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. 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 ef-
fect 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 be-
neath 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 up-
rushing 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
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