Sitting on his log, Teldin kept whittling at the marker, not looking up. He was reluctant to get on with this burial, more than any other he had done. The knife pared away another strip of wood.
“Sir?” the giff spoke again.
Teldin bit his lip, then thrust the knife with a fierce jab into a fence post. “Let’s get it over with.” His voice was tight and grim, edged with exhaustion that was fast overtaking him. He stood slowly and followed the giff back around the house.
The bundled bodies lay in a neat row near the stone wall behind Liam’s house. Not too far away, under a scraggly tree, were four holes in the ground. The fresh earth was heaped in a great mound alongside. Teldin and Gomja lowered the bodies one at a time into the graves and shoveled the dirt back over them. Teldin worked slowly, letting the monotonous task numb his mind.
When they eventually finished, both stood unmoving in front of the graves. The giff simply watched the human, waiting for some sign of what to do next. Teldin stared at the fresh earth and tried to remember a prayer. During the war, when he had to work the burial details, the Seekers had chanted while they worked. He had never paid much attention to the prayers then and now none came to mind. “Good-bye, Liam, Eloise. Paladine protect you all,' the young farmer said softly. It was all he could think of saying. As far he was concerned, nothing more needed to be said.
“What about the neogi?” Trooper Gomja quietly asked. The giffs words broke Teldin’s trance. Without acknowledging Gomja’s presence, the farmer turned back to the house. “There, beneath Abyssal gates, I choose my way,” Teldin whispered, remembering a snatch of verse his grandfather had taught him. He didn’t know why the thought came to him now, but he could clearly remember Grandfather teaching him the words as they walked through the fields. Teldin couldn’t have been more than ten at the time.
“What will you do now?” Gomja asked again. The giff plodded to where Teldin stood, a spade still in his hand.
Teldin was tired, too tired to plan. “I don’t know. I don’t care,” he bitterly answered. “Go back to the…'
Teldin stopped. He had been about to say his farm, but he didn’t have one anymore, or at least not much of one. He needed money to buy supplies for rebuilding. Trooper Gomj a’s expectant expression, turned attentively toward Teldin, forced the farmer to think, and he suddenly knew where to go. He had cousins in Kalaman, and they could help him. At any rate, it was better than staying around
here-but the giff was not part of this plan.
“Sir?”
“Back to the farm,” Teldin hastily said. That was all the giff needed to know.
“And then what, sir?” Gomja pressed.
Then I leave you behind, Teldin thought with a shake of his head. He began to feel the strains of the last two nights. Labor, pain, terror, and rage had worn the threads of his mind thin. “I want to go home.” The giff nodded in understanding, his broad muzzle bobbing up and down. “Now, let’s get out of here before the valley folk show up.”
“Or the neogi return,” Trooper Gomja grimly added.
Teldin let the giff lead the way back through the forest, occasionally pointing out the right path. The morning birds were already falling silent in the midday heat. Squirrels chattered at their passage. In the clearings Teldin could look back and see the lonely buildings of Liam’s farm in the bright light. He was glad to be away from the site.
Once across the ridge, Teldin felt a weight lift off him. The terrors of the night were still firmly fixed in his mind, but he had left Liam’s farm behind. Both the fear of discovery and the shame that he felt eased. His brain became numbed, focusing only on the simple task of walking.
When they reached the edge of Teldin’s melon field, Trooper Gomja reverted to his old caution, halting their march in the bushes. The giff carefully picked his way to the edge of the field and knelt in the cover of some brambles. The big creature patiently scanned the shattered farmyard.
As he stood near the kneeling giff, Teldin wondered, too, if the neogi were really gone. Trying to watch with the same vigilance, Teldin looked over his farm’s broken remains. The destruction seemed less from this angle than he actually feared. The cabin was a complete loss, as were most of the melons, but the other fields seemed unharmed. I can recover, he thought optimistically, with a little money and time. All I need is money, from somewhere.
“It looks very quiet,” the giff announced. Teldin could already see that, and he moved to head down the trail. The farmer was brought up short when Gomja laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “But there might be hidden scouts. Shall I go out and see?” The giff stood, ready to go.
Teldin checked his first impulse to give approval. It was his farm, he decided, and he wasn’t going to hide behind a seven-foot-tall walking hippopotamus. It grated against his pride. Besides, as he looked up into the big creature’s dark eyes, Teldin again didn’t trust his companion. The problem was that he still didn’t trust the giff at his back either. Maybe the giff had saved his life, but the yeoman still remembered how they had met. “You stay,” Teldin ultimately chose, letting pride win out. “I’ll go. If I signal, then everything should be safe.”
“Yes, sir,” Gomja said, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.
Staying along the tree line, Teldin loped down to the
“They’re gone!” Teldir shouted. He settled down at the base of a tree and stabbed the cutlass into the earth beside him. He felt giddy, the burden of fear suddenly lifted. It was an irrational impulse given the horrors of the night, but still he could not help the feeling. Teldin adjusted the cloak and leaned against the tree, relishing for a few seconds the feeling of peace.
Trooper Gomja slowly walked down to join the human, warily circling the ship’s remains before he settled down. “They are gone.'
“Thank the gods,” Teldin added, slightly vexed that the giff did not seem to believe him.
“Perhaps.” Gomja looked toward the wreck. “The neogi dug up the graves. The bodies are gone.' The giffs voice was cold and unfeeling.
Teldin’s good feeling collapsed inside him as a surge of dread replaced it. “The graves? They dug them up? Why?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything!” Gomja bellowed. He turned his broad face, twisted with a snarl, on the startled human. Exhaustion finally broke the giffs strict discipline, releasing a wave of rage and frustration. “They kill things. They kill everything. I’m just a trooper, not an expert on neogi! They’ve killed my captain, they’ve killed my friends, and I didn’t even die fighting them like a true giff!”
Teldin sat stunned by the huge creature’s outburst. Only a few moments before, Teldin was ready to trust the creature, but in this instant he felt no such security. Teldin glanced at the cutlass jammed into the earth and slowly slid his hand toward the weapon. The giffs savage tone dispelled any of Teldin’s illusions concerning the creature’s peaceful nature.
Before the human could reply, Trooper Gomja wheeled away. The giffs shoulders shook as he strode through the wreckage, giving a few well-placed kicks to the loose wood in his path. Teldin sagged back, exhaling the breath he had held since the beginning of the creature’s tirade. He felt anger and relief all at once. At least, Teldin mused, giff are like humans in some ways. They both need to blow off steam.
There were noises from Gomja rummaging through the wreckage, and although Teldin knew he should see what the giff was up to, he felt it was much wiser to give the big creature some privacy. He needed some for himself, too. Teldin basked in the sun and deliberately tried not to think. It didn’t work; grief and sorrow came over him and sitting alone only highlighted the pain. He cursed himself for his weakness, for killing Liam and his family.
A regular beating noise, like stone whacking stone, roused the farmer. At first he thought it might be the
