Prairie Fire (9 page)

Although technically the British forces merely held off the encroaching Americans, and prevented them from making any gains in terms of land or population, the aftermath of the war had a profound effect on the American territories that were due to join the country as states. The Dakotas, less Minnesota and Wisconsin, and most of Washington Territory, less Wyoming, jumped ship and petitioned the Brits for readmission into the Empire. At the time, the Americans were not particularly sad to see them go. Those territories did not have a lot in the way of resources, and they were expensive to patrol and maintain. Also, the British were willing to pay a portion of the funds the territories had cost in the first place, and since they did that with monies taken from Napoleon, it was all deemed very cyclical and fair.

Half a century later, when oil became the lifeblood of the west, there was a bit of grumbling in Washington, DC about it, but by then the borders were solid and the citizens of the Dakotas, Montana, and Cascadon were rather happily Canadian.

Alberta, in more ways than one, came out on top. It no longer had to defend a border against American incursion, and it became the de facto leader of the Oil Coalition, the five provinces for which oil was a primary export. Historians enjoyed theorizing that, were in not for the coalition, Canada's politics would be much more determined by the central and eastern parts of the country (by which, of course, they meant Ontario), but under Alberta's guidance, the West became progressively more wealthy, if decidedly less progressive.

The settlement of Alberta proceeded apace, led by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which laid down the tracks that made east-west transport slightly less arduous, provided you wished to travel from Toronto to Fort Calgary. From there, Alberta spread north, though the train only went as far as Edmonton before apparently deciding that it was too cold to go any further.

And then, Alberta began to dig. They dug for oil, for gas, and for potash. They clear-cut trees for lumber, though those they did replace with saplings. And the dragons came.

After the incorporation of the Oil Watch in the 1950s, Canada, as the founder, reserved the right to conscript dragon slayers for Alberta, even though there was no combat there. At the time, Oil Watch founder Lester B. Pearson was so well-liked and respected that no one was going to deny him anything, and it seemed like a very simple request. As the years rolled on, however, and conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere became more concerning, Alberta became less of a priority for the Oil Watch. Thanks to our current Prime Minister, Canada was enjoying its least popular time as a member of the UN, and as a result, only the most troublesome, most unreliable dragon slayers were sent to defend Canada's oil.

Thus it was that when Owen Thorskard left CFB Gagetown and struck out for the west, it was with considerable lack of enthusiasm on the part of his support squad. Their goodwill towards Owen, not to mention towards me, had not faded entirely, but I knew that they couldn't help but view our assignment as a punishment, and each of them was wondering how they'd screwed up to get assigned to a dragon slayer who was clearly in such bad grace.

The cornet-sergeant came to the train platform to see us off, something he'd not done for any of the other departing squads. Around me, everyone straightened in spite of themselves.

“These are difficult times,” he said. “Things are changing and the government doesn't want them to. They're sending you out there because they think it's out of the way and that everyone will forget about you while you're gone. But I have been fighting dragons and training dragon slayers for a very long time, and I am telling you that Alberta is as dangerous and as important as any other place they might have sent you, and not just because of the dragons.”

He was talking to all of us, which I appreciated, because he could have just spoken to Owen. I didn't think it was possible for the fire crew to stand any straighter, but somehow they did. Maybe it was because now they wanted to.

We got on the train and wordlessly sorted out who would be sitting where.

It would be days before I saw the prairies for the first time, but I heard them coming before we got there. I could feel them in the train wheels, clicking against the tracks, and in the way the carriage swayed. It was a different song—not the one that any of us had expected—but we would write it all the same.

TOTEM POLES

Fort Calgary was a hard town, between an uncaring prairie and a mountain range that would just as soon the city didn't exist at all, if the weather that rolled down the mountainsides was any indication. You could see it from pretty far away, but not as far as the jokes about the prairies suggested. Alberta was flat, but it wasn't
that
flat.

We arrived by train, all fourteen of us in one car, with the regimental reinforcements in the carriages behind us, bound for the base in Edmonton. Though Edmonton had the larger numbers and a civilian population besides, Fort Calgary was nothing to sneeze at. When it was at full capacity, it boasted twice the population of Trondheim, upwards of five thousand people, all members of the Oil Watch. At need, it could host five thousand more in emergency quarters.

The bottom berths in the train carriage folded into seats during the day, but there wasn't a lot to do besides look out the window and wonder if we were seeing the curvature of the Earth or if we were merely going insane from the monotony. At least we slept through Northern Ontario. We traveled through Canada the whole way, because the rail lines were safer there. Since we were north of Ottawa, we were clear of most of the populated hatching grounds, whereas if we'd gone south through Maine and around the foot of deserted Michigan towards the province of Dakota, we'd have been at more risk. Furthermore, there had been a series of dragon attacks in Nebraska, along the Canadian border. There are any number of American movies about dragon slayers fighting dragons from the tops of trains, but I was quite happy not to be reenacting one. We made it all the way to Manitoba before we even saw a dragon out the window, and it was far enough away that we didn't have to worry about it.

For the first two days, everyone trod lightly around Owen, expecting him to be angry about where we were being sent. I could tell that he wasn't. Sadie had been surprised by her assignment, which should have gone to a dragon slayer who was used to the coast, but we all knew she'd be so busy learning that she'd barely have time to miss us, or me anyway. She'd said good-bye to both of us at the same time, as if she was going to see us in the morning, and stood on the train platform with her head held high as we pulled away. We were bound for Alberta, where we wouldn't even need our passports, but as the cornet-sergeant reminded us, it wasn't exactly going to be a walk in the park.

By the time we entered Saskatchewan and became more or less permanently hypnotized by the endless vistas stretching away from the train tracks, the others had relaxed. Anderson taught us to play poker, which I was wretched at, and we talked more about our lives before we'd joined the Oil Watch. Aarons took the time to look over Owen's sword and mine and lamented that he was never going to win renown by making a weapon for his own dragon slayer because Hannah's work was so good.

“There are a few of us to take care of,” Annie pointed out. “Plus all of the guns.”

He sighed, “It's not really the same thing.”

“We didn't bring any backups,” Owen reminded him. “You'll get to make those.”

Aarons brightened and returned to making sketches, while Courtney looked over his shoulder and made suggestions. As our combat engineer, Courtney was the third most important person in the squad after Owen and Annie. Technically, the foreman's job had the higher rank, but it was also a great deal more straightforward. Courtney had taken over most of the logistics and was better at setting people to tasks they were good at. In the end, Annie and Courtney reached an agreement on the hierarchy, and I wondered if this was what Lottie had meant when she'd said that the Oil Watch ran differently from the regular Forces.

Laura, who was one of the tiniest people I had ever met, and who somehow managed to carry her own body weight in gear anyway, was doing a crossword puzzle. She was actually from Saskatchewan, so the prairies were less alluring to her than they were to the rest of us. Gratton leaned across her to look out the window, and she kept smacking him with the pen every time he got too close.

“Look!” Gratton said. “There it is.”

We couldn't see the mountains yet, but on the ruddy yellow horizon there stood what looked like a row of metal teeth stretching up into the air. During the day, this was the first part of Fort Calgary you could see, though at night you could see the lights from much farther away. The metal teeth were the tops of stylized totem poles, taller than the California Redwoods on which they were modeled, and thrusting jagged steel into the bright prairie sunset. Though most of the poles were around the wall of the fort, they were also scattered throughout the city itself, to prevent the dragons from dive-bombing any of the buildings. It was dramatic and, according to several European pseudo-scientists, entirely unnecessary, but since Fort Calgary was the last real stronghold between the rest of Canada and Kamloops, BC, on the other side of the John A–Zuò Tunnel, no one complained. We watched as we drew closer to the fort, though Laura kept poking at her crossword as if to spite the fact that the rest of us were Easterners.

“It's beautiful,” said Aarons, who knew how to get use from metal.

“They're probably covered with bird crap up close,” Parker pointed out.

The train slowed, and a steward came to let us know that we'd be met upon our arrival. We scrambled to pack everything back into our kits, and Annie did my zippers and buckles while I folded up the berth that she and Dorsey had been sitting on. The train slowed as it passed underneath the metal branches, and I watched Aarons drag himself away from the window. We'd have plenty of time to admire the sights later, so I didn't feel too bad for him. Courtney pushed his pack at him and winked at me while Owen helped me get my own bag settled on my shoulders.

“I really hope this doesn't suck,” I said, quiet enough that only he heard it.

“We'll be fine,” he told me. “Maybe they thought we'd done so much work already, we needed a break.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “Not even I am that naive.”

“All right,” Owen said to everyone as he pushed his way to the front of the car. “I guess we should line up. Courtney, Annie?”

They joined him at the front, and I fell back to let them. I had my bugle, one final gift from Trondheim, in my gear. I hadn't had time to play it since we'd arrived at Gagetown, but I had practiced for months before that and knew that I was as good as I was going to be. We still hadn't heard if I was going to be required to play, or if they would just find something else for me to do. I had my assignment, same as everyone else, but no official job yet besides “bard,” which was very unspecific. Traditionally, I should have held the same rank as Owen did, but it had been so long since a bard had served in the Oil Watch that no one at Gagetown thought to tell me what to expect when I arrived in Fort Calgary. The squad deferred to me, or at least they did after the Singe'n'burn, but there was no telling what other, more experienced members of the Watch would do.

The doors opened, and we followed Owen off the train. The few senior members of the Oil Watch who'd come with us, bound for Edmonton, were emerging from their cars as well, but they didn't really pay attention to us, unless it was to catcall about us being new and green and dragon-bait.

“Thorskard!” came a voice that made me instantly jump to attention. “Front and centre.”

By tradition, each squad was called after its dragon slayer, and since Owen was the only member of his family currently in service, we had no numerical designation. Sometimes it was odd, not knowing if we were being called as a group or if he was being called as an individual, but if the idea was to promote a cohesive group dynamic, it was working. At the sound of Owen's name, we all fell in and waited for further orders. The man who came for us was Owen's mentor, the senior dragon slayer who would shepherd him through his first few months in the Oil Watch. Overseas, this position was usually more important, like in Sadie's case, where new dragon slayers came up against unfamiliar terrain, dragons, languages, and cultures. We were only going to have to worry about the dragons. Theoretically, each member of Owen's squad would have a guide from his mentor's squad, except for me, of course, and yet the dragon slayer on the platform was by himself. Owen stepped forward as his mentor stopped in front of us.

“Owen Thorskard, sir,” he said, saluting as was expected. “And squad.”

“At ease.” We followed the order as best we could, carrying all the gear we had.

Owen's new mentor walked up and down the line, looking at each of us in turn. He was not surprised to count an extra person. I did my best not to let my eyes wander, but it's always harder to tell the story if I haven't seen it myself. He was tall, though not as tall as Aodhan, and much narrower in build. Aodhan powered through dragons like a charging bull, all deep bass line and inevitable vanquishment. This man was like a coiled spring, something that made noise before the player began the piece. Bagpipes—right on the edge of annoying, yet oddly compelling, though you still wouldn't want more than one of them in a small room. I had no idea what he might do. He stopped again in front of Owen and didn't seem to be too disappointed with us.