Prairie Fire (17 page)

He didn't look at Porter, though his gaze swept the rest of the room when he said it. I wondered if he'd looked at Courtney for a fraction of a second longer than the rest of us, but I don't think he did.

“Furthermore, it is time for the new dragon slayers among us to receive their winter assignments,” he continued. “Crawford, Thorskard, and Yamamoto companies, stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed.”

The older officers and crew filed out, already talking to each other like nothing had happened. We sat as straight and as still as we could. I didn't have to look at Porter—and I could tell that Owen didn't either—to know that whatever was coming, it wouldn't be good.

DISMISSED

I had only a very short time to fill Owen in on what Courtney had told me. I was unsurprised to find out that Lottie had already told him a bit of it; he knew the story of what had happened, anyway, even though he hadn't known it was Porter who'd done it.

“She mentioned it before Manitoulin,” he said. “Half cautionary tale, half how-to. You know how it is with Aunt Lottie sometimes. I'm more surprised she hasn't said anything about the fact that we're working together.”

“I don't think it can be good,” I told him. “I mean, Porter's already on the low end of the food chain in terms of what the Watch thinks of him, and there's at least one world government that hopes you fade into obscurity.”

I could have said “die,” but I really didn't think the government of Canada wanted Owen dead. They wouldn't mourn him too much, but I was pretty sure they'd just settle for him doing fewer things that made him look cool on the Internet.

“Maybe they thought we cancel each other out,” Owen said.

“That doesn't even make sense,” I replied, but before I could really get on a roll, General Speed was on his feet again.

“Right, Crawford!”

Nick's squad was quick to get to their feet. I wondered if any of them were from Kansas. “Sir!” Nick replied, his spine as straight as one of his arrows.

“Your squad is deployed to Grande Prairie,” the general said. His snare drum was so tight that it didn't rattle at all. There was no room in it for anything but a military march. “Your mentor will join you. You will be in charge of monitoring the town itself, in particular the mills.”

“Yes, sir!” Nick said, and his squad chorused behind him.

“Yamamoto!” The general moved on, not even pausing long enough to hear Kaori's reply. “You are being stationed in Edmonton, where you will serve as liaison to the regular Canadian Forces stationed there.”

Kaori acquiesced without question, but I had a few. Sending the team with the least experience in North America, not to mention the team with the least proficiency in English, to work alongside regular Canadian soldiers as they drilled with live artillery seemed counterproductive. There certainly weren't mountains in Edmonton that would make Kaori's specialties useful. I was suddenly profoundly uncomfortable about what would happen to Owen.

“Thorskard!” General Speed said. “You and Lieutenant Porter will be decamping for Hinton tomorrow morning.”

That wasn't a complete disaster, I thought. Hinton is the eastern mouth of the John A–Zuò Tunnel. It's a key strategic base, and it's much closer to the shadows of the mountains than Fort Calgary, though it often goes untouched by Chinooks. Unless there's a train derailment, Fort Calgary is a much more tempting target. Hinton, the joke goes, is so unpleasant that even the dragons don't go there, but at least it would be relatively safe.

“Yes—” Owen started, but Speed put up his hand.

“I'm not finished,” he said. Beside him, Porter ground his teeth. “Your squad stays here. You don't need them in Hinton, and they'll be assigned to the Chinook cleanup as needed here. Your bard too.”

We were completely silent. The squad might not have been instant fans of Owen, but he was their dragon slayer. We'd been a team for more than a month now, and we slayed a dragon together. That sort of thing sticks with you. And yet here it was, barely Thanksgiving, and we were being separated. It was as good as if they'd told us flat out that we weren't passing muster, except that we clearly were. The Oil Watch was supposed to be about teamwork too, and it looked increasingly like someone had forgotten to mention that to General Speed.

We had mastered disposal much faster than Kaori had, even though the Wapiti we'd dealt with had been twice as large as hers. Nick's squad had failed entirely and nearly contaminated the base sewage system in the process. Owen's seat was much better in his riding, and while his accuracy wasn't as good as Nick's, he could complete more passes than the American due to his greater strength. He was the one who should be slaying dragons, and while they were sending him to a place where he would probably get some, they weren't sending the rest of us with him.

I realized that Owen was looking at me with a concerned expression on his face, and a second after that, I realized that his concern was not for himself. It all crashed in on me then. I'd spent the days since we got here learning all the dragon lore I could and shadowing the others as they trained, but I still had no specific job. I spent most of my logged call time in the communications office, practicing the bugle and painstakingly making notes about what everyone else was up to. Once Owen and the squad had gone their separate ways, though, I had no idea what I'd do.

General Speed didn't give us long to mull it over.

“I expect you to be packed and ready for inspection before dinner, and all drills except riding are postponed for the day,” he said. “You're all dismissed.”

He turned on his heel and strode out of the mess, not even checking to see that we were moving. Porter rose to his feet, slowly, like Lottie might have done when she was stiff. He always wore long sleeves, and the uniform had long trousers anyway. I wondered what burns they hid.

“You heard him,” he said, his voice almost soft by comparison, even though bagpipes don't usually have that in them. “Get a move on.”

Packing didn't take very long since we weren't going anywhere, so we went to the rec room that was allotted to the junior dragon slayers and waited for the others instead of just sitting around in the barracks getting depressed. Kaori and her two-female fire crew came in first and veered off to the corner, where they sat and talked quietly to one another. Nick was next and installed himself in the activity area, throwing darts at the dartboard with disturbing accuracy. I stared at him while everyone else trickled in. No one spoke.

Finally Aarons couldn't take it anymore and stood up.

“Okay, everyone just stay here for a moment,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

It wasn't like we had anywhere else to go, and none of us had really moved by the time he got back, carrying Owen's practice shield in one hand and a bag of white powder in the other. There was a hot plate in the rec room, theoretically for boiling water for tea or coffee while you were on downtime, and a sink beside it. Aarons turned on both burners and laid the shield down across them to heat. Then he measured water into the bag before sealing it and shaking it up.

“Legend tells us,” he began, “that one day on the field of battle, a Viking war band fared ill. They did their best, but the results did not come, and at the end of the day they were exhausted and forlorn. When they sat down to make dinner, they realized that the griddle had gone missing, and then they were really extra sad, because they thought that meant they couldn't have a hot meal.”

His timing needed some work, but he wasn't a bad storyteller. I listened carefully in case we ended up writing a song together.

“But all was not lost,” he said, grinning a bit now, “because their clever smith had a solution.”

“I'm sure he did,” Courtney said, smirking, but the American smith laughed and, once Kaori translated, the Japanese smith smiled as well.

“He got the dragon slayer's shield, and he held it over the fire,” Aarons continued. “And he poured in the batter he had made.”

There was a sizzling sound as Aarons opened the bag and poured the newly mixed batter on to the shield.

“Ew,” said Annie, wrinkling her nose. “Do you have any idea where that's been?”

Owen hadn't been using that shield to tilt, so I wasn't worried. I trusted Aarons. Trusted the story he was telling.

“Anyway, the shield was dented from the fight,” Aarons continued. “The batter ran into the dents, and instead of flat pancakes, a new cake was invented.”

All of the Americans were leaning forward now. The cakes smelled very good. I wondered how long Aarons had been carrying that mix with him. I filled in the story myself. His father had packed it in his suitcase when Aarons wasn't paying attention, and when he'd gotten to Gagetown and found it, he'd smiled and known that he was loved. I shook my head. It wasn't my story yet. I forced myself to pay attention.

“They called it
eibelskiver
,” Aarons said, using a piece of flat steel to flip the round cakes over. I didn't remember Owen's shield being that dented. In fact, now that I was close, I didn't think I'd ever seen Owen practice with this shield at all. “And they ate it together—and remembered for all of their days.”

He turned the little cakes onto a plate and poured more batter in. None of us said anything, and at last there was a pile of cakes on the plate and an empty bag. Aarons turned the burners off, leaving the shield to cool, and walked around the room, passing the
eibelskiver
out to every one of us.

As we ate, Annie asked Nick's fire crew foreman what it was like to work in cities. He was from Miami, so they always had plenty of water available. From there they fell into one-upping each other. The Japanese fire crew joined in as best they could, one of the engineers translating, and Kaori came over to me.

“I think I have eaten these cakes before,” she said.

“You know a lot of Vikings?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and laughed. “Owen is the first. But these cakes are much like something I ate when I was in Hong Kong. I think your Vikings may have stolen them, not made them on the field of battle.”

“You're probably right,” I said. “But it makes a good story.”

“You ought to know,” she said and frowned. “You should know?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, both are correct, but the second is more idiomatic.”

“I hate idioms,” she said, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it.

We listened as one of her fire crew, through the engineer, told a story about racing a dragon's fire down a mountainside. It sounded terrifying, and also remotely possible, which just made it worse.

“Myself, and the others,” Kaori said. “The girls. We will shave our heads tonight.”

I looked at her. She had short hair already, but I could tell from the way she carried herself sometimes that she used to wear it long. She held her head like I did.

“Kaori,” I started, not sure what I was even trying to say. She shook her head.

“Siobhan,” she said. “We are part of your story now. The world should know that if it sees us.”

I ran a hand through my close-cropped hair. It was long enough to tuck behind my ears again. I could use a haircut too, and said as much. Kaori smiled, and soon after that all the girls, even the Americans, retired to our barracks to take care of it. They could split us up and send us all over the province, but we had lived together this long, in a way that the guys hadn't, and that had made us into a team in a way the military hadn't predicted. The general was trying to limit Owen's influence on his own squad, but because of the billet assignment, his story would spread to the US and Japan. It was too late to stop it. All he could do now was chase the fire down the mountainside.

In the mess hall at breakfast the next morning, General Speed looked out over a row of newly shaved heads and frowned.