Cressida Cowell - How to Train Your Dragon 05 - How to Twist a Dragons Tale

How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III #5)

Cressida Cowell

[Map: Map of the Barbaric Archipelago during the first summer for 100 years.]

CONTENTS

1. The Herding-Reindeer-on-Dragonback Lesson............................1

2. The Exterminators.............................................................15

3. The Firetrap.....................................................................37

4. The Fight........................................................................49

5. Who Is the Man on the White Dragon? ....................................56

6. Hiccup's Bardiguard Has a Busy Time......................................81

7. The Tale of Humungously Hotshot the Bardiguard......................105

8. The Twist in the Bardiguard's Tale.........................................111

9. How Do You Take Advice from Someone Who

Has Taken a Vow of Silence? ...............................................119

10. A Meeting of The Thing..................................................123

11. The-Quest-to-Stop-Volcano-from-Exploding..........................141

12. Welcome to Lava-Lout Island............................................146

13. Meanwhile, Back on Berk.................................................156

14. Is it Always Nice to Bump into an Old

Acquaintance? ................................................................159

15. I Didn't Mean to Come Here............................................177

16. Another Fight.............................................................182

17, Just Exactly When Is Too Late? .........................................200

18. Can You Outrun an Exploding Volcano? .............................204

19. Is the Universe a Good Egg or a Bad Egg? ..........................220

20. When the Play Is Over..................................................229

[Image: Hiccup.]

[Image: Camicazi.]

[Image: TOOTHLESS hiccup's disobedient little dragon.]

[Image: Sevot face Shot lout.]

[Image: Clue and his hunt FLAC.]

[Image: STOICK THE VAST Hiccup's father and chief of the Hooligan Tribe (taught but dim)]

[Image: Hiccup's best friend FISHLEGS.]

PROLOGUE BY HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III THE LAST OF THE GREAT VIKING HEROES

There were Heroes when I was a boy.

Now that I am an old, old man, with white in my hair and wrinkles on my cheeks, it seems a long time ago.

So I shall tell this story as if it happened to somebody else, because the boy I once was is so distant to me now, that he might as well be a stranger.

Here is the story of a Hero I met when I was eleven years old and about to embark on one of the most dangerous Quests of my Life, the Quest to Stop the Volcano from Exploding.

He was a very great man, but he didn't want to be a Hero anymore ...

[Insert: I am an EXTERMINATOR Imprisoned in my Egg T can see through the clear transparent walls of the shell I cannot break After fifteen years of scratching I look out upon the world That I am dying to IGNITE, and Over the years, my fury has been simmering, stewing, boiled and now it is SMOKING HOT.]

[Image: One eye]

1. THE HERDING-REINDEER-ON-DRAGONBACK LESSON

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third never forgot the day he met an Exterminator Dragon for the very first time.

How could he?

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of his short, adventurous life.

There he was, sitting in the middle of a circle of fire which was getting smaller and smaller, with no way out, and prowling through the flames, getting closer and closer, were these sinister leopard-like shapes, the slinking silhouettes of Exterminator Dragons sharpening their talons and getting ready to leap --

Hang on a second.

I had better start at the beginning.

It all took place during a heat wave in August, which was surprising, for Augusts in the Viking territories were normally rather cool, wet affairs. But it had been growing hotter and hotter over the course of the summer, and as the temperatures rose, Hiccup's grandfather Old Wrinkly had been babbling on about how the unexpected warmth was a terrible Omen of Doom, and a new kind of Terror-Dragon had awoken

in the West, and would descend upon them all with Fire and Destruction ...

But unfortunately nobody really took Old Wrinkly seriously, because he wasn't very good at looking into the future.

[Image: Light.]

On this particular day, the sun was

beating down relentlessly on the usually soggy Isle of Berk as if it had lost its way and thought it was in Africa.

There was not a cloud (let alone an Exterminator Dragon) in the sky.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, only son of Chief Stoick the Vast, was in the Hooligan Pirate Training Program on the Isle of Berk.

His teacher, Gobber the Belch, had decided that on this particularly still, stuffy summer's day, when all you really wanted to do was to find a nice tree and lie gasping underneath it, downing lots of drinking-horns of nice cool water, it would, in fact, be an EXCELLENT idea to hold a Herding-Reindeer-on-Dragonback lesson.

Hiccup did not agree with Gobber the Belch.

[Image: Clouds of midges.]

But Gobber the Belch had not asked Hiccup's opinion on the matter.

And Gobber the Belch was a six-and-a-half-foot axe-wielding lunatic who was not the kind of teacher you argued with.

So there they all were, all twelve pupils on the Program, standing in a hot, bedraggled, wilting line, halfway up Huge Hill, swatting off the midges that were gathering in great clouds in the still and steamy air.

There was Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, rather surprisingly the Hero of this story, for he was extremely ordinary-looking, with bright-red hair that shot straight up in the air whatever you did to it, and no obvious Heroic qualities.

There was Hiccup's best friend Fishlegs, the only boy on the Pirate Training Program who was even worse at being a Viking than Hiccup was. He had asthma, eczema, short-sight, flat-feet, knock-knees, an allergy to reptiles, heather, and animal fur, and he couldn't swim. He bore a strong resemblance to a string bean wearing glasses.

There was Snotface Snotlout. A delightful boy -- if you happen to like unpleasant teenagers with skull tattoos who bully anything that moves and is smaller than them.

4-

There was Tuffnut Junior. A pleasure to meet -- if you happen to like meeting pimply young plug-uglies who pick their noses and sleep with an axe under their pillows.

And Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, the largest, sweatiest, and smelliest of the lot of them, had all the grace and charm of a pig in a helmet.

There they all were, this horrid collection of spotty Viking preteens, and Gobber was shouting at them in his usual cheery fashion.

[Image: Fishlegs and Horrorcow.]

[Image: Shot lout swatting the midges.]

"RIGHT!" yelled Gobber, the sweat pouring down his lobster-red cheeks and into his beard,

[Image: A man]

turning it as limp and steamy as a jungle rainforest. "I PRESUME YOU HAVE ALL BROUGHT YOUR HUNTING DRAGONS?"

They had all brought their hunting dragons. All except for Clueless, who really was so stupid that he shouldn't have been allowed out without a guardian. He had brought his hunting FLAGON, which wasn't the same thing at all.

But everybody else had brought their hunting dragons.

Most of the hunting dragons were looking as cross at being called out on this mission as their Masters were, panting heavily with their forked tongues hanging out, and swishing their tails to keep off the midges and the flies.

Snotlout's dragon, Fireworm, who looked a bit like a flame-red Rottweiler with a face like a snooty alligator, was curling dangerously around Snotlout's legs, wondering whether she would get in trouble if she gave Gobber a big fat bite on his big fat hairy bottom.