my problem,” he snarled softly to himself. “He can take care of himself.”
Abranch cracked behind the farmer, followed by crunching noises. The giff, Teldin thought, was following him again. The noises continued and doubt entered his mind. What if it wasn’t the giff? It might be a neogi, after all, left behind to spy. Slowly and carefully drawing the giffs cutlass, Teldin turned around, crouched like a brawler in a bar- fight.
There were no neogi, but across the field the giff was marching steadily along. Teldin jabbed the sword into the dirt and stood up straight. “Trooper Gomja,” he bellowed across the distance, “will you stop following me? Leave me alone! Go away!”
The giff barely paused in his stride. He met Teldin’s hot glare with an ingenuous smile. “But, sir, I’m not following you,” Trooper Gomja sweetly answered back. “I’m just going the same way. Kalaman sounds like an interesting place.” In a few lumbering strides, Trooper Gomja was almost alongside the farmer.
Teldin was getting a headache. Having refused to accept the giff, the farmer couldn’t very well order the creature away, nor were threats likely to work. It was clear that whether Teldin wanted him or not the giff was coming along, at least as far as Kalaman. “You sly knave,” Teldin grumbled, “get yourself up here. If we’re both going to Kalaman, we might as well walk together.”
Resigned to the companion at his side, Teldin struck out on the path for the last time, crossing the melon patch and wheat field. At the edge of the woods, he looked back. Blackbirds were settling on his broken melons. Teldin automatically took a step back toward the farm to shoo them away, but then stopped. There wasn’t any point. When he came back with money and maybe a team, then he could take care of things.
“Good-bye,” Teldin whispered, his voice unable to speak any louder. The cabin’s roofless walls echoed his words. Teldin could see the house, complete and whole, as his grandfather had built it. There were the places he had played: the brook, the gnarly oak at the edge of the forest, the fields in the time they grew corn. He saw his father, bent and tired, in the doorway when his son had come home from the war. Although Amdar had never said anything, Teldin knew the years alone had burdened his father, had worn him down before his years. Now, as he was leaving again, Teldin regretted going away the first time- any time.
Teldin swallowed painfully. He realized he hadn’t even visited the family graves. There was no time. “Good- bye, father. Good-bye, grandfather,” he whispered. “I’ll be back soon,” he added, not wanting their ghosts to think he was running away this time. Biting his lip, the farmer turned away from his land before the echoes of his own voice might return in the rustle of the trembling wheat.
As Teldin led the way, Gomja cast a look over his shoulder, searching for the ghosts that Teldin had seen.
By midmorning the pair had crossed Dargaard Valley and reached the Kalaman road. Teldin had swung wide of Liam’s farm. There was a good chance people might be there, and Teldin didn’t want to try explaining Gomja just yet. He also wasn’t ready to face the memories of that place. The detour had lengthened their march to the road, but neither Teldin nor the giff was in a particular hurry.
Before long, the late summer sun made their trek a sweltering march. The grasses that grew thick on all sides were already turning a sun-scorched tan. Grasshoppers flew up at every step, and thickets of brambles rustled with mice and birds.
As they strode down the rutted lane, Teldin noticed that his big companion didn’t seem very happy. With jowls sagging, Trooper Gomja stared at the ground.
“Why the long face?” Teldin asked. If they were going to walk together, they might as well talk, he reasoned. Conversation had certainly shortened long marches during the war.
“Long face?” the giff queried, raising his small, black eyes to meet Teldin’s gaze.
“Sad, unhappy. Not cheerful.”
Trooper Gomja gave an expansive shrug. “The neogi are gone,” he answered as if that explained everything.
“Yes, I know. I thought that was good,” Teldin answered with a tinge of sarcasm. A red-winged blackbird dove past them, cawing with irritation as they passed its nest.
“But I did not face them in combat!” the giff exclaimed. “I’ll always be Trooper Gomja, Red Grade, First Rank. At this rate, I’ll never get the chance to fight.” Gomja kicked at a rock with a big, round foot, sending the stone skittering into the grass. “It doesn’t matter anyway,’ he continued, “because there aren’t any other giff here to see what I do. I’m never going to go up in ranks, I’m never going to get off this world, and I don’t even know where here is!” The giffs big shoulders heaved with frustration. He stomped the earth with a solid thud.
Teldin held back his own feelings, giving the giff a chance to vent. He remembered how similar his own bitter accusations to his father were to Gomja’s complaints. Amdar had never seemed to understand, always insisting his son perform his duties on the farm and avoid pointless death in battle. They were not the words an idealistic youth had wanted to hear and, in the end, Teldin ran from the farm to seek honor and glory. He never found it in the war. Now, listening to the giff, Teldin tried to remember how it had felt back then. So much had changed since that time. Indeed Teldin found he had greater sympathy for his father than for his own voice in Gomja.
“Well, you’re in Vingaard Valley, outside Kalaman,” the farmer offered lamely, trying to be sympathetic. It was hard, though, since he no longer saw any glory in war. “Does that help?”
Trooper Gomja snorted, shaking his head. “What planet is this?”
“Planet?” Teldin was somewhat surprised by the question. While he had learned during the war that the continent on which he lived was Ansalon, the concept of an even larger body had never occurred to him. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Oh.” That knowledge didn’t really seem to help the giff at all. The creature’s gaze sank again.
“What are you going to do in Kalaman?” Teldin asked. It would be nice, bethought, if the giff had some kind of a plan, though Teldin doubted that was the case.
“I don’t know.” Gomja abruptly looked up. “What should I do, sir?”
“Me? That’s not my problem.” Teldin quickly backed off. Being sympathetic only went so far. The giff had already made his life complicated enough. “I’ve got my own worries, like how to get this cloak off. Can’t you decide for yourself?”
The giffs bluish skin darkened. “I don’t know,” the giff said, embarrassed to make the admission. “I’ve never had to.'
“Never had…' Teldin shook his head in disbelief. It didn’t seem sensible that anyone as large as the giff should be so inexperienced. Then, remembering his experiences with his own father, Teldin stopped in the middle of the road and considered the trooper. “Just how old are you?” he asked the giff suspiciously.
“I am of age to serve in the ranks of the giff,” Trooper Gomja answered, again standing at attention as he spoke. A dragonfly whirred by and settled on the spreading head of a sunflower beside the road.
Teldin couldn’t help but notice the defensive tone in the giffs voice. “How old is ‘of age’?”
“Sixteen cycles of the spheres,” Gomja answered with exaggerated pride.
“Sixteen cycles-oh, sixteen years,” Teldin said, nodding. He found himself reevaluating his relationship, such as it was, with the giff. Teldin was twice the trooper’s age, even as old as a parent. “And what about your family? They weren’t on the ship, were they?”
“Family?” Gomja cocked his head, bemused by the question. “I was of the Red Platoon.”
Teldin did not understand the gift’s answer. “But you do have a mother and father? Parents-family?”
“Of course I had sires,” Gomja replied, explaining the obvious, “but I am of the Red Platoon. Giff do not live with their sires.
Although it seemed unnatural, Teldin accepted this, given the giff s curious militaristic bearing. He started walking again, slowly, so that the giff could keep pace. “Well, then, where’s the rest of the Red Platoon?”
“I am Red Platoon-or all that’s left,” Gomja answered sadly. The giff wiped away a rivulet of sweat that ran down the center of his muzzle. “The others were on board. They did not have the chance to die fighting.” Teldin wasn’t sure, but it looked like a small tear was forming in the corner of the gift’s tiny eye. If it did, the tear quickly disappeared into the fleshy folds of the gift’s jowls. The farmer decided not to bring the subject up again.
Flies buzzed between the two, attracted by the scent of sweat that reeked from the pair. It was not until the road reached the edge of the hills overlooking the Vingaard River that Teldin felt the urge to talk again. He looked out to see the river flowing across the valley floor.
“Those creatures, the neogi,” the farmer carefully asked of Gomja, “will they be back?”
Gomja screwed up his brow in thought. “They might,” he allowed.
