How to Train Your Dragon Book 9: How to Steal a Dragon's Sword by Cressida Cowell

The Heroic Misadventures of Hiccup the Viking

as told to

Cressida Cowell

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANYNew York Boston

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PROLOGUE BY HICCUPHORRENDOUS HADDOCK III,THE LAST OF THE GREATVIKING HEROES

Now that I am an old, old man, the past seems veryfar away.

But once there were dragons in the Archipelago.And once I was a boy, a boy who in the

thirteenth year of my life made a terrible mistake.I released the dragon Furious from the prison of

Berserk. The dragon promised to fly into exile in the icy

wastes of the north for one year only. One year’sgrace, and then he vowed that he would bring down adragon rebellion whose only aim was the absolute andutter extinction of the entire human race.

Over the next year, the boy-who-once-was-megrew like a weed, at least three inches taller. My armsstuck right out of my shirtsleeves, but the year cameand went, with no sign of the dragon Furious, or of hisrebellion.

I heaved a sigh of relief and began to hope that

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perhaps the terrible hurts of a hundred years ofimprisonment had been soothed by the chill of thoseinnocent snows, and diving free and joyous throughthe pin-sharp cold waters, chasing the fleeting sealsin that endless chilly wilderness, the dragon hadreturned to the happy, carefree life of his ancestors.

Perhaps he had remembered himself up therein his element, and what if he had forgotten hispromise, and maybe he might not return after all?

Perhaps.What if?Maybe.But in the quiet watches of the night, the

words of the dragon Furious came hissing andburning back into my brain, and they were not wordsthat melted like snow into drops of water. They werewords of flame, and they hissed and leaped intoburning, terrible life in my dreams.

“We shall scourge this world with fire and leaveno wretched human being alive, not a single one. Forover the last hundred years, I have been looking intothe past and into the future, and I tell you this,Boy . . .humans and dragons cannot live together . . .”

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The words spat through my brain like living,burning snakes:

“. . .And so I will call the dragons from far andwide, from the depths of the ocean and the ends ofthe earth, and we shall fight the final battle beforeit is too late.”

“NO!” I shrieked in my dream. “NO! NO!

NO! NO! NO!”But time cannot tick backward. The boy-who-

once-was-me could not stop it.And the dragon was coming.

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1. THE GREATEST DAY OFYOUR LIFE (NOT)

One long-ago winter’s midnight, Hiccup HorrendousHaddock the Third awoke with a frightened start.

Despite being the Hope and Heir to the Tribe ofthe Hairy Hooligans, Hiccup was a gangly, skinny,ordinary-looking boy with the kind of face that waseasy to overlook in a crowd.

To tell the truth, he had not been sleepingvery well.

It is difficult to sleep well if one’s bed is ahammock suspended three-quarters of the way up theHard Way of Angry Mountain.

The Hard Way of Angry Mountain is a cliff sohigh that it takes two days and a night to climb it. It isso vertical that a climber has to hammer in a couple ofnails and spend that night sleeping uneasily in ahammock hung precariously from the shiny rock.

Hiccup’s riding dragon, the Windwalker,sleeping on a little shelf of rocks a couple of feet away,was supposed to be looking out for danger.

However, it was still winter, the Windwalker’s

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hibernation time, so he was barely awake even in thedaytime, and now that it was night, he was sleeping sosoundly he might as well have been dead. His long,untidy body sprawled messily on the ledge, and hesnored as loud as a cow with a cold.

Anything dangerous would have had to comeright up and sit on his head before he’d take anynotice whatsoever.

Toothless, Hiccup’s tiny, selfish Common orGarden hunting dragon, had not noticed anything,either. He was fast asleep on Hiccup’s chest, sendingout smoke rings that filled the hammock.

But it was danger that woke Hiccup up. He was sure of it.Hiccup’s heart was pumping like a jack-in-a-box,

and he was suddenly wildly awake, for, with every fiberof his being, he sensed danger.

Danger all around him.Frankly, they should have been safe enough, high

up on a cliff face, in the middle of the wintertime,when most of the dangerous dragons in theArchipelago were still hibernating.

The only danger should have been if thehammock fell down.


So why did Hiccup’s heart tick so quickly, andwhy was his stomach so faint that he was nearly sick?

Moving very slowly (he didn’t want to dislodgehimself), Hiccup peered over the edge of thehammock.

The bottom of the cliff was sickeningly far below.Hiccup swallowed and tried not to look down.They were so far up, he could see for miles in

every direction, as if he were looking down on a map ofthe Archipelago. To the west, the sea. To the north, thesinister, jagged gash of the Gorge of the Thunderboltof Thor. Farther north still, the drifting icebergs andragged peaks of the Cold Mountains.

And here, right here, thestrange mainlandlandscape of ice andsnow, relieved by weirdlywarm bubbling poolsbelching smoke that driftedupward like dragons snoring.

A couple of feet away onthe cliff hung the patchedhammock of Hiccup’s bestfriend, Fishlegs.


Fishlegswas snoringtoo, but that wasprobably because ofhis asthma. (Fishlegswas unfortunatelyallergic to his owndragon, Horrorcow, whowas in the hammock withhim.) Or it could have beenhis hay fever. (Fishlegs wasthe only person Hiccup knewwho could get hay fever in themiddle of the winter.)

And above, way above,was the night sky, brilliantlystudded with stars.


The sky was full of noises,sounds more eerie than thunder,

stranger than lightning. High-pitched sounds that

made the eardrums throb, likewhales calling to each other in

an alien universe. And up there in

the sky, Hiccup couldsee advancing

black shadowyshapes,


slowly flying toward them over the Gorge of theThunderbolt of Thor.

The shapes were too far away for Hiccup toidentify which types of dragon they were exactly, butthere was something nightmarish about their wings,and he knew them deep in his soul.

When a young rabbit spots a hawk circling above,it may never have seen such a creature before — butthere is some ancestral memory that tells it to beafraid, to leap in great, panicky bounds to the safety ofthe burrow. So it was with these dragons.

It was not, of course, that Hiccup had neverseen dragons before.

He lived in a world full of the creatures, bothwild and domesticated.

But what was different about these dragons wastheir behavior. There were a number of differentspecies, and they were acting as if they were in ahunting party. And dragon species did not generallyjoin together to hunt humans.

Maybe they had done that, once, long ago.But for as long as the old Vikings could

remember, they did not hunt humans.A wild dragon would eat you, of course, if you

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happened to cross its path and it was hungry. Butthere was no organized hunting of humans, as perhapsthere might have been way in the past.

Hiccup’s scalp prickled with fear as if he werebeing climbed all over by black beetles. He strainedso hard to hear into that blackness that it was as ifhis ears were growing outward. And somehow,above the roar of the wind, he could just hear a trulyterrifying noise, a savage hiss in Dragonese, but nastierthan he had ever heard Dragonese spoken, it was socold with hatred.

There was something scarily trancelike about theway the words were spat out, so faint he could hardlycatch them. But perhaps it was better if he could nothear them at all:


Closer, closer, flew the advancing dragons, headingstraight for the cliff where the hammocks perched.

Hiccup craned his neck even farther upward.About sixty feet above him were the hammocks of theother young Warriors of the Tribes of the Archipelago,hammered into the cliff, just like his own. They were ahalf hour’s climb ahead of Fishlegs and Hiccup, andwhile Fishlegs’s and Hiccup’s hammocks were madeof brown patched blankets, theirs were made of oldships’ sails. The gaudy patterns of these sails, such asred-and-white stripes or blue-and-gold diamonds,made them stick out against the cliff like a flamingositting in a bog.

The mysterious dragons were heading straightfor them. They seemed to have gone rogue, to behunting humans.

Hiccup could see what they were now. Herecognized them from their wing patterns.

They were a mixture of some of the nastiesttypes of dragons in the Archipelago: Razorwings and Tonguetwisters and Doldrums and VampireGhouldeaths.

I’ve got to warn the others, thought Hiccup. Heopened his mouth to shout, but terror seemed to

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havestrangled hisvocal cords,like it doesin yourworstnightmares.

“Squeak,”

panted Hiccupfaintly, “squeak

squeak squeak . . .”

Thatwasn’t going todo much good.

And then:“Dragons . . .”

And as anafterthought,“Really nasty ones.”

This wasn’t even waking upToothless, let alone the young Warriorssnoring peacefully, unaware, highabove him.

The dragons were horribly near


now, flying in close formation — most unnaturalbehavior for dragons. They were drawing down theirlegs and stretching out their talons, ready to strike.The Warriors were totally helpless; they’d be killedinside their gaudy cocoons as they slept.

Hiccup leaned over to the small ledge in the cliffwhere he had stowed his rucksack. Hands shaking, hedrew out his bow and an arrow from the quiver.

Perhaps it was lucky that Hiccup was so far away.If he could see what the leader of the dragon pack wasdoing now . . . he might have fainted.

For the leader was a Tonguetwister dragon.

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Tonguetwister sounds like a name for asweet, charming dragon. But I am afraid thatTonguetwisters remove the limbs from their victims sothat they can no longer run away.

I’m sorry, but it’s true.Hovering perfectly still next to one of the

hammocks, the Tonguetwister slowly opened itsmouth, and out flicked its tongue: a tongue thickerthan a man’s muscular arm. The forked tips of thattongue were flexible and delicate.

The tongue slid inside one of the hammocks, theone belonging to Hiccup’s unpleasant cousin SnotfaceSnotlout, and rummaged around as if looking forsomething.

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Hiccup took careful aim and fired the arrow.Of course, he was aiming at the Tonguetwister.Hiccup wasn’t that bad a marksman, actually.

Not as good as he was at swordfighting, but not bad.But to do Hiccup justice, it is difficult to fire an

arrow from a wobbling hammock. Particularly whenyou are using a bow and an arrow both bent out ofshape — ironically, by Snotlout himself.

The slightly crooked arrow left the bow andspiraled upward, weaving erratically in a drunkenfashion. At the last minute, it plunged to the right,missed the dragon entirely, and sank into Snotlout’sleft calf.

It wasn’t quite what Hiccup had intended, but itdid have the desired effect . . . sort of.

Snotlout let out a small, muffled scream, as youwould, of course, if you had just been shot in the legby an arrow, and leaped out of the hammock . . . muchto the surprise (and annoyance) of the Tonguetwister,who hadn’t yet gotten hold of one of Snotlout’s limbs.

Of course, in his half-asleep, arrow-ridden state,Snotlout had completely forgotten he was three-quarters of the way up a cliff. Down he plunged,hurtling down that hysterical drop, past the hammocks


of hisfellow Warriors andpast Hiccup himself,who reached outdesperately to try tocatch him, thoughSnotlout would havebeen far too heavy . . .

And that would havebeen the end of Snotlout ifthere had not been a tree growing outof the cliff face not far below Hiccup. Thetree broke Snotlout’s fall, and though he carried ondownward, he ju-u-ust managed to grab hold of oneof the lower bendy branches to save himself.

So there was Snotlout, dangling from the tree, athree-thousand-foot drop below him. He was sosurprised that he, too, could not make a sound, andhe stared up at Hiccup with round, terrified eyes.

“HELP ME, YOU IDIOT,” mouthed Snotloutgracelessly. Snotlout was not one for being polite, evenwhen he had just been saved from a nasty fate at thetongue of a Tonguetwister and was still depending onthe person he was insulting to save his life.

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He couldn’t hold on for long, but he was slightlyout of Hiccup’s reach.

Hiccup frantically scrabbled around in hishammock, trying to get out one of his climbing ropesso that Snotlout could grab on to it. But even at thebest of times, maneuvering inside a hammock is liketrying to put your underpants on inside a pillowcase,and in this instance, with the hammock fogged upwith Toothless’s smoke, it was like taking part in somebizarre saunalike sweating ceremony.

Back and forth Hiccup struggled and swayed,but he couldn’t find the end of the beastly climbingrope, and his hands were slippery with perspiration.He gave a frantic wriggle like a stranded worm . . . andaccidentally drew his sword instead of pulling out theclimbing rope . . .

With a dreadful ripping sound, the sword cut theold faded-brown hammock right in half.

“Whhhhoooooooaaaaa!”Now, at last, he could find his voice.“DRAGON ATTAAACKKKKK!!!!!!”It was an enormous shout, the full, terrified blast

of Hiccup’s lungs echoing off the dark walls of thecliff, sending the shout back again and on and up.


A couple of feet away, Fishlegs caught the fullblast of the shout and rocketed into wakefulness likean exploding starfish. He very nearly fell out of hishammock as well. Way, way up the cliff, every hammockwobbled and wiggled as its occupant blearily sat up,blurting, “Wossat? Wossgoingon?”

“E-e-e-e-k!” squealed Toothless in alarm,opening his eyes and putting out his wings as herealized he was plummeting toward the ground.


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The dragons paused in their attack,hovering for a moment in the cold night air. Theyadjusted the lights in their yellow eyes (a mostextraordinary trick that some dragons possess) from aslight glow to a dazzling glare and turned their headsdownward . . .

And pinpointed Hiccup, swinging on theremains of his hammock, and illuminated him in thedazzling brightness of their many searchlight eyebeamsso that he shone in brilliant detail against the darknessof the cliff.

“Uh-oh . . . WINDWALKER! WAKE UP!!!!”yelled Hiccup, waving his sword around wildly. (Heyelled this in Dragonese, for Hiccup was one of the


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few Vikings, before or since, who could speak thisfascinating language.)

“Hoooooonnnnnng . . . sshuuuuuh . . .” snoredthe Windwalker.

The swarm of dragons, eerily stillhanging way above Hiccup, hissed with

slow, chilling anger. Something in theireyes clicked. It was the little focus

lid, a shutter that came downover their eyes and enabled

them to see objects verywell from an

extraordinarydistance.

They hungthere for amoment morewithout moving.

Only their eyes shifted alittle, following the waving ofHiccup’s sword.


And then they folded back their wings and dived.The Prey Dive.What a beautiful sight, if Hiccup had only been

in the state of mind to appreciate it! It’s a shame thathe was hanging by only a thread off the highest cliff inthe Archipelago at the time.

The Prey Dive is a glorious feat of aerialacrobatics, in which the dragon goes into free fall withhis wings folded back. And to see a swarm of giganticdragons performing this simultaneously, so verticallyand so close to the Hard Way of Angry Mountain thattheir wings were practically skimming the cliff itself, inthe dead of nighttime — well, I can tell you, thatshould have been a privilege and a pleasure, the kindof sight to see before you die. (And frankly, if you seethis kind of sight, the likelihood is you’re going to diepretty soon anyway.)

The lead dragon opened its jaws as the dragonscame screaming down at Hiccup, who made a finalwild wriggling swing back onto the cliff at the lastminute, and the entire swarm of dragons missed himand carried on, unable to stop, in their brilliant divedown the side of the cliff.

Hiccup scrabbled around wildly, desperately

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trying to get a foothold on the glass-smooth rock face.He could feel his fingers sliding slightly down whatwas left of the unraveling hammock. He couldn’thold on much longer . . . but there was nothing for hisfeet to grip on to, and he swung out again over the

dizzying drop.Meanwhile, Toothless was

bouncing up and down onthe Windwalker’s head,desperately trying to gethim to wake up. “W-W-

Wake up! Wake up! OrToothless’ll grind your bones

into broth!” yelled the littledragon. “Wake up, youlolloping l-l-lazy-bonesl-l-loser!”

“Hooooooooooong . . .ssshuuuuuuh . . .” The

Windwalker’s snores were happier andmore content than ever. In his dreams,

he was flitting happily from tree to tree, and a dearlittle butterfly was gently tickling his head with its dearlittle butterfly wings.


Fishlegs tried to get out of his hammock to help,but his foot got stuck in one of the ropes.

Clang!The fiftieth dragon, another Tonguetwister,

having screeched past Hiccup at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, did a lightning last-minutebreakneck turn, gripping the cliff with the hooks onthe ends of its wings.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant flying skills.With eyes firmly set on Hiccup, the

Tonguetwister rapidly began to haul itself by its wingsacross the cliff, toward the dangling and seeminglyhelpless Hiccup.

Toothless had given up bouncing on theWindwalker’s head and was now heaving with all histiny strength, trying to nudge the happily snoringWindwalker off the ledge in the hope that that wouldbring him to his senses.

“Oh, don’t go, dear little butterfly,” whisperedthe Windwalker in his dreams, blowing reproachful,crooning smoke rings. “Stay with me, little flutteryone, and we’ll dance the flower dance together . . .”

“HICCUP, YOU FOOL!” shouted Snotlout,hanging by his hands onto the tree a couple of feet

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below. “DO SOMETHING, FOR ONCE IN YOUR

LIFE! I CAN’T HOLD ON MUCH LONGER!”But Hiccup had problems of his own.“Aaaaieeeeee!” screeched Hiccup as the

Tonguetwister crawled, batlike, ever closer. As itopened its mouth, he could see the dreadful,muscular, hairy tongue lurking sluglike in the depths.

The dragon’s alligator jaws snapped open, and itshorrible tongue snaked out and around Hiccup’ssword, dragging Hiccup’s left hand with it, off thehammock shreds. . .

The dragon shifted its grip a moment, and,shivering with revulsion, Hiccup felt the tonguecurling around his whole arm.

Ping!Another strand of the fibers broke, leaving him

dangling by only the tiniestthreads above the drop.

The dragonpaused, preparing totwist off Hiccup’sarm that held thesword. . .


This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are theproduct of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance toactual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Text and illustrations copyright © 2011 by Cressida Cowell

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, thescanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without thepermission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectualproperty. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for reviewpurposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisherat [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017Visit our website at www.lb-kids.com

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 ownedby the publisher.

First U.S. Edition: July 2012Originally published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder Children’s Books

ISBN 978-0-316-20571-9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

RRD-C

Printed in the United States of America

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How to Train Your Dragon Book 9: How to Steal a Dragon's Sword by Cressida Cowell

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