Chapter Forty-two
~
“We need to warm ya four up before we head down,” a troll bull I vaguely remember meetin’ once at a safety forum explained to me. “Wind blowin’ hard enough still, be tough for us to carry any of ya down.”
“Ya don’t have to carry me. I’m no—”
“Yeah sure,” he said. “Why doncha just shut up and follow the expert’s lead.”
I looked about the cramped chamber. Trolls were feedin’ spoonfuls of hot soup into Alex and Beky’s mouths. They were alive. “How are they?”
“Some frostbite. Nothin’ the surgeons can’t fix with a little skin graft.”
“Ick,” I said.
“Thought ya’re in med school,” the troll said.
“Am I?” Oh yeah, maybe I am. My frostbite clearly affected my brain.
“Why do Woriz and Hale talk so mean at each other?” he asked me. “Aren’t all yall cousins?”
“Every stinkin’ ogre in the Hamlet is a cousin of ours,” I said.
He grinned.
Izig returned from the hearth carryin’ a tin of steamin’ somethin’. “What’s so amusin’?” she asked.
“Bele was explainin’ that no one knows who dropped ya and yar siblin’ at the firehouse twenty years ago.”
“That’s rich, comin’ from a half goblin, half dwarf.” She kept any humor off her face. Inside she worked not to crack up.
She held out a deeply scooped spoon of somethin’ toward my face. I explained I could feed myself. The troll bull growled, warned me to keep my stinkin’ arms inside the sleepin’ bag. “Can’t afford to lose a degree of heat ya absorbed off me the last twenty minutes.”
“How long?” I asked.
They both knew what I meant. The bull answered. “Sun already crunchin’ into the western peaks. Can’t find our track at night. We’ll all stay stuck together for warmth through the night, start out early. Should be a good fifteen degrees warmer than the high today.”
“I don’t think the orc and human—”
“We’ll be carryin’ ’em on our backs,” the bull said. Explained the straps and aluminum frames a couple of the bulls had assembled over the last hour. “Ya and yar siblin’ too.”
I opened my mouth to argue and Izig laughed. The bull told me to shut up. He explained again that they’re the most experienced Range patrol on the continent, and weren’t gonna let a couple dumb ogres endanger ’emselves again.
“Did ya call us dumb?” I hissed.
“I could have added, and unprepared to climb the vertical face the shrine sits on.”
“Yar a rude troll,” I said.
“He is,” Izig said. “But he knows his stuff.”
My mind split to the other, bein’ carried like a bag of rocks down the mountain. The idea of leavin’ my life in someone else’s hands was a bit intimidatin’. Izig managed to get another near-tepid scoop of onion soup in my mouth. Ick. Onion? For an ogre?
“Don’t make faces,” the troll mumbled. “If it were up to me, she’d be feedin’ ya smokin’ centipedes.”
“Why are ya even here?” I asked Izig. “This is a troll team, right?”
“And yar point?” Izig asked, pushin’ another scoop my way.
The bull was workin’ pretty well at hidin’ a grin. His mind was so open though. Relivin’ a near-fisticuffs with Uncle Jam about her and Woriz havin’ the stamina to carry folk out of the deep woods. Maybe not full trolls, but then in two hundred years the Range team hadn’t needed to pull a troll out of any situation. Trolls weren’t dumb enough to get lost in the woods, or whatever. Trolls are so superior.
The bull cleared his throat. “Yar cousins have put in about two hundred hours of trainin’ in the last two years. They have tasks in this recovery. Even if they aren’t carryin’ anyone out.”
Hadn’t Mama said Izig worked in some shop in the Hamlet? When did she find the time to train with the most elite mountain recovery team? Most of ’em are full-time, not really a volunteer kinda gig. And why would the cousins even want to get involved with the Range team? A pretty self-centered duo, as far as I know. They wore the same patches on the breast of their parkas as the adults, though. Lookin’ again closely, I noted the rockers underneath, monogrammed with In Training. Very official like.
~
Hale
~
We aren’t trolls, but Bele and I aren’t lil’ folk. I asked Woriz wouldn’t it be safer to allow us to climb with ’em.
“Debated,” he said. “Decided, considerin’ neither of ya have ever done any winter rock climbin’, that it would be safer.”
“Ya just wanna humiliate us a bit,” I offered.
“Hadn’t thought of that. Always enjoyed stickin’ it to ya when we could, considerin’ how holier than thou ya two always acted.”
“Holier than thou?” I grumbled. A full ogre might have ripped off his head—as though an ogre could rip off a troll’s head—but then, the cousins are only half-troll. So if I had the emotion in me, I prolly could rip off Woriz’ head.
A new sensation, or thought, seeped into my itty bitty head. We acted superior—he thought. No. It was the other way around. He and his sister always pushed their superior troll genes in our faces. I told him he was an enormous hypocrite.
“Oh yeah. How do ya see that?”
This was a subject for Bele to argue. I looked over at her, but she was busy whisperin’ to that fool human now.
“Okay,” Woriz murmured. “We resented a few thin’s.”
Resented? What was there to resent?
“Do I have to write it on yar forehead?” my dumb cousin asked.
I still didn’t say anythin’.
“All the other kids called ya names.”
Definitely.
“Like we were supposed to protect ya?”
Protect? They were our most fierce attackers.
“We got tired of all the adults treatin’ ya so special. I think.”
I was definitely the special one.
“Not special like, ya know.”
Bele was now curious what our ignert cousin was talkin’ about, though she tried not to look nosy. But she was only half-clued into what the hulkin’ troll was sayin’ to her. I think Woriz mentionin’ the word special grabbed her attention.
“Papa talked about ya two like—”
Woriz moved, aggitated-like in the sleepin’ bag. Or was I pickin’ up his discomfort from Bele?
“Never mind,” Woriz growled.
An odd kind of—like a mental snort, came from Bele. If I can’t pick up emotions from a person, that wasn’t gonna be clear in my head case. So I remained quiet. I thought about how Uncle Jam acted around us. His smile always slid up the side of his troll face when he saw us. Not that I ever knew what that meant. Did it imply somethin’? Prolly. I’d have to ask Bele. How might he have talked about us? Might never know, ’cause it sounded like Woriz had said all he was gonna say.
“They’re lookin’ kinda worried,” I heard Bele say to the troll forcin’ that stinkin’ onion soup down her.
I followed her line of sight. Think she meant the two leaders of the rescue crew. Their troll heads were tilted close together. Whispered what a regular soul might consider ominous-like. Must have picked up that impression from Bele. She shank a quick look at me. Yep. I was payin’ attention to her now. That curled brow meant some kind of stronger emotion. But the context of the remainin’ expression paintin’ her face meant nothin’ to me.
“The climb out of here won’t be easy,” the troll said softly.
“How not-easy?” Bele asked. She was drivin’ all her emotion at the troll now.
“Duh,” the bull said. “Ice covered rock. Prolly be in the negative teens until we’re halfway down the cliff. Carryin’ a couple hundred pounds on our backs, a couple of us. Not enough rope in our arsenal to give us the backup we could use.”
“What’s that mean?” Bele snapped. Not that I sensed the emotion. But her words were pushed together some.
The bull began to explain they were gonna descend in three tracks, so if there was an incident, the entire party wouldn’t fall a mile to a bloody death. He actually used the term bloody death. Didn’t feel that was called for. Bele said somethin’ about, wasn’t a longer train easier to recover a fallen climber.
The troll snorted. “The ice’ll be a foot thick. If one of us screws up, ain’t gonna be any recovery.”
~
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