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~ CONTENTS ~

Title Page

Map

Dedication

How to Train Your Viking

The Day of the Dreader

When the Windwalker Changed

Copyright

This is

Hiccup is a Viking, and is on his first year of the Pirate Training Programme, which is a bit like prison but the boys are armed and the food is TRULY DISGUSTING.

Vikings are the Terrors of the Seas, the Scourge of Civilisation, great Barbarian Warriors of the North.

But what Hiccup is is mostly WET.

It rains a lot on the Isle of Berk.

Did you know, there are 101 different words for ‘rain’ in the Dragonese language?

Hiccup knows them ALL.

This is Hiccup’s dragon,

He is the smallest hunting dragon anybody has ever seen. And he hasn’t got any teeth. But he can still give a nasty bite with his VERY HARD gums, as you will find out if you ever try and take back the haddock he’s just sneakily stolen from your plate when you weren’t looking.

NEVER try and take back the haddock. You might need all ten of your fingers one day, for swordfighting, or learning to play the harp or something.

Sometimes Hiccup can’t help wishing Toothless was a truly gigantic Monstrous Nightmare kind of dragon… but don’t tell him.

~ CONTENTS ~

1. A Hunting Competition

2. A Proper Viking Doesn’t Speak to Dragons

3. Snotlout and Dogsbreath

4. What Happened that Afternoon

5. Everything Goes Wrong

6. In the Dark

7. The Strange Thing that Happened

8. The Darkbreather

9. In the Mouth of the Darkbreather

10. A Viking Never,
Ever Gets Frightened?

11. The End

Epilogue

1. A HUNTING COMPETITION

One summer’s evening, when I was a dragon so young I had left the egg only five or six years before, ten young Vikings from the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans stood on a wild and lonesome beach on the wild and lonesome Isle of Berk.

These ten Vikings were on the Pirate Training Programme and standing in front of them was their teacher, an enormous hairy Warrior called Gobber the Belch. Gobber had a helmet with horns that curled like a stag, and (like most adult Hooligans), if he met a problem he tended to punch it.

Perched on the shoulder of each young Viking was a dragon. Some were shielding themselves from the wind with their wings, others were hunched like bad-tempered ravens.

These dragons were hunting dragons, and about the size of dogs. Hunting dragons come in many different breeds. There were everyday Common-or-Garden dragons, with the standard forked tongue and pointy tail, and fat mustard-brown Gronckles with horns like a rhinoceros and teeth like kitchen-knives.

There were a few shiny, slippery Slitherhawks with watchful eyes and short tempers, and a friendly, spotted Basic Brown who was chewing the cud as she sat. There was even one enormous blood-red Monstrous Nightmare, rippling with muscles and extra-sharp talons.

Monstrous Nightmares think they are the best breed of all, and they don’t half fancy themselves and put on airs.

I was there too, snuggled down the shirt of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the Heir to the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans, curled up tight under his shirt where it was all nice and cosy.

But nobody was quite sure what breed I was.

I looked rather like a Common-or-Garden with a wart on the end of my nose, but of course, I was FAR too special to be such an ordinary dragon.

I had been asleep for some time, but it was difficult to doze when Gobber was shouting his gob off, and his yelling had woken me up.

‘OKAY THEN, YOU MISERABLE PIECES OF SHRIMP VOMIT!’ yelled Gobber the Belch. (He always talked like that.) ‘This is the HUNTING COMPETITION you’ve been waiting for. In ten minutes’ time it will be completely dark. I want you to set out in your boats, and see how many fish your dragon can catch you in half an hour… This is a test of how well you have trained your dragon by YELLING at it… for in the dark, your dragon will only be able to hear your voice.’

These young Vikings, you see, were learning to be Hairy Hooligans, and Hairy Hooligans trained dragons to hunt fish for them, and pull down deer for them. Basically, we dragons did all the work, while they stood around YELLING at us.

‘Well, Hiccup is going to be even more USELESS at this than he is at everything else,’ sneered Snotface Snotlout, a tall boy with skull tattoos and a face like a pig. ‘Hiccup can’t YELL for toffee.’

This was true.

Hiccup, wasn’t a great Yeller. He was a small, freckly, skinny boy and he was surprisingly polite for a Viking.

But Hiccup had a very unusual gift. He spoke Dragonese, the language we dragons speak to each other.

‘I don’t need to yell, do I, Toothless?’ Hiccup whispered to me in Dragonese. ‘We’re right on top of this hunting business… you’re going to catch more fish than Snotlout has ever seen in his ENTIRE LIFE, aren’t you?’

‘W-W-Well yeeees,’ said I, a bit uncertain-like, but licking his face. I AM a truly MAGNIFICENT hunter, despite being just a bit smaller than the other dragons.*

However, today I had this feeling that there might be some reason why this might not work… I just couldn’t quite remember what it was…

2. A PROPER VIKING DOESN’T SPEAK TO DRAGONS

‘SILENCE!’ yelled Gobber the Belch, glowering at us like a bull in a bad mood.

‘I do HOPE, Hiccup, that I didn’t hear you talking to your animal in that filthy language, Dragonese…’ He spat out the word like it was a bad whelk. ‘We YELL at our dragons, YELL at them, Hiccup, and Dragonese is banned by order of your father, Stoick the Vast, O Hear His Name and Tremble, Ugh, Ugh…’

‘Yes, sir,’ muttered Hiccup sadly. He hated anyone mentioning his father. Stoick the Vast was the Chief of the Tribe. He was six foot seven and good at everything, and he expected his son to be the same.

‘Now, let me get this absolutely clear,’ said Fishlegs, Hiccup’s best friend. ‘You want us to go out to sea in our boats when the sun is going to go down in ten minutes’ time and get our dragons to hunt for fish in TOTAL DARKNESS?’

‘You’ve got it, Fishlegs!’ roared Gobber the Belch happily.

‘Ohhhh,’ moaned Fishlegs. Fishlegs was even skinnier than Hiccup, and he had asthma and a squint. ‘There could be all sorts of monsters out there in the darkness… Seadragons… Sharkworms… Darkbreathers…’

‘Oh, DON’T BE SO RIDICULOUS, Fishlegs!’ yelled Gobber. ‘Don’t you know that A VIKING NEVER, EVER GETS FRIGHTENED. Honestly, Fishlegs, sometimes I wonder whether you and Hiccup are Vikings at all…’

Fishlegs and Hiccup looked miserable.

‘Okay,’ Gobber continued. ‘You have half an hour starting from now, and the boys who bring back the MOST fish will be named MOST PROMISING HUNTERS and will have no homework for the next three weeks…’

‘Yaaaaaay!’ cheered the boys.

‘… and the boys who bring back the LEAST fish will be named MOST HOPELESS GOATS and will have to give the Dragon Toilets a thorough clean out…’

‘Yuuuuucky…’ groaned the boys.

The Dragon Toilets were in a big pit just to the west of the village, and they were very smelly and disgusting. I never went there myself – far too pongy and revolting for ME. I always tried to find a nice, warm, private spot to do a poo. In the middle of Stoick the Vast’s bed, for example. Or just behind the door of Valhallarama’s food cupboard.

As you can imagine, this often got my Master into trouble.

‘I will light a bonfire on the beach so that you can find your way home in the dark… RIGHT! ’ boomed Gobber the Belch, ‘FIND YOURSELVES A PARTNER, AND GET GOING! ’

3. SNOTLOUT AND DOGSBREATH

The young Vikings started running towards the six small boats that were drawn up on to the beach.

But before they could get there, Hiccup got tripped up by Snotface Snotlout, and Fishlegs’s face was ground into the sand by Dogsbreath.

‘LOSERS!’ yelled Snotlout as the bullies ran off, laughing.

Fireworm, Snotlout’s dragon, sneered at me before she flapped off: ‘YOU won’t catch any fish at all after what happened THIS AFTERNOON…’

Now, this was giving me a BAD FEELING again.

What had happened this afternoon?

I was still feeling a little confused after my nap and I couldn’t quite remember…

By the time Hiccup and Fishlegs reached their boat, The Hopeful Puffin, the sun was sinking fast and all the other five boats were way out in the bay with their dragons out fishing enthusiastically. Fireworm, in particular, we could see diving again and again.

‘No problem,’ said Fishlegs, in between shivers, as he and Hiccup started paddling out to join everybody else. ‘Toothless can catch them up. Toothless may be a right pain in the bottom, but Waistline of Woden, he can sure catch fish! In the last two weeks I’ve never seen anything like it… he is a truly gifted hunting dragon…’

I ignored the bit about being a pain in the bottom (what could Fishlegs be talking about?) and I started swelling up with pride.

‘It’s t-t-true,’ I said. ‘Toothless m-m-marvellous. T-t-toothless brilliant. Toothless the b-b-best…’

Hiccup said nothing. We had reached the fishing grounds by now. Hiccup rolled up his sleeve and put out his arm. I hopped onto it, still crowing.

‘Toothless g-g-glorious! Toothless h-h-hunting genius! COCKADOODLE-DOO!’ I gloated.

Hiccup interrupted me. ‘Toothless,’ he asked seriously. ‘What DID happen this afternoon?’

I stopped. I looked into Hiccup’s worried blue eyes.

And I suddenly remembered.

4. WHAT HAPPENED THAT AFTERNOON

That afternoon, four hours earlier, I was having a lovely time chasing rabbits, when SUDDENLY from a bush ten metres away there came the sound of slow clapping.

I turned round, and it was Snotlout’s dragon FIREWORM who was clapping.

Fireworm is a bright red Monstrous Nightmare dragon who thinks she is the greatest.

‘Oh, nice chasing, Toothless,’ jeered Fireworm, ‘but why aren’t you EATING those rabbits after you catch them?’

My tummy gave a sad little rumble.

‘C-c-can’t trick ME, Fireworm,’ I retorted. ‘Toothless n-n-not eating cos he’s going to b-b-beat you in tonight’s contest… Fireworm’s gonna be TOAST tonight…’

‘You don’t mean to say,’ Fireworm laughed, ‘that you have allowed Hiccup to BAN you from EATING? I never thought of you as a goody-goody, Toothless…’

I was furious.‘T-t-toothless not a goody-goody!’ I said.

‘Oh, but you are,’ purred Fireworm. ‘All the OTHER dragons have been eating… Why, Seaslug and I captured a whole load of nanodragons and had a real FEAST this morning… Ohhh those nanodragons were so TASTY…’

I could feel my mouth beginning to water. Nanodragons are a species of tiny little dragons about the size of insects, and they are a real treat for us larger dragons.

I know any humans reading this are a bit squeamish about us dragons eating other dragons…

This is most unfair.

Nanodragons are an entirely different SPECIES to us hunting dragons, as different as a human is to a chicken. And you humans eat chicken, don’t you?

There you are then. There is absolutely no difference between you humans eating chicken and us eating scrumptious wriggly little nanodragons.

‘Were they the c-c-crunchy kind?’ I asked.

‘No, they were the ones with the soft centres that melt in the mouth…’ replied Fireworm, licking her lips. ‘We ate so many we had to put some in a barrel in the Old Wrecked Ship to save them for later… but of course that wouldn’t interest a GOODY-GOODY like you…’

Fireworm laughed nastily and slunk away into the ferns.

I waited till she was out of earshot and then I shouted out: ‘S-s-snob!’

And then I flapped off in the direction of the Old Wrecked Ship. And there I found the barrel that Fireworm was talking about and I am ashamed to say, I ate EVERY SINGLE ONE of those nanodragons. And they were YUMMY.

I ate so many I couldn’t even fly home. I had to WALK back, groaning, and it took me several tries to climb up into my favourite spot in Hiccup’s bed. Once I had managed it I fell immediately into a deep sleep.

That was where Hiccup had found me, four hours later, and stuffed me into his shirt to take me to the Night Hunting Competition.

THAT was the Bad Thing that had happened this afternoon.

5. EVERYTHING GOES WRONG

As soon as I remembered what had happened, I could feel that nanodragon feast weighing down my stomach. I felt a little sick.

I had been TRICKED. From the look of her, flying around like a buzzard that had drunk a lot of coffee, Fireworm hadn’t eaten ANYTHING that day at all. She had TRICKED me.

‘What happened this afternoon, Toothless?’ Hiccup asked me again, sternly. I couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and shuffled down his arm, shrugging my shoulders.

‘N-n-nothing…’ I said.

Hiccup looked relieved.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, getting excited now. ‘Let’s get going… we’ve got a bit of work to do to catch up with Fireworm and Snotlout. Now, Toothless, just hunt like you’ve been hunting for the past two weeks and we should beat them, no problem. Keep the boat steady there, Fishlegs…’

Fishlegs swung The Hopeful Puffin round a bit. It was really getting dark now. You could just see the five other boats around us in the bay. The other dragons were climbing high, high into the air and then diving down into the water to catch the fish.

‘Ready… steady… GO!’ said Hiccup, and he quickly raised the arm that I was standing on. This was supposed to be the signal for me to THROW myself into the air.

But nothing happened.

Oh, I tried all right, flapping my wings, struggling to lift off, but that weight in my stomach just wouldn’t let me fly. There I was, batting those wings up and down, still stuck like a limpet to Hiccup’s arm.

‘This isn’t the time for mucking about, Toothless!’ said Hiccup sharply.

And he repeated, ‘Ready… steady… GO!’

This time, with a lot of work, I did actually make it off his arm and into the air. I rose about a foot or so, flapping desperately… and then sank like a stone, hitting the deck of The Hopeful Puffin with a nasty thud.

‘Toothless!’ cried Hiccup, very worried now. ‘What’s the matter, are you all right? What’s wrong with you?’

I rolled around the deck groaning and holding my belly.

Hiccup picked me up. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked again.

I hung my head and covered my eyes with my wings.

In a very muffled voice I told Hiccup what had happened that afternoon.

‘S-s-sorry…’ I said, miserably. I didn’t dare look at him.

‘Never mind, Toothless,’ said Hiccup, sighing heavily. ‘What can you do if people are going to CHEAT?’

At that moment Fireworm came sailing over and perched on the mast.

‘Flying problems, little Mongrel?’ she sneered. ‘Well, if you will be such a greedy little pig and gorge yourself on nanodragons on a HUNTING DAY…’

‘Oh, buzz off, Fireworm, you BIG RED CHEAT…’ snapped Hiccup crossly.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Fishlegs, who didn’t understand Dragonese, so he wasn’t sure what was going on.

Hiccup explained.

‘Maybe HORRORCOW could catch us some fish,’ said Fishlegs, turning desperately to his own dragon. Horrorcow was sitting singing to herself on one of the benches like a small, peaceful brown-and-white cow.

‘Well, you know, boys,’ she said cosily, ‘of course I’ll do my best… but I AM a vegetarian, you know… and hunting isn’t my strong point…’

She got slowly to her feet, and flapped off, still singing.

‘Oh, for Thor’s sake,’ cried Fishlegs, ‘this is TERRIBLE…’

Hiccup tried to cheer him up. ‘Oh, come on, Fishlegs, it’s not that bad…’

‘Not that bad?’ said Fishlegs. ‘Not that bad?? How could it be worse?’

He was so cross he got to his feet and glared furiously at the Heavens. ‘YOU ANSWER ME, THOR AND WODEN!’ he shouted at the sky above, shaking his fist. ‘It’s so UNFAIR! Why do you always let the BAD GUYS win? Why do WE always end up in the Dragon Toilets? And HOW, oh HOW could this be worse?’

And then the lights went out.

6. IN THE DARK

It was a bad moment.

The sun had gone down and we were floating in total darkness. All around us were the cries and shrieks of triumph from the other boys and dragons.

Almost drowned out by this racket, we could just hear the friendly, polite voice of Horrorcow calling, ‘Coooeee, you guys, where are you, I think I might have found one… Oh I’m so sorry, Seaslug, did I bump into you, I do apologise…’

Meanwhile, Snotlout’s yells were the loudest of all as he bellowed at Fireworm. ‘GO FOR IT, FIREWORM! SLICE THEM, FANG THEM, TEAR THEM TO BITS! THAT’S THE WAY, YOU’RE BEATING EVERYBODY ELSE BY MILES, KILL FIREWORM, KILL!’

He was almost as loud as Gobber himself, and in that bad, bad moment, you could begin to imagine Snotlout as the next Chief of the Hairy Hooligans.

And then, in the darkness, you suddenly started to remember all those scary monsters that live in the oceans beneath you.

They were always there, of course, but somehow, in the daylight they didn’t seem so terrible.

‘Seadragons…’ moaned Fishlegs in the darkness. ‘There could be Seadragons underneath us…’

Try and imagine a dragon the size of a MOUNTAIN, a great, evil, glistening mountain with a ravenous appetite and no heart at all, and then you’ll have imagined a Seadragon.

‘Or even Sharkworms?’ groaned Fishlegs.

Sharkworms were dragons that looked remarkably like hammerhead sharks, and therefore they could actually CLIMB ABOARD your ship to get you.

‘And what about DARKBREATHERS?’ Fishlegs panicked. ‘There are loads of DARKBREATHERS in the Inner Isles… We could bump into a DARKBREATHER…’

Darkbreathers were blood-suckers that swam up from the bottom of the ocean like vampires and dragged unlucky Vikings down to the depths where they could do their blood-sucking in peace and quiet.

But all in all, even thinking about these horrors didn’t seem AS awful as listening to Snotlout’s smug yelling.

‘WE’RE GOING TO BE THE MOST PROMISING HUNTERS THESE ISLANDS HAVE EVER SEEN! I’M GOING TO BE THE GREATEST CHIEF THE HOOLIGANS HAVE EVER HAD! KILL, FIREWORM, KILL!’

And there I was, lying with a bad stomach-ache on the edge of the deck, feeling so sad that I’d let everybody down, when a very strange thing happened.

A very strange thing indeed.

7. THE STRANGE THING THAT HAPPENED

The strange thing that happened was that my stomach began to GLOW.

It gave me a huge shock.

First there was this little flicker inside, and then it got brighter and brighter, just exactly as if there was a light burning deep down in my belly. I was so frightened I ran up and down the ship shrieking horribly because I thought perhaps I was on fire…

I mean, what would YOU do if YOUR tummy suddenly lit up like a bonfire?

Then Hiccup began to laugh. ‘Toothless,’ he said, ‘what KIND of nanodragons were you pigging out on this afternoon? They weren’t GLOW-WORMS by any chance, were they?’

I stopped running. ‘T-t-toothless not notice…’ I said, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Now I came to think of it, they might easily have been Glow-worms.

Glow-worms are a curious type of nanodragon that look grey and boring in the day-time, but light up like lightbulbs in the dark. I had eaten a whole swarm of the creatures, so now that it was night-time they were lighting up inside me, turning me into a little Dragon Candle.

Hiccup and Fishlegs laughed like anything when they realised what was happening. ‘You must have eaten a LOT of those Glow-worms,’ said Hiccup.

‘Humph,’ I said grumpily.

And then Fishlegs stopped laughing.

‘Look!’ he said, pointing.

I was perching on the rim of the boat, with my stomach sending out light into the darkness. And in the sea on the other side you could just see little dark shapes gathering.

They were FISH, swimming towards the LIGHT my belly was giving out. You may not know this about fish, but they are often drawn towards a light. And in this case, there were not just one or two fish, either. By complete chance, my belly shining like a torch had attracted an entire SHOAL of mackerel.

‘Quick!’ yelled Fishlegs. ‘Let’s get them aboard!’

So that is what they began to do, scooping the fish out of the sea, first with their helmets, and then with an old fishing net that was bundled up under one of the seats of The Hopeful Puffin.

You may not believe this, for if it hadn’t happened to ME, I am not sure I would even believe it myself. All I can say is, the truth is often stranger than stories.

Now it wasn’t so much a question of ME finding the fish, as the FISH finding ME. I had never found hunting so easy in my life. I just hung over the edge of the boat with my stomach shining, and the fish swam up in their many millions and practically threw themselves on deck.

Fishlegs and Hiccup just had to put the net in the water, and a minute later it was heaving with a squirming mass of shiny fat fish. Within a quarter of an hour the deck of The Hopeful Puffin was knee-deep in mackerel.

Fishlegs was so delighted he was hopping from one foot to the other in excitement.

‘We’re going to WIN!’ he said. ‘I just DO NOT believe it… for ONCE in our lives, we are actually going to win! We’re going to BEAT Snotlout! Fate is on our side and WE’RE going to be the HEROES this time!’

Hiccup was so happy he turned quite white and his freckles all stood out.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said slowly.

‘It seems too good to be true…’

It was too good to be true.

For it wasn’t only mackerel that were being attracted by the light on The Hopeful Puffin. Something very large and sinister was swimming slowly up from the deep waters beneath.

8. THE DARKBREATHER

The Something was a Darkbreather.

A Darkbreather is a dragon that lives way down on the sea-bed, in a darkness so deep that the blackness enters its soul, if it ever had a soul. They have truly terrible jaws that are bristling with jagged fangs and seem way too large for their snakelike bodies. They lie for hours with their mouths wide open, waiting for the foolish fish to wander in, thinking they are entering an underwater cave.

Darkbreathers cannot survive for long on the surface – too much oxygen poisons them. However their longing for the light, and their ravenous hunger, draw them upwards anyway, and they often snatch Viking fishermen who are leaning out to pull in their nets, and drag them down to the bottom to drink their blood in peace and quiet.

On this occasion it was ME the Darkbreather was after.

One second I was peacefully leaning out, my belly shining like a star, gloating about how I was going to be named the best hunter and thinking of the amazed look on Fireworm’s face when she found out. The next, this creature BURST out of the water, its jaws wide open like a Great White Shark, scattering mackerel in all directions.

I was off the side of that boat and into Hiccup’s arms like a streak of lightning. The creature’s jaws closed on thin air, and a tiny chunk of The Hopeful Puffin’s wooden rims, and the great Monster collapsed into the sea again, sending a wave of water over the side that drenched the three of us.

‘Aaaaaaaargh!’ screamed Hiccup and Fishlegs and I.

Fishlegs made a grab for the sail and started to pull it up the mast.

The Darkbreather carried on past us, moving in the same twisting, slithering fashion that a snake moves across the sand. It was already, however, beginning to turn round towards the boat again, slowly, because Darkbreathers don’t like to use up too much energy.

‘But it will still be able to outrun us…’ I heard Hiccup whisper almost to himself.

I could see Hiccup thinking fast. He may not be as tough and muscly as the other Vikings but he’s a lot smarter.

‘Halt, Darkbreather!’ he yelled at the creature in Dragonese.

The Darkbreather stopped for a moment, very surprised that a human could speak the Dragonese language. And then it carried on, easily catching us up and swimming alongside. I caught my breath. The animal was at least three times as long as The Hopeful Puffin and it was horribly ugly.

When it spoke back to us, it was in a voice so ghastly and wheezy that it was as if it were coming from the corpse of itself. It was a voice of terrible despair, that came from centuries of living alone with no hope, no warmth, no love.

‘Give me the Star…’ it rasped. ‘I will leave you alone if you give me the Star…’

I gave a yelp as I realised the Darkbreather was talking about ME.

‘This isn’t a star,’ replied Hiccup. ‘This is just a greedy little dragon who has eaten Glow-worms for lunch… he will no longer be light in the morning.’

But the Darkbreather did not hear, or did not want to understand.

‘Give me the Star…’ it repeated with a dreadful sadness.

‘No,’ said Hiccup. ‘I will NOT give him up.’

Hiccup tried to hide me underneath his shirt, but the light inside me still shone out.

‘If you want him,’ said Hiccup, ‘you will have to swallow the boat.’

‘All right then,’ said the Darkbreather, ‘I will.’

And the Monster disappeared underneath the waves.

There was silence for a moment.

The wind had really caught the sails of The Hopeful Puffin now, and we were skimming along quite fast. Without realising, however, we had drifted a long way from the beach and Gobber’s bonfire was only a pin-prick in the distance.

‘Where’s it gone?’ asked Fishlegs in terror. ‘What did you say to it?’

‘I told it,’ said Hiccup, ‘that if it wanted Toothless, it would have to swallow the boat.’

‘What did you say that for?’ shrieked Fishlegs.

‘Because I don’t think it can do it,’ answered Hiccup. Curled up tight against his chest with my eyes closed, I could feel him shivering. ‘And I wanted the Darkbreather to try that rather than hole the boat, for example. That way we DEFINITELY die. This way we only MAYBE die.’

‘Oh, great,’ moaned Fishlegs. ‘Oh that’s marvellous, that is…’

‘Anyway, it seems to have gone…’ said Hiccup.

I peered out from under Hiccup’s shirt. Hiccup seemed to be right.

We were getting closer to the beach. Gobber’s bonfire looked brighter and larger. Ahead of us we could just see the dark shapes of the boats of the other young Vikings, coming in to land. All around us the beams from my belly shone on calm, shimmering waters.

And then…

About a hundred yards behind us, the mouth of the Beast reared up. It was extraordinary. For the creature was not SO much bigger than The Hopeful Puffin itself. But it could open its jaws so incredibly wide it did not seem physically possible.

Hiccup’s mouth fell open also. ‘That’s amazing…’ he murmured. ‘Darkbreathers must have jaws like a snake…’

‘Don’t go banging on about jaws NOW!’ screamed Fishlegs. ‘What are we going to DO???’

‘There’s nothing we CAN do…’ said Hiccup.

Now, I want you to imagine the sheer scariness of the situation we found ourselves in. There we were, in our boat in the middle of the ocean, and behind us there was this enormous MOUTH nearly as big as the boat. We were sailing quite fast, but the MOUTH was moving even faster. It was still some way behind us, but it was getting nearer and nearer…

‘It’s catching up!’ screamed Fishlegs.

It was catching up.

Nearer and nearer it came, like an appalling moving cavern, until it was so close behind us we could smell the cold, dead-fish stink of its breath on our necks. Fishlegs and Hiccup were both screaming now, and desperately paddling to make the poor old Hopeful Puffin go faster. Hiccup looked over his shoulder. ‘I still don’t think that mouth is quite big enough to swallow us…’

I looked too. Terrifying as it was, a great yawning cave of Death, edged with a twisted mess of razor-sharp teeth, the MOUTH was not quite as high as the mast of the The Hopeful Puffin.

But then there was a ghastly click, as the jaws stretched just a little bit wider, and then to my utter horror the MOUTH moved under and over us and took us in.

9. IN THE MOUTH OF THE DARKBREATHER

It took us in whole, and the jaws began to shut. I closed my eyes, for I did not want to see the terrible teeth closing in front of me, shutting out the world forever.

But then there was an awful shudder like an earthquake, and another, and I opened my eyes again, and the jaws were still wide open, but the Darkbreather that held us was screaming and jerking and bucking and lashing like a fish out of water. Hiccup and Fishlegs had to hold on tight so as not to be thrown out of the boat…

… and eventually all was deathly still.

There we were, the boat still jammed absolutely tight in the mouth of the Darkbreather.

But the Creature itself was as dead as a stone.

‘What happened?’ asked Fishlegs shakily.

Hiccup peered upwards. ‘I think…’ he said slowly, ‘I think the mast of the boat might have been just too big for it… it may have pierced through the roof of its mouth and into its brain. That’s AMAZINGLY lucky, because a Darkbreather’s brain is particularly small.’

‘Oh, thank Thor,’ breathed Fishlegs. ‘Thank Thor and Woden and Freya and Loki and pretty much everybody really. We’re ALIVE… and tomorrow, I swear, I’m GIVING UP being a Viking, there MUST be a better way to make a living… looking after sheep or playing a musical instrument or making things out of raffia or SOMETHING… now, let’s get back to the beach before I die of the smell of this creature’s breath.’

This was easier said than done. For The Hopeful Puffin was stuck so tight in the mouth of the Darkbreather that we could not work her free. So Hiccup and Fishlegs had to lean out of the front of the boat and the mouth, being very careful not to cut themselves on the Darkbreather’s teeth, and paddle this strange combination of Boat-Inside-Creature towards the beach.

Which was hard going, before Horrorcow came flapping up and lent a hand, or rather a wing, by towing us with a rope made out of that old fishing net. She hadn’t found any fish AT ALL, so it was a good thing that we still had the vast pile of mackerel that my belly had caught for us.

10. A VIKING NEVER, EVER GETS FRIGHTENED?

In fact, in the end, it was all worth it.

Firstly, as we just about reached the beach, we bumped into Snotlout and Dogsbreath, using the last few minutes of the hour to get Fireworm and Seaslug to still catch more fish.

It was such a pleasure to see the pure terror on their faces as we loomed up behind them. We must have been a ghastly sight, an awful Monster with jaws wide open, and me glowing weirdly in the heart of it.

Fireworm screamed, Snotlout turned as white as a piece of paper, and Dogsbreath wobbled with fear like a human jellyfish.

They were all so frightened, that in their yelling and scrambling to get out of the way they managed to overturn their boat, The Sparrowhawk, and they, and all their fish, tumbled into the sea.

That was good enough in itself.

But then, Gobber was waiting with the others in front of his bonfire…

As Horrorcow pulled us up on to the beach, Hiccup and Fishlegs still paddling ferociously, the last little glow in my belly began to flicker on and off.

And when Gobber looked up to see this Terrible Sight landing on his beach in the darkness, he too, turned an awful green colour.

Gobber wasn’t afraid of Monsters, or Dragons, or storms, or rival Warriors with axes, or pretty much anything really, but the one thing he was afraid of, was GHOSTS. And we did look rather like the ghost of some long-dead creature, with the light in my tummy flickering spookily.

Oh, it did my heart good to see gigantic bossy Gobber shrinking and shivering and falling to his knees and calling out in a thin little voice that trembled: ‘Whhooooo’s theeere??’

And Hiccup decided to teach him a lesson.

‘I AM THE GHOST OF THAT CREATURE YOU KILLED TEN YEARS AGO…’ Hiccup called out.

The walls of the Darkbreather’s mouth made Hiccup’s voice echo in the most satisfactory ghostly fashion. ‘I HAVE COME TO REVENGE MYSELF ON YOU, GOBBER THE BELCH, AND THE WHOLE OF THE REST OF THE TRIBE OF THE HAIRY HOOLIGANS… WELL MAY YOU TREMBLE, FOR I SHALL MAKE YOU SUFFER…’

Behind Gobber, the six tough young thugs, Clueless and Sharpknife and Wartihog and everybody, didn’t look so tough any more. They also fell to their knees.

‘Have mercy, Ghost!’ begged Gobber, clasping his hands together, and starting to sob. ‘I didn’t mean to kill you… I’m so clumsy, my hand must have slipped… Oh help me, Mummy, help me…’

‘Just kidding,’ said Hiccup, hopping out of the boat and over the grim lips of the Monster. ‘It is I, Hiccup Horrendous the Third, who one day will be your CHIEF.’

Hiccup strolled over to where Gobber was kneeling, and looked his teacher straight in the eye.

‘And as you can see, Gobber,’ said Hiccup sternly, ‘it is not true that A VIKING NEVER, EVER GETS FRIGHTENED. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, is frightened of something.’

11. THE END

There was an awful silence.

Nobody had EVER dared to speak to Gobber in this way before. I held my breath, and the last dim little blaze of light in my belly went out entirely.

The expression on Gobber’s face changed from fear to embarrassment to RAGE.

He staggered to his feet, his brow like thunder, his fists clenched.

And just as he was about to ROAR at Hiccup, something about the royal way the boy was looking at him made Gobber stop.

And instead of being angry, to everyone’s astonishment, Gobber’s great shoulders heaved, and his mouth twitched, and Gobber threw back his head and laughed.

‘HA HA HA HA HA!’ bellowed Gobber. ‘Oh, you had me there, Hiccup, you had me there! Ghost of something I’d killed, indeed!’

And everybody else began to laugh too.

In between gusts of laughter, Gobber went over to The Hopeful Puffin, still caught in the jaws of the dead Darkbreather. He admired the great heap of fish on the deck.

‘It looks like Hiccup and Fishlegs are the winners of the Hunting Competition!’ boomed Gobber the Belch. ‘THREE CHEERS FOR HICCUP AND FISHLEGS!’

The young Vikings were just in the middle of cheering for Hiccup when Snotlout and Dogsbreath staggered out of the sea, having swum to shore.

‘You’re late!’ glowered Gobber. ‘And where is your boat and your fish?’

‘The boat turned over…’ muttered Snotlout.

‘THE BOAT TURNED OVER?’ boomed Gobber. ‘And you call yourselves Vikings? It looks like we’ve found the LOSERS of our Hunting Competition… SNOTLOUT AND DOGSBREATH WILL BE MUCKING OUT THE DRAGON TOILETS FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS!’

Snotlout groaned and Fireworm and Seaslug stuck their tails between their legs and wimpered.

Dogsbreath nearly cried.

It was the perfect end to a day that had turned out fairly perfect after all.

The boys began to rush about getting things ready for a midnight barbecue of all those fish we’d caught. All together, with Gobber’s help, they managed to release The Hopeful Puffin from the jaws of the Darkbreather. Her mast was slightly bent, but then it had always been a bit wonky, anyway.

I had finally digested my meal of Glow-worms, and so at last I was hungry again, and could do some victory somersaults in the air, and even more importantly, look forward to a nice big mackerel supper.

And it was only I who heard Gobber mutter to himself during the cheering, ‘Hiccup was right… EVERYBODY is frightened of SOMETHING…

Perhaps that boy will be Chief of this Tribe one day after all…’

EPILOGUE

Gobber’s new-found respect for Hiccup did not last.

A couple of days later, when Hiccup dropped the ball for the seventh time in a Bashyball game, Gobber started shouting at him again: ‘FOR THOR’S SAKE, HICCUP, YOU’RE PLAYING LIKE A FIVE-YEAR-OLD, HONESTLY, MY GRANNY COULD DO BETTER THAN THIS AND SHE’S NINETY-SEVEN…’ and so on.

And within a fortnight, as far as Gobber was concerned, it was as if the Hunting-at-Night Competition had never happened. But I never forgot it. How could I forget that glorious time long long ago in my childhood, when Snotlout and Dogsbreath had to muck out the Dragon Toilets for THREE WHOLE WEEKS?

I visited them every single day.

Wasn’t that kind of me?

And even now that I am an old, old dragon I still sometimes dream that I am shining like a star again, and through the deep waters of my sleep the great despairing Mouth of the Darkbreather comes swimming up to swallow me… and Hiccup says again the quiet words:

‘… I WILL NOT give him up…’

And he never has.

~ CONTENTS ~

Prologue by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III

1. The Clever and Intelligent Plan

2. Who is the Boss?

3. A Little Snack for Toothless

4. Is There Such a Thing as a Haunted Egg?

5. Toothless is Not Your Papa

6. The Terrible Power of the Dreader

7. The Attack of the Dreader

8. Dragons are Selfish Don’t you Know That?

9. Back to the Hooligans and the Dreader’s Dreadful Power

10. Having Your Own Pet is a Wonderful Thing Of Course

11. It’s a Mystery

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Stories do not always tell the truth…

Except for this one.

Many stories have been told about what happened on THE DAY OF THE DREADER. Many sagas have been sung by the bards at the fireside. But I have to warn you, dear reader or listener, stories do not always tell the truth. The bard gets carried away. Legends get added to and exaggerated, and so gradually, gradually… the truth gets lost along the way.

Here, for the very first time, I shall tell you the real story, the truth about what really happened on that dreadful day…

It is the truth, I promise.

One terrible winter, a truly dreadful Seadragon rose up from the depths of the ocean like a bad mood from Thor and swam to the waters surrounding the little Isle of Berk and took root in the dark mud there. You could not see him; all that was visible was a long dark shadow, a deep depression in the water that was so big it was almost as long as the island itself.

The name of that Seadragon was a ‘Dreader’.

The Dreader was no ordinary Seadragon.

Every single dragon in the ocean was frightened of a Dreader.

Sharkworms and Darkbreathers and Doomfangs all scattered like flies at the sight of it. Even a much larger dragon like the mighty Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus, a dragon the size of an underwater mountain, would give a snort of terror when it spotted a Dreader on the horizon, and with one flap of its mighty tail, it would disappear into the depths of the ocean.

For it was said that a Dreader had a power that was truly dreadful indeed.

Legend had it that it sucked out every drop of moisture from its victim’s body, leaving it as thin and desiccated as a piece of paper. Or it merely removed its senses, or its brain or its heart, leaving it as frantic as a box of frogs, or a lifeless lump of flesh.

The Hooligans were so frightened of the Dreader lurking by their shore, that no boats or hunting-dragons could leave the island to hunt fish. They were waiting for the Dreader to go away.

They waited, and waited, and waited.

And as they waited, they ate everything they could find on the little Isle of Berk.

They ate all the fat black mussels that clung to the rocks. They ate all the scallops and oysters and big juicy clams they could find on the beaches.

But the Dreader would not go away.

And slowly but surely, the Hooligans and the dragons on the little Isle of Berk began to starve…

1. THE CLEVER AND INTELLIGENT PLAN

Six weeks after the Dreader first swam to the Isle of Berk, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third looked up at his father, Stoick the Vast, the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.

‘I think you’re wrong, Father,’ stammered Hiccup.

The Great Hall on Berk was full to bursting with Hooligan Warriors, slightly less large of belly and chunky of thigh than they had been six weeks before, but still an impressively gigantic and unwashed lot. This mass of muscled, hairy Vikings gave a gasp of horror and turned to gaze at Hiccup, who stood on one leg and turned red to the tips of his ears.

Hiccup was not what you might call a typical Hooligan.

He was thin and clever-looking, with the kind of entirely unmemorable face that does not normally stick out in a crowd. After six weeks of eating very little, he was just skin and bone, and his elbows stuck out of his shirt like sticks.

‘Wrong?’ bellowed Stoick the Vast. ‘You think I’m WRONG????’

Stoick, on the other hand, although Not-as-Vast-as-He-Normally-Was (owing to the forced diet as a result of the Dreader’s presence), still had muscles on his chest that would have made a decent-sized bull weep tears of jealousy.

And when he bellowed, he BELLOWED like a dinosaur declaring war, so these gentle words could have been heard faintly but clearly on the neighbouring island.

Hiccup swallowed hard.

‘Yes, Father,’ he repeated defiantly. ‘I think you’re wrong.’

Stoick had called an emergency meeting in the Great Hall to present his ‘Clever and Intelligent Plan for Getting Rid of the Dreader’.

Stoick was not the brightest barbarian in the business. In fact, he had just about enough brain-cells to keep one gigantic leg moving in front of the other.

So this Plan had taken him weeks of sleepless nights, and painful days, with Gobber the Belch holding his sword-arm and applying hot towels while he went through the exhausting process of thinking.

And as a result Stoick wasn’t too happy about the Clever and Intelligent Plan being criticised.

The Plan was this:

‘If you provoke the Dreader like this, it might attack out of self-defence,’ said Hiccup. ‘I think we should try and talk to it, and ask it what it wants…’

‘TALK TO IT?’ yelled Stoick. ‘The speaking of Dragonese is forbidden, as well you know. And Legend tells us that the Dreader is one of the most fearsome and supernatural creatures in the Archipelago. Its power is horrific…’

‘Well then,’ said Hiccup stubbornly, ‘if we can’t talk to it I think we should be patient a little longer, and wait for it to go away.’

Stoick the Vast swelled and turned purple with temper. ‘BE PATIENT?’ stormed Stoick the Vast furiously. ‘I’ve been eating limpets for the last six weeks! If that’s not patience, I don’t know what is.’

‘Yes, but Father—’ argued Hiccup.

‘SILENCE!’ roared Stoick. ‘The Chief has spoken! Every man, woman, child and dragon will join in the Clever and Intelligent Plan tomorrow! The Dreader must die!’

‘ATTACK!’ bellowed the Vikings, raising weary arms despite their empty tummies. ‘The Dreader dies tomorrow!’

Fishlegs, Hiccup’s best friend, was the only person in the Hooligan Tribe who was worse at everything Vikingy than Hiccup. Fishlegs had asthma, eczema, and an inconvenient allergy to reptiles.

Now he sighed, and said to Hiccup, ‘You’re not going to persuade them, Hiccup. You know what they’re like. After a while they just have to go and BASH something, however ridiculous an idea that is. It’s like asking a whole load of over-excited warthogs to be patient.’

Hiccup sighed too. ‘I know, I just have a really bad feeling about this Dreader business.’ Hiccup swallowed. His stomach did a couple of nauseating flip-flops as he thought about some of the things he had found out about the Dreader in the sagas he had read. ‘I heard about one Viking ship that had a nasty encounter with a Dreader… and when they came back to harbour –’ Hiccup’s voice dropped to a whisper ‘– every one of them had lost their heads. They were all sitting there, still holding their oars… but not a head on any of them. No wonder all the other dragons are frightened of them.’

Fishlegs sighed and rubbed his neck. ‘I thought they were just supposed to send you frantic. But they remove your whole head, do they? You see, I’m very fond of my head,’ said Fishlegs. ‘Me and my head go way back. Call me old-fashioned but I’m definitely keen on keeping it right where it is.’

Up in the rafters perched the hunting-dragons, large as crocodiles, their ribs showing through their thin skin, their eyes watching the cheering Vikings down below. There were Slitherfangs, Gronckles, Monstrous Nightmares – a multitude of dragon species. Who will win the day tomorrow? thought the dragons. Whoever it is, we shall get fed at last.

Dragons, you see, are only faithful to their human masters up to a certain point. And the dragons were hungry too.

2. WHO IS THE BOSS?

Later that evening, when Hiccup returned home, his father was furious with him.

‘How dare you question me in public, Hiccup!’ yelled Stoick. ‘Criticising my plan, and banging on about talking to the Dreader, when everyone knows that the speaking of Dragonese is forbidden. Not only is it disloyal to me, it’s dangerous. You will be Chief one day and you can’t have them thinking you talk to dragons. It’s not allowed and, well, it is a little… weird!’

Hiccup looked miserable. He was always trying to please his father, and somehow he never seemed to.

‘Promise me you will not try and talk to this monster!’ ordered Stoick. ‘I don’t want you getting too close to it!’

Hiccup mumbled that he promised.

‘And another thing!’ roared Stoick. ‘Who do you think did this?’

Stoick held up the chewed remains of a swordbelt. Uh-oh.

Hiccup’s hunting-dragon, Toothless, was hiding guiltily under the table.

Toothless was the smallest, cutest, most wriggly Common-or-Garden hunting-dragon that anybody had ever seen, before or since.

He was also the NAUGHTIEST.

‘Umm…’ muttered Hiccup. ‘Mice?’ he suggested hopefully.

‘This was not mice! Those are the gum-marks of a fang-free dragon!’ yelled Stoick. ‘YOUR dragon, Hiccup! And I suppose you’re going to tell me that those flame-breathing mice have set fire to my priceless spear collection as well?

‘That dragon of yours is completely out of control!’ screamed Stoick the Vast. ‘If he’s not chewing things he’s burning my underpants. There are scorch-marks all over this house. You have to show him who’s boss, Hiccup, show him who’s boss.’

And Stoick the Vast reached under the table with his big fat arm, and he caught Toothless by the leg, and sat him on the table.

‘NOW LISTEN TO ME, JUICELESS OR WHATEVER YOU’RE CALLED,’ yelled Stoick firmly. ‘THE NEXT TIME YOU BURN SOMETHING OR CHEW SOMETHING I WILL THROW YOU OUT OF THIS HOUSE FOR EVER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

‘You see, Hiccup?’ explained Stoick. ‘It’s perfectly simple. I am your boss, so I think up the Clever and Intelligent Plan, and you do as you are told. And you are the boss of Toothless, so you tell him what to do and he does it. Now, I’m going to need an early night if I’m going to bash up that Dreader tomorrow.’

And he gave a gigantic yawn and stomped off to bed. Hiccup looked at Toothless reproachfully.

‘You have to stop being so selfish,’ said Hiccup.*

‘But T-T-Toothless was hungry,’ whined Toothless. ‘Was Toothless’s tummy’s fault. It told Toothless it was so empty and Toothless felt sorry for it…’

Hiccup sighed.

‘We’re all hungry, Toothless. It’s so hard looking after you if you won’t do what you’re told. You know the rules, they’re all written up on your star chart… No chewing my father’s stuff…’

‘O-O-OK.’ Toothless nodded his head so hard his horns wobbled.

‘No pooing inside the house…’

‘N-n-n-no, no, no…’ agreed Toothless.

‘And absolutely no setting fire to things…’ said Hiccup in his sternest voice. ‘You don’t want my father throwing you out, do you?’

‘Toothless will be g-g-good!’ said Toothless. ‘Toothless promises. Cross Toothless’s heart and hope to die, Toothless will be very, very good.’

But I’m afraid I know the truth, and Toothless had his claws crossed behind his back.

3. A LITTLE SNACK FOR TOOTHLESS

The next day, the Hooligans got ready for war against the Dreader, and Toothless refused to go.

‘Is not Toothless’s fault that big bully Dreader in the harbour. Nothing to do with Toothless,’ Toothless sniffed from under the nice warm covers.

‘OK,’ said Hiccup, ‘you stay here if you don’t want to help, but DON’T LEAVE THIS ROOM, TOOTHLESS. My father is cross enough with you already.’

Hiccup looked very silly in his battle kit. He was now so skinny his belt kept slipping down over his hips and tripping him up.

‘T-T-Toothless do as he’s told. Toothless a good dragon,’ said Toothless. ‘N-n-no chewing, n-n-no pooing, no burning, Toothless knows…’

But as soon as Toothless heard Hiccup’s footsteps padding out the front door, and the sound of those Hooligans thundering down the hillside towards the harbour, Toothless poked out his snout from under the covers.

‘P-p-poor Toothless is hungry,’ he moaned. ‘Nobody cares about poor Toothless starving to death. They all so s-s-selfish…’ Toothless’s fat little belly gave a protesting rumble, as if in agreement. Toothless patted it comfortingly. ‘D-d-don’t you worry, lovely little tummy… Toothless’ll feed you… You can rely on Toothless…’

He gave a sudden squeal of excitement. He had just remembered. A couple of months ago, he had buried three eggs just outside the Great Hall. Toothless often hid little snacks like this, so that he could enjoy them at a later date, but with all the excitement about the Dreader he had completely forgotten about this particular little treat.

Toothless swooped through the smoke in the empty hall and out through the open door. There was a scrabbly patch of grass and gorse bushes and bracken in front of the Great Hall, and Toothless flew over it several times, his sharp little greengage eyes searching for something. Eventually he found the right spot, and started digging vigorously with his front paws.

The ferns shook fiercely for a couple of minutes, mud spraying upwards like a dirt volcano, until Toothless unearthed three large eggs, a beautiful lime green in colour, and lightly speckled with pale-brown freckles. Toothless licked his lips with his forked tongue, mouth watering already. FOOD.

There was nothing Toothless liked more than a delicious egg. Boiled eggs, fried eggs, coddled eggs, you name it, Toothless liked them any way at all.

But Toothless was particularly fond of a baked egg, cooked for just long enough that the yoke was still runny but the white was firm and scrumptious.

Toothless began to roll the eggs towards the open door of the Great Hall, using the end of his snout and his wings. It was quite tricky rolling three of them at once, as they tended to go off in opposite directions, and he had to be very gentle, for fear of cracking them. Once he’d got them through the front door it was easier, for the Great Hall had a smooth dirt floor, just right for rolling. Triumphantly, Toothless rolled the eggs over the floor, and one, two, three, right into the ashes of the fire smoking on the hearthstone.

Then, cooing with greed, he tenderly scooped the ash over them with his wings, so that they were completely buried in the hot grey dust. (Toothless’s skin, like all dragonskin, was fairly fireproof, so he could do this without hurting himself.)

Chirruping with satisfaction, and drooling with excitement, Toothless perched on one leg on top of the meat-spit, to wait for them to cook, blinking fondly at the little mounds in the ash.

4. IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A HAUNTED EGG?

After about two minutes, something strange happened.

The ash around the eggs turned lime-green, and the eggs themselves began to shake, and one of them shook so hard that it wobbled itself right out of the ash and rolled on to the floor again. Squeaking with alarm, Toothless shepherded it back into the ash again, muttering, ‘N-n-not ready yet! You’re not ready!’

But no sooner had he got one egg safely back and buried in the ash, then another rolled off in a completely different direction. Squealing and baffled, Toothless swooped after one, and then the other, scooping them back into the fire with his wings, like an anxious mother hen with her disobedient chicks. But they kept on rolling out again, and before long Toothless was out of breath, and indignant and covered with ash.

Finally, he manoeuvred one of the eggs all the way back from the other side of the room for the fifth time, and buried it lovingly next to its fellows, and there was a brief moment when all three lay still, as they should be. ‘Th-th-there,’ said Toothless with a grunt of satisfaction – and all three gave a violent tremble at the same time, as if they were in secret communication with one another, and rocked fiercely out of the fire-bed, bowling around the room in wild wandering circles.

Toothless sat down heavily in the fire, in his bewilderment, putting out the last remains of the flames with his bottom. He followed the wild progress of the eggs with his eyes as they looped erratically around the dust of the Great Hall, gathering speed as they went.

‘W-w-what’s going on?’ squeaked Toothless. ‘Stay h-h-here and do as you’re told!’

Food shouldn’t run away like this. It should stay still, and let itself be cooked, like any self-respecting sausage or carrot. It shouldn’t be running around the room as if it had a mind of its own, weaving its way through the chair legs and generally showing off.

One of the eggs had come to rest against a table leg. Crouching down low, Toothless stalked the egg slowly, as if it were prey. The egg did not move. Feeling braver, Toothless edged a little closer. The egg remained motionless. Toothless froze, ready to pounce, whiskers quivering faintly, every muscle tense. The egg was eggily still.

Toothless sprang… and just at the last minute the egg wobbled wildly into life, swerving out of the way and skittering out of reach, so that poor Toothless’s paws closed on nothing, and the momentum carried him forward, and he bashed his nose on the table leg.

‘Rrreeeowww…’ Toothless let out a strangled meowing noise like a cat that has had its tail pulled.

And ‘Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee…’ came the sound from the egg, gently vibrating on the spot. Toothless could have sworn it was tittering. Muffled giggling noises came from the two other eggs, on the other sides of the room.

Now poor Toothless was thoroughly terrified. He stuck his tail between his legs and whimpered pathetically.

‘H-H-H-HAUNTED eggs!’ moaned poor Toothless. Probably inhabited by the ghosts of vengeful suppers that Toothless had burgled over the years, and let’s face it, there were loads of those.

It was the only explanation. Just as he was backing away, the spines on his back quivering like porcupine needles, there was a loud CRACK!

… and crooked little lines appeared all over the lime-green surface of the egg.

CRACK!

CRACK!

CRACK!

A hard little head punched its way through the eggshell (it had to be hard for the shells of dragon eggs are nearly a centimetre thick). A tiny little dragon, with huge yellow eyes and a black smudge on the end of its nose, blinked back at an astonished Toothless.

And after a gob-smacked minute while Toothless digested this latest surprising development:

‘Papa!’ squeaked the little smudgy dragon. ‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’

5. TOOTHLESS IS NOT YOUR PAPA

With every ‘Papa!’ the tiny creature head-butted the shell that was still partly encasing him, until with a final CRACK! the dragon unfolded its wet little wings and the egg fell apart entirely into tiny smashed pieces of green.

The dragon was far smaller than the size of the egg that had encased it, a little larger perhaps than a baby chick or duckling, but not a lot. It was covered all over with lime-green goo, and as it shook out its wings, the startling orange of a scallop coral, it flung a fine rain of gooey stuff over Toothless himself.

‘Y-y-yucky,’ groaned Toothless.

The little dragon grinned. ‘Papa,’ it repeated, looking up at him lovingly.

Toothless was horrified. ‘Me? Toothless not your P-p-papa. Toothless HATES babies…’

The dragon baby ignored this and hopped towards Toothless enthusiastically. ‘Papa!’

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The other two eggs split apart too, on opposite sides of the room.

‘Papa!’

‘Papa!’

Two more little dragon babies hopped out of the smashed remains of their shells and hopped unsteadily towards Toothless.

The second one was yellow rather than green and had a remarkably flat head, because it had spent its egg-hood bashing against the walls of the shell. The third was a bit smaller and bright blue and kept on falling over because it had a rather wobbly leg, and a permanent case of the hiccups.

It tended to charge ahead in an uncontrolled fashion as if its legs had run away with it, before listing to the left and landing on its bottom and saying ‘Whoops!’ in a surprised fashion. Although why it was surprised I have no idea, because it fell over pretty much every two minutes, so it shouldn’t have been much of a shock when it did it again.

It also had a terrible cold, so every now and then it added ‘Aaatishoo!’ to the ‘Hic!’ ‘Whoops’ and ‘Ow!’s.

‘Papa!’ squealed the second one gruffly.

‘It’s our Papa! Hic! Whoops… Ow… ATISHOO!’ said the third one.

‘Toothless N-N-NOT your Papa,’ said Toothless firmly, but backing away nonetheless as the little creatures rushed towards him in a flurry of green goo.

‘Toothless not like babies… B-b-babies is yucky and wet, and ever so soppy…’

These babies were certainly all that, but they carried on rushing towards him in a yucky soppy gooey mess nonetheless, and he had to take off suddenly so that the little blue one bashed into all the others, and Toothless flapped up to perch on one of the ceiling beams and blinked down at them furiously. They couldn’t yet fly, so they couldn’t follow him, they just leapt up and down, cheeping and clicking furiously.

Toothless tucked his head under his wing and pretended to go to sleep.

Five minutes later they were still there, cheeping and clicking, and bouncing more hysterically than ever. ‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’

Oh, fish-hooks.

Toothless would never live it down with the other dragons if he kept on being followed about by soppy little dragon babies.

‘GO AWAY! Toothless NOT your Papa…Toothless just tried to eat you…Toothless could still eat you…’ Toothless shouted down from the roof beam.

In fact, Toothless ate pretty much anything but even he drew the line at baby dragons who thought you were their father. However, from Toothless’s perch he had a great view out of one of the high windows.

Through the window, he caught sight of a red dragon flying towards the house, still some distance away.

Fireworm.

Fireworm would take care of the problem. You see, Fireworm was a Monstrous Nightmare and did not suffer from any of Toothless’s rare qualms of conscience, and she would gobble up three insufferably cute little dragons in less time than it took a dragon to scratch its own ear. The cuter the better, as far as Fireworm was concerned.

Toothless grinned. She was definitely flying their way, probably hoping that Stoick had left some titbits over from breakfast. Toothless settled down more comfortably on the roof beam to wait for her to show up. It wouldn’t be his fault if Fireworm decided to eat them, would it?

The moment that Fireworm set eyes on those babies, they would be doomed…

6. THE TERRIBLE POWER OF THE DREADER

I’m sorry, it doesn’t seem a very good moment, but we’ll just have to leave those babies in awful peril, about to be eaten up by Fireworm, while we return to catch up with what was happening with Hiccup and the Hooligans.

Because they were in trouble too, you see.

Dreadful, ghastly trouble.

Trouble too nasty to even think about, let alone tell.

The Hooligans were aboard their ships, and the ships were already out in the bay, carrying out Stoick’s Clever and Intelligent Plan.

They were advancing on that great, grim underwater shadow, banging on their shields with their axes to shoo away this terrible beast.

Even the bravest of the Hooligans, magnificent warriors like that gormless muscly giant, Gobber the Belch, were terrified, and white to the lips.

All of their senses told them to ‘Go back!’, to run away from that darkness under the waves, and not to go nearer.

‘Go back! Go back! Go back!’

But hunger had made them desperate.

So they forced their quaking hairy arms to row towards the dreadful shadow. They made their poor exhausted limbs bash those axes weakly on those shields, and ordered their poor shaking feet to drum out a pathetic human warning to the mighty, pitiless horror that was lurking under the water.

It was very, very brave of those Hooligans.

It was also extremely foolish.

Hiccup and Fishlegs were aboard Stoick’s ship, The Fat Penguin.

Fishlegs was trembling all over, his legs shivering uncontrollably, as if he had caught some feverish plague. He had his eyes closed, in the useless and pathetic hope that if he couldn’t see what was happening, maybe he wasn’t really there.

He tried to bash his axe on his shaking shield, moaning, ‘Oh this noise really isn’t helping my headache one bit…’

Fishlegs laughed, but the laugh grew out of control, and became very high-pitched. ‘What’s going on, Hiccup? Has the Dreader sucked out anybody’s heart or removed their head yet? ’

‘Not yet,’ replied Hiccup cautiously. He too, was pale as death, heart beating so quick he felt sick with the pulse of it. This was going to be a really unpleasant way to die…

And then, in front of Hiccup’s terrified eyes, a miracle happened.

‘Hang on a second,’ panted Hiccup, in joyous astonishment. ‘I don’t believe it… It’s turning… It’s moving away!’

And so it seemed.

The dark shape uncurled its serpentine coils from around the island. It moved away, out into the sea that was Woden’s Bathtub, and as it moved, the famished Vikings could hardly believe their luck.

Terror turned to hope in an instant.

The hope gave strength to their arms, and they increased their banging on the shields and let out a ragged Hooligan Hoorah, as they saw themselves being able to fish for food for the first time in many, many weeks.

‘Bring out the nets!’ bellowed Stoick the Keen-to-be-Vast-Again, red with relief.

Thank Thor, thank Thor.

For one horrible moment, he had thought perhaps his Plan hadn’t been such a good one after all. He shook his sword, and patted his poor empty belly.

‘You see, Hiccup?’ Flushed and beaming with triumph, Stoick turned to his son. ‘The Plan is working my boy.’

He patted Hiccup kindly on the head. ‘Watch and learn, Hiccup laddie, watch and learn. My Clever and Intelligent Plan is working. Thinking skills, you see. Brain power.’

Stoick tapped his hairy head importantly, and then roared to the Viking warriors in relieved joy: ‘THERE WILL BE FEASTING TONIGHT, BY THE STOMACH-JUICES OF THOR, THERE WILL, MY FELLOW HOOLIGANS!’

But WHO would be feasting on WHOM???

Sometimes we rejoice too soon, brothers and sisters.

Sometimes we rejoice too soon, and we forget we are not safe until we reach the shore, or the end of the story, whichever is nearer.

It seemed that the Hooligans had rejoiced too soon, for slowly, slowly the shadow that had been moving away, like a departing underwater battleship, slowly, slowly, came to a halt.

Slowly, slowly, the shadow turned again…

It turned to face the Hooligan fleet.

Stoick was not what you might call a lightning thinker, but even he realised that this was not good news. His mouth dropped open. ‘Uh-oh.’

And the Hooligan Hurrah died on famished lips, and all around the ships the Hooligans stopped banging on their shields, and the noise came to a confused halt as their poor weakened arms were frozen in terror.

All except for Fishlegs, who banged away more shakily than ever, squeaking, ‘Why are they stopping, Hiccup? Why are they stopping? Actually don’t tell me… I don’t want to know.’

Hiccup, peering out into that darkness, swallowed hard, though his mouth had no moisture, for it was dry as dust.

‘Don’t open your eyes yet, Fishlegs,’ was all he said.

The shadow was moving…

Oh for Thor’s sake, it was huge…

It was moving, moving, and the darkened sea swelled up and began to surge towards them like a tidal wave but it wasn’t a tidal wave at all…

It was the Dreader.

7. THE ATTACK OF THE DREADER

There was a dreadful ghastly silence.

And then the Hooligans lost it.

Relief turned back to terror again, in an instant.

They forgot their empty bellies, and their pride, and the Clever and Intelligent Plan.

All they saw was the shadow, that hole in the water that they filled up with their worst, their darkest, their most terrible fears…

And then ‘MAKE FOR THE SHORE!’ bellowed Stoick the Vast, and they hauled on the sail like wild things, trying to change direction and go back to the harbour, for the wind was carrying them straight into the path of the charging beast.

Only Fishlegs banged away at his shield, eyes tight shut, shouting, ‘Don’t tell me what’s happening! Don’t tell me what’s happening!’

But Hiccup couldn’t have told him what was happening anyway.

Hiccup, you see, had forgotten the promise that he had made his father.

He was already leaning over the side of the boat, shouting at the Dreader in the water, the shadow that was gaining on them…

Just to make things even worse, the wind had died.

The sail was flapping and sagging uselessly as the Dreader stormed towards them.

It was as if they were in one of those bad dreams in which you are being chased, but you cannot move your legs.

The boat was stuck to the ocean like a fly to fly-paper.

The Vikings blundered towards their oars, roaring in terror, pushing each other over in their panic.

Hiccup leaned as far as he could over the side of the boat.

‘WHAT… DO… YOU… WANT?’ shouted Hiccup at the Dreader in Dragonese. ‘HOW… CAN… I… HELP YOU?’

The tiny words were snatched by the wind the moment they left Hiccup’s mouth.

Snatched, and tossed away, as the depression in the water deepened and gained and the wind screamed louder.

Hiccup HAD to get close to this dragon, so that he could speak to it. He just HAD to…

Thinking of nothing but getting near enough so his voice could be heard, Hiccup climbed the slippery dragon figure-head of the boat, his hands sliding on the cold wet wood, the wind tearing frantically at his clothes and his hair.

‘WHAT DO YOU WANT??’ screamed Hiccup, louder still. ‘Please don’t take our heads… or our blood, or our hearts…WHAT DO YOU WANT???’

And then right in front of Hiccup’s terrified gaze, two enormous eyes rose to the surface, but did not break the water.

‘AAAAAARRGGHHGHHHH!’ shrieked Hiccup, as to his absolute horror, his hands slid on the wooden dragon’s head. He couldn’t keep his grip. He was going to fall into the sea, into the path of that dreadful creature.

He fell…

… and the back of his waistcoat caught on the edge of one of the figurehead’s teeth, so that he hung there, dangling and scrabbling wildly in front of the advancing Dreader, like a fish on a hook.

Oh for Thor’s sake, shrieked a voice in Hiccup’s head. I’m going to be the first to go…

He braced himself for the Dreader’s attack.

The mouth broke the water, and the creature screamed as if in pain. The wind from its inhaling mouth sucked the boat towards it, despite the Vikings desperately paddling with all the strength of their hungry limbs.

The inhaled scream of that Dreader made the head ring like it was a bell being rung by Thor’s hammer from the inside, but it seemed to Hiccup like the weird terrible scream contained half-formed words in a very ancient Dragonese indeed, and the words were:

‘You stole my future.’

Maybe that was what the words were, and maybe that wasn’t – they were so unformed it was hard to say.

But on the final shrieking syllable the sucking-in ceased and the creature exhaled, and Hiccup’s last thought was:

Here we go… The Dreader’s going to use its power now…

And there was a truly ear-splitting noise… A horrible choking yank at Hiccup’s neck…

I’m going to die, thought Hiccup.

And everything went black.

8. DRAGONS ARE SELFISH, DON’T YOU KNOW THAT?

Now I’m afraid this doesn’t seem a good moment to leave Hiccup EITHER, does it, given that he’s about to die?

But we just have to catch up with those cute and helpless dragon babies whom we left moments away from a messy death in the jaws of Fireworm.

This is all very inconvenient but we can’t leave the poor little things for one second longer.

You see the problem with story telling? Sometimes so many things are going on at once you can’t keep up with everything at the same time.

We had left Fireworm flying towards the open door of Hiccup’s house, and as soon as she set eyes on those dragon babies, they would be EX-dragon babies, sure as fish-eggs are fish-eggs.

Toothless was watching from the roof beam above, delighted that the problem of the little pests was going to be taken out of his paws, because their unbelievably high-pitched chirping was giving him a headache.

‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’ squeaked the babies. ‘We love you, Papa!’

Toothless snorted disgustedly.

What was it with babies? Where was their sense of dragon-hood? Dragons were selfish, and they didn’t love anybody, didn’t they know that yet?

And then the blue one shouted up, ‘Papa is wonderful!’ and craned its neck so far backwards as it leant back to look up at him that it fell over – ‘Whoops!’ – into Toothless’s water bowl.

Oh fish-hooks.

Something came over Toothless – he didn’t know what. Toothless was more selfish than most dragons.

But whatever it was, it seemed Toothless couldn’t let Fireworm eat the wretched little babies after all.

Quick as a diving falcon, he swooped down, plucked the blue one out of the water bowl with his mouth, the yellow one and the green one in each of his front paws, and carried them in a rain of goo and water up to the roof beam.

‘B-b-be quiet!’ he hissed at them fiercely, ‘or you will DIE!’

‘Oooh… Papa so brave,’ they all cooed.

‘Oh f-f-f-fiddlesticks,’ sighed Toothless, his empty tummy grumbling even louder as he dived down again, panting, and perched on Stoick’s chair-back, trying to look unconcerned.

In the nick of time.

In through the open door swooped the lean red panther body of Fireworm, a beautiful Monstrous Nightmare dragon, all gleaming muscles and glinting fangs. By some instinct, the squeaking from the roof beam ceased instantly the moment she entered. She glided slowly round the room, like a gigantic malevolent red bat sensing drama, before landing on the hall floor and sharpening her talons on the bright edge of Stoick’s axe.

‘What has been going on here?’ she hissed at Toothless, looking suspiciously round the room, taking in Toothless’s blackened state, covered in charcoal and goo. Her serpent eyes brightened as she saw the lime-green slime dripped liberally all over the place, and the spilt water bowl, and the thousands and thousands of pieces of smashed lime-green dragon egg.

‘Babies?’ she purred, licking her lips with her long forked tongue. ‘Delicious soggy gooey little dragon babies? Oh how I love to wring their goggly little necks, the gooier the better! So, where are they, Toothless?’

She pointed her pin-sharp front talon, long as a scimitar, right at Toothless’s throat. ‘I know you would want to share…’

‘T-T-Toothless already ate them,’ said Toothless rudely, as careless as he could be.

It was very believable, for Toothless was the greediest little dragon on Berk, and he was covered head to toe in lime-green goo.

Quick as lightning, the talon came down. Luckily Toothless was quicker still, and jumped out of the way just as it plunged into the chair, practically carving it in half.

‘Savage!’ hissed Fireworm. ‘Greedy little mongrel!’

‘You l-l-looking too fat, anyway, Fireworm!’ jeered Toothless, sticking his forked tongue out at her.

Fireworm aimed a jet of flame at him, and again he dodged it. Nobody was better at dodging than Toothless.

Toothless thought quickly. He had to get rid of her. ‘There’s more of ’em though,’ he said, pointing his wing to the door. ‘Out in the h-h-harbour…’

Fireworm’s eyes lit up with greed.

‘Watch your back, you inflated little flying toad,’ she warned Toothless nastily, as she flew swiftly out the door, to look for more delicious little dragon babies to eat.

Toothless heaved a sigh of relief.

She was gone.

But Fireworm had only just left, when…

BAM!

The first baby fell out of the hiding-place.

It made no attempt to fly, just hit the floor with a sickening thud.

Screeching with alarm, terrified that it must have broken something, Toothless swooped down to it.

The baby gave Toothless an angelic smile. ‘I is fine!’ it squeaked. ‘Don’t worry!’

Oh, for Thor’s sake… Toothless collapsed with relief, and…

BAM!

BAM!

Toothless jumped a foot in the air as the two other little babies slammed to the floor as well.

‘We is fine too!’ they squeaked, squealing with laughter at Toothless’s alarm.

Poor Toothless had barely got over the shock when the little dragons shot off (at extraordinary speed, considering they couldn’t fly yet, and were waddling on little newborn feet) in three different directions, squealing: ‘We is hungry, Papa, HUNGRY!’

‘What are you doing????’ cried Toothless in alarm. ‘We have no food… Toothless promised he w-w-wouldn’t make a mess… What are you doing????’

CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! The little green one munched a huge chunk out of Stoick’s chair leg. The little yellow one set fire to the chair, and the curtains, and the cupboard. And—

‘Hic… Whoops! Ow! ATISHOO!’

There was a mountainous clatter from the larder as the little blue one went through it like a tiny dragon tornado, sending pans and cauldrons flying in all directions and bowling out the door.

‘S-S-STOP!’ cried poor Toothless, trying to put out the fires and yelling at the top of his voice. ‘STOP! NO CHEWING! NO P-P-POOING! NO BURNING! TOOTHLESS WILL BE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE! STOP!!!!!’

To his passionate relief, and surprise, the three little dragon babies shot wobbily and obediently towards him. They came to a halt underneath him, looking up at him with their huge baby dragon eyes, innocently questioning.

‘Oh, thank Thor,’ panted Toothless, and he put on his most stern voice. ‘You m-m-must not burn anything… or eat anything… or make a mess… or T-T-Toothless will be in BIG TROUBLE, understand?’

The three little dragons looked up at him.

‘Papa is wonderful,’ said the little blue one.

‘We promise we’ll be good…’ said the little yellow dragon.

But all three little dragons had their claws crossed behind their backs.

There was a slight pause.

And then the little blue one made a big pooey mess in the middle of the floor.

The smell was indescribable. How could something so small make such a huge stink?

And all three shrieked, ‘But we is HUNGRY!’

And off they dashed in three separate directions again, raking up the floors with their little dragon talons, and setting fire to things. The little blue one was already in Stoick’s bedroom attacking all the pillows in case they contained food, and giving himself a coughing fit as he choked on the feathers.

Toothless was beside himself…

‘AAAAGH!’ he yelled. ‘STOP IT, YOU LITTLE H-H-HORRORS! STOP IT! TOOTHLESS’LL PUT BAD MARKS ON ALL YOUR STAR CHARTS! TOOTHLESS’LL PUT YOU TO BED WITHOUT ANY DINNER! TOOTHLESS’LL… TOOTHLESS’LL—’

But whoever was the boss of those little dragons, it certainly wasn’t Toothless. They took absolutely no notice whatsoever.

9. BACK TO THE HOOLIGANS AND THE DREADER’S DREADFUL POWER

Now at least we know that the dragon babies are all right, even if they are destroying Hiccup’s home, so we can go back to the Hooligans, who, to their indescribable terror, were just being attacked by the dread of the Dreader.

Oh, yes, and Hiccup was about to die, wasn’t he?

I knew I’d forgotten something important. Everything had gone black, and warm and wet, and there was a horrible choking feeling around Hiccup’s neck.

‘AAAAAARGGHH!’ gargled Hiccup. ‘AARRGH!’

For he thought he was about to lose his head, and maybe the warm-and-wetness was his own blood.

He was lifted upwards, as if by the arms of Thor himself, and he imagined that perhaps he was dead already, and being lifted up towards Valhalla?

The breath left his body with a sickening shock as he landed, sprawling and soaking wet, on some hard flat surface.

His eyes had closed automatically, but now he opened them, slowly and stickily, for it was like they had been dipped in glue. His heart was palpitating with fear like a rabbit’s, for he thought he was opening his eyes into the next world.

But the hard flat surface he had landed on was in fact the wet wooden boards of the deck of The Fat Penguin, awash with some strange liquid substance much thicker than water.

Oh thank Thor.

He wasn’t dead after all.

Yet.

Gasping, he looked upwards through his gummy eyelids.

That choking feeling around his neck must have been caused by Stoick hauling him by the back of the waistcoat over the edge of the boat. For Stoick was standing over him, gasping in shock, covered in a strange liquid blackness, his white eyes the only colour showing through.

All around the Vikings were screaming, ‘MAKE FOR THE SHORE!’ paddling wildly, covered in this weird shiny blackness and spattering little liquid splats as they shovelled their way through the heaving sea.

The Hooligans did not stop to ask what had happened. They paddled desperately for the shore, and it was only when they had landed all the boats in the harbour and staggered, dripping blackness, on to the beach, that they began to wonder what had gone on.

‘Gobber…’ said Stoick the Vast in a baffled, liquid sort of way, blowing bubbles through the goo that had gathered in his beard. ‘Gobber… what is this stuff? We seem to be alive, but this stuff is very…’

‘Smelly…’ Hiccup pointed out.

For now that the terror of the moment had passed, the smell crept up on them, a smell so appalling that the inside of the nostrils burned like acid. It was a smell so much worse than anything you’ve ever smelt before. Imagine a skinful of skunks who had been taking a lot of exercise without using deodorant. Imagine rotten eggs and stinking haddock and rotting corpses and Baggybum’s socks after he’s been playing Bashyball for a couple of weeks, and you still haven’t got there.

It was a smell so bad that it almost had a physical presence, as if a large dead wet walrus was hanging right in front of your nose.

‘Stinkdragon,’ panted Hiccup in wonder. ‘The Dreader is just a giant Stinkdragon.’

‘Hang on a second,’ roared Stoick furiously. ‘The Dreader’s power, the power of Legend that has kept us hungry and eating nothing but limpets for the last six weeks, is supposed to be the power of removing people’s heads! Or at the VERY LEAST it’s meant to send you frantic, or suck out your blood until you’re flat as a piece of paper… Are you telling me that this power the sagas have been going on about for centuries is not any of these things, it’s just a BAD SMELL????’

‘It looks like it,’ said Hiccup. ‘Legends do not always tell the truth. I guess if you’re telling a saga, a bad smell doesn’t make such a good story.’

‘Well, you have to admit, it’s not just a light pong,’ said Fishlegs. ‘This is the worst smell I have ever smelt in my entire life. I can feel one of my rashes coming on.’

‘I’LL NEVER BELIEVE A STORY AGAIN!’ yelled Stoick, punching his fist in the air. ‘THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!’

For a moment it looked like Stoick would explode.

Which would have been a messy business, what with all that yucky smelly black stuff all around. But instead his shoulders began to shake. Stinky little droplets showered off him like smelly rain, as Stoick the Vast, O Hear his Name and Tremble, threw back his gooey black head and roared with laughter.

And then all the other Hooligans joined in: HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! Laughing fit to bust a gut, smelling to high heaven. No one can laugh like a Hooligan can laugh, great gusting belly laughs, even when those bellies are empty.

‘RIGHTO GUYS!’ bellowed Stoick. ‘Let’s clean this stuff off, and go out and catch ourselves some FISH!’

‘Yes but, Father,’ argued Hiccup, ‘the Dreader is still out there, and he’s still gigantically enormous even if his dreadful power IS only the power of pong—’

Stoick was suddenly serious again.

‘Yes, you’re right, Hiccup,’ he said, scratching his head, and frowning. ‘This calls for another of my Clever and Intelligent Plans.’

Hiccup sighed. It could take WEEKS while the wheels of Stoick’s brain moved infinitely slowly to come up with something as ridiculous as the last Clever and Intelligent Plan. But Hiccup had more urgent problems.

For out of the corner of his eye he could see flames shooting upwards on the hillside, right in the heart of the Hooligan village.

His father’s house was on fire.

Toothless. Oh for Thor’s sake, what had Toothless done now?

As everyone else jumped in the harbour, trying to scrub off the smelly stuff, SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!

Dripping and reeking, Hiccup shot up the hill.

10. HAVING YOUR OWN PET IS A WONDERFUL THING OF COURSE

SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! Hiccup was holding his own nose to try and keep out the disgusting stench as he half staggered, half ran up the hill, his legs wide apart because the revolting Dreader-juice was sloshing around the inside of his trousers.

Bits of ferns and heather stuck to the stuff as he fell flat on his face, and staggered to his feet, and flung open the broken door of his father’s home.

‘AAAAAGHHHHHHHH!’

How could one small dragon cause so much devastation in so short a time? Furniture, crockery, weapons smashed, tables in flames, kitchenware scattered across the length of the room – it was as if a gang-load of fire-eating Berserks had been charging around the place on rhino-back.

‘TOOOOOOTHLESSS!!!!!!’ howled Hiccup, without really expecting the little dragon to reply, but Toothless swooped down from the rafters, in passionate relief, only just stopping himself from landing on his Master’s sticky black head in time.

Toothless was in tears.

‘They w-w-won’t do anything T-t-toothless says!’ wailed Toothless desperately.

‘What are you talking about?’ screamed Hiccup. ‘My father is going to kill us, and then he’ll throw you out, and then he’ll kill me again, and he was in such a good mood—’

Toothless pointed a tragic wing downwards. ‘They did this! They ch-ch-chewed everything, and they set f-f-fire to everything, and they pooed everywhere, and they w-w-wouldn’t listen to Toothless and it’s… ALL… THEIR… FAULT…’

Blinking through the stinking Dreader-goo, Hiccup looked down at his feet.

Three tiny little baby dragons were sitting in a row, one green, one yellow, one blue.

‘Where did these dragons come from, Toothless?’ asked Hiccup in a bewildered sort of way.

‘Ah.’ Toothless looked guilty. ‘T-t-toothless found them… They hatched… From some eggs that t-t-turned up… Toothless was just out in the Open Ocean a couple of months ago, you see, and he found this little island, and these eggs were just l-l-lying there… Didn’t seem to belong to anybody…’

‘Toothless, I keep telling you not to steal dragon eggs, you never know what type of dragon they might be!’ exploded Hiccup.

Now the little dragons turned into little hissing spitting demons as they rushed to defend Toothless, who they thought was their father, against this horrible great big human who was being mean to him.

‘Be nice to Papa!’ spat the green one.

‘Papa is wonderful!’ said the yellow one.

And ‘Hic… Whoops… Atishoo!’ said the blue. And he opened up his little blue dragon mouth, and he inhaled with a little sucking noise, and then he exhaled, and out shot a little shower of black liquid.

It missed Hiccup’s right foot by some distance.

The smell of it was extraordinary. How could something so tiny make a pong of such indescribable awfulness? A smell of rotting corpses, of stinking eggs, of dead wet walrus hanging in front of your nose…

AHA.

Suddenly everything fell into place.

Those eggs had just been lying there, had they? Somewhere out in the Open Ocean…

Hiccup bent down, scooped up the three little dragons in his arms, and shot off down the hill.

11. IT’S A MYSTERY

Down the hill, Hiccup ran, SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH!, with the little dragons shrieking, and biting and squealing, ‘Papa save us! Papa save us!’ all the way down.

SQUELCH! SQUELCH! SQUELCH! Hiccup ran past the roaring, laughing Hooligans, still trying to scrub off the smell in the harbour.

Into The Hopeful Puffin Hiccup jumped, and he wrapped the little dragons in his dripping waistcoat to confuse them and set the sails out to the dark shadow beyond the harbour.

He sailed out to where it was waiting, and then he shelved the oars, and drew out the little dragons, who bit him furiously.

‘Papa save us! Papa save us!’

‘HERE,’ said Hiccup. ‘This is your REAL Papa…’

And he dropped them one, two, over the side. The third, the little blue one, had got a tight hold of Hiccup’s trousers with his little jaws, and Hiccup had to work them free, and then he dropped him over the side as well, with a

‘Hic… Whoops… Atish—’ SPLASH!

They swam instantly underwater, a flash of yellow, green and blue, and the dark shadow shimmered under the water, and they were gone.

Hiccup could not see what was happening. No doubt explanations were going on under the water, but nothing could be heard.

There was silence.

Toothless was hovering over Hiccup’s head. ‘What are you d-d-doing?’ he squeaked, furious, outraged. ‘That D-d-dreader is out there… The Dreader will get them…’

‘The Dreader is their… Papa,’ explained Hiccup sternly. ‘Or parent, anyway.’

‘N-n-no!’ exclaimed Toothless.

‘Where did you find those eggs, Toothless? Those were the Dreader’s eggs, and who could blame it if it came looking for its eggs? I have told you and told you, Toothless, not to go stealing eggs. And now you know why.’

Toothless denied everything, swore he had come upon the eggs entirely by accident. But both he and Hiccup knew the truth of the matter.

And then far, far out in the Bay, way, way in the distance, as it swam to the Open Sea, the gigantic form of the Dreader LAUNCHED itself out of the water.

It was just a glimpse of this creature that never allowed itself to be seen by man, but what a magnificent sight it was, impossibly huge, a breathtaking green, not dreadful at all.

Hiccup caught his breath at the wonder of it. And was it Hiccup’s imagination, or was the flipper raised in a sort of salute?

And was that three little specks, diving after it, squeaking joyously?

On the wind, the faint words in ancient Dragonese:

‘THANK YOU…’

Toothless sniffed.

‘Toothless’ll miss them… They’re smelly and n-n-naughty, but so cute… How can little dragon babies that cute grow up to be big scary Dreaders?’

‘I don’t know, Toothless,’ said Hiccup, shaking his head. ‘It’s a mystery.’

Hiccup sailed The Hopeful Puffin back to the harbour, and called out to the Hooligan Warriors, who had done the best they could to wash themselves, to say that the Dreader was gone.

‘Excellent,’ boomed Stoick the Vast, rubbing his hands together, deeply relieved he didn’t have to do any more of this brain-work. ‘I KNEW that my Clever and Intelligent Plan would work. And now I don’t have to come up with another one! Watch and learn, my boy, watch and learn. It’ll be a Fish Feast for supper then, guys!’

And off the Hooligan Warriors set, thinner and tireder and a great deal stinkier than normal, but as happy as anything at the thought of a limpet-free Fish Feast.

‘And now, Toothless,’ said Hiccup, in his sternest voice, ‘hopefully my father will be in a better mood when he’s got some food inside him, but still, you and I are going to tidy up what’s left of that house before my father gets back.’

Toothless thought for a second. He put his head on one side.

‘Weeeeelll,’ said Toothless in the voice of a martyr. ‘This wasn’t T-t-toothless’s fault… None of this is Toothless’s fault… Was all those dragon babies…’

‘Toothless!’ interrupted Hiccup in exasperation. ‘This was all your fault entirely from start to finish! If you hadn’t stolen those Dreader eggs, the Dreader wouldn’t have followed us, and nobody would have been hungry and—’

Toothless ignored him in a lofty way. ‘And T-ttoothless is tired… Got a tummy ache… W-w-want to go fishing…’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Hiccup.

‘B-b-but…’ said Toothless, considering the matter, ‘Toothless is not a bad dragon like those dragon babies. Toothless a GOOD, kind dragon, helpful, thoughtful. Toothless sh-sh-shall help the Mean Master – this time…’ he said kindly. ‘Until Toothless’s wings start hurting.’

EPILOGUE

Well, Toothless DID help Hiccup clear up that time (if you call ‘helping’ flying around looking busy and tripping up Hiccup three times by accident), and he tried to be good for at least two weeks after that, before he forgot what it was like to look after dragon babies.

There was the most magnificent Fish Feast in the harbour that evening. Nobody even bothered to go home first. They just dumped the fish they’d caught on the rocks and built a fire right then and there and ate and ate until they were as full as fat walruses.

And then, oh what dancing and celebrating there was under the stars that night!

Stoick was in such a good mood that he barely even noticed the remains of the destruction when he returned to the house. Even he, however, could not fail to notice the next morning the half-burned table, and the remains of the door. But Hiccup said it was a passing Tigerbreath who had done it, and Stoick was so smug with pride and full of belly that he believed him.

As for the stinkiness, well I’m afraid such was the stench of the Dreader-juices, the entire Isle of Berk reeked like dead haddock for at least a month or so afterwards.

But even that had its upside. The Uglithugs came creeping across in the dead of night on a deer-rustling raid on at least two occasions… and had to turn back when they came too close, on account of some of their younger Warriors feeling thoroughly ill at the pong.

Stoick never ate limpets again, and he never forgot his Clever and Intelligent Plan.

He had Fishlegs write him a small saga called ‘The Day of the Dreader’, which exaggerated everything terribly.

Fishlegs called the saga: ‘The True Story of What Really Happened on the Day of the Dreader.’

Fishlegs gave the Dreader every single terrible power he could think of. He added at least another foot to Stoick and gave him a long curling moustache as well. According to the saga, Stoick not only had the brilliant Shield-Bashing Plan, he also fought the Dreader in hand-to-hand combat, and circled the Isle of Berk twice while holding on to one of the Dreader’s tail fins.

So here we are at the beginning again.

Stories do not always tell the truth.

The bard gets carried away, legends get added to and exaggerated, and so gradually, gradually… the truth gets lost along the way…

Stories do not always tell the truth.

Except, of course, for this one.

MANY YEARS AFTER THE LAST TWO STORIES…

On top of Mount Perilous, way, way to the East and to the North, miles and miles and a world away from the little Isle of Berk…

…was the great Viking fortress of GOREGANTUA where the Viking King, Dreardread, ruled in terror and in might over the Pirate Lands of the Barbaric East.

The East was very different from the lands in the West.

The forts were bigger here, and the people much richer, for the Viking kings burgled gold and spices and silks and much treasure from the wealthy nations to the East and South. They thought of themselves as more ‘civilised’, although they were in fact altogether as ruthless and violent pirates as their fellow Vikings in the West.

They just prided themselves on speaking Latin while they ran you through with their swords.

Talking of uncivilised, it was Prisoners’ Execution Day in Goregantua, and that always gave King Dreardread an uncomfortable stomach ache. It had to be done, of course, it was part of the duties of a Great Viking King of the East. But nonetheless, it made him uncomfortable.

So he had dressed in his grandest and silkiest clothes, and rather gloomily put on his Red Helmet, which was the ‘Death Helmet’, and prepared to say ‘Guilty’, and lay a Death Sentence on whoever was put in front of him.

Dreardread sat down on his great throne, in the tallest room of the tallest tower of the great fortress of Goregantua to listen to all of the charges. The morning light shone in through the huge window behind him, dappling the stone floor. He ordered himself some nice little snacks of fried pop-dragons to eat, to cheer himself up while he was doing this, and began a game of Viking chess with his son, Sebastian the Skilful (Dreardread was soon losing, because Sebastian was rather better at chess than he was).

Sebastian was a boy with bright eyes and an eager expression, not at all like his father.

Dreardread had just got to his fifteenth prisoner, having said ‘Guilty, and Death Sentence’ to the previous fourteen, while trying not to think about it too much – when something made him look up.

The fifteenth prisoner was dragged before him in chains. But unlike the previous prisoners, who had immediately fallen to their knees and begged to be released, this particular prisoner stood straight before Dreardread and said nothing.

He was a young man with red hair and a little on the skinny side. On his forehead was a curious Mark of a Dragon making the shape of an ‘S’. But other than that, he was really not that remarkable-looking.

He had lost the lower part of his left leg, which was not that unusual in those dangerous times, but what was unusual was the very creative and smart leg attachment that he was wearing, carved with runes, and now planted confidently on the stone floor before him.

Dreardread had never seen anything like it.

How cool, thought Dreardread’s son admiringly.

Something about the unwavering steadiness and lack of fear in this young man’s gaze made Dreardread pause and pay attention to what the soldier in charge of the Death Announcements was saying.

The lad carried himself with a peculiar dignity and wisdom, as if he had been through a lot for one who was such a young man.

‘Troublemaker who calls himself a “Leader” of the so-called “Wilderwest”,’ cried the Death Pronouncer.

‘Who is guilty of: boarding our ships, setting free the dragons, and generally contributing to the Great Dragon Disappearance… caught in the act of trying to release our dragons from the dungeons below—’

Dreardread interrupted the reading of the crimes by holding up one hand.

‘He’s calling himself a Leader of the Wilderwest?’ he said in astonishment.

‘Yes,’ said the Death Pronouncer apologetically. ‘That’s why we didn’t execute him immediately as a spy. Just in case he really was royalty, we thought we’d bring him to you first… but it’s probably a lie. He doesn’t look like a Leader… or a Chief of any sort.’

‘Of course it’s a lie!’ said Dreardread. ‘The Tribes of the Wilderwest are a barbaric bunch, always quarrelling! Someone like this would never get those rebellious angry pirates out there in the Barbaric Archipelago to stop fighting each other, and follow him, just look at him, he’s a mere strip of a lad… and who is he supposed to be leading? He’s all on his own! What is your real name, Liar-Man?’

The young man remained silent.

‘He’s wearing no jewels… no armour… he couldn’t possibly be royalty, even royalty for an uncivilised place like the Wilderwest.’

The young man’s only adornment seemed to be a Black Star around his neck.

‘And what about weaponry?’

‘All we could find was this,’ said the Death Pronouncer, producing a very small, ordinary-looking sword.

‘Oh, come on!’ scoffed Dreardread. ‘That isn’t the sword of a Chief, let alone a LEADER!’

‘And this,’ said the Death Pronouncer, showing Dreardread an odd round ticking thing, with strange numbers on it.

‘What is this?’ asked the great king, shaking the ticking-thing irritably.

The young man still said nothing.

‘This is all impossible!’ said Dreardread. ‘And what is that Mark on his head?’

‘He says it’s called the Dragonmark,’ said the Death Pronouncer. ‘And…’ The Death Pronouncer lowered his voice and looked embarrassed. ‘…when we caught him he seemed to be talking to the dragons in some strange language that he called “Dragonese”. He says he is a “Dragon Whisperer”.’

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense!’ jeered Dreardread. ‘He must be working for one of my rival kings. Trying to steal my dragons, as if this Dragon Migration wasn’t enough to be dealing with! What have you to say for yourself, young man?’

The strange, quiet, steady lad still said absolutely nothing.

‘Well, if you’ve no words to say in your defence, I’ll just have to assume that you’re a Liar and an Outcast and working with my enemies,’ said Dreardread, ‘and whoever you are, you deserve to die for stirring up further unrest among the dragons! I pronounce you GUILTY, and YOUR SENTENCE IS DEATH. But before you die, you must tell me who you are working for…

‘Who sent you to steal the dragons from MY dungeons? Was it King Barboroos the Flashpot, he’s always had a grudge against me?

‘Tell me, and then your death will be the Easy Death of being thrown over the battlements here, rather than the Bad Death, and I won’t tell you what the Bad Death is, except to say you really don’t want it. There,’ said Dreardread. ‘What have you to say to THAT, then, young man?’

Finally the lad leaned forward.

He spoke firmly, but so quietly that only Dreardread and his son Sebastian the Skilful could hear him.

‘My name is HICCUP,’ said the lad. ‘And the dragons should be FREE.’

SMASH!!!

The moment Hiccup stopped talking, the great window behind them all exploded into smithereens as a blast of dragon-lightning came streaking down from the skies above and forked through the room.

Glass flew in all directions, sending everybody down to their knees, sheltering from the explosion.

The lad-who-called-himself-Hiccup sprang towards the window.

‘Stop him!’ cried Dreardread, for he really did want to know WHO the mysterious young man was working for, and if he threw himself out that window, he would fall to the rocks below, taking his secret with him.

But before anyone could prevent him, Hiccup had jumped out the open window.

Dreardread and his soldiers ran to the broken gaping hole where the window used to be.

DOWN Hiccup fell,

DOWN,

DOWN.

Assuming the position of total commitment, leaning forward into the wind.

A leap of faith.

Trusting that he would be saved and having a complete belief in who or what would save him.

Even though what might save him was free as a bird and under no obligation to do so.

And he was right to have that faith.

For just before he reached the rocks below, out of nowhere…

… a flash of black came down from the sky.

So swift was it, unimaginably quick, really, that you could barely see what it was.

A wild black dragon.

The dragon streaked downwards faster even than the falling lad, and then, unbelievably, the young man landed on the dragon’s back, and together they shot on and up and through the sky like some dark meteor.

‘What is that dragon?’ said Dreardread’s son, Sebastian the Skilful, mouth open in awe. ‘I’ve never seen a dragon as cool as that one before! And he’s riding bareback! I didn’t know you could DO that!’

And they were about to see that dragon right UP CLOSE.

‘He’s coming back!’ yelled a soldier.

‘DUCK!’ roared Dreardread’s Bardiguard, as the dragon swooped over their heads to land in front of them atop the broken glass in the Room of Judgement, and swept out a great paw to pin Dreardread to the ground, sending out a haze of smoke and lightning from his mouth that was so bright it was dazzling.

Everyone’s eyes were so overpowered by this brightness they could not see Hiccup leaning down from the dragon’s back and picking up the sword they had sneered at only moments before, dropped by Dreardread when the window exploded.

Dreardread could feel the grim talons of the dragon on his chest and he trembled.

‘Release your dragons!’ said Hiccup, calmly, his sword pointed in Dreardread’s direction.

‘What???’ spluttered Dreardread.

‘The dragons you are keeping in the dungeons of this fortress. RELEASE them!’

A terrified Dreardread, still pinned to the floor by the dragon, gave the order.

Everyone was so scared of King Dreardread, that the command took less than a minute to make its way from soldier to soldier, shouting to each other, all the way to the dungeons below.

‘How are they getting on, Windwalker?’ asked Hiccup in Dragonese to the dragon he was sitting on.

‘They’re releasing them,’ replied the dragon, his eyes lighting up like searchlights, so he could see through the smog of his own smoke.

‘The man can speak Dragonese!’ whispered Sebastian the Skilful to himself, listening in awe. ‘He’s TALKING to his dragon, and his dragon is replying!’

And then, to the young man called Hiccup’s obvious surprise, a little grass-green hunting dragon entered through the broken window, appearing out of nowhere, and it flapped around Hiccup’s head, and complained in a high squeaky voice, as it coughed.

‘This s-s-smoke is giving Toothless tickles…’

‘Toothless!’ scolded Hiccup. ‘What are you doing? I told you this was too dangerous for a small dragon like you, and you were to stay behind and wait for us! Thank Thor you’re safe!’

‘Of course I is s-s-safe!’ said Toothless with a joyful sniff. ‘You c-c-can’t go on an adventure without T-t-toothless! Toothless may be small but Toothless is mighty… Toothless is Hiccup’s dragon, and Toothless is the BEST!’

‘You are the best, Toothless,’ said Hiccup.

Hiccup held wide his arms, and the little hunting dragon shot right into them, and Hiccup held the little dragon close to his heart.

And then Toothless broke free of Hiccup’s embrace, crying, ‘W-w-we need to get off now! Mission accomplished! Go home!’

‘Yes,’ said a trembling King Dreadread, ‘call off this dragon of yours, and leave! You have what you want…’

It did indeed seem that Hiccup’s mission was accomplished.

With great calls and hoots of joy, dark clouds of dragons were streaming out of the dungeons below, up and out to the freedom of the skies.

Hiccup gave the order for his riding dragon to remove his talons from Dreardread’s heart.

‘Remember me,’ said Hiccup sternly to Dreardread. ‘And if you imprison the dragons again…

… I’ll be back.’

The dragon he was riding sent out one more blast of smoke that smudged the eyes of all in the room, and took off, out the window and up into the sky.

King Dreardread staggered to the window, now shaking with anger rather than fear. His kingly robes were ripped, he had been insulted, in front of his son and his subjects. ‘After them!’ he cried, but the command was useless.

For there were no dragons left in the Fortress to ride in pursuit.

‘Who WAS that Liar?’ gasped Dreardread.

‘He spoke in Dragonese!’ said Sebastian the Skilful, jubilantly. ‘So maybe he wasn’t lying after all… maybe he really is a Leader, like he said he was when he was captured.’

Dreardread’s blood ran cold.

Suddenly this seemed like a much greater threat than one of his rival Kings of the East with a grudge.

A new kind of Leader who was on the same side as the dragons? Maybe this young man was behind what people were calling the Great Dragon Disappearance…

This young man COULD be behind it all, stirring up rebellion among the dragons… threatening their whole Barbaric Way of Life…

‘Whoever he is, he must be killed!’ roared Dreardread. ‘PUT OUT A BOUNTY ON HIS HEAD! WARN MY FELLOW VIKING KINGS OF THE EAST! We must bury the hatchet to face this new and greater peril… THIS SO-CALLED “LEADER” MUST BE DESTROYED!! You have seen a dreadful threat here today, Sebastian, this is our Enemy…’ stormed Dreardread, in the most terrible temper.

But Dreardread’s son wasn’t listening to his father.

Instead, he was leaning out the window, searching the skies for some clue as to what species the dragon was that had just blasted them all with its bright lightning.

And unlike his father, his eyes were lit up with sheer admiration.

‘He was riding a truly wild dragon, bareback!’ said Sebastian, Dreardread’s son, in an awed voice. ‘No saddle, no chains, no spurs…’

‘And WHAT was that dragon?’ asked Dreardread’s son, eyes shining. ‘I’ve never seen a dragon species that looked like that before…’

Sebastian the Skilful shook his head in wonder.

‘That’s the coolest dragon I’ve ever seen, with the coolest rider…’

Because when Dreardread’s son, Sebastian the Skilful, looked at Hiccup, he hadn’t seen an Outcast.

Dreardread was looking through the anxious, angry eyes of a king with lands to defend, dragons to hang on to, worlds to conquer.

Sebastian was looking through the clear eyes of a child.

And he hadn’t seen a Liar. He hadn’t seen an Enemy.

What Dreardread’s son had seen was a HERO.

NOTE FROM THE TRANSLATOR, CRESSIDA COWELL

So many questions.

How did the boy who we met in the first two stories become the young man we meet in this one?

Was he really telling the truth about being a rebel Leader of the Wilderwest?

Or was that just a clever invention of Hiccup’s, to stop himself being killed as a spy?

To find out the answer to that question, you can read the books in Hiccup’s memoirs, How to Train Your Dragon, How to Be a Pirate, etc etc…

But an even more important question than anything above…

WHAT WAS THE DRAGON THAT HICCUP WAS RIDING?

We haven’t seen that dragon before.

That was, indeed, the coolest dragon that ever flew the skies of the Archipelago.

It didn’t look like Hiccup’s riding dragon, the Windwalker, who was a very unusual, shaggy, anxious but faithful dragon, who we first met in book 6 of Hiccup’s memoirs, How to Twist a Dragon’s Tale. But Windwalker is what he called it.

Could the Windwalker have… changed somehow…?

Not much is known about Windwalkers.

But Hiccup has written in his Incomplete Book of Dragons about how a baby Windwalker evolves… Here are those very pages for you to see:

My own riding dragon, a Windwalker, is an example of a dragon who ‘evolves’ during the course of its lifetime.

A newborn Windwalker is a rather extraordinary ball of feathers and fur, that looks remarkably like a cross-eyed duckling mixed with an anxious wolf cub.

As it grows, the Windwalker gradually sheds its hair, and becomes sleeker, faster and more aerodynamic. The ankles strengthen, the bending wings become an advantage as the dragon gains control and mastery over them, and by the time it reaches its late adolescence, the Windwalker is nearly as fast as the Silver Phantom. In its seventeenth year, the Windwalker enters its chrysalis stage…

Like a great black butterfly, the Windwalker builds its chrysalis inside a dark remote cave. It stays inside the chrysalis for six or seven months…

So eventually…

…wolf cubs and ducklings grow up.

And if you look back at Hiccup’s twelve memoirs, as Hiccup grew…

… so, too, did the Windwalker.

In his seventeenth year, some time after the end of Hiccup’s twelfth memoir, the Windwalker did indeed enter his chrysalis stage.

And until this moment, Windwalkers being so exceptionally rare, we have not really known what happens after that, what happened to Hiccup’s very own Windwalker.

But I can tell you now.

This is what happened.

Hiccup’s dragon Windwalker emerged from his chrysalis and assumed his adult form.

And the adult form of a Windwalker was a dragon that was so unusual, so powerful, so mindblowing, that it has always been assumed to be pure legend.

A dragon known as…

… the Dark Defender.

Imagine somewhere unlike anywhere your human eyes have ever seen before.

I know this will be hard for you because it is difficult to imagine any other world than your own, particularly if you are a grown-up and your imagination has become stiff and hard and slow. So remember what it was once like to be a child, if you must, to help you imagine this other world. This other planet.

This planet is called Excelsiar and it has three moons: one pale orange, one a beautiful turquoise, one purple and green. The sun is redder than your own sun, and many of the mountain ranges are striped, almost as if they are made out of candy. And, oh, the jungle in that world! A jungle so green it makes your eyes ache, with rivers that burn and smoke.

Most of this planet is covered in an ocean that can be black as ink, and red as wine, and the creatures in that ocean glow starlike in the glorious darkness as they swim lazily through the seas. Many of these animals you will recognise from worlds all across the universe: whales, porpoises, jellyfish … but in the enormity of this particular dark ocean, the jellyfish can be large as islands, drifting ominously with their tentacles hanging down.

There are great continents with land masses that are either sinister wastelands of dust-blown desert or tangled

jungles brimming with life. Every now and then the forest is punctuated by the stripy mountains that climb up into the violet clouds, and there are floating cities built on gases, populated by all sorts of creatures that perhaps you thought were just myths. The skyscrapers and the trees have twisted round each other in spirals, the roads can be rivers all on fire, the buildings are growing, very slightly, every day, like big bamboos.

Now, calm your breathing, for there are truly terrible things in this planet’s jungle who hunt by the smell of fear, and they hate human beings with a hungry, bloody hatred. They can sniff out fear from a distance of several miles, and you do not want to draw the attention of these creatures. You do not want them to sense that you are here. The instant you find yourself becoming anxious, the sweat beginning to form on your forehead, the first flutterings in your stomach, make your heart slow down.

HOLD YOUR BREATH.

Are you ready?

Hang on to the sides of this book very tightly.

Sharpen your wits.

Open your eyes, clean those smears off your glasses, prick up your ears.

Cling tight to the hairs on the back of my neck.

On the planet with three moons, a young human boy was running through the choke of a vividly tangled jungle, heart pounding, chest heaving with sobs, absolutely petrified.

The boy was called K2 (pronounced ‘Kay Too’), and he was rather ordinary-looking, thin as a twig, covered in grazes, his clothes in rags and ruins about him, his glasses so scratched and broken he could barely see where he was going.

K2 was right to be so terrified.

For this was a planet where human beings were hunted to the death.

Above K2’s head there was a whirring, flying robot, about the size of a small dog. The little robot was called Puck, and he was in an even worse condition than the boy. One of his rotary wings was bent so he was flying lopsidedly and a whole chunk of his right-hand side had been shot off. It was a miracle he could still fly at all.

‘We is being chased by people-eating plants …’ said Puck.

‘Yes, Puck, I know,’ panted K2.

All around K2, the jungle was alive, and waking up.

‘And hunted by that thing I absquolootly cannot mention,’ said Puck (but he was unfortunately mentioning it, nonetheless). ‘That hairy, scary unbemaginably terrifying BEAST … with its grabbers and its stingers and its big … what’s the white pierce-y unloving bits on the ends of the gnashing things called?’

‘Teeth,’ gasped K2. ‘But please don’t talk about it, Puck! That Beast and those others all hunt by the smell of fear, and the more you talk about them, the harder it is to stay calm …’

But K2’s stomach had already liquefied with terror, and the vegetation must have caught the smell of his fear, for nearby vines unwrapped themselves from tree branches, reaching out long tendril fingers, growing in front of K2’s eyes.

‘Is … there … anything … you … can … do?’ cried K2, as one long curling python of a vine whipped out languorously and tripped K2 up. He just about squirmed out of its grip, staggered to his feet, and ran on, limping even more than he had been before.

‘Lasers would be good!’ said Puck, enthusiastically.

‘You’ve got lasers?’ said K2 in excitement.

‘I HAS got lasers!’ said Puck, always keen to please.

‘Use the lasers, Puck! ’ squealed K2.

‘I has got lasers,’ Puck admitted sadly, ‘but I’s afraids my lasers gots jammed up with sand in that dessert.’

I think he means ‘desert’, thought K2, because that would make more sense.

‘Let me see … what’s I sqwat in here instead?’ Puck put out a little robot arm with an array of attachments, like a more sophisticated version of a Swiss Army knife. ‘Fork? … No … Tin-opener? … No … Ice-scream scoop? … No … Egg whisk? … No.’

WHEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!

K2 ducked just in time as a great harpoon shot above his head and straight into a tree trunk ahead of him. The area around where the harpoon had struck turned a great spreading black, as if the tree was bleeding.

The tree let out an enormous scream that made K2’s ears ring with the sound of it.

‘Sorry, tree …’ said K2, as he stumbled past the poor shrivelling sapling. ‘I’m so sorry …’

‘I’s sorry, too, K2!’ wailed Puck. ‘I’s got nuffink helpful!’

‘Don’t worry, Puck, that’s not your fault, you’ve done your best …’

K2 was in Big Trouble, but he knew that his robot was in dreadful danger too.

‘You hide in my rucksack,’ he recommended. ‘They hate robots nearly as much as human beings. Go in there, and keep quiet and maybe they won’t find you. That’s an order, Puck!’

The little robot dived down into K2’s rucksack, for robots have to obey orders, even if they don’t want to.

K2 could smell the Beast that was chasing him now, a rich, hot stink that reminded him vaguely of the scent of lion, for he had breathed it once before when he visited a zoo. But this was a far more powerful, angry stench and it exploded the memory of the poor weak reek that came from the caged lion he had inhaled before, and replaced that faint echo with something far more scary.

All around K2 the trees were reaching back their branches to comfort the stricken, poisoned tree, murmuring soothing noises, and he knew that underneath the ground where he could not see, they were stretching out their roots through the sluggish soil, and at any moment, the roots would push

through that mud and vegetation that was already bulging up in leaf-quakes underneath him, and catch him by the ankle …

And if they caught him, the Beast would be on him.

WROOOOOOUUUUAAAEERRRRRR!

The astonishing roar reverberated around the jungle and around K2 as if he was being turned over like a big ocean wave, and as the sound drummed right into the heart of his body, he no longer knew whether he was running away from the Beast or towards it.

And the Beast caught him.

Or more precisely, another great tendril of vine came licking around K2’s ankle, tripping him up, and although he shook it off, he stumbled, and that slight hesitation enabled another tendril to get a good hold of his other foot, and he was tipped over on to the ground and in five seconds flat, wrapped all around with vines and stems as thick as curling ropes …

… and dragged across the jungle floor to face the Beast.

OOoo, THAT was an exciting opening!

If you want to read more,

Which Way to Anywhere is out now!

Footnote

* Toothless was the smallest hunting dragon anybody had ever seen, then or since.

* Hiccup was speaking to his dragon in Dragonese, for Hiccup was one of the few Vikings, before or since, who have been able to speak this fascinating language.

HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS

How to Train Your Viking by Toothless the Dragon first published in 2006;

The Day of the Dreader first published in 2012.

This collection first published in Great Britain in 2024 by Hodder & Stoughton

Text and illustrations copyright © Cressida Cowell, 2006, 2012, 2024

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eBook conversion by Jouve India Pvt Ltd.

ISBN 978 1 444 97993 0

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