The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 24

"How could you let them get away?" the woman shouted. "I set a net across this valley, and you… you sniveling excuse for a troopleader… you let them slip through!"

Thog,aparticularly ugly hobgoblin, and six goblins cowered before the

Commander, afraid to respond. "Two platoons dead or missing!" The horned helmet turned from one to another of them, its dragon facemask seeming to boom with each syllable. "Did any of you even see them clearly? Do you know how many there were?"

Thog scuffed his toe and raised hiseyes. "Fiveof the lighted ones,

Commander… but one of them was a horse."

Furious eyes blazed at the hobgoblin from behind the mask. "Five, but one was a horse. There were six! Counting the horse. I counted them. Why couldn't you?" When there was no answer, the Commander paused a moment, shaking with fury.

"Double shifts!" she said then. "Double shifts for everyone until further ordered. Now, get out of my sight!" The hobgoblin and the goblins turned and hurried away, almost scrambling in their haste. When they were gone, she muttered, "And you… I found the dwarf for you. All you had to do was destroy him. Why didn't you?"

A dry, twisted voice that seemed to come from within the Commander's armor said, "Ah… she questions me? Does she dare?"

"I dare question you, yes," Kolanda hissed. "Why didn't you strike down that dwarf? Why didn't you strike them all down? I gave you the chance!"

"Magic failed," the voice said. "But there will be another chance.

Glenshadow knows."

"Glenshadow?"

"Glenshadow," the thin voice repeated bitterly. "He knows I will kill him when next we meet." Kolanda Darkmoor walked to a high, clear ridge to oversee the reorganization of her troops. Though it was unthinkable that the dwarf with the knowledge of Thorbardin's secret — and his companions

— had somehow managed to get past all her defenses, she let her fury subside somewhat and resumed her planning. The dwarf had to be stopped.

She turned and looked at the range of mountains to the east.

Goblin trackers had reported at morning's first light.

The group had gone almost straight east across the valley… at least as far as they had been able to track them. Someone with the group, it seemed, was skilled at covering trail. But they had gone east, and due east lay the soaring peak of Sky's End. Kolanda knew from her scouts that there was an old, climbing trail that curved around the mountain's slopes, but it would be a tedious and difficult journey. It would have been far better for them to take the pass road, farther north. It crossed heights more scalable than giant Sky's End, and there was a bridge beyond that crossed the chasm and led toward the Plains of Dergoth. And it was to those plains that the dwarf must be going, because it was there that

Grallen fell.

Kolanda smiled. Several of the captured humans and dwarves had died in the process of their inquisition, but she had a serviceable map and a great deal of information as a result.

The northern pass would place her on Dergoth well ahead of the fleeing group.

There was still one other matter to attend to here. The refugees who had crossed the ridge into the next valley to the west were still at large, and she wanted them. Only a small force would be necessary for that.

When the troops were assembled, Kolanda Darkmoor sent a group to find the fugitives from Harvest and Herdlinger, and bring back all those fit to be put to work. The unfit would simply be killed.

"Go south a few miles," she told them, "then cross over into Waykeep and turn northward. Trap them, subdue them, and bring back slaves."

Bobbin was growing more and more irritated as the days passed. He was irritated with himself, irritated with his soarwagon, and irritated with the world in general. And much of his irritation came of being bored.

Except for sightseeing, there was hardly anything to do when one was stuck aloft in a contrivance powered by the very air currents on which it floated. And the soarwagon was far more responsive to the wind's vagaries than to the feeble controls the gnome had managed to build into its structure.

For the past day or so, there hadn't even been anyone to talk to. Since leaving the pass between Waykeep and Respite, Bobbin had tried any number of times to return, but the soarwagon wouldn't go. He kept winding up in other places, or over familiar places but too high in the sky to make contact with anyone. And he was running low on raisins.

In a way, that could be a blessing, he realized, because it was the half-bushel of raisins that had caused his present set of problems. The raisin basket — resting just in front of him in the soarwagon's wicker cab — had shifted and fouled his control lines, and so far he had been unable to correct them. His lateral and pitch pulls were crisscrossed in some fashion, somewhere beyond his reach. The result was that he could gain altitude more or less at will. To descend, however, he had to wait for the air currents to make proper adjustments on the vehicle's forward foils, and hope that the positioning would hold long enough to get near the ground again before it reversed itself and climbed. Worse still, he could not turn left. Only right.

The dilemma was symptomatic of the basic control problem in the soarwagon's design. In building it, Bobbin had underestimated the craft's buoyancy and misjudged the sensitivity of its control surfaces.

The other gnomes were right, he told himself. I am insane. Had this contrivance been built in proper gnomish fashion — designed by a committee, sublet out among several guilds, and then assembled by a task force, it wouldn't have these problems. But then, it wouldn't fly at all.

The problem of the airfoils and their controls wasn't insoluble. Within the first week of his plight, Bobbin had deduced what was wrong and how it could be corrected.

Part of it was the result of something unforeseen, a phenomenon that

Bobbin simply had not known existed. The air near the ground was denser and more turbulent than that higher up, and all drafts within twenty or thirty feet of the ground were updrafts.

Obvious enough, now that he understood it. But he hadn't known about such things when he had designed the soarwagon. His assumption had been that air was air, anywhere.

He had even named the phenomenon of the nearsurface currents. Ground effect, he called it. And he had worked out the control requirements to correct for it. Only one problem remained. The soarwagon couldn't be repaired in flight. He would have to land first. And he couldn't land until it was repaired.

Feeling grumpier by the minute, Bobbin tugged his strings and helped himself to some more raisins. He wished he had some cider to go with them.

Raisins without cider were like a sundial without a pointer. Adequate, but hardly timely.

Through a long morning he had been drifting in wide right-hand circles, while the soarwagon descended from an abrupt, screaming climb to an estimated twenty thousand feet — a maneuver executed entirely without

Bobbin's assistance. Once at that lofty altitude, the device had seemed satisfied to begin a slow, languid descent. Bobbin had set the soarwagon in an easy right-hand pitch and spent the intervening hours dozing, fuming, and eating raisins.

After Bobbin finished his breakfast and washed it down with rainwater collected during the previous night's storm, he looked over the side of his wicker cab to see if he could identify where he was. He frowned and shook his head in disgust. A half-mile below was that same valley he had been trying to leave when his raisins shifted: the long, wooded valley between ridges, the one those people had called Waykeep. The place with the winding black road.

Off to Bobbin's left was the smoke of the refugee camps, the people who had come across from the next valley, fleeing an invasion of goblins.

Ahead, just a few miles, was the textured ice-field where he had first met the kender, Chestal Thicketsway. An old battleground, the creature had said. The lumps of ice on the field contained fighting dwarves, frozen in place. Bobbin saw no reason to doubt it, though why it mattered was beyond him.

There were people out there now, on the ice. People moving around. He squinted. Dwarves… and either humans or elves. From such a distance, it was hard to tell, except that some of them seemed to have beards.

Humans, then, he decided. Elves don't have beards. Other movement caught the gnome's attention then, far off to his right, to the south. He squinted, trying to see details. A large group of… something… crossing a clearing between stands of forest, coming north. Sunlight glinted on metal. Armor?

The soarwagon's lazy circle brought it over the edge of the ice field, and Bobbin leaned out to wave. "Somebody'scomingyourway!" he shouted excitedly, waving his arms and pointing. But he was ton high. The people down there, dwarves and humans, obviously from the refugee camps, were intent on the ice itself, and what was under it. No one looked up, and within moments the soarwagon was past them, continuing its descending spiral.

Long minutes passed, then the other group was in sight again below, now dead ahead. The gnome leaned out to squint at them. He saw them clearly now. Armored goblins, a company of them marching in rough phalanx order, with a slightly larger figure in the lead — a waddling, greenish-colored thing in bright misfitting armor. Bobbin had never seen a hobgoblin before, though he knew what they were. If anything, he decided, hobgoblins were even uglier than ordinary goblins. Without its bright garb, the thing would have resembled a big, misshapen frog.

The soarwagon closed on the marching company below, lower now, only a few hundred yards up. Well, Bobbin told himself, I'll circle over those other people again pretty soon. I can tell them then that there are goblins coming. None of my business, I suppose, but then nobody needs goblins.

As he sailed over the marching goblins, Bobbin heard their shouts and leaned out to look down at them. Crossbows and blades were brandished at him, and guttural taunts drifted upward. On impulse, the gnome looked around for something unpleasant that he could drop on them. The only thing that came to hand was an empty line-spool wedged between the raisin basket and the lateral courses. He gripped it, pulled it loose… then grabbed the rails of his cab and hung on for dear life as the snagged tilt controls of the soarwagon suddenly broke free and the vehicle responded.

The left wing dipped sharply, the nose went up, and Bobbin's contrivance came around in a hard turn, climbing. Righting itself, the soarwagon pointed its nose at the sky and shot straight up, then completed a perfect roll and reversed itself in a blistering dive, directly at the goblins below. They stared, shouted, and began to run in all directions. Bobbin cursed as he fought his lines and eased the dive. But the craft had a mind of its own and responded with a neat half-roll.

Upside down and frantic, Bobbin shot over the heads of the goblin troops, raining raisins down upon them. By the time he managed to turn the soarwagon right side up, he was four miles south and climbing, again coming about in a wide right-hand turn.

Bobbin clung to his lines, pounded his wicker rail with a frustrated fist. "Gearslip!" he cursed. "Threadbind and metal fatigue! You misassembled piece of junk, can't you behave yourself just once? Stress analysis and critical path i If I ever get my feet on solid ground again,

I'm going to take you apart and make camel davits out of you!" At a half-mile relative altitude, the soarwagon soared serenly over the scattered force of goblins, over the intervening forests, over the ice field where humans and dwarves worked to gather old weapons. Finally, it passed over the huddled encampment beyond, where refugees tended their children and wounded companions, then raised its nose and climbed. Bobbin closed his eyes and shook his head. Things were bad before. Now he was out of raisins. High above the ridge that separated two wilderness valleys, and miles north of the pass, the gnome repaired and rerouted his control lines and prepared to come about one more time. At least now he had controls again, after a fashion. He could turn east, then south, and possibly find the people he had lost at the mountain crossing.

Then movement of an entirely different sort caught Bobbin's eye, and he raised himself high in his wicker to peer dead ahead. Something was coming from the north, coming toward him, a speck against the horizon but definitely coming his way… and flying. Where exasperation had been, hope surged forward, brightening the gnome's gaze.

Flying! Someone else is up here in another flying machine, Bobbin thought gleefully. I'm not alone. Grinning eagerly, he settled into his wicker seat and lowered the nose of the soarwagon gently, aiming for the approaching flier. Someone to compare notes with! Someone who might have an answer to my dilemma! Someone else in the sky!

At a mile's distance, the gnome studied the stranger. Red in color — bright, crimson red — with movable wings that flapped rhythmically, and a long, trailing appendage of some sort. And legs? Yes, definitely legs. Not wheels or runners, but jointed legs, like an animal's. And who was flying it? Bobbin could not see a cockpit or basket, not even someone mounted on a bench.

Closer still, Bobbin moved. Then his eyes began to widen in incredulous astonishment. The thing looked — he would have sworn it — like a flying dragon. Ridiculous, he told himself. There are no dragons on Krynn. There were dragons once, they said. Ages ago. But not now. Not in the memory of anyone living had there been reports of dragons.

Closer and closer the two fliers came, and more and more Bobbin had to admit that it did look like a dragon. A huge, red, flying dragon, coming along the line of peaks, coming directly toward him.

Fear washed up and down the gnome's spine, a compelling, sweating fear that was like cold fingers gripped him. Then a voice spoke to him. "Who are you?" it asked, seeming to be right there beside him. Bobbin gasped and looked around, this way and that, trying to see who had spoken. The dragon was a halfmile away now, and there was no doubt in the gnome's mind that it was, indeed, a dragon. Again the voice at the gnome's shoulder asked, "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the gnome shouted. "Where are you?"

"You're looking at me," the voice said. "Yes. Me. And yes, little creature, I am what you think I am. Now, calm down and tell me who you are?"

"Bobbin," Bobbin said. "I… I'm a gnome. Are you really a… But of course you are. You wouldn't say so if you weren't, would you?"

"Bobbin," the voice seemed to purr in his ear. "Just keep coming,

Bobbin. You will have no further doubts, in a moment or so."

Whether it was Bobbin's own numb hands trembling at the control strings, or some vagrant current of air, the soarwagon chose that instant to slip to the right, stall, and go into a nosedive. Suddenly the gnome saw spinning mountaintops straight ahead, and somewhere behind him the air crackled with fire.

"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.