a SINGLE PERSON

236

or dragon has died a terrible death from Vorpent stings

EVER SINCE.

(The potatoes are also rather delicious when

they are cooked, either mashed or just plain with a little

dollop of melted butter.)

But more importantly still, if I had never gone

on the quest for the Frozen Potato, I would never have

saved the life of my good friend Fishlegs, who, although

some people thought of him as a little weirdo, was the

best and truest friend a Viking ever—

HANG ON A SECOND.

You see how confusing all of this is.

I didn’t save the life of my good friend Fishlegs,

after all, did I? Because Fishlegs was never ill in the first

place.

I saved myself.

237

What Happens Next?

Will Norbert the Nutjob set out on a quest to go back to

America? And, indeed, does this land they call America

really exist, and is the world really a circle that has no end?

And what has happened to Alvin the Treacherous,

Hiccup’s arch-enemy, who we rather hoped had been killed

when he dropped from a hot-air balloon into a sea boiling

with ravenous Sharkworms? I can’t think how he might

have got out of that tricky situation…

But I have a nasty feeling in the pit of

my stomach that Hiccup hasn’t seen

the last of these two mad, wicked and

dangerous villains, both of whom have

sworn to kill him...

Watch out for the next volume of Hiccup’s memoirs,

How to Twist a Dragon’s Tale

1. THE HERDING-REINDEER-

ON-DRAGONBACK LESSON

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third never forgot

the day he met an Exterminator Dragon for the very first

time.

How could he?

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of

his short, adventurous life.

There he was, sitting in the middle of a circle of

fire which was getting smaller and smaller, with no way

out, and prowling through the flames, getting closer

and closer, were these sinister leopard-like shapes, the

slinking silhouettes of Exterminator Dragons sharpening

their talons and getting ready to leap –

Hang on a second.

I had better start at the beginning.

It all took place during a heatwave in August,

which was surprising, for Augusts in the Viking

territories were normally rather cool, wet affairs. But it

had been growing hotter and hotter over the course of

the summer, and as the temperatures rose, Hiccup’s

grandfather Old Wrinkly had been babbling on about

how the unexpected warmth was a terrible Omen of

Doom, and a new kind of Terror-Dragon had awoken

in the West, and would descend upon them all with Fire

and Destruction…

But unfortunately nobody really took Old

Wrinkly seriously, because he wasn’t very good at

looking into the future.

On this particular day, the sun was beating down

relentlessly on the usually soggy Isle of Berk as if it had

lost its way, and thought it was in Africa.

There was not a cloud (let alone an Exterminator

Dragon) in the sky.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, only

son of Chief Stoick the Vast, was on the Hooligan Pirate

Training Programme on the Isle of Berk.

His teacher, Gobber the Belch, had decided

that on this particularly still, stuffy summer’s day,

when all you really wanted to do was to find a nice

tree and lie gasping underneath it, downing lots of

drinking-horns of nice cool water, it would, in fact, be

an EXCELLENT idea to hold a Herding-Reindeer-on-

Dragonback lesson.

Hiccup did not agree with

Gobber the Belch.

But Gobber the Belch had not asked Hiccup’s

opinion on the matter.

And Gobber the Belch was a six-and-a-half-foot

axe-wielding lunatic who was not the kind of teacher

you argued with.

So there they all were, all twelve pupils on the

Programme, standing in a hot, bedraggled, wilting line,

halfway up Huge Hill, swatting off the midges that were

gathering in great clouds in the still and steamy air.

There was Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the

Third, rather surprisingly the Hero of this story, for he

was extremely ordinary-looking, with bright-red hair that

shot straight up in the air whatever you did to it, and no

obvious Heroic qualities.

There was Hiccup’s best friend Fishlegs, the

only boy on the Pirate Training Programme who was

even worse at being a Viking than Hiccup was. He had

asthma, eczema, short-sight, flat-feet, knock-knees,

an allergy to reptiles, heather, and animal fur, and he

couldn’t swim. He bore a strong resemblance to a

runner-bean wearing glasses.

There was Snotface Snotlout. A delightful boy

– if you happen to like unpleasant teenagers with skull

tattoos who bully anything that moves and is smaller

than them.

There was Tuffnut Junior. A pleasure to meet –

if you happen to like meeting pimply young plug-uglies

who pick their noses, and sleep with an axe under their

pillows.

And Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, the largest,

sweatiest, and smelliest of the lot of them, had all the

grace and charm of a pig in a helmet.

There they all were, this horrid collection of

spotty Viking pre-teens, and Gobber was shouting at

them, in his usual cheery fashion.

‘RIGHT!’ yelled Gobber, the sweat pouring down

his lobster-red cheeks and into his beard, turning it as

limp and steamy as a jungle rainforest. ‘I PRESUME

YOU HAVE ALL BROUGHT YOUR HUNTING-

DRAGONS?’

They had all brought their hunting-dragons. All

except for Clueless,who really was so stupid that he

shouldn’t have been allowed out without a minder. He

had brought his hunting FLAGON, which wasn’t the

same thing at all.

But everybody else had brought their hunting-

dragons.

Most of the hunting-dragons were looking as

cross at being called out on this mission as their Masters

were, panting heavily with their forked tongues hanging

out, and swishing their tails to keep off the midges and

the flies.

Snotlout’s dragon, Fireworm, who looked a bit

like a flame-red Rottweiler with a face like a snooty

alligator, was curling dangerously around Snotlout’s legs,

wondering whether she would get in trouble if she gave

Gobber a big fat bite on his big fat hairy bottom.

If it was a big enough chomp, it might just stop

the lesson while Gobber went to the Hospital Hut…

But, reluctantly, she decided that she would get

in trouble.

Fishlegs’s dragon, Horrorcow, the only vegetarian

hunting-dragon anybody has ever heard of, had gone to

sleep in Fishlegs’s arms on the way up, and Fishlegs was

trying to hold her head up in a way that looked like she

was awake, and listening intently, because Gobber had

strong views on how everybody at the lesson really ought

to be conscious.

And all the other dragons were lounging at their

Master’s feet, or hovering limply a little way above their

Master’s heads, wishing they were somewhere else.

Hiccup’s hunting-dragon, Toothless, was by far

the smallest, a bright-green little Common-or-Garden

dragon, about the size of a naughty dachshund, or Jack

Russell terrier.

He was also the only dragon showing the same

amount of enthusiasm for this expedition as Gobber.

He was fidgeting in and out of Hiccup’s

waistcoat in a whirl of impatience, scurrying up his shirt,

his little claws tickling Hiccup’s tummy, and then up

out the collar and on to Hiccup’s head. Then he would

perch on Hiccup’s helmet, spreading his wings and

hooting in short, excitable bursts before scampering

back down Hiccup’s body again.

‘Are we s-s-starting yet? Are we s-s-starting?’

chirped Toothless. ‘When are we going to start? H-h-how

many minutes? C-c-can T-T-Toothless go first? Me! Me!

M-m-me!’

‘Calm down, Toothless,’ said Hiccup, as Toothless

accidentally stuck his claw up Hiccup’s nostril on the way

down. ‘We’ve only just got here.’ *

‘OK, BOYS, LISTEN UP!’ bellowed Gobber.

‘Herding reindeer is a lot like herding sheep, but

reindeer are bigger.’

Clueless put his hand up.

‘Which is bigger?’ asked Clueless.

‘Sheep are the round fluffy ones, and reindeers

are the larger ones with the pointy things on their heads,’

explained Fishlegs kindly.

‘Thank you, Fishlegs,’ said Gobber. ‘You

will use your hunting-dragon to round up any stray

reindeer that try to break away from the group we are

herding. It’s a chance to put into practise all that you

have learnt in your Herding Sheep lessons.’

*Hiccup was the only Hooligan who could understand Dragonese, the

language that dragons spoke to each other.

‘I don’t know how Hiccup the Useless is ever

going to be the chief of this tribe,’ sneered Snotlout,

‘when he can’t even keep control of that minuscule

microbe of a dragon of his. Look what happened last

Herding Sheep lesson.’

Toothless had lost his head on that occasion,

and single-handedly CHARGED the flock, and chased

it into the Dragon Toilets. (He claimed it was an

accident, but Hiccup had his suspicions.)

It had taken three-quarters of an hour to get

the sheep out of the Toilets, and they still stunk to high

heaven four weeks later.

‘But the main business of the herding,’

continued Gobber, ‘will be performed by YOU on your

RIDING-DRAGONS…’

‘C-c-can Toothless EAT the reindeer when he

catch them?’ squeaked Toothless.

‘NOBODY is going to be EATING any reindeer,

Toothless!’ whispered Hiccup. ‘And we’re not going to

chase them, either. This is herding, not chasing. We will

just be gently guiding the reindeer in the right direction.’

‘Oh,’ said Toothless, hugely disappointed.

‘… None of you have ridden dragons before,’

Gobber boomed, ‘and you will find it is more difficult

than you think. And therefore the dragons that

you will be riding on today are NOT YET FULLY

GROWN. This means that they will not have the

strength to carry you up into the air.’

‘Oh, Sir…’ groaned Snotlout, ‘I thought we were

going to be FLYING today.’

‘First you learn to ride,’ said Gobber, ‘and

then later, MUCH LATER, you learn to fly. You fall

off a flying dragon, Snotlout, and you will end up a

SQUASHED Viking. Which would be difficult for me

to explain to your father.’

‘Can T-T-Toothless just eat a very small one?’

asked Toothless, in a very small voice.

‘No,’ whispered Hiccup.

‘So, ON our riding-dragons, we will approach

the reindeer QUIETLY – no farting, Dogsbreath – and

we will carefully surround the herd, and see whether

we can guide it back towards Hooligan Village. Any

questions so far? Yes, Clueless?’

‘Which were the round fluffy ones again?’

asked Clueless.

Gobber sighed.

‘The round fluffy ones are the SHEEP,

Clueless, they’re the SHEEP. Now. You will find the

riding-dragons rather a lively ride. They are just over

here – WHERE ARE THE RIDING-DRAGONS?’

asked Gobber in exasperation. ‘They were supposed to

be following us.’

‘I think they’re over there, sir,’ said Fishlegs,

pointing to a small, twisted tree a little way away.

The riding-dragons were looking far from lively.

They were lying in the shade, resting their heads on their

paws, their forked tongues hanging out.

Gobber strode towards them, clapping his hands

and shouting, ‘COME ON, UP YOU GET THERE,

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE TERRIFYING, FOR

THOR’S SAKE!’

And as the riding-dragons got to their feet, and

slunk towards their Masters through the browned and

shrivelled heather, like a pack of surly lions, Hiccup

realised something that really WAS terrifying.

Something that gave a small indication that

perhaps the day might take an unexpected turn.

The tree the riding-dragons had been sheltering

under was blasted and twisted and reduced to carbon.

All around the tree were scorch-marks. And when

Hiccup moved a little closer to investigate, he found to

his horror that the entire hillside behind had been burnt

to a cinder and turned to sooty desert.

Where once heather grew and swayed in the

wind, covered with butterflies and grasshoppers and

buzzing nanodragons, now there was only ashy stubble,

scarred across with white, stretching out across the

whole of the slope.

Only one thing could do that to a hillside, and it

wasn’t the sun, however fiercely it might shine.

It was FIRE.

www.cressidacowell.co.uk

This is Cressida, age 9, writing on the island.

Join Hiccup and his dragons on

their original misadventures!

Find the adventures wherever books are sold, and play interactive games at

www.HowToTrainYourDragonSeries.com

Table of Contents

Copyright

Title

Contents

1. The Hunting-with-Bows-and-Arrows-on-Skis Expedition

2. Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons

3. The Hunters Become the Hunted

4. Is There Something Wrong with Fishlegs?

5. Smashsticks-on-Ice

6. What Old Wrinkly Said

7. The Quest for the Frozen Potato

8. The Wrath of Thor

9. Back on Berk

10. Freya’sday Eve on Hysteria

11. In the Soup

12. Will Toothless Save the Day?

13. The Great Potato Burglary

14. The Potato-Burglars’ Run

15. They Might Just Make it, Now

16. The Doomfang

17. The Quest is Over

18. Fishlegs

19. The Final Chapter

Epilogue