Ogreness, Black Lake-book5

Chapter 7
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No repeat performance with the eggin’. But my chest was still a little flatter than usual as I readied for work. I donned leather to two-wheel it. Be a nice almost-fall day. To get my emotions up a little I asked Sissy if she wanted to join me. She went bazonkers, twirlin’ around in circles. She ran to the shelf where we keep her helmet, vest, and doggles. I think that was a yes.

The traffic in seemed a bit heavier than usual, but I settled back and enjoyed the cool air and Sissy’s face in my rearview mirror. I always smile like a fool at the image of her in that little black leather vest. She’s the cutest thing on this Earth in that.

The line for my first coffee in Ogreware’s atrium was a bit longer too. Seemed folks’ heads bent together in rumor mode more than usual. Something must have happened. Figgers I was out one day and the world twisted on its axis or something. Looks wafted back at me often, followed by the obligatory smile and nod.

Hmm.

I was two from the coffee guy when Darshee and Wizper approached. I stepped to the back of the line to join them. I didn’t get any arguments from the three employees I let slide in front of me.

“Ya see the news this morning?” Darshee asked without a typical good morning.

I shook my head.

“Squeee. Sissy’s cute in her black vest,” Wizper said.

“Violence was bound to break out,” Darshee said.

Oh, no. One of us had gotten tired of the bigotry and lashed out. “How many did he hurt?”

“Didn’t fight back.” Darshee shook her head. “Weird. Very weird.”

“Then how was there violence?” I asked.

“A mob, on one of us,” Darshee hissed.

“A mob?” I mumbled.

“Last night.” Wizper interrupted her visit with Sissy.

“What happened last night?” I asked.

“A bull ended up in the hospital,” Darshee said. “Pounded with sticks and bricks, kicked for ten minutes before the police broke it up. Concussion, in a coma, poor thing. He should have killed them.”

I sucked in a hard breath between my teeth. There was a day just thinkin’ about a giant settlin’ on a human was enough to give a giant a shiver. Humans are awfully fragile.

I’ve broken a few ribs by accident on our basketball mixed-league, and they wear pads just for that reason. I get a little competitive on the hardcourt.

“Did ya hear me?” Darshee poked me in the chest.

“What?”

She waved me to step up in line. “Rumor is ya took a day off.”

“Had something to clean up at home,” I said.

“Heard ya locked yarself out,” Wizper said.

Ah. How did that get out? A guy can’t hide from nothing.

“So ya did,” Darshee shrilled.

I shrugged. “Were there arrests?”

“For lockin’ ya out?” Wizper grinned.

I grimaced at her.

“Story is the trolls that broke it up were so taken back to find an ogre on the bottom of the pile, they maybe dropped the ball.”

“Ya’re kiddin’ me.” I mumbled more to myself than them, mixed thoughts tumblin’ around.

“They’re idjits,” Wizper said softly.

Darshee and I nodded. She wasn’t talkin’ about the troll cops, but the mob. Northerners, more specifically. Escalatin’ to violence against a race than can snap them in two is ludicrous. And simply not good for society.

“Ya’re up.” Darshee pointed forward.

I got my order in. Our barista gave me an extra broad smile this morning, tinged with a darker edge, in my head I thought, gloom. This latest news was unsettlin’ for anyone associated with Ogre Industries. And of course, Ogreware. I handed Sissy a giant-sized blueberry scone, which she grabbed and trotted ten feet away to devour.

By the time I got my tall coffee with a hint of cream, Darshee and Wizper were in a conversation with another OW-er, so I gave Sissy a whistle, which isn’t that easy for ogres to do with our tusks, and headed upstairs.

The phone-system-thingie said I had sixty-four messages. Oh, gods. Eighty percent of them would be about yesterday’s debacle up North. Before I did anything, I pulled the news up on my tablet and searched for the report. Serious anchors drawled on and on about the unprecedented harassment in the state’s largest city, ending with a caveat. Ogre Industries opened down ten percent on the exchange. OW six.

Complete idjitry. Did the fools think we were gonna go to war or something? On the bright side, the company could buy back some stock if the trend continued for a few days.

How many generations had it been since OI released stock? Stink. Those original shares had split a few thousand times. An orc workin’ for the company a hundred years ago, earnin’ a few shares a quarter, would have several million bucks to leave to her ancestors. If she was wise enough to keep those shares. She would have been livin’ well off the dividends the past sixty years.

I was stallin’. I had a responsibility to the clan. I dialed up our gnarly leader. His phone was busy. Busy again. So I listened to a few of my messages. Earliest calls were teases that wunderkind had locked himself out of his house.

The eleventh call was finally business. An answer to a query I left two days ago. I tried the clan leader again. He answered, a little breathlessly.

“Which Ike is this?” he asked.

“Son of Bliar,” I answered.

“About time.” He sniffed. “Called ya earlier.”

I explained I have a lot of messages. He wasn’t interested. Interrupted me with the obvious. We have to keep our folk calm. Who could have thunk that up? At least he didn’t start our conversation with our stock numbers.

“Ya know anyone up North ya can call, get the skinny on the emotions going on in the little skulls of those humans in the big city?”

I told him my papa would.

He told me to get on it. “Best thing in the world financially in the long haul, is if our stock tanks. Imagine, buyin’ up all those lose bonds. But those silly humans reproduce like rabbits. Outnumber us by the gazillions now. This discontent scares our old timers.” Stink, his mind was spinnin’ an odd number of directions.

I mentioned he’s one of our old timers.

“This old timer doesn’t get spooked. Listen to yar stinkin’ messages.” And he hung up. The goat never had much patience for decorum. Good thing he never wandered out of the Range.

The next zillion messages were a lot of the same, minus a few business calls from being out one day. How many meetings and conference calls was I blowin’ off today? I didn’t even want to look at my calendar.

It was already midmorning. I called Papa.

“Everyone is panickin’, huh?” He really didn’t mean it as a question.

“Humans used to be smart enough not to back a giant into a corner,” I said.

“Ogres use to have a spine not to be beat on by a passel of puny humans.”

He had a good point. “Our glorious leader wants me to make a call.”

“Ya want me to do it?” he asked.

Very polite of him. But I knew he didn’t want to get in the middle of clan business any more than he wanted to stick his toe in an electric socket. A reason he insisted I take the open seat on the council.

With a grin I said, “Sure.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“Doke wants a line on the emotions up North,” I explained.

Papa chuckled. “More likely wants a name for someone to blame. Remember Ozir?”

“Yeah.” Curmudgeon troll who taught me a bit about tendin’ cattle. Trolls truly embraced beef when the humans brought them into the Range.

“He’s got a grandson, or a great, great grandson, I forget which, who’s a big mucky muck in the police force up there. Kid has to interact with those flighty-brained humans every day. Be first I’d call.”

He gave me the kid’s number. I called him immediately. Didn’t surprise me Zug sounded a hundred years old. Figgered. Ozir has to be a couple eons old.

Trolls are kind of long lived. Even more than us ogres.

“Ya’re calling for the council?” Zug asked up front. I wasn't surprised he didn't have a Southern accent.

I admitted I was. He offered to put me up if I’d come up and visit, see the world first hand. The world. Funny. I told him I had a real job. He whined about all of us havin’ responsibility.

“But I don’t owe ya ogres a whole lot.”

“That’s rude,” I said.

He laughed, that trollish bass makin’ my phone vibrate—tickled my ear. “Just pulling yar tail. Ogres are getting a lot of that these days. It’s always been us trolls on the butt end of the joke. Them stinking humans wouldn’t have anything to do with us trolls if they didn’t need our bulk to keep all the other giants in line.”

My chin thrust toward my lap. For a mucky muck, as Papa called him, he wasn’t in the mood to play political, or polite.

“Ya all gettin’ some of yar own negative media?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a few beats. “Some.”

“What can the council do?” I asked.

I worried I’d lost him. I repeated my question.

He sighed, long and hard. “This ain’t the world of our forebears. Not like we can descend on them aback dragons and correct their attitudes.”

The bull was definitely not talkin’ politically correct. He had been pushed a little too far, lately. Maybe.

“There are pockets of insurrection,” he continued.

“Insurrection?” I blurted.

“Dinks of no matter mingling about, talking trash. Organizing fools to parade around with signs. And baseball bats.”

“What’s their beef?” I asked.

“Hatred. Vitriol. No substance. I’d like to make all of them disappear.”

Wow. “Zug, I hope ya aren’t being recorded.”

“Me too,” he said. “Maybe I do. Give me an excuse to collect all of my brethren and head to the lowlands south of the Range, get away from these uppity humans who resent us because we look a little different, listen to different music. Pray differently. Prefer to sit around at night and tell stories than drink beer and act like idjits at the corner pub.”

My mouth hung open. I’d never heard such measurable disgust—from a politically connected sort. Not that I could recall.

He continued. “Ya remember we originally moved North to work our old mines. They invited us above ground, to protect them. Protect, them. From day one they’ve treated us like usurpers.”

I told him he sounded like he needed a vacation down South.

He didn’t respond.

“Zug. What can I do?”

“A little late,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t handle the prejudice right. We ignored it, best we could. Soon, there will be ogres and trolls tiring of turning the other cheek. And there will be blood in the streets.”

“Reinforcements?” I asked. Though I didn't know what I meant with that.

“Just incite more distrust,” he said. “Truly. I think the days of harmoniously living side by side has outworn its time. I have a letter of resignation typed up. Mulling it. No one needs to put up with this nonsense. Life is too short. Even for our kind.”

I let out a long breath of air.

“Did I make yar day?” Zug asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Got nothing better to tell ya. If ya haven’t been on the highway lately, there are lots of moving vans full of trolls heading south. Don’t know where they’re gonna land, but they may be the smart ones, getting out early.”

Seriously? This was not an uneducated man. He’d seen a lot in his day. A good forty years older than me.

“Ya’re not givin’ me anything to take back to the council,” I whined. I hate to whine. Just doesn’t set well for any ogre.

“Well, maybe it’s time for the council to get off its butt and do something besides visiting widows and opening free Internet cafes.”

“We do more than—”

“Pulling yar tail, whippersnapper.” He chuckled. The vibration tickled my hand.

He begged off. I sat starin’ at my handset for a good five minutes after he disconnected. I didn’t want to call Doke back.

“Whacha got?” he asked when I did.

My words escaped me for a couple breaths. He prompted me again.

“Nothing good. I think maybe the council should meet.”

“That bad?” Doke asked.

Lawyers take care of the minutia the council tended to generations ago. Rarely meet more than the minimum quarterly, stated in the charter.

“I suggest we all reach out to as many inside and outside of the clan as we can, bring some ideas together.”

“Ya don’t just want an excuse to traipse up to Black Lake, do ya?”

Good that he could keep his humor. I told him that’s all it was. He said he’d set something up for the weekend. I reminded him the inns are pretty busy on weekends. Though I’m one of only a few councilors that don’t live in the Range, and couldn’t drive in at our leisure.

“Next Tuesday then. That satisfy ya?”

Meh. Either way, I had plenty of cousins to stay with, what with my cabin rented out. I wanted to smile, but the lips didn’t twitch against my tusks.

~ Nuel ~

I’m a city hen. Whatever came over Silva to believe I’d like a nature hike on the prairie first light? I guess it was nice enough. She stayed busy pointing out this warbler and that jay, like I care one orc’s sliver tooth.

Why was she so excited about me chatting with that Ike, the yokum ogre next door? What an absence of class. Like I care he’s richer than one of the gods. She thought that was important to me?

~