How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (Hiccup) Read Online Free PDF Page A

twenty-four sword talons simultaneously. The next his arms shot out to the left and right and two black dragons lay dead in the flames.
    And all at once the remaining four abandoned the fight, shooting up into the air like gigantic dark bats, and the Man on the White Dragon galloped out of the fire and into the circle where Hiccup, Gobber, and the Windwalker were crouching, and where Goliath lay dead.
    62
    [Image: A pirate.]
    63
    "PERSON WITH THE ENORMOUS BELLY!" roared the Man, taking off his cloak. "Climb on the back of my dragon!"
    "The boy must go first," said Gobber the Belch.
    "Can't carry all of us!" bellowed the Man, above the roaring of the greedy flames, creeping nearer and nearer, "but the boy will be safe, you have my word for it!"
    "Swear," said Gobber.
    "I swear," said the Man.
    He threw Hiccup his cloak.
    "Wrap yourself up in that, boy, and your own dragon can carry you out of the fire."
    [Image: Hiccup.]
    Slowly, Gobber stood up. Carefully, he
    64
    removed his helmet from his head, and placed it very gently on the chest of the dead Goliath.
    And only then did he climb on to the back of the White Dragon, which immediately leapt into the air.
    "Wrap yourself tight!" the Man called down to Hiccup. "It's fireproof!"
    Hiccup was alone in the circle of fire, so close now about him that his sleeve caught on fire.
    The flames surged forward to swallow up the last little piece of unburned land as Hiccup leaped onto the Windwalker's back, pulling the cloak over his head, with both his sleeves burning.
    The flames snuffed out instantly.
    The cloak was as cold as the ocean and smelled comfortingly of fish.
    It was like wrapping yourself up in the sea itself, and Hiccup gasped with the delighted shock of it.
    He tucked the cool ends firmly around every part of him, so that not a finger, not a toe, not a morsel of his body would be exposed to
    65
    the fire. He threw his arms around the Windwalker's shivering back.
    " Run , Windwalker, run," whispered Hiccup. And as the whole of the mountain was consumed with the flames, the Windwalker ran.
    [Image: Men]
    66
    5. WHO IS THE MAN ON THE WHITE DRAGON?
    Stoick the Vast was Hiccup's father, and the Chief of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. He was a man built on generous lines, with a belly like a battleship, and a beard like an electrocuted Afghan hound.
    He had been having a peaceful after-lunch nap in the surprising warmth of the afternoon, when he was rudely awoken by a couple of his Warriors chattering on about a fire up on the Highest Point... and how the Pirate Training Program was up there herding reindeer.
    Stoick immediately feared the worst. Stoick wasn't normally of a fearful nature, but his father-in-law, Old Wrinkly, who was a soothsayer, had been warning Stoick for WEEKS that the omens were saying that Hiccup was in danger.
    Stoick had laughed this off, for Stoick was not a great thinker or worrier, even though for a small, skinny boy who didn't amount to much, Hiccup DID seem to get into an extraordinary number of dangerous situations.*
    *see How to Train Your Dragon, How to Be a Pirate, How to Speak Dragonese, and How to Cheat a Dragons Curse.
    67
    "CALL OUT THE FIRE BRIGADE!" bellowed
    Stoick, jumping out of bed and leaping for the door, dressed only in a rather fetching pair of hairy underpants that his wife Valhallarama had brought back for him from one of her Quests abroad.
    When you live side by side with dragons you have to have an extremely efficient Fire Brigade System. Even though most dragons TRY not to fire-breathe unnecessarily, the hunting and riding dragons were always accidentally setting fire to the furniture or the thatch, and on these occasions the Fire Brigade could be on the scene in two minutes flat.
    The Fire Brigade consisted of a whole fleet of Water Dragons, so called because their stomachs can distend to carry extraordinary amounts of water, ridden by Fire Warriors specifically trained in fighting fires. It took a little longer than two minutes on