'Aerodynamics,' Bobbin muttered. 'Mass and energy coefficients.'
'Stop babbling and come back here!'
'You certainly are big,' the gnome remarked, his mind racing. 'I'll bet you weigh a ton.'
'Closer to three,' the dragon voice sneered.
'Five hundred miles, you said?' He dug out a carbon marker and did rapid calculations on the trailing edge of his wing. 'At say… twenty knots?
That means you've been in the air for more than twenty-four hours. That's a long time. Do you have far to go?'
'Not much farther. Now let's get this over with. Turn around?'
'I'm still having problems with my autonomic responses,' the gnome apologized. Glancing around one more time, he readjusted his lines, dropping the craft's nose in a sudden forty-five degree dive. He wondered how much longer he could stay out of the dragon's reach.
Chapter 25
Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill stood at the center of a ragged, determined line of refugees, watching goblins advance across the ice.
Twenty-eight fighters formed the motley line, dwarves and humans, most of them male but with a few females among them. A few held weapons of recent make, but most were armed with ancient blades, hammers, axes, and shields broken from the smoking ice — weapons that had been dropped or cast aside by those still under the ice. The two chieftains looked each way along their ragged battle line, then glanced at each other. There was nothing more to say, and nothing now to do except wait for the attack and hold the line for as long as possible while the helpless ones — those in the refugee camps — made their escape.
It was all they could do. The refugees were outnumbered four to one, poorly armed and poorly equipped, a handful of herders and planters against a force of goblins. They all knew that the best they might achieve would be a little time.
The refugees had been exploring the ice field when they saw the goblins coming from the south, no more than a mile away. There had been time to do no more than send a runner to warn the camps, and break out as many weapons and shields as they could find under the shallow ice. Wisps of ancient dark smoke, trapped from trees and grasses caught blazing by the ice, had drifted from the breaks with each new crack.
Now they waited as grinning goblins, a hobgoblin leading them, surged across the ice, eager for slaughter. Crossbows were aimed, and a deadly rain of bronze darts lashed out at the defenders. Shields took most of the missiles, but two dwarves and a gray-haired man fell. The goblins shouted as they slung their bows, raised swords and pikes, and charged.
All along the line, blades struck from behind shields as the foes closed, and goblin blood steamed and stank on the ice, mingling here and there with the crimson blood of humans and dwarves.
The little line of defenders took the first assault and turned it back, then closed ranks and retreated slowly, drawing the barely disciplined goblins out of their formation and into single — or more often double or triple — combat. For long minutes, the skill and sheer desperation of the defending line held the field. But the goblins were too many, and the refugee army retreated again… and again. Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill found themselves fighting side by side, and knew that this would be the final strategy. Hold and retreat, hold and retreat, until none were left to face the goblins. It was, simply, a buying of time.
At the edge of the ice field they retreated yet again, no more than a dozen of them now against at least seventy goblins. The goblins formed another charge, then halted. Goblin mouths dropped open, and goblin eyes stared aloft, beyond and above the line of defenders.
Fleece Ironhill glanced around just as something very fast skimmed over his head and swept upward on wide, pale wings. He didn't see what it was, nor did he try to follow it with his eyes. Instead he stared at the second flying thing, plunging down from above. A huge red dragon, its mouth opened wide and a rush of fire coming from it. The dragon flared its wings and soared over the line of battle.
Without warning, the dragon's fire-breath smote the ice field behind the goblins.
Bobbin was in trouble. For a brief time, he had held his distance ahead of the dragon, the soarwagon diving earthward on rippling wings. But he had waited too long, gone too low, and lost his edge. The dragon had managed to get above him, and now was closing with deadly speed. The gnome heard the long, deep rumble of in-drawn breath and knew what it meant.
'Thermodynamics,' the gnome muttered, praying that his final calculation was correct, that the same ground effect that had been his undoing might just this once work to his advantage. How many times since he had gone aloft had the soarwagon abruptly shot skyward in a screaming climb, propelled by the extra buoyancy of the near- ground air?
'Don't change your ways just yet,' Bobbin muttered, taking a firm hold on his lateral controls. The ice field sped by just a few yards below.
Closing his eyes, he pulled the strings. Behind and beneath the soarwagon's tail, a torrent of terrible flame seared the air and flowed in waves of heat across the ice field, which seemed to explode in great clouds of steam and soot.
The soarwagon went nearly straight up, a pale sliver flung by its own dynamics and given added speed by uprushing air currents ahead of the rising clouds of steam. Bobbin opened his eyes and looked around. Behind him was a tiny, distant landscape, where finger ridges of mountains lay like furrows in a field. And barely visible, far below, was the red dragon, just coming out of its dive and beginning to circle to the east.
'How did you do that?' The dragon voice in his ears seemed genuinely impressed.
'I bounced off the ground effect,' the gnome explained. 'It's nothing especially new. I've been bouncing off it for weeks.'
'Ground effect?' The voice seemed fainter now.
'That's what I call it. The air near the ground is denser than the air higher up. It's why I can't land.'
'You can't land? You mean you can't get down?'
'No, blast it! I can get near the ground, but I can't quite reach it.
Uh… are you coming after me again? I'd rather you didn't. I have enough troubles without you.' The diminishing voice in Bobbin's ear seemed to chuckle. 'I've heard of gnomes being standoffish, but you're the first one
I've found who was actually stuck up!
But I have no more time for you, so I suppose this is your lucky day.
Goodbye, Bobbin.' Again there was a fading chuckle, then the voice was gone.
The gnome had managed to level out his climb, and he looked over the wicker rail. In the distance below, the red dragon was winging for the mountains east of Waykeep. Bobbin circled and watched until the mythical beast cleared the peaks there and descended into the smoky mists beyond.
Then he sighed and tugged on his descent strings. He was cold and hungry, and ready to go down. Apparently the soarwagon was, too. At the slightest pressure on its vanes, it dropped its nose and plummeted straight down, its wings rippling and whining.
'Stress and derailment!' the gnome swore, and began another adjustment on his controls.
When dragonfire rolled over the frozen battlefield, the effects were instantaneous. Ice splintered and fell away, becoming great spreading clouds of steam mixed with ancient smoke. Gray mist roiled outward, obscuring the goblins and the defenders beyond, then drifted upward on heated drafts. A wide, thick cloud shadowed a foreshortened land where everything seemed to writhe and rumble. Goblins retreated, wide-eyed, then turned and retreated again when the blades of the handful of human and dwarf refugees drew blood.
The evil minions fell back, turned again, and stopped in confusion. From the rolling clouds came dwarves, hundreds of dwarves. Dwarves armed and armored. Mountain dwarves and hill dwarves with dead eyes in frozen faces that had not known change in more than two centuries — faces that grimaced and twisted in the exact ways
