1 THE HERDING-REINDEER-ONDRAGONBACK LESSON

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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...

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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. 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-