Sitting up on his bed of leaves and moss, the farmer brushed the dirt from his clothes and threw the cloak back over his shoulders. He looked ruefully at his shirt. The brown linen was scorched and stained, marked by large smears of dirt and blood. His cotton trousers were little better, marked by tatters and unraveling threads. Unfortunately, nearly all his other clothes had been lost in the blaze. The cloak, curiously enough, wasn’t stained at all.
“Best to wash what I’ve got. Wouldn’t want my cousins to think me a beggar,” Teldin muttered.
At the stream edge, Teldin kicked off his shoes and pulled down his trousers. His ankles and shins were scratched and scraped, and there were several new large bruises on his calves and thighs. No wonder he ached with every step. “Explains the bad sleep,” Teldin muttered crossly as he got ready to bathe.
The cloak would have to come off before Teldin could remove his shirt, he reasoned. Up to now, he’d had no luck with the clasp, because it had jammed somehow. It was either that or it obviously didn’t work the way he thought. Sitting on a stone at the edge of the bank, Teldin pressed his chin down to his chest, trying to see the small silver chain that held the cloak around his neck. It was ornate workmanship. The fine links of chain ended in two small lion-headed clasps. At least, Teldin assumed they were lions. The silvery jaws gripped each other in an intricate death struggle, holding the chains shut.
Teldin looked for a catch that would open the jaws. He tried pressing the eyes and nose, squeezing at the jaws, and pushing on the top of the head. Nothing happened. Stumped, he tried turning the heads. Perhaps they needed to be twisted in just some certain way, he thought.
As Teldin fiddled with the clasp, a shadow fell over his shoulder. “Trouble, sir?” rumbled the giff, standing behind him.
Teldin gave a sour look over his shoulder at the giff towering over him. Apparently the creature could move quietly. Teldin cautiously shifted around to put himself at less of a disadvantage. “It’s this clasp. I can’t seem to get it open, he grumbled. “Your captain ever take this off?”
“She never wore it until the neogi appeared,” Gomja answered.
“Hmm?” It wasn’t the answer Teldin had expected. He gave a yank on the chains, trying to pull the clasp apart. “How so?’’
Trooper Gomja unwound his filthy sash. “I remember the captain went below when the neogi first appeared. She said she needed to get her advantage. She came back wearing the cloak.” The giff began unbuttoning his blouse.
“Advantage?” The more Teldin learned, the more puzzled he became.
“That is what she said.” The giff peeled off his uniform. “Besides, she must have been able to remove it. She gave it to you, didn’t she? You jammed it, sir.”
Teldin doubted that greatly. The clasp did not look broken. He stared at the little eyes of the animal heads. “Is this thing magical, maybe?”
Trooper Gomja looked up from pulling off his trousers. His ears twitched warily. “I don’t know. Never had much use for magical stuff,” he muttered. In a louder voice the giff continued, “Could be, I suppose. The captain seemed to think wearing it would help.” Trooper Gomja’s words were carefully chosen and guarded.
Teldin chewed at his lip, vexed with the problem. He tried wiggling a fang. Nothing happened. “Did she? What’s it supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. sir. The captain never told me,” came the matter-of-fact answer. Naked, but unseen by Teldin’s occupied eyes, Trooper Gomja waded into the center of the stream and gingerly sat down in the cold water.
“Well, did you see anything? Did your captain, or this cloak, do anything special?” Teldin stood, his shirttail flapping against his bare legs.
Gomja thought carefully. “Not that I saw, sir. It was just a cloak.” Scooping up a handful of sand from the bottom, the giff let the mud in it filter away. Trooper Gomja turned away and began scouring his blue-gray hide with clean grit.
Teldin was not sure whether the giff really did not know or was carefully picking his answers so as not to reveal too much. All the same, he was not getting any answers. “Well, this is wonderful!” the farmer burst out in frustration. “I’ve got you, a cloak that might be magical-but I don’t know with what powers-and a bunch of creatures ready to kill for it! And I can’t even take this damn cloak off!” Infuriated, he yanked at the chain, trying to snap the silver clasp, but the fastening held. '
Gomja watched silently from the center of the stream. He had stopped scrubbing, letting the sand flow out from between his thick fingers. “Why don’t you pull your shirt off over it?” he calmly suggested.
Ready to start snarling, Teldin glared at the giff, then stopped. “Of course,” he said calmly, more to himself than to the giff, “pull my shirt off over a five-foot-long cloak. That shouldn’t be difficult. And every time I want to change my clothes, I can just do the same thing.” After a short struggle, Teldin emerged from the tussle of clothes, shirt in hand, cloak still around his neck. “It’s a good thing I don’t have to bathe too often,” he grumbled. The farmer finished pulling off his clothes and stood nearly naked on the bank. The cloak hung long down his back, lending an air of imperial, if ridiculous, dignity, to the bath. Teldin waded into the water, trying to keep the cloak dry. “Damn! I don’t want to go hiking with it soaking wet,” he muttered. The captain’s gift was becoming more and more of a curse every instant as he fumbled with the cascades of cloth, trying to wrap it around his shoulders or bundle it on top of his head.
Finally, with a frustrated growl, Teldin plopped into the stream and resigned himself to wearing the wet mass. The cool water tingled over his thighs and buttocks, raising the hairs on his legs.
“That’s curious,” the giff commented, watching Teldin’s back.
“Eh?” Teldin remarked with mild alarm while craning his neck around to look over his shoulder. The cloak was shorter, now barely more than a half-cape, dangling just above the water. The bottom had shrunk upward, as if suddenly afraid to get wet. “It changes sizes?” Teldin asked, dumbfounded. Still watching, the farmer leaned back slowly, trying to see the strange cloak in action. Sure enough, as he leaned, the hem receded, maintaining its distance just above the water.
Satisfied with these observations, Teldin decided to try something more extreme and suddenly pitched backward into the water, dunking himself completely. He emerged, blowing and rasping from his sudden immersion in the coolness. Water streamed from his short, sandy hair and down his hairy chest. The cloak was little more than a collar, shrunk to a minuscule size. Teldin beamed triumphantly.
After finishing their baths, the pair returned to the bank. Teldin sat on a stump, observing the waving green of his sunlit wheat field. Trampled paths made by the neogi and their slaves threaded through the waving stalks. The farmer scowled as he looked at the field. The wheat would recover from the beating, but Teldin worried about being away from his crops for too long. It would take at least a week, maybe more, to go to Kalaman and make arrangements with his cousins, and even then there was the matter of rebuilding the cabin. That needed to be done before the winter rains. Teldin started making a mental inventory of all the work that needed doing. He had to clear the wreckage, build a new cabin, replace the chicken coop, get new livestock, and still lay up enough food to see him through the winter. It was going to be a lot of heavy labor. “I wonder if I can talk Cousin Trandallic into buying a team and hitch.” In his heart, Teldin doubted it. During the siege of Kalaman, Teldin had lived with his cousins and knew they were not the wealthiest people in the city. Still, Malbart Trandallic had always been a good-hearted man.
At last dry, Teldin pulled on his clothes. “It’s time for me to go,” he announced casually. It was all the leavetaking he felt the giff needed. They were hardly old friends or companions. The farmer assumed the creature could manage on his own-he was certainly big enough to do so.
Teldin gathered his few surviving possessions, rolled them in a blanket, and tied off the ends. Shouldering his load, he struck out on the forest trail. The giff gathered up his own paltry goods and fell into step behind. Aware that he was being accompanied, Teldin stopped and confronted the blue-skinned alien. “Where are you going?” he challenged.
“With you-sir,” the giff answered, somewhat surprised that the question had even come up.
“I’m going to see my cousins. I don’t remember asking you along,” was Teldin’s cold reply. The farmer turned his back on the big alien.
As he walked, Teldin listened for sounds of the giff behind him. There was nothing, no plodding footsteps, and with the silence Teldin did not feel very proud. The big creature had even fewer choices than himself, he knew. The farmer wondered briefly where the giff would go or if the alien would still be here when he returned. “It’s not
