~

Chapter Thirteen

~

Neither of us could manage the pace that Marl pressed, but both of us must have been eager to get back to the Hamlet. I don’t think it’s fair that witch healed the hen’s feet and just sent a nurse in to bandage mine.

We topped the saddle of two ridges and both of our phones pinged. Here in the middle of nowhere? As I dug in my vest for my cell I scanned the peaks. Could there be a cell tower nearby? Up here?

I had fifteen messages to choose from. Nuel must have had the same text I had, to call when I had reception. Nuel already addressed Ike. Hens do manage devices with a dexterity no bull can. My last text wasn’t from Ike though. Clearly I’m not important to him. I dialed Bliar back.

“Congratulations,” the bull gushed. How’d he hear we clocked it out of the park? Do the trolls—of course they have phones. Had to be wire-line, inside a mountain and all.

“The Northerners are goin’ a little nuts,” Bliar continued.

“About our success today?”

He told me not to be stupid. “Their folk we—ya know.”

I’m shocked. Not about Bliar callin’ me stupid. Humans. They’re such a relaxed, unemotional bunch. I hated that Nuel was gonna be able to tell Ike, told ya so.

“None of my business,” I said. “I’m done with all this. Corralled in, without information that would have helped considerably. Treated like a mushroom.”

“Why’re ya speakin’ Trollish?” my uncle asked.

I told him I decided I needed to practice it some. He barely gave it a hmm, before he was pushin’ me around again.

“Need ya and Nuel to head east.”

“I’m not headed nowhere but to my cabin. To take a shower, and sleep for three days.” Looked forward to seein’ that cute troll, Zia, too.

“Yar Trollish sounds good to me,” he said. “But ya might be in more danger in the Hamlet than ya’d expect. At least for the next day or so. Ike decided to give ’em lots of rope.”

Give ’em rope. I know that cliche. I closed my eyes tightly and waited for the other clog to fall.

“Besides,” he said. “OW has officially been closed for a couple weeks, or until the hostility settles down, so no need to rush back to the Plain.”

Uh. Hostility? What? I’m always bein’ corrected. “OW?” I asked.

“Yep,” Bliar said. “Ike announced it from his hidey hole up North. Gonna change the name back. Those ingrates—”

Like it’s solely his decision. The jerk.

I waited. Was Bliar gonna finish that thought? I waited a bit longer.

“I suppose,” he finally continued, “UI will go back to OI as soon as Ike’s safe, back in the Range. Glad we hadn’t yet changed any of our signs.”

“When he’s safe?” I asked. Well duh. There’s a reason he didn’t want his cell to be tracked.

“It’s a lot worse than it was three days ago. ’Em ignert humans have declared him an enemy of the state, or some such foolishness.”

“There a law that defines an enemy of the state?” I asked.

“Council lawyers say no, but ya suppose that’ll stop ’em Northerners?”

“Uh,” I hummed, “aren’t they all about the letter of the law and such?”

“So, I’ll text ya the coordinates of where ya’ll be picked up, and the best passes, to avoid the worst of the highland weather this time of year.”

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, “I explained I’m done with all this.”

“The entire clan leadership has decided to be scarce for the time bein’. Even Ezra has closed the inn’s kitchen for a few days and blended into the woods, her words, not mine.”

I screeched somethin’ about the entire leadership. “Since when do ogres hide?”

“I always said,” Bliar snorted with a laugh, “ya catch on faster than the average marmot.”

They’ve gone into hidin’, but they really haven’t, and the bull is callin’ me a marmot? So not hidin’, just bidin’ their time? Was he tryin’ to confuse me? Either way, I hate my relatives—especially the uncle presently on my cell.

I asked where my ma and pa are. He said they were snug and safe with his pa, on the East Slope Ranch. I asked if the entire world had gone crazy.

He laughed so hard he choked. Took him several moments to recover. “Wait until ya hear that the South is callin’ up their National Guard.”

“What?” I asked. Uh, no waitin’ needed. He just told me.

“We’re likely to need ’em,” he said. “Good that we pretty much paid all the bills.”

He still wasn’t makin’ any sense.

And he was flippin’ topics too fast. I can’t deal with that on a good day.

My mind settled on his paid-the-bills comment. We? We financed the Southern National Guard? Are we goin’ to war with the North? Like, with bullets and stuff? Oh lordy, lordy.

“Didn’t we practically shut down their economy up North just a few months ago with the rail closure to show ’em that they shouldn’t mess with us?” I asked.

“Clearly, ’em folk didn’t learn nothin’.”

Before I could cry about how stupid all of this was, how someone had to put an end to the foolishness, Bliar said he’d text me the coordinates, and hung up. Without a polite good bye.

Occurred to me a few seconds later, coordinates weren’t gonna do us any good in a few hours when our cellphone batteries died.

Nuel was still blabbin’, so I texted Zia that I wouldn’t be back right away. She replied with a pouty face emoticon. I could fall in love with her.

~

Nuel

~

That’s what he worried about? Loosin’ power to his phone? The world has gone crazy, and his cousin is waitin’ for nightfall to sneak out of the city. Black Lake’s entire Council leadership—or did he mean his clan leadership; that always confuses me—is goin’ into hidin’.

The North is actin’ as though Martial law is in place or somethin’. Maybe it is. But how did they believe their law ruled over us? I’m sayin’ us now, as though I haven’t lived my entire life in the North.

“Of course I’m carryin’ a battery pack, ya idjit. Ya aren’t?”

He glared at me a long moment. “We’re gonna get hungry. We’re talkin’ about an extra two days of hiking, or more.”

“Yar cell, and yar stomach. Those are yar priorities?”

“I’m learnin’ to hate ya as much as I hate Ike.”

I asked him why he’s speakin’ Trollish. His glare intensified.

“If it hasn’t occurred to ya,” the idjit said, “makin’ it through these mountains isn’t gonna be a breeze without a device to plot GPS coordinates on. A fool can wander around in these woods for the rest of their life. A shortened life.”

“Oh,” I said.

That made sense. For an idjit he’s capable of puttin’ a brain cell to use. Unusual for a bull. We hens really should stop lettin’ bulls make any decisions. They are clearly incompetent at keepin’ anythin’ runnin’ smoothly. Considerin’ the current situation in particular.