Prairie Fire (29 page)

I walked back to the barracks and assured Courtney that her father hadn't done me any permanent damage. I'm not sure she believed me, given how distracted I was for the rest of the evening, but at least we got the packing done.

“Drum?” said Annie, looking down at what remained to be squared away.

“No,” I said, “but the bugle for sure.”

“Really?” asked Laura. “I mean, we're going to be in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And sometimes the radios won't work. But you'll be able to hear this.”

I tapped the case, and Courtney added it to her list. The bugle went in Aarons's kit, because he could carry it by the handle while we were walking. I couldn't, so I got the spare shovel and axe because they could be carried on my back.

It was the middle of nowhere, but at least we'd have each other. And thanks to Courtney, we would be very well prepared. Owen would carry mostly his own gear. There would be a few ATVs, but we'd do the bulk of our work on foot. To everyone's relief, it would be too hilly and too heavily wooded for the horses.

I fell asleep listening to Courtney recite where everything had been packed, so that she'd remember even if she didn't have her list handy. I'd write her a song too, I decided. She was as much a hero as I was, and apparently I had a million followers I could share her with.

THE STORY OF JOAN

It wasn't dragons that burned her, in the end.

But everyone remembers her name.

FORTY BELOW

The good thing about winter in northern Alberta is that it is so cold that the snow stays very, very frozen and remains light and fluffy for weeks after it has fallen. This came as a surprise to all of us but Laura, because in Ontario and Eastern Canada, snow tends to get heavy and gross after a while, and wading through two feet of it can be very hard. For the first day, even with our packs, it was almost like a game, wading through knee-deep snow like it was nothing. Of course, then we had to camp in it.

The military is nothing if not efficient, so we had a very well-appointed base camp. The tents had strong canvas sides, lined with a polymer that kept out even the fiercest winds, and the generators worked to keep us warm. Were it not for the ridiculous number of layers we had to put on before we went outside, it would have been almost like regular camping. I had done no small amount of winter camping with Owen and Aodhan, and sometimes Sadie, but those had always been short trips. Way out here and for this many days, well, let's just say we all got really good at going to the bathroom half-in and half-out of our fireproof snowsuits.

The actual work was grueling. Clearing the firebreaks wasn't too bad, because most of those trees were young saplings. The firebreaks that had to be widened were much worse, because most of those trees were much older. Generally speaking, logging wasn't done in this part of Alberta during the winter because the ground is too treacherous for heavy machinery, but this particular kind of logging couldn't wait for spring, because that was when fire season started.

It wasn't just dragon fire that we were working to prevent, although the fact that about sixty percent of Alberta forest fires were caused by dragons was what got the Oil Watch to do the actual labor.

In addition to our squad and Porter, Nick and his mentor, Kaori and Amery, and all of their squads were involved too. By the time you added in the five-hundred-odd regular members of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry deployed out of the base in Edmonton, we were nearly a whole company. All of us managed to get on well enough, mostly because Kaori was very well-liked by the Patricias. The only problem was that Amery's antipathy towards Owen and Porter was even more apparent now that they all had to live together in close quarters.

“I don't expect everyone to love me,” Owen said about three weeks into our extended camping trip. “I just expect them to have a reason for disliking me.”

“Maybe Amery thinks General Speed has the right idea about dragon slayers and their support crews,” I suggested, trying to use a can opener on a can of beans. Owen let me struggle with it for a while, and then he just took it. I didn't say anything. I was hungry too.

“I don't think so,” Owen said. “She didn't complain when Kaori suggested it was time to cut everyone's hair again.”

“I still don't think that was a good idea, by the way,” I told him, running a hand over my scalp. “My neck gets cold.”

“It's forty below,” Owen said. “I think your neck would be cold anyway.”

Since there were almost six hundred of us, we worked a rotation of field and camp jobs. The regular troops were divvied up with the dragon slayer squads, and we all worked on week-long jaunts out from the main base camp, returning each night to smaller, less permanent camps. Saturdays and Sundays were spent in the main camp, redistributing work for the following week and attempting to thaw out. So far, Owen had worked with Nick's mentor twice, and once with just Porter and some extra troops from Edmonton, but he had yet to go with Amery.

I had spent the first week in the main base camp with the big radio, a map, and a metric ton of straight pins, which I used to keep track of where everyone was and how many firebreaks they had cleared. It was kind of fascinating, and I learned the geography of the river valley pretty quickly, but by the second week Porter had decided that he wanted me in the field with them, because they were headed for a hilly region where they didn't think the small radios would work. They didn't, and I spent five days in camp freezing my ears off, blowing bugle calls so that everyone would know when it was time to eat. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't the most fun I'd had since Christmas. Porter made sure to talk about how useful I had been, so the next week, I went out again with Nick's crew and did the same thing. Our next assignment was with Amery, and all fourteen members of Owen's crew were going together.

“Do you really think we need this much stuff?” Laura asked, looking with some dismay at what Courtney expected her to carry. “The Patricias will have a lot of spares, you know.”

“That may be,” Courtney sniffed, “but I like to know that you'll have what you need.”

“The only fires we've seen have been for cooking,” Laura said under her breath as she lifted her pack by its strap with a mournful expression on her face.

Privately, I rather agreed with her. But at the same time, I couldn't deny Courtney's point. During the week I'd spent with Nick, Kaori and Amery had found a nest of Wapiti eggs, and we'd seen signs of 'Bascan Longs—trees bent over with slashes from their tail spines, not to mention the burns on the tree bark—though none of the actual dragons themselves. I suppose it never hurt to be prepared.

“You should try lifting one of the Patricias' packs,” Courtney said. “We just have to carry fire stuff. They have to carry everything they would if they were in Afghanistan.”

“What, in case of insurgents?” Annie said.

“For practice,” I said. “Like how the Redcoats all had the same kit, whether they were boiling to death in India or freezing to death in Quebec.”

“'Cause that worked out so well for them,” Laura muttered.

“Well, you're carrying that pack, so stop moaning about it.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Laura saluted. She didn't even look that sarcastic.

My alarm beeped. Time for taps. Even though we were in camp and everyone could use the radio just fine, it had become customary for me to play the main calls of the day: reveille, meals, and taps. It meant I had to get up first and was always late to meals, because the best spot to be heard from was also far from the commissary, but I didn't mind. It helped that we weren't rushed through meals and that someone else always got my plate when they went through the line to get their own.

I pulled the bugle from the case and polished it off with my shirt.

“Why do you always do that?” Annie asked. “It's not marked up at all.”

“Comfort, I guess,” I told her, making sure the spit valve hadn't frozen shut. In this cold, the bugle was nearly impossible to tune, but so far no one had complained. It probably helped that I was the only person who could hear the instruments the bugle had to be in tune with.

“She likes to know where everything is too,” Courtney said, and I smiled at her. It was true.

I set the bugle on my cot and stood so that I could pull on my snow pants. I was still wearing my boots—the pants had a zippered leg—and the clasp was big enough that I could do them myself. I put on my thermal and then the fireproof coat. I was already sweating, but I knew it would be worth it as soon as I stepped outside. Last came the balaclava, toque, and thick mittens.

At least we'd yet to experience a skin-exposure warning.

I picked up the bugle and headed for the tent flap.

“See you in a moment,” I said, and ducked out.

I walked across the camp by myself. There weren't a lot of people out. This call was almost entirely unnecessary, except it told everyone that the kitchen was closed and let the nighttime radio operator know it was time for his or her shift. Still, it was my favourite song of all the calls, so I didn't mind in the slightest.

The thing about taps is that it wasn't written for the woods, but it could have been. Each note gets held as long as you want. There are pauses for effect. It's a song about going to sleep, but it's also a song filled with joy, or at least with contentment for a day's work done well. The words were added later, and unlike those added to reveille, they match the profound nature of the melody. I went to stand by the flag pole and licked my lips under the balaclava. I pulled the hood down and raised the bugle to my mouth.

It's odd to play for so many people and not have any of them actually watch you do it. I couldn't see another soul, but I could feel them all pause. Such is the nature of taps.

I finished the song—it's not a long one—and headed back for my tent. On the way, I saw that I did have a one-person audience, and I'd missed her because she had been standing in the shadows.

“You're very good,” Amery said when I saw her. She had a more delicate drawl than the other Southerners on her crew and Nick's crew.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said. “I'm fairly new at the bugle.”

“I prefer it when it's jazz,” she said. “But you need valves for that.”

“I'm not so good with valves anymore,” I admitted, wiggling my fingers inside my mittens. “And I was never much for improvisation.”

“I can imagine that,” she said. “I didn't get to see much of the good part of New Orleans when I was there, but I did like the jazz.”

“Katrina?” I asked, as politely as I could. This was the closest we'd ever had to an opening with her, and I was determined to take it.

“The aftermath, mostly,” she said. “Not exactly the best place to start your tour with the Oil Watch.”

“We say the same thing about Alberta back home,” I said. “But I guess it's for a different reason.”