How to Train Your Dragon: How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel Read online

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

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

  ABOUT HICCUP

  Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was

  an awesome swordfighter, a dragon-whisperer,

  and the greatest Viking Hero that ever lived.

  But Hiccup’s memoirs look back to when

  he was a very ordinary boy, and finding

  it hard to be a Hero.

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

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

  living or dead, is coincidental.

  Text and illustrations copyright © 2012 by Cressida Cowell

  Cover art © 2013 by Red Hansen

  Cover design by Kristina Iulo

  Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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

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

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

  than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at

  [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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

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

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

  First ebook edition: September 2014

  ISBN 978-0-316-29952-7

  E3

  ~ CONTENTS ~

  1. The Warrior...........................................................................19

  2. A Few Little Communication Problems...............................46

  3. Hiccup Must Die....................................................................66

  4. One of Hiccup’s Less Brilliant Plans....................................72

  5. The Wrong Side of the Door................................................85

  6. The Witch Excellinor is a Little Annoyed............................106

  7. A Truly Scary Bedtime Story..............................................116

  8. Hunting for the Amber in the Amber Slavelands..............138

  9. The Evil Reaches...................................................................154

  10. The Deadly Shadow............................................................172

  11. A Genuine Surprise.............................................................175

  12. Bear-Mama..........................................................................191

  13. The Past has a Way of Catching Up with You..................197

  14. The Luck Turns Alvin’s Way..............................................200

  15. Hiccup Sets Off to Find the Jewel.....................................217

  16. The Triple-Header Deadly Shadow...................................227

  17. Did I Already Mention that the Past Has a Way

  of Catching Up with the Present?......................................238

  18. Searching for Fishlegs........................................................246

  19. The Monster and the Slave-Boy.........................................249

  20. Oh Dear................................................................................256

  21. A Story from the Past........................................................259

  22. What Happened Next.........................................................275

  23. Some Dragons Really Are Monsters.................................280

  24. The Wink of a Red Herring................................................296

  25. I Don’t Think I’m Dead.........................................................304

  26. A Ghost from the Past........................................................312

  27. The Story Ends as It Began...............................................324

  28. Facing the Music… and Alvin and the Witch....................328

  29. An Unexpected Development............................................354

  30. The Battle of Prison Darkheart.........................................366

  31. The Secret Hideout............................................................392

  PROLOGUE BY HICCUP

  HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III

  Courage.

  You, dear reader, will need courage to read on.

  This is NOT the last of my memoirs. But the

  story has become darker now, so dark that I need all

  my courage just to write it.

  I am looking back to that time when I was

  fourteen years old and an Outcast.

  The Red-Rage had taken over all the dragons in

  the land and the Dragon Rebellion had begun. The

  Great War between humans and dragons had started.

  The Vikings were being led by that dreadful

  villain, Alvin the Treacherous, guided by his even-

  more-dreadful mother, the Witch Excellinor.

  The Dragon Furious was in charge of the

  dragon forces, and his aim was nothing less than the

  extinction of the entire Viking race.

  And the Dragon Furious was winning.

  The Vikings’ only hope was for a new King to

  be crowned King of the Wilderwest. A King who,

  according to ancient prophecy, would have all ten of

  the King’s Lost Things.

  13

  Nine of the

  Lost Things had been found. Only the Dragon

  Jewel, the most important, remained Lost.

  The Dragon Jewel had the power to destroy

  dragons for ever… it was the only thing the Dragon

  Furious was afraid of.

  Alvin the Treacherous had eight of the Lost

  Things.

  I, Hiccup the Outcast, had only one: my little

  hunting-dragon called Toothless. But I also had

  Grimbeard the Ghastly’s map that showed the way to

  where the Jewel was hidden.

  And so I, ‘Enemy Traitor Number One’, was

  being hunted through the Archipelago, by both

  humans and dragons alike. A proclamation calling for

  my death hung on hundreds of burnt-out tree trunks.

  My fourteen-year-old self was all alone apart

  from three dragon companions.

  My Tribe had been driven out of their home on

  Berk by the Dragon Rebellion.

  My father Stoick and my friend Fishlegs had

  been turned into slaves and sent to the Amber

  Slavelands. (Originally, they were in the Uglithing

  Slavelands, but when the witch figured out where

  14

  the Jewel was, she moved

  everyone.)

  You see why I call these

  my darkest times?

  I had to have hope

  that things would turn out

  well in the end, that

  the s
mallthings and the

  happiness of peacetime would return.

  I had to remember this through the teeth and fire

  and talons.

  I had to have Courage.

  15

  THE PROPHECY OF

  THE KING’S LOST THINGS

  The Dragontime is coming

  And only a King can save you now.

  The King shall be the

  Champion of Champions.

  You shall know the King

  By the King’s Lost Things.

  A fang-free dragon, my second-best sword,

  My Roman shield,

  An arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-exist,

  The heart’s stone, the key-that-opens-all-locks,

  The ticking-thing, the Throne, the Crown.

  And last and best of all the ten,

  The Dragon Jewel shall save all men.

  1. THE WARRIOR

  One cold moonlit winter night in the Forgotten Forest,

  a gigantic Warrior sat high and still in a treetop, like an

  Angel of Death.

  The Warrior was out hunting. It had been on the

  trail of the Outcast for many days. It was intending to

  kill this Outcast, this enemy of the Wilderwest.

  Its metal visor was down. Its sword was ready in

  its hand, looking for the kill. It was still as a statue, only

  its bright blue eyes looking down on the path winding

  through the woods far below it.

  In those times, the humans and the dragons were

  at war, so it was strictly forbidden for humans to ride

  dragons any more.

  But surprisingly, this Warrior was seated on the

  back of a dragon, lying lazy but alert along the length of

  the tree branch. The dragon was an Air Dragon of the

  purest silver; very, very rare and very, very dangerous.

  It too looked down at the snowy path below, only

  its pointed tail moving, slowly and rhythmically, like the

  tail of a cat.

  All was quiet. After a little time, a noise was

  heard. The Warrior had closed its eyes, but now, buried

  in the black visor, they snapped open.

  19

  Way in the distance, a human was

  moving along the path through the woods.

  The human was ‘The Outcast’, the Enemy,

  exactly the person that the Warrior was waiting

  to kill.

  20

  The Warrior gave a grunt of satisfaction, and sat

  up a little straighter.

  When you looked at this Outcast close-up (which

  the Warrior couldn’t, not from that distance) he was

  not at all what you might imagine an Outcast to be.

  He was very different from the clever confident figure

  he cut when he was releasing dragons from right under

  the Visithugs’ noses two hours ago.

  He was a young boy called Hiccup Horrendous

  Haddock the Third, about fourteen years old, very

  skinny and ordinary-looking, with the dark purple

  mark that the humans called the ‘Slavemark’ – a

  tattoo in the shape of a dragon –

  burning blue-black on one

  side of his forehead.

  Hiccup had been

  sleeping rough for

  six months now, in

  treetops, or in caves,

  and all he’d had to eat

  in that time was berries

  and nuts and food stolen

  fearfully from sleeping

  Viking villages.

  Risking his life day after day undoing the dragon-

  traps the Vikings had been setting for the dragons,

  and constantly running away from the humans and the

  terrifying hunting-dragons of the Dragon Rebellion had

  really taken it out of him.

  So there in the moonlight, Hiccup looked like

  what he was.

  Afraid, alone.

  He was dressed from head to toe in a

  dragonskin fire-suit, ripped and tattered by brambles

  and branches. He was muddy and dirty, the strain

  and fear of being hunted showing in the stiffness of

  his body, and the anxious tic in his eyes.

  He had a black eye, and he was limping, as was

  the riding-dragon trotting along beside him. The

  Windwalker was exhausted, which was why Hiccup

  wasn’t riding him, and puffing out great wafts of tired

  steam.

  Around Hiccup’s head fluttered two tiny

  hunting-dragons. One very old one, the Wodensfang,

  with wings all tattered and torn. One very young

  one, Toothless, a bright grass-green – the naughtiest,

  most fidgety dragon in the whole of the Archipelago.

  They were talking together in soft whispers

  in Dragonese.

  24

  ‘I’m telling you, Hiccup,’ the

  Wodensfang was saying in a light

  quavery voice, ‘your Quest is very simple.

  ‘You have to find the Dragon Jewel, go

  to Tomorrow, get yourself crowned King of the

  Wilderwest, and then the Tomorrow Men will tell

  you the secret of the Dragon Jewel and you can stop

  this stupid war, and save the dragons and the

  humans from extinction.’

  ‘Did you s-s-see me?’ squeaked Toothless. ‘Did

  you see me dive-bombing that Visithug? Wasn’t I

  clever? Wasn’t I brilliant? Wasn’t I m-marvellous?’

  25

  ‘Yes, you were marvellous,

  Toothless,’ replied Hiccup, ‘but

  can you keep it down a bit. The

  forest dragons are hibernating at the

  moment, and we don’t want to wake

  them up.’

  He rubbed the back of his neck, and

  sighed, because he was missing everybody so much.

  Being an Outcast was very, very lonely.

  ‘The thing is, Wodensfang, nothing is ever that

  simple. People actually have to want me, a slave, an

  Outcast, to be King. You have to have actual human

  followers, not just you three. And I have to have

  all of the Lost Things, and Alvin the Treacherous

  already has eight of them.’

  ‘You’ve got m-m-me!’ squeaked Toothless,

  landing on Hiccup’s arm. ‘I’m one of the Lost Things,

  and I’m the best one!’

  ‘Manners,’ reminded the Windwalker gently.

  ‘Don’t forget, Toothless, no boasting…’

  ‘OK,’ said Toothless, his brow furrowing.

  ‘Toothless is the best one… p-p-please?’

  ‘The map says that the Jewel is in the Amber

  Slavelands,’ said the Wodensfang. ‘Why aren’t

  we there?’

  26

  ‘Because instinctively I don’t think the

  Jewel is there,’ replied Hiccup.

  ‘That is because your heart is not yet in

  your Quest,’ replied the Wodensfang, solemnly.

  ‘At the moment, you are on a different Quest,

  the Quest to find your friend Fishlegs and your

  father. Admit it, that’s why we’re here.’

  It was why they were there. The Hooligans were

  supposed to have hidden out in this country after

  Berk was burnt out by the Dragon Furious.

  ‘OK,’ admitted Hiccup. ‘I am worried about

  Fishlegs, he’s always sort of relied on me.’

  Fishlegs was a ‘runt’ who had been washed up

  on the beaches of Berk fourteen years ago. He had no

  parents, so i
t was Hiccup who looked after him and

  stopped the other Hooligans from bullying him.

  ‘And this is getting in the way of your true

  Quest,’ interrupted the Wodensfang, ‘which is to

  find the Dragon Jewel.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Hiccup, ‘because I still

  don’t think the Jewel is in the Amber Slavelands,

  whatever the map says.’

  They had walked such a long way now, that they

  stopped right underneath the tree the Warrior was

  sitting in. Hiccup got out the map.

  27

  The map was quite complicated. It showed a nice

  distinct picture of the Amber Slavelands, and there was

  a maze of mirrors and Prison Darkheart, and there, in

  the heart of it, was the Dragon Jewel, helpfully pointed

  out with a large arrow and capital letters.

  The three dragons peered at it over Hiccup’s

  shoulder. So too did the Warrior and the dragon

  perched high, invisible and menacing in the treetops

  above Hiccup.

  ‘Look,’ said Hiccup, pointing to a large fish at

  the top of the map – a fish so long that it took up the

  entire space from left to

  right. ‘What is that?’

  Trust sea-faring

  creatures like dragons and

  Vikings to know their fish

  species.

  ‘It’s a member of

  the herring family,’

  said the Wodensfang.

  ‘And what colour is it?’

  ‘R-r-red!’ said Toothless

  proudly. ‘Ask me another one! I

  know all the colours,’ he confided

  confidentially to the Windwalker.

  30

  ‘You see,’ said Hiccup, ‘in the human world a

  “red herring” is another way of saying a false start,

  or a wrong direction. My knowledge of Grimbeard

  the Ghastly is that he was a tricky man, and this

  is his way of saying that the Jewel isn’t in the

  Slavelands at all. What do you think, Wodensfang?’

  The Wodensfang was the only one of the four

  of them old enough to have actually met Grimbeard