Prairie Fire (7 page)

I was used to farmland and being able to see the horizon most of the time. I had been with Owen when he'd slayed dragons in woodlots, but that didn't happen very often. I knew how to scan the horizon and listen for the sounds of dragon flight, even if I was in a moving vehicle. I was learning the woods, the sounds that were made, but I wasn't very good at it yet. Fortunately for us, Gratton and Parker, two of our fire crew from Northern Ontario, were used to a view blocked by trees.

“What's that smell?” Courtney asked. (Theoretically we were supposed to call each other by last name when we were on drill, but Courtney had been three beds down from me during the first part of Basic, and I figured that seeing her naked qualified me to call her by her given name, unless there was a superior officer around.)

“It smells like a dragon,” Owen said. He meant that it smelled like Manitoulin, but I was the only person who knew that.

I looked at the GPS. I did most of our navigating because it was the only thing we could think of for me to do.

“We're coming up on the Orange Zone,” I told them, and everyone shivered.

In the sixties, apparently before common sense was invented, Gagetown had served as a research facility in addition to being a training camp and the regimental base of the Black Watch. One of the experiments had involved the controlled slaying of dragons, mostly of the small, coastal variety—though both “small” and “controlled” were relative terms—to determine the full environmental effect of dragon death.

The experiment was never really completed, because the effects were ruled too devastating for them to continue. Most of the St. John River watershed had been contaminated, killing dozens of river fish and animal and plant species before the damage was brought under very expensive control. The ground had been left, and nothing had yet grown on it, even though it had been fifty years. I'm not sure why anyone was surprised by that. The Sahara had been a desert for centuries.

The Orange Zone was dangerous not only because of environmental contamination, which meant we had to carry our own water for most of the hike, but also because it was still an attraction to the local dragon population.

“Shush up,” said Gratton, turning his head to the side. “Listen.”

I could hear it, once he told me there was something to hear. It was different from the way the river ran over the stones. It was deeper than the wind in the leaves on the trees. It was faster and more continuous than any woodland creature would be, foraging for food in the leaf litter and undergrowth. I would never forget it, any more than I could forget what made a euphonium different from a tuba. I could tell the moment the others picked it up because, except for Owen, they froze.

“Send the code, Siobhan,” Owen said, reaching over his shoulder for his sword.

That snapped everyone back to their jobs. The engineers and medics fell back. There was nothing Courtney or Aarons, the smith, could do, and we wouldn't need Davis and Ilko until after. I sent the SOS code to base and received confirmation immediately. Help was on the way, but no further orders came. I'd half expected them to tell us to hide, like they had before, but there was nothing but silence. Maybe they'd decided it was time. This was, after all, what we trained for, and Owen had trained more than most.

Annie King, who'd been elected the foreman of the fire crew, marshalled the others around her, issuing orders in a low voice. They prepared as best they could, ready to focus on diversion and suppression by chemical means, since we didn't have any of the portable pumps with us. I could hear Courtney quietly adding her own suggestions with regard to the chemicals. Her specialty was oil rigs and natural gas extraction, but as a chemical engineer, she knew a bit about fire as well.

“Can you tell the species?” Owen asked, looking at Gratton.

“I'm from Kapuskasing,” he said. “We have more or less the same dragons you do.”

We didn't have an easterner on our crew. Wilkinson and Anderson shook their heads. They were from Montreal. You could never hear a dragon coming in Montreal.

“Perfect,” said Owen. “Siobhan?”

“You'll have to get it to land, or we're cooked,” I told him. “Your boots should be okay in the Orange Zone, but I wouldn't recommend falling over. Or breathing too much.”

“Thanks,” he said. There was a roar as the dragon passed overhead and scented us. It circled around. “Tell them the plan!” Owen shouted, the need for quiet having ended, and headed for the ugliness of the experimental glade.

They looked at me, and it was the Suez Canal all over again. I smiled, pretending a confidence I did not feel, and started talking.

“Okay, Owen's going to get the dragon to land on the government-sanctioned environmental disaster over there, and then bring it into the trees.” The fire crew bristled. “I know that's a bigger fire risk, but if Owen's never fought this kind of dragon, he's going to need all the distractions he can get.”

“What do you want us to do?” Mikitka asked.

“I'll let you know,” I told him.

About a hundred metres away, there was a tremendous bellow as the dragon hit the ground, and then a slowing series of crashes as it pursued Owen into the trees.

“Get ready,” I shouted, and the fire crew fanned out.

I had my sword in my hand now. The others all had them and could use them with varying degrees of capability if they had to, but a fire crew rarely got involved in the business end of dragon slaying. The medics and engineers fell even farther back into the woods.

“Helicopter!” I heard Courtney yell, but I knew already that our reinforcements wouldn't get here in time.

“Keep your eyes on the dragon,” I said, “and keep your ears on me.”

Technically, Owen was the commander of our little family, but the two of us had a system that had been born on a county highway and hadn't really varied since—though I had never had to use a hubcap for dragon distraction again. Owen slayed the dragon; I did the crowd control. His support squad seemed to accept it. Either that, or they were too scared to argue.

“Siobhan!” Owen shouted, pelting into view. “It's a Singe'n'burn.”

All things considered, that was for the best. Though it was the largest dragon in the area, it was a freshwater type, and those were typically less ornery than the local salted species. It received its common name from the fact that it regularly made attempts to burn down St. John, and though it was taxonomically identical to the Newfoundland variety nicknamed Singe'ns'burn, the locals got really tetchy when you mixed them up.

I started deploying the fire crew, arranging them in a half-circle around where Owen had engaged the dragon. They coated the trees with the chemical compound that best counteracted Singe'n'burn flame, though they couldn't reach very high since we didn't have the aerosol dispensers with us.

“Next time we do this,” Courtney called out from her place next to Ted back in the trees, “I am overseeing the packing!”

“You do that,” I shouted back. I could understand her frustration. Not being able to help was the worst in moments like these, even though I knew, I
knew
, that Owen could handle it.

And then the dragon was on him, and the smell of burning wood and grass filled the air.

Fighting with a fire crew was exciting. Usually I had to keep moving to avoid getting lit up by incidental fire, but with eight people focused on suppression, even the grass flames went out quickly under Annie's shouted direction. I was used to watching Owen's style, so I could see the moment the dragon died. Owen got it to overextend its neck, and turned, dodging around a tree trunk. The dragon couldn't recover in time, and then Owen's sword was buried in its chest.

I breathed in, relieved, and turned back to the fire crew to help Annie with the final hot spots. Davis and Ilko raced for Owen, but he wasn't even scratched by tree branches.

“Your boots are smoking,” Anderson pointed out, gesturing with the wand he'd been using to spread the suppressant.

“Orange Zone,” Owen said. “I'll get my spares.”

“You stay put,” Ilko said, fishing out a Gatorade and all but shoving it in Owen's face like a baby bottle.

The sound of the helicopter, which had landed during the battle when the noise was so loud we couldn't hear it, reminded me that we were going to have company just before the cornet-sergeant emerged from the woods.

“It would be you lot,” he said, but he sounded proud of us. “Well done.”

“Thank you, sir,” Owen said. “It was a team effort.”

“That's why you're here,” the sergeant said. “You're all coming back to the barracks. You've earned a day off after this.”

The fire crew brightened at that. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, none of us were really looking forward to another day of marching. They headed for the helicopter as the disposal squad surrounded the dragon. We could hear them exclaiming over how clean the kill was. This close to the glade, it probably didn't matter on an eco-friendliness level, but Owen walked a little straighter. I struggled with the straps of my pack, and was then nearly pulled off my feet when the sergeant lifted it for me.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. My fellow recruits had done small things to ease my way lately, but the instructors had been as merciless as ever.

“Don't get used to it,” he said. “But you've made me a lot of money in the last few weeks, so this one time I don't mind.”

“You bet on me to stick it out, sir?” I knew that someone must have, or the odds wouldn't have been so ridiculously attractive.

“You slayed a
siligoinis
with less than a year of training,” he said. “I'd bet on you if you didn't have any hands at all.”

I sat next to Owen in the helicopter on the way back. It was too loud to talk, and they didn't have headsets for us, but we grinned at each other like idiots anyway.

THE STORY OF MANITOULIN(ISH)

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful island where three Great Lakes met. Named for a god, it could well have been the home of one: rolling green hills and big enough that it was dotted by small blue lakes of its own. It was the biggest freshwater island in the world, and Canada was proud to call it ours.

All was not well with this treasure of an island, though. In the early, less-enlightened days of American capitalism, poor civil planning—from which Canada has never suffered—left Michigan uninhabitable. Our island, so close to those blighted American shores, had to be abandoned for safety until a solution to the Michigan problem could be found. Two whole generations of Canadians grew up, never having set foot on that pristine sand, never staying in those quaint hotels, and never learning to swim in those sheltered bays, but always there was hope that we would someday return.

That hope is gone now. Burned in fire and destroyed by chemical warfare, without the consultation or approval of the government of Canada.

It was common knowledge, in certain levels of the government, that dragons nested on Manitoulin. Professionals had been consulted, and they determined that saving the island's biosphere was worth the risk that the newly hatched dragons would present.

And yet the island burned.

Two children, a teenage dragon slayer and his unknown companion, were convinced by their elders to go and burn our island to ruin. They are minors in the eyes of the law, yet they did tremendous damage to a natural resource. Who will be held accountable for that? Them? Their dragon slayer parents? The local politicians who spoke in their favour? The RCMD slayers who loaned them a boat and then turned a blind eye?

And, more disturbingly, what conspiracy lurks within the Canadian dragon slayer ranks?

The moral of this sensationalist little tale is this: try never to be unconscious while other people write your press.

When Owen and I got back from Manitoulin, the media storm hadn't start right away, but it was a pretty near thing. While I was confined to my bed, my mother and father went out of their way to keep me from finding out what was being said outside the slightly scorched brick walls of Trondheim General, but they couldn't keep that up forever. My room had a TV, after all, and one of the first things I learned how to do with very bandaged hands was operate the remote.