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 sword fighter, 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 © 2013 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
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than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
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First ebook edition: December 2013
eISBN 978-0-316-33373-3
We have not yet seen Tomorrow. We have not yet
dared go there.
There was once a thriving city on the island of
Tomorrow. The flags of the Wilderwest flew bravely
from the towers of its hundred splendid castles. It was
a city built on the enslavement of men and of dragons
but, like many a city before and after it, it was a
handsome and glorious city nonetheless.
But a century ago, Grimbeard the Ghastly, the
Last King of the Wilderwest, did a truly dreadful thing.
Grimbeard’s son Hiccup Horrendous Haddock
the Second, with his dragon the Dragon Furious, was
leading a peaceful Dragon Petition to plead with his
father to end the misery of slavery. Grimbeard mistook
the Petition for Rebellion. He killed his very own son
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by his very own sword, the Stormblade, and the blood
of his son was spilt on the seat of his very own Throne.
That was the beginning of the Curse upon the
Throne and the island of Tomorrow. The city was
destroyed by the dragon forces that had come at first
in peaceful protest. The hundred splendid castles
were burnt to the ground, and the Dragon Furious
was captured and bound in inescapable chains, in the
depths of a forest prison.
Grimbeard the Ghastly repented of his terrible
crime. He swore that there would never be a King
of the Wilderwest again, unless that King could be
a better man than he was. So Grimbeard created an
Impossible Task. He scattered ten of the King’s Things
to all the four corners of the distant earth.
Those Things would be guarded by monsters and
dragons most terrible. Only a true Hero could gather
the Things together, and lift the Curse and become the
next King of the Wilderwest.
In the unlikely event that there would ever be a
Hero great enough to gather together those Ten Lost
Things, the Hero could then be crowned, but only on
the twelfth day of Doomsday, known as the Doomsday
of Yule, which comes but once a year, and only on
the island of Tomorrow, on the stumps of the Throne
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where Grimbeard’s son had died.
In the meantime, Grimbeard appointed human
and dragon Warriors to be Guardians on the ruined
island fortress of Tomorrow, so fearsome and so
terrible that they can barely be imagined. All will kill on
sight anyone illegally entering their territory.
Now the Archipelago needs a King more than
ever before. For the Dragon Furious has escaped from
that forest prison where Grimbeard the Ghastly once
enslaved him, and the Dragon is carrying out his own
Curse on the humans that he now hates. His intention
is to extinguish the entire human race.
And the Dragon Furious is winning. He has
torched the whole north of the Archipelago. The
humans have been forced to live in hiding-places
underground, for fear of the Dragon.
Nothing can stop the Dragon Furious now.
Nothing except for a new King, for a new King will be
told the secret of the Tenth Lost Thing, the Dragon
Jewel, a jewel that has the power to destroy dragons
forever.
There is only one time in the year that a possible
King is allowed to enter the territory of Tomorrow.
It is on one of the twelve mornings of the Twelve
Days of Doomsday.
13
Today it is midwinter, and the morning of the
ninth day of Doomsday.
Here he is now, the extraordinarily tall figure of a
lone Ferryman, rowing across from the dreadful island
of Tomorrow, across the little Causeway of Hero’s
Gap, to the mainland of the Murderous Mountains.
The Ferryman is the Druid Guardian of the island
of Tomorrow. He is blindfolded, and cannot take off
this blindfold until a new King of the Wilderwest is
crowned. The blindfold signifies his role as an impartial
and implacable Judge, and his absolute commitment to
his role as a Druid Guardian. But by some supernatural
agency, he seems able to sense that there is a figure,
with a little band of followers, waiting for him on the
beach. The figure is UG the Uglithug. His hope rises.
At last… in the nick of time… a Hero come to
claim the Kingdom!
For the Druid Guardian fears that the Dragon
Furious is very close to extinguishing the human race.
The Druid Guardian brings the boat to a
sludgy halt on the Singing Sands of the Beach of the
Ferryman’s Gift, and spreads wide his arms, and makes
the declaration, as his father, and his father’s father,
and his father’s father’s father have done every year
before him.
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‘He-Or-She-Who-Would-Be-King, approach
Tomorrow if you dare! Only the One with the King’s
Lost Things can be crowned the King and live…’
And then he turns to UG the Uglithug, and asks
these solemn words.
‘Are you He-Who-Would-Be-King?’
UG replies, ‘I am.’
‘Are you the chosen representative of all the
Tribes of the Archipelago?’ asked the Druid Guardian.
UG nods.
‘Have you brought a gift for the Ferryman?’ asks
the Druid Guardian.
‘I have,’ replies UG the Uglithug.
The Druid Guardian says solemnly, but with
eager hope, ‘Then show me the Things.’
UG the Uglithug snaps his fingers to his followers,
and one by one they bring forward the Things.
They are: a fang-free dragon, Grimbeard’s
second-best sword, the Roman shield, an
arrow-from-the-land-that-does-not-exist, the heart’s
stone, the ticking-thing, the key, the Throne, the
Crown, the Dragon Jewel.
UG the Uglithug’s followers lay them out on the
beach before the Druid Guardian and retreat. The
Druid Guardian steps forward to examine the Things.
15
A long, long
time he spends,
picking up each Thing
with his long clever
fingers, taking care to
feel each individual
object from all angles, to
check whether it is right.
And then he steps
backwards. A grim note
enters his voice as he
declares: ‘These Things
are FAKES. The replica
of the toothless dragon is
particularly poor, and it
is unkind of you to
do such a thing to a
We will give it a
home on Tomorrow.’
(UG the Uglithug has
removed the teeth from a
poor little Trotterdragon in
order to pretend it is the real
toothless dragon from the Prophecy.)
UG the Uglithug turns as white
as a sheep’s fleece. ‘As for YOU, UG
the Uglithug,’ continues the Druid
Guardian, ‘know this. He who dares to
approach Tomorrow with a gift that is
unacceptable, dies a quick and horrible
death along with his followers.
‘ARISE, YOU GUARDIAN
PROTECTORS OF TOMORROW!
ARISE AND DO YOUR WORST!’
All around UG the Uglithug and his
followers on the beach, the sand begins to
bubble. And then the land gives birth to
creatures of unimaginable horror, huge and
terrible, screaming vengeance. There is no
time for reaction, no time for defence. UG
the Uglithug and his followers have no time
to see even what they are, whether they are
dragons or something worse.
These creatures take hold
of UG the Uglithug,
they take
hold of the followers, screaming and
struggling. They shoot upwards and
ever upwards, up into the sky, up and
up and up, into the clouds beyond, into
the choking freeze of ice and fire of the
upper atmosphere, and those people
are then no more. They will return to the
earth only as ash and purple rain.
Such is the vengeance of the
Guardians of Tomorrow on those who try
to approach their shore without the
correct Things.
The Druid Guardian sighs. He gently caresses the
head of the poor toothless Trotterdragon, reassuring it
softly that all will be well. He mutters to himself, ‘Two
more days… Only two more days for a Hero to arrive
and save us all.’
Wearily, he clambers back into his little boat. He
is not really expecting that right Hero to come, you
see. Why would he? This is a ritual that has taken place
every year for ninety-nine years and only the unworthy
have come. Wearily, the old man begins to row back to
Tomorrow.
He will call for a Hero to come and claim the
crown for two more days. If a Hero does not arrive on
the eleventh day, on Doomsday Eve, then it will be
too late. Grimbeard’s rules set down a century ago, are
inviolate. The borders of Tomorrow will close again,
until the following year.
And next year really WILL be too late. By then
the Dragon Furious will have grown too strong. This
year is their only chance.
A Hero must come to claim the Throne, with all
of the Lost Things, by the eleventh day of Doomsday…
… Or all is lost.
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PROLOGUE BY HICCUP
HORRENDOUS HADDOCK III,
THE LAST OF THE GREAT
VIKING HEROES
These last two books of my memoirs take place over
only forty-eight hours, during the last two days of
Doomsday when I was fourteen years old, and I warn
you that they are the darkest and most terrifying, and
were the most difficult to write. For this was the time in
which I faced both Grimbeard the Ghastly’s Guardian
Protectors of Tomorrow, and the true might and anger
of the Dragon Furious.
This was the time in which the dragons faced
extinction.
At the beginning of this book, war has come to
the Archipelago, the dragons and the humans are trying
to obliterate each other, and I am being hunted down
by both the terrible dragons of the Dragon Rebellion,
I look back at that pale, skinny, fourteen-year-old
Boy-Who-Once-Was-Me, and I feel such anxiety for
him, for he does not yet know what is coming to him.
He is living through this dreadful war, so he has seen
25
death already, but he has not yet lost someone that he
loves. He is beginning to understand what it means to
bear the burden of the guilt and responsibility of being
a leader. But he has not yet accepted that burden as his
fate and his destiny.
Will he be able to save the dragons in the end?
I yearn to help him.
I want to reach out across the chasm of space and
stars and time and hold his hand to help him through
it. But of course he is living in the past, that distant
country, and however hard I shout, he will not hear me.
Now I am an old, old man, looking back on
my life, I can see the pattern and the reason for the
darkness of that time.
Great things are only made out of love and out of
pain.
A great sword must be made out of the very best
steel. But what truly makes the sword great, is what
happens to the sword after it is made.
We call this the ‘testing’ of the sword.
The sword is bashed and hammered and hollered
into shape by the bright hammer. It is thrust into the
fierce heat of the fire, where it softens, and then it is
quickly quenched in water, where it hardens again. The
higher the temperature, the fiercer the fire, the tougher
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and the greater the sword eventually becomes.
The whole testing process can make a sword, or
break it.
The same could be said for the Making of a Hero.
1. YOUR MOTHER SAID NOT
TO LEAVE THE HIDEOUT
It was a chill and foggy night in the Murderous
Mountains.
A good night for treachery.
Humans should not have been out in the forests
of the Murderous Mountains in those times of war. If
the dragons of the Dragon Rebellion caught even one
hint that there were humans moving in the burnt trees
of those misty mountain passes, they would hunt them
down and kill them.
But somewhere deep in that forest, far away
from any aid, a terrified human voice was shrieking,
‘Help! Help! Help!’ and a little party of brave but
foolish humans and dragons had set out to offer their
assistance.
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was
sitting on the back of a Deadly Shadow dragon, flying
so low over the treetops that every now and then the
slow downward beats of the dragon’s wings brushed
the scorched topmost twigs of the trees.
Deadly Shadow dragons are chameleons, and so
this beautiful three-headed dragon was exactly the
colour of the midnight sky, complete with stars slowly
shifting across its shining sides.
Hiccup’s knees were trembling with the effort to
keep a grip on the saddle.
Hiccup was a very
ordinary looking boy,
for one so sought after
by so many people. A
ragged little string-bean
of a teenager, his fire-suit
torn to ribbons, his face
bruised and scratched,
with the wild hair and
scared eyes of one
who had been
hunted by too
many for too long. War and exile hadturned him into a
scarecrow of a boy.
His sword was drawn, his ears ringing from the
piercing coldness of the biting wind – and he was
peering over the Deadly Shadow’s wing as it flew, his
heart beating horribly quick at the blackened wasteland
down below. He was trying to work out where that