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  How to Speak Dragonese (The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III #3)

  Cressida Cowell

  CONTENTS

  1. The Boarding-an-Enemy-Ship Lesson .......1

  2. Sharkworms............................................. .11

  3. Out of the Cooking Pot .............................32

  4. Toothless to the Rescue ............................46

  5. Back on Berk..............................................61

  6. That Night in Sinister

  Roman Fort Sinister .....................................74

  7. The Nanodragon .......................................76

  8. The Frightening Foreigners Lesson ...........90

  9. Welcome to Fort Sinister .........................100

  10. The Secret Identity of the Thin Prefect .108

  11. The Bog-Burglar Heir.............................122

  12. The Master Escaper ................................132

  13. Back on Berk...........................................136

  14. Camicazi's Escape Plans.........................139

  15. The Coming of the Sharkworms.............152

  16. The Cunning but Desperate Plan ............162

  17. The Circus on Saturn's Day Saturday ....169

  18. The Valhalla Express ................................172

  19. Aaaaaaargh!..............................................187

  20. Hiccup the God.........................................197

  21. You Can't Keep a Bog-Burglar.............206

  22. The Return of the Heroic Heirs ...............220

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  [Image: Stoick the vast.]

  [Image: Dogsbreath.]

  [Image: Ziggerastica (a nanodragon)

  [Image: The thin prefect.]

  [Image: Snot lout and fireworm.]

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  [Image: Fishlegs hiccup's best friend horrorcow.]

  [Image: Hiccup toothless.]

  [Image: Camicazi.]

  [Image: Big-boobied bertha (chief of the Bog-Burglars.]

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  [Image: Hiccup and his sword, endeavour.]

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  Once there were dragons.

  Imagine a time of DRAGONS -- some larger than mountainsides, slumbering in the depths of the ocean; some smaller than your fingernail, hopping through the heather.

  Imagine a time of VIKING HEROES, in which men were men and women were sort of men too and even some little babies had chest hair.

  And now imagine that you are a boy called Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, not yet twelve years old and not yet turning out to be the kind of Hero his father would have liked him to be. That boy, of course, was really ME, but the boy I was then seems so far away to me now that I shall tell this story almost as if he were a stranger.

  So, imagine that instead of being me, this stranger, this Hero-in-Waiting, is YOU.

  You are small. You have red hair. You don't realize it yet, but you are about to set out on the most alarming episode of your life so far ... When you are an old, old man like I am you will call it "My First Encounter with the Roman Empire" -- and even at this distance in time it will still cause your old wrinkled arms to prickle with goose bumps as you remember the perils and dangers of that terrifying adventure...

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  [Image: Ships.]

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  1. THE BOARDING-AN-ENEMY-SHIP LESSON

  Once upon a foggy day in a cold, cold country long, long ago, seven small Viking boats floated through the Sea-Known-as-Woden's-Bathtub. The fog had swallowed up the Peaceable Country to the north, and the Isle of Berk to the west, and, indeed, had swallowed up so much of everything that it was as if the boats were sky-boats, and had left the earth entirely, and were sailing through cloud banks way, way up in the air.

  In the first boat, The Fat Boar, sat Gobber the Belch, a six-and-a-half-foot giant in teeny-weeny hairy shorts, who had leg muscles so enormous they had muscles of their own, and a beard like a hedgehog struck by lightning. Gobber was the teacher in charge of the Pirate Training Program on the Isle of Berk, and this sail through the fog was part of a Boarding-an-Enemy-Ship lesson.

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  The six boy-sized boats that were following The Fat Boar each had two boys in them, and these boys were Gobber's pupils, young members of the Tribe of the Hairy Hooligans.

  "OK, YOU DISGUSTING GLOBS OF GIRLY SNOT!" yelled Gobber, in a bellow so loud it could be heard several miles away. "WE ARE NOW GOING

  TO PRACTICE BOARDING AN ENEMY SHIP ON THE EASY TARGET OF A PEACEABLE FISHING BOAT ... CAN ANYONE REMEMBER THE FIRST RULE OF AMBUSH?"

  "TAKE THE ENEMY BY SURPRISE, SIR!" shouted out Snotface Snotlout, a tall, unpleasantly smug-looking boy with gigantic nostrils and the beginnings of a small mustache.

  "Very good, Snotlout," purred Gobber the Belch, and he continued at full volume: "IN A FOG THIS THICK YOUR VICTIM SHIP WILL NOT HAYE A CHANCE OF SEEING YOU COMING!"

  They can hear us, though, thought Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, gloomily trying to peer through the fog, unless, of course, we have the luck to stumble across some completely deaf peaceable fishermen...

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  16

  Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third is, rather surprisingly, the Hero of this story. I say surprisingly, because the first thing you noticed about Hiccup was how very, very ordinary he was. He was on the small side, with a slightly freckled, absolutely average face that would always get overlooked in a crowd.

  His dragon, Toothless, who was at that moment asleep down the front of Hiccup's shirt, was just as average as his owner. The only truly remarkable thing about Toothless was how remarkably small he was. He was at least half the size of the other boys' dragons.

  And, as you can imagine, this wasn't something to boast about.

  Gobber's shouting woke the little dragon up. He poked his nose out of the neck of Hiccup's tunic. "W-w-what's happening?" he asked sleepily in Dragonese.

  * Dragons spoke Dragonese. Only Hiccup could understand this fascinating language.

  [Image: Hiccup.]

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  "Oh, nothing unusual," Hiccup whispered back, scratching Toothless behind the horns. (He loved that.) "Gobber is shouting, Snotlout is showing off, and. we're all out here floating in tie fog and the cold when we could be tucked up in front of a roasting fire ... Ton can go back to sleep if you like."

  Toothless chuckled. "You V-v-vikings are as m-m-mad as mackerel," he said. "W-w-wake Toothless up when it's l-l-lunchtime..." And he burrowed back down to the nice warm spot just next to Hiccup's left armpit and closed his eyes again.

  Hiccup was sharing his boat with his best friend Fishlegs, who was even skinnier than Hiccup and looked a lot like a daddy longlegs with asthma and a squint. Fishlegs put his hand up in the air.

  [Image: Hiccup.]

  "It's all very well that they can't see us coming, sir," he pointed out logically, "but how are we going to see them so we can board them in the first place?"

  "Easy-peasy, o plankton-brain," boomed Gobber, very pleased with himself. "Peaceable fishing boats are always followed by flocks of Lesser

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  Blackbacked Seadragons, hoping for a bite. All you have to do is follow the racket they make and you'll have found yourself a boat. You then simply board the boat yelling the Hooligan War Cry: repeat after me ... YAAAAAAAAAH!" yelled Gobber the Belch.

  "YAAAAAAAAAH!" yelled ten of the boys back at him, brandishing their swords like maniacs.

  "Yaaaaah," repeated Hiccup and Fishlegs, without much enthusiasm.

  [Image: Men.]

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  "The Peaceables are terrified of us Hooligans, Woden only knows w
hy ... Right, lads -- you steal one of their helmets to prove you have completed the exercise, and report back to me. THIS IS GOING TO BE LIKE BURGLING BERRIES FROM A BABY!" boomed Gobber the Belch.

  "Oh, I nearly forgot. Silly me ..." Gobber laughed carelessly. "The one thing you do have to bear in mind is that ON NO ACCOUNT SHOULD YOU LEAVE THIS BAY. This is VERY IMPORTANT because just to the south of here runs the Summer Current, a warm stream of water, and you all know what lives in the Summer Current..."

  "Sharkworms," gulped Fishlegs.

  "That's right, Fishlegs," boomed Gobber. "I know Hiccup, our natural history expert, can tell us something about Sharkworms."

  "Certainly sir," replied Hiccup, delighted to be asked a question about his favorite subject, dragons. He took out of his pocket a small scruffy notebook with How to Speak Dragonese written in large scrawly letters on the front. In this book Hiccup kept notes on the Dragonese language and descriptions of the various species of dragons and their habits.

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  "Well," said Hiccup, having trouble reading his own handwriting, "Sharkworms are a kind of dragon that look a lot like sharks. The adults can grow to about six meters in length, they have at least five rows of teeth --"

  "GET ON WITH IT, BOY!" yelled Gobber.

  "They are highly carnivorous and they not only scavenge off ships but climb aboard and attack you there ... On land they can easily outrun a man ... I would suggest, sir, that if there was even a chance we could run into Sharkworms we should leave the area immediately."

  "For Thor's sake, boy," grinned Gobber the Belch, "with that kind of attitude you might never leave the house. I'm training you to be pirates, not softies."

  "What happens if we get lost, sir?" pleaded Fishlegs.

  "Lost?" snorted Gobber. "LOST! Vikings don't get LOST!"

  "Honestly, sir," sneered Snotface Snotlout, "I don't know why you don't throw Hiccup the Useless and his fishlegged failure of a friend out of the Tribe completely. They're a disgrace to all of us."

  Hiccup and Fishlegs looked miserable.

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  "I mean look at their boat, sir," continued the sneering Snotlout. "We're Vikings, sir, the greatest shipbuilders the Ancient World has ever known, sir. A raft like that just makes us look ridiculous."

  "You think you're so clever, Snotlout," retorted Hiccup determinedly, "but this boat can go a lot faster than you think. Looks aren't everything, you know ..."

  Unfortunately, Snotlout had a point.

  The Hopeful Puffin was more of a floating accident than an actual boat.

  She had been built by Hiccup and Fishlegs in Shipbuilding lessons, and they were both hopeless at woodwork. Something kept on going wrong with the design and instead of being long and thin like a Viking ship should be, she had ended up fat and almost completely round. Her mast was too long and leaned lopsidedly to the left, so that in a strong wind she went round in circles.

  She also had a leak.

  Every half an hour Fishlegs or Hiccup had to remember to ban out the seawater that had collected in the bottom of the boat with Hiccup's helmet (Fishlegs's helmet also had a leak).

  Gobber the Belch looked at The Hopeful Puffin.

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  "Mmm," said Gobber thoughtfully. "You might have a point, Snotlout. NOW!" he continued briskly.

  "At the sound of my horn, the exercise will begin."

  He raised a curly-wurly bugle to his lips.

  "Ooooh, jumping jellyfish," moaned Fishlegs, "I HATE the Pirate Training Program! We're going to get lost... We're going to sink ... We're going to get eaten slowly by Sharkworms ..."

  "S-C-R-E-E-E-ECH!" screamed the bugle.

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  [Image: The Hopeful Puffin.]

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  2. SHARKWORMS

  Just as the sound of the bugle died away, the fog lifted, for a second giving a glimpse of the entire bay. Over to the right, further toward the gray outline of the Peaceable Country, there were the shadowy shapes of four or five Peaceable fishing boats, surrounded by clouds of screeching Blackbacked Seadragons.

  "Over there!" yelled Sharpknife and Tuffnut Junior, turning their boat, The Raven.

  "It's all under control, Fishlegs!" shouted Hiccup excitedly. "I can see where we're going!" Hiccup yanked the rudder of The Hopeful Puffin so sharply that Fishlegs lost his balance and fell face-first into the water at the bottom of the boat.

  The wind caught the sails at exactly the right speed and The Hopeful Puffin surged forward after the others ... But Hiccup hadn't noticed Snotlout's boat, Sparrowhawk, steaming up behind him at great speed.

  Sparrowhawk was as lean and mean and hungry as Snotlout himself. Beautifully built out of elm wood,

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  she came to a point so sharp at the prow that she sliced through the water as easily as an axe through a scallop. She was being steered by Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, Snotlout's best friend -- a great, hairy bully of a boy with a ring through his nose, who was snorting so hard with laughter that snot flew in all directions.

  "Get him, Fireworm," whispered Snotface Snotlout, and his dragon, a glistening blood-red Monstrous Nightmare, leaped from Snotlout's shoulder and dive-bombed Hiccup from behind with a furious shriek.

  [Image: Snotlout.]

  [Image: Snotlout's friend Dogsbreath.]

  Fireworm swooped down and pushed Hiccup's helmet down over his eyes with her talons. Hiccup took his hands off the rudder in surprise, and at the same moment, Sparrowhawk

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  rammed into the port side of The Hopeful Puffin, denting her severely.

  "So sorry, Useless!" jeered Snotface Snotlout as Sparrowhawk sailed on, completely unhurt. "Your pathetic raft is so small we didn't see you!"

  "Har har har," guffawed Dogsbreath the Duhbrain.

  The ramming sent The Hopeful Puffin into one of her spins.

  [Image: Sparrow hawk.]

  For a long time she spun

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  round in wobbly circles, like a confused sea urchin. Eventually, Hiccup regained control of the rudder and Fishlegs picked himself up from the bottom of the boat, moaning slightly.

  The Hopeful Puffin completed her final spin and began moving swiftly forward.

  But the fog had come down again, if anything

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  even thicker than before. After all that spinning, Hiccup had absolutely no idea which

  direction they were facing. And when the last faint echoes of Snotlout and Dogsbreath's jeering had faded away, they sailed on in spooky silence.

  "Where is everybody?" asked Fishlegs.

  "Ssssh," scolded Hiccup. "I'm trying to listen."

  The boys were quiet for ten long minutes.

  The only sound to be heard was the lapping of water against the sides of the boat and a brisk wind filling out the sail. They were gliding along at quite a rate now, but where were they going? Hiccup and Fishlegs strained their eyes into the fog and their ears into the silence, desperate to see or hear something, anything at all.

  But there was nothing.

  It might have been Hiccup's imagination playing tricks on him, but it seemed to him as if the air suddenly felt just a tiny bit warmer, and when he trailed a finger briefly into the water it felt just a tiny bit less icy than it should have done. And then he got to thinking about the Summer Current and Sharkworms and a prickle of fear ran all down his back, and everywhere

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  about him the drifting, ghostly fog seemed to be taking the shape of Sharkworm fins ...

  "Just out of interest," asked Fishlegs casually, "how does a Sharkworm attack you, exactly?"

  "Well," replied Hiccup, changing direction yet again in the hope of getting back to the safety of the bay, "Sharkworms should only attack if you are wounded. Even if you're not in the water they can smell the blood and that drives them crazy And then, because they have legs as well as a fishy tail, they can actually CLIMB ABOARD a ship to get you. That's where they got their nickname of Pirate Dragons,' because, although they can su
rvive at least ten minutes in the air, they generally drag you back into the water to kill you."

  "Oh, brilliant, " said Fishlegs, frantically checking himself all over to see if he had any grazes. "Do you think eczema counts or does it have to be an actual cut?"

  "I'm not sure," said Hiccup. "I've never actually met a Sharkworm."

  "Better and better," said Fishlegs. "It's at times like this that I am so glad that I was born a Viking and not a Roman." (The Romans were the Vikings' deadly enemies -- a very bossy lot who wanted to take over

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  the world and had jolly nearly got there.) "Think how BORING it would be to be a Roman. All those warm baths and lounging around in togas when you could be out here enjoying the fresh air and the multi-fanged blood-crazy carnivores ..."

  "Ssssh," said Hiccup, changing direction for the ninth time. "Let's just see whether we can hear anything this time ..."

  But again there was silence, and the splash of seawater coming over the side onto Hiccup's ankle felt definitely warm.

  "I'm h-h-hungry," said a deep little voice from Hiccup's chest, and both boys jumped at the sudden sound.

  The nose of Toothless, Hiccup's disobedient little dragon, poked out of the top of Hiccup's shirt, closely followed by the rest of him. He crawled sleepily up Hiccup's neck to his familiar perch on the top of Hiccup's helmet, where he shook out his wings, had a quick rummage for dragonfleas, and gave an enormous yawn, revealing a very pink forked tongue and the fang-free gums that gave him his name.

  Even though he was only a Common or Garden dragon, the most ordinary of the dragon species,