What the hell, this is the era of glasnost. We’re all supposed to be friends these days. He sat down on a tree root and put his boots on. Then he checked his pistol. Still, it never hurts to be careful.
Cautiously, Major Mick Gilligan set off into the forest in pursuit of the vehicle.
The trail was surprisingly difficult to follow. The amphtrack had not torn up the forest floor as much as he expected. There were no clear tread marks and in many places broken branches offered clearer indications than the tracks. Still, you can’t move something that big through a wooded area without leaving a plain trail.
Except for the breeze in the trees and an occasional bird or animal call, the woods were silent. There was no sound of an engine, which made Gilligan even more cautious. But there were no voices, either. Perhaps they were too far ahead for him to hear.
Gilligan was a pilot, not a woodsman. He had to divide his attention between trying to follow the trail, trying not to walk into a tree and trying to scout ahead. So it wasn’t surprising he stepped into the clearing without seeing Patrol Two standing in the trees on the other side.
Then the dragon rider shifted. Gilligan caught the motion and looked up. Then he stared-first at the weapon and then at the wielder.
The bow was nearly as tall as she was and the limbs were of unequal length. Gilligan remembered seeing something like that when he had been stationed in Japan and he had gone to a demonstration of traditional Japanese archery. But the person carrying it was anything but Japanese.
To Gilligan she looked like something out of a Robin Hood movie. She wore thigh-high boots of soft brown leather, tight breeches that bloused out at the thigh and a fleece-lined vest over a close-fitting tunic. She was tall, nearly as tall as he was, and slender. Her hair was cornsilk blonde and freckles dusted her nose. The eyes were pure, pale blue and very, very serious. The arrow in her bow was aimed straight at his midriff.
"Uh, hi," Gilligan said.
Twenty-seven: ENCOUNTER
Karin studied the stranger carefully without shifting the aim of the arrow. He was a big man, broad shouldered and apparently well muscled, although it was hard to tell through his clothing. He wore a drab green coverall with straps, pockets and strange black runes scattered over it. The thing in his hand was black and shiny and he handled it like a weapon, although Karin had never seen its like.
In all their patrolling, the dragon riders had never seen a human in this place. Indeed, they had been told there were only two humans among the enemy and they never left their castle. Where did this one come from?
He didn’t act like one of the enemy, she thought. In fact he seemed more confused than hostile. Still better to be safe, so she simply nodded to him without moving the bow.
"I’m Major Michael Gilligan, United States Air Force. I, ah, had a little trouble back there and I need to contact my unit." He stopped, as if expecting a response. "Um, I don’t suppose there’s a phone around here anywhere?"
"Air Force? You are a flier then?"
"Yes, ma’am. Only, as I say, I had a little trouble and came down in the water."
"And your mount?"
"Down at sea."
The poor man’s dragon had drowned! To Karin, who had only narrowly avoided the same fate, the tragedy was doubly poignant.
"I’m very sorry," she said, lowering her bow. "I am called Karin and I too am a flier."
Slowly and with exaggerated care, the man put the black metal thing in a pouch under his armpit. "Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Ah, about that phone… ?"
"I do not think you will find one here," Karin told him, not quite comprehending what a "phone" was.
"I kind of figured that," he said. "Where are we, anyway?"
"I am not quite sure," she admitted. "I think it is the western shore of the main island in the Bubble World."
"Bubble World?" he asked blankly.
"The World between the Worlds. I do not pretend to understand it, but our wizards say that it is connected at one end to our World and at the other end to the World from whence came the Sparrow."
"Sparrow? Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m just plain confused."
"Of course! You must be from the other World, the Sparrow’s World." She smiled. "This must all be very strange to you, I know."
"Yes, ma’am!" he said fervently. "It certainly is that."
"Well, come back to my camp then and we can talk. Oh, and stop calling me ma’am. I am neither a witch, a wizard nor an elder and I am called Karin."
He looked at her in a way Karin found rather pleasant. "No ma’am-I mean, Karin-you are definitely not an old witch!"
This, Major Mick Gilligan told himself firmly, has gotta be a hallucination. He was probably lying in a hospital bed somewhere drugged out of his skull after being fished out of the Bering Sea. He wondered if his nurse looked anything like Karin.
Still, he thought, hallucination or not, I’ve gotta play it like it’s real. So far it hadn’t been too bad. Stuck on a deserted island with a beautiful girl, even a beautiful girl who thought she was William Tell. No, that wasn’t half bad for a hallucination.
"My camp is just over there," Karin said, pointing toward an especially thick clump of trees.
"Where’s your vehicle?" Gilligan asked.
"No vehicle, only Stigi and myself," Karin told him as they stepped into the camp.
"But we’ve been following…" Gilligan began.
Then he saw the dragon.
Stigi was only average size for a cavalry mount-which is to say he was eighty feet long and his wings would probably span as much when fully extended.
An eighty-foot wingspan on an airplane wouldn’t have impressed Gilligan particularly. Eighty feet of bat wings on a scaled, fanged monster who looked ready to breathe fire at any second was very impressive.
Gilligan’s jaw dropped and he licked his lips. "That’s, that’s a…"
"That is Stigi," Karin supplied, strolling over to the monster and patting its scaly shoulder just in front of its left wing.
The dragon raised its head about ten feet off the ground and regarded Gilligan with a football-sized golden eye.
"Does it fly?"
"Of course he flies," Karin said. "How else would we get here?"
"Hoo boy," said Major Mick Gilligan. "Oh boy."
Karin’s camp was well off the beach, in a fold in the ground well-shaded by trees. The dragon took up a good half the space, but there was still room for a small fire and a simple canopy made with something like a shelter half.
"This is pretty cozy," Gilligan said as he looked around.
"I am a scout," Karin explained. "There is always the possibility of being caught away from my base and having to forage. So," she shrugged, "we are prepared."