"It isn’t easy with us either," Gilligan said, thinking of the lawyers, the interminable conferences, the constant phone calls and the months of aching, gaping hurt.
"Forgive me for asking, but how did your wife displease you?"
Gilligan smiled mirthlessly into the campfire. "She didn’t displease me. I displeased her. I think. Or maybe we just displeased each other. Anyway, she had her choice of rotating to Alaska with me or leaving me, so she left." He snapped the twig and threw it into the fire.
"Look, it was nobody’s fault. Okay? It’s just that I’m a pilot and an Air Force officer and she couldn’t handle that."
For a while neither of them said anything. "I understand, somewhat," Karin said slowly. She sighed. "I was to be married once, while I was in training. But Johan wanted me to give up flying. I could not do that."
The fire turned the pale skin of her cheeks ruddy and painted reddish highlights into her blonde hair.
"I couldn’t either. God knows I loved Sandi, but I just couldn’t give it up."
Karin looked up at him and smiled slightly. "We are two of a kind then."
"Guess so," Gilligan agreed.
They sat by the fire for a while in companionable silence.
The next morning Karin took Stigi out into the open and carefully exercised him. She was frowning when she led him back into camp.
"How’s the wing?" Mick asked, seeing her expression.
"Not good. It is healing, but only slowly. It may be another half-moon before Stigi is strong enough to bear us away."
"Is it infected or something?"
"Nothing like that. It is simply taking more time than it should to heal. If I did not know better I would think he was not properly fed." She sighed. "As it is, I suspect it is simply the nature of this place. It is harder for dragons to stay aloft here, you know."
"I hadn’t noticed."
She led Stigi back to his resting place and spent the next hour or so grooming him and talking to him. To Mick, lounging under the overhang, the sight was remarkable. Beauty and the Beast, he thought.
Karin was still frowning when she left Stigi and came to sit beside him in the shade.
"Something else wrong with Stigi?"
"No. Nothing like that." She dropped down beside him.
"What then?"
Karin bit her lip. "Mick, there is something else you should know. After last night… The way you describe your mount… I think I am the one who brought you down."
"I know."
She turned to him wide-eyed. "You knew? And you did not tell me."
"I pretty much figured it out the first day. I got a better look at you than you did at me and unless there were other dragon riders in the area it pretty much had to be you."
"And you made me gather up my courage to tell you! Thank you very much, I am sure."
"Hey," he said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder, "I was the one who hurt Stigi. I wasn’t sure how you’d take that."
"Yes, but you did not mean to."
"And you didn’t mean to shoot me down." He grinned. "We’re even. By the way, how did you bring me down?"
"With this," Karin said, reaching behind her and drawing an arrow from the front part of the quiver.
"Do not touch it," she admonished as she held it up for his inspection. Gilligan saw the whole arrow, from head to fletching, was made of iron.
Karin pointed to two black dots, one on each side of the broad arrow head. "These crystals on either side of the head are eyes," she explained, pointing to the shiny black buttons. "When both can see their target the arrow’s aim is true. There is a spell to keep the target centered in each crystal."
"Like a guidance head," Gilligan nodded. "But that still doesn’t explain how an arrow brought down a twenty-eight-million-dollar aircraft with triply redundant everything."
"The death spell," Karin told him. "It paralyzes anything the arrow strikes."
"So that’s why my electronics went to hell." He shook his head. "I’m damn glad Congress is never going to hear about this."
There was very little they could do. They did some exploring, hunted a bit and gathered berries and other wild foods from the forest. But that did not take much time. Karin spent an hour or two working with Stigi every day and another half hour or so grooming him. Mostly they lazed around camp and talked while they waited for Stigi’s wing to heal.
There was one chore that needed to be done regularly. Stigi was very efficient at converting dragon food into dragon droppings. Although he was partially housebroken and used a spot down hill from the camp, the spot had to be shoveled out and spread around, well mixed with earth. Otherwise the smell and insects would have made the camp uninhabitable.
Using her hand axe, Karin made them two wooden scoop shovels. They looked a little odd to Gilligan and the handles were too short for his taste, but they were much better than using hands.
Every two or three days Karin or Gilligan would "clean the catbox," as Gilligan insisted on calling it. It was hard, dirty work but it was at least something to do.
"Well, this part of the woods should be green next year," Gilligan said, stretching backwards to try to get the kinks out of his back. "You know this is one thing we never had to worry about with an F-15."
Karin tamped down a mound of mixed earth and dragon dung and looked up.
"Back at the Capital the grooms and stable hands would take care of such chores. But it is part of dragonriders’ training to be able to care for our mounts in the field."
"Does that include making shovels out of expedient materials?"
"Expedient… ? Ah, I see." She smiled in a way Gilligan found utterly charming. "No, I learned that from my uncle when I was growing up on the farm. He would make such implements to take to the village and sell." She looked down at the scoop beside her. "I think he would find these a little crude, though."
"You grew up with your uncle?"
"My parents died when I was young," Karin said. "A hard winter, not much food and some malevolent magic." She shrugged. "Life was hard before the Sparrow brought us new magic."
"Who’s this Sparrow?" Mick asked, as much to keep her sitting beside him as to keep from going back to shovelling.
She turned to him, her blue eyes wide. "You must know the Sparrow. He comes from your world."
"The only Sparrow I know is an air-to-air missile."
"This Sparrow is a mighty wizard. Near four years ago he broke the entire Dark League of the South in a great battle of magics. Since then his new magic has spread across the land, driving back the dark."