Prairie Fire (25 page)

LESS THAN TWO PERCENT

“Courtney!” Porter and Owen said in the same breath, but she was already moving.

Like she promised that day in Gagetown, Courtney had masterminded the packing of each kit. In my case, and in Aarons's, she simply packed for us. With Owen and the fire crew, she worked from a list Annie gave her and Owen's suggestions. Ted and Jeremy did their own packing, but Courtney watched them do it. I didn't understand at first, but I soon realized that she did it so that in an emergency, she would know not only what we had with us, but also who had it and where in the pack it was. Accordingly, she had both Owen's and Lieutenant Porter's swords and shields out of their wrapping before the train had slowed down enough for them to jump from it, Nick right on their heels.

“We are really lucky that thing wasn't closer to the tunnel entrance,” Laura said. “There's no way we'd have stopped in time otherwise. And it looks big enough to derail us.”

“It's not a species I recognize,” Mikitka said.

“Okanagan Greenback,” Peter said, looking out the window. “It's a bit like a Wapiti, but without the acid.”

“Does Lieutenant Porter know that?” Wilkinson asked. His face was glued to the window. Last time we'd done this as a team, at least we'd done it together.

“And hey, if there's fire, shouldn't we be out there?” Annie said.

I could hear Porter yelling at both Owen and Nick, who ranged out on either side of him with swords at the ready and shields up in the fire position. I couldn't make out the words, but he didn't look out of sorts.

“He's been here before,” Courtney said. “He'll be fine.”

Sheets of fire billowed from the dragon's mouth, and the snow steamed around it.

“Are you sure we shouldn't be out there?” Annie said. “It's wet now, but the dragon's got to be hot enough to dry the grass, and then it'll burn.”

A tree caught fire and went up almost immediately, flames licking along the boughs and reaching for the trees nearby.

“We don't have enough supplies on hand to deal with a forest fire,” Courtney said. “Not unless you give me thirty minutes and I can get to the cargo cars safely.”

“It should be okay,” Laura said. Peter was also nodding.

“Yeah, the train engineer will have radioed ahead to Kamloops,” Peter said. “They'll be sending their own fire crews.”

“They won't get here in time either!” Courtney protested.

“They're flying,” Peter said. “Small planes are fast enough to outrun anything but a Chinook, and those don't usually come down on the western side of the mountains.”

“How will they land?” asked Nick's smith. He was holding Nick's extra swords in his hands, ready in case they were needed.

“They won't,” Peter said. “Smoke jumpers. Parachutes.”

Annie's face lit up despite the danger. “That sounds exciting,” she said.

“Yeah, it's all fun and games until a dragon snags you midair,” Parker said.

“That almost never happens,” Peter said. “They won't make their jumps until the dragon's dead.”

I turned my focus out the window while Annie continued to ask questions about the smoke jumpers.

On the ground, Owen and Nick were busy making trails in the snow. This served two purposes, I saw, in that it confused the heck out of the Greenback, and also meant that whenever Porter got close enough to take a swing at it, he was standing on beaten-down snow instead of fresh snow. I watched Porter set himself and wait for the dragon to extend its neck after Nick, who was much better at moving on the uneven ground than Owen was. When the opportunity presented itself, he slashed along the dragon's neck. It was a shallow cut and didn't do much damage to the dragon (or the ground on which the blood landed), but by now I'd seen enough of these to know the blow's intent. Porter was trying to make it turn, make it show its belly, and then he'd go for the hearts. Once I realized that, I knew how the battle would unfold, and I stopped focusing on the details. I could always make those up if I had to write a song about it later, and it helped me keep my cool if I didn't have to watch Owen's every move. That's part of the reason Hannah and Lottie had started me off by watching him train in the backyard. I knew what he'd do just as he did.

“Porter's very good,” I said to Courtney, who had come to sit beside me. She was uncharacteristically nervous, not having seen as many of these as I had. She knew now how dragon battles were supposed to go, but she didn't trust the dragon slayers as much as I did. If I could help her feel better about how her dragon slayers were doing, I would.

“He really is,” Courtney said. There was a fierce light in her eyes. She might not know Porter as well as I knew Owen, but she was proud of him regardless.

It was freezing cold outside the train, and none of them were wearing particularly good footwear for this kind of activity, yet Porter might as well have been on the practice field, he moved with such surety. I was used to watching Lottie, who always had to limp, or Aodhan, who always worked with Owen and paused to teach. This was the closest I'd been to a dragon slayer in his prime, and the difference was clear. Someday, I could only hope, Owen would be this good.

“You know,” I said cautiously, wondering how far I could distract her, “your dad thinks dragon slayers should work alone.” I gestured out the window. “Isn't that pretty compelling evidence to the contrary?”

“Of course it is,” she said. She leaned back against the seat without taking her eyes off the scene. “But the general thinks that dragon slayers should practice and work alone just in case they ever are alone. He thinks if they work in teams, they'll get used to each other, and if they have to work alone, they'll be incomplete.”

“Porter was alone in Kansas,” I said. “And look how that went.”

“That was a Chinook,” Courtney said. Her tone wasn't overly defensive, and I knew I hadn't misstepped. “And all things considered, it didn't go that badly.”

I looked at her quizzically. It had gone badly enough.

“No, I mean it. Kansas is over two hundred thousand square kilometres in size,” she explained. “The stories make it sound like the whole thing's on fire but it isn't. It's less than two percent. And there's a company in Switzerland working with a lab in Japan that's close to figuring out a way to put the fire out.”

“They can't do it without losing the coal bed,” I guessed. You talk about the oddest things when you are trying not to panic on the sidelines of a dragon battle.

“Correct,” Courtney said. “Porter's just the guy they blame, and people from Kansas think he's the freaking second coming, because he managed to do it with such a low death toll. They were predicting deaths in the hundreds. They got away with only a few dozen, and most of those were the people who were too stupid to abandon their houses and get out of the way.”

“So why doesn't he retire?” I asked. “Go to Kansas and be a hero or something.”

“He doesn't want to,” she said. “He wants to slay dragons, and the Oil Watch is the only way he knows how.”

A flurry of activity drew our full attention back to the window, and Courtney leaned forward again, though this time she didn't grip the armrests quite so tightly. We watched as Nick led the dragon past Porter. Porter looked fine, but Nick was clearly starting to flag. He'd done most of the distraction runs because he was better at it than Owen was, but he only had a few more passes in him. The Greenback's neck was as green as its back now, as the scales bled poison onto the winnowing snow. The trees burned, and even the grass was starting to catch. Annie was right: the dragon had been enough to dry it.

“Is the plane with the smoke jumpers close?” I asked. Watching the fight, I'd lost track of them.

“Look.” Courtney pointed out the window, and I saw six dots on the horizon. They were circling us, and I knew that they were ready for when the killing blow landed.

Owen was running now, and this time Porter's sword bit a little deeper into the dragon's neck than it should have, spilling too much poisoned blood on the newly-exposed grass. He was clearly frustrated, but it was enough to finally get the beast to turn, and when it did, Porter's blade slid home so quickly I barely saw it move. We heard cheers from the car where the refugees sat, and the support crews relaxed too. Davis and Ilko were out of their seats in an instant, with Nick's medics close behind them.

“Here they come!” said Annie, pointing up.

The blue winter sky was speckled with white dots, shifting in the wind as they steered down towards us. The planes turned and headed back for Kamloops, fading before the parachuters made their landings. Soon enough, they were working to bring the fire under control.

“You might as well go,” I said to Annie, who was clearly dying to see how the smoke jumpers worked.

She led the rest of the fire crews and Aarons, who never let anything pass by without looking at it, out of the car. The Americans could be heard protesting the cold, but it was more habit than anything else. Courtney hadn't moved from beside me. Neither of us were really needed right now, and I could tell it wasn't a position she particularly liked.

“I swear, I didn't mean for it to get serious,” Courtney said, once we were alone in the carriage. “I thought it would be fun and make my dad see spots for a good bonus.”

It took me a moment, but I figured out what she was talking about before I said something that would embarrass me.

“I thought he'd be a mess,” she continued. “And I didn't want to fix him. That's not how I work.”

“You build,” I said. “With whatever you've got.”

“That's true,” she said. “I figured I'd do a tour and then leave dragon slaying behind. I still might.”

“You might stay for a second go?” I said, surprised.

“Hell no,” she said, smiling. On the newly exposed grass, Porter was clapping Owen and Nick on the shoulders and trying to wave off Davis, who was attempting to check him over for scorch marks. “But if he would come with me, I'd learn to make swords.”

“Not for nothing,” I said, “but I think I know someone who'd be happy to teach you.”

The dragon slayers managed to get free of their medical team and talk to the chief smoke jumper. Nick apparently had as many questions as Annie, because after a few moments, Porter just pushed him towards a discarded parachute and headed back for the train, Owen trailing behind him.

“All clear?” I said as they boarded.

“More or less,” Porter said, collapsing into a seat. “It bled a bit more than I'd like, but there was no help for it. They'll do what they can for the ground once they're done with the fire, and that's mostly under control.”

Courtney passed them both water bottles. It might have been my imagination, but I thought Porter's hand lingered on hers for just a fraction of a second longer than he really needed to.

“I'll see to Nick,” she said, and hopped down into the snow.

“I hate British Columbia,” Porter said to no one. “I swear, the farther west you go in this country, the worse it gets.”

“You need to come back in the summer,” Peter said. He had returned from the refugee car just as Courtney left. “It rains all the time. Not only would you feel right at home, it keeps the dragon activity down too.”

“I don't think so,” Porter said. “I've been here in the summer too.”

“How are you?” I said to Owen. He was still red from all the running, and his shoulders moved steadily as he regained his breath.

“I think I've been letting Constantinople do too much of the work,” he replied. I knew he was joking, because he hadn't taken the horse with him to Hinton. It was always best when he could joke after slaying a dragon. “But I'm fine, I promise.”

“Good,” I told him, “because you have to tell me all the parts that happened up close.”

That was a joke too: I knew what had happened. If the dragon was slayed and Owen was talking to me, I could piece together the battle whether he filled me in on the close details or not. We had had a lot of practice.

“It's always work with you two,” Peter said. His tone was mild, but there was an edge to it that I didn't entirely like.

“Sometimes there's spaghetti,” I said, a bit more peevishly than I'd intended.

Peter threw up his hands in defeat, though I wasn't quite sure what I had won, and headed back to the other car. With the fire out, the crews came back too, including the smoke jumpers. Parachutes being something of a one way trip, they needed a ride back to Kamloops.

The scenery grew monotonous after a while, but no one requested a song. We were all too busy watching the sky.

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE DANCING

The dragon didn't actually land right in front of us. If it had, we'd all be dead. Going that fast, we needed a couple hundred metres to come to a complete stop, and even that pretty much ruined the train we were on, though we did avoid both derailing and warping the tracks. The dragon had been on the ground when we came out of the tunnel, yes, but it had gone aloft again almost before the engine driver could throw the e-brake. We would have been better off if his instincts had been a little slower. Committed, we had slowed until Porter, Owen, and Nick could get out, even though at the time, it had felt like everything was happening very quickly. We should have kept going, even if it meant leading the dragon all the way to Kamloops. The engine driver's panic had made the isolation of the dragon fight inevitable, and even though the dragon slayers had responded well, it was mistakes like this that led to things like falling off the Burlington Skyway. The driver should have known better.