"Oh, gearslip?" he muttered, struggling with his controls.

"Aha," the voice at his shoulder chuckled. "A fine dodge, gnome. You were lucky that time. But you won't be so lucky again. I can't let you live, you know."

"Why not?" Bobbin tugged strings, wrestling the plunging soarwagon out of its spin.

"Because you have seen me," the calm voice said.

"That is your misfortune. None who see me must live to tell of it… not yet, anyway. You see, that could spoil the Highlord's plan."

"I wouldn't want to do that, I suppose." Bobbin hauled on his lines, and the soarwagon's nose edged a few degrees down. Bobbin glanced back and gasped. The red dragon was less than a hundred yards back, wings folded, gaping jaws displaying ranks of glittering teeth. The soarwagon screamed into a dive, strained its fabrics, and flattened out of the descent, its wake currents spewing a small snowstorm from the icy top of a rock peak.

Behind the contraption the dragon spread great wings and dodged the pinnacle.

"That was a nice stunt," the deep voice said in Bobbin's mind. "But awfully chancy."

"I'm insane," the gnome explained.

"What a shame," the dragon voice purred. "Well, you won't have to worry about that much longer."

Bobbin glanced around again. He had gained some lead, but now the dragon was winging around, making for him in a flanking attack. The creature was huge, far larger in both length and wingspan than Bobbin's soarwagon. It fairly radiated power and dominance and a mastery of the air. Its very presence was enough to inspire an awful fear, like nothing the gnome had felt before.

"I don't suppose we could come to some… ah… less terminal agreement?" Bobbin suggested, throwing the soarwagon into a side slip that plunged it directly below the dragon. He soared into a climb beyond his pursuer.

"Don't be ridiculous," the dragon voice was tinged with anger now… and something else that tingled just beyond the gnome's understanding. "You might as well stop this dancing around. You don't have a chance of escaping, you know."

"I'm sorry," Bobbin said. "No offense intended, of course, but self-preservation is a difficult habit to break." He increased the soarwagon's pitch and reached for the sky. Behind him, the red dragon beat great wings, powerful in full pursuit. Yet, somehow, the beast seemed a trifle sluggish.

Could the creature be tired? the gnome wondered. The hint in the voice, that subtle something… could it be fatigue?

"Stop this, now!" the dragon commanded. "I don't have all day."

"I'm wrestling with my instincts," Bobbin assured it. "I suppose you've come quite a long way."

"Nearly five hundred miles," the dragon snapped.

"Not that it's any of your business."

"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.

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.