by David Cook
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. “And I can’t even take a bath!”
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 leave-taking 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 my problem,” he snarled softly to himself. “He can take care of himself.”
A branch 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, b
ut 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.
“Might …” Teldin mulled over the words. “And if they caught up with the cloak-bearer?”
“It would mean a fight,” Gomja countered, not sounding entirely displeased.
The two companions stopped for a rest at the edge of the road. Teldin leaned against a worn distance marker while Gomja sprawled back in the tall, sun-browned grass. The giff rubbed the big, round pads of his feet and let out a mock groan.
“In Kalaman,” Teldin said, speaking to himself, “I’d better find someone who can get this cloak off. I might even be able to sell it for the team I need. After all, it’s magical – I think.” Teldin fingered the fabric, little more than a circlet around his neck since its immersion in the stream.
The giff was not listening; he was too busy checking his feet for blisters.
Teldin spat out a mouthful of road dust. “Better get used to it – the marching, I mean,” he advised. “It’s a long walk to Kalaman.”
The giff raised his head and gazed mournfully at the human. “How far, sir?”
“A dozen leagues, at least.” Teldin looked under his arm at the stone marker. “Fourteen, by this.”
Gomja let his head fall back with an audible sigh.
“I thought you were a soldier. Didn’t your platoon ever march anywhere?” Teldin chided.
The giff rolled his bulk upright. “We were marines,” he answered proudly, “not groundlings. We served aboard ship. Marching is for groundlings.”
Teldin felt his temper rise at the giffs words. “I marched everywhere,” he said coldly. “You’d better remember, you’re a groundling now.
The giff reddened, or, more properly, purpled, as his face flushed. “Yes, sir. I will remember that.”
“Enough,” Teldin said with no rancor in his voice. There was no point in arguing. “It’s time to get marching. Kalaman won’t get any closer if we just sit here.” He stood and rolled his shoulders, flexing out the kinks. The giff heaved to his feet.
“I will carry the load, sir.” Gomja held out a huge hand for Teldin’s bedroll. “You should not have to carry it. I want to do my part.”
Teldin started to protest,
then thought better of it. Shrugging the makeshift pack off his shoulder, he passed it over. The giff draped the undersized pack around his neck.
“You told me you were a mule skinner,” Gomja said as he lumbered along, adding a curious inflection to the words. “Mule Skinner is the name of your platoon? It would be a great unit to have such a fearsome name.
Swallowing hard, Teldin stifled a hoot of laughter. His blue eyes twinkled mischievously as he thought of how to answer. Finally, with a straight face and mock seriousness, Teldin explained, “Oh, yes, Trooper Gomja, mule skinners were a brave lot, all right. The mule is one of the most dangerous, clever, and ornery beasts found in the land. It was the mule skinners’ job to keep these creatures under control.”
Gomja’s little eyes grew wide as he absorbed every word Teldin spoke. “There must be many heroes in your unit, sir.”
A smirk escaped from Teldin’s lips. He fought to keep from collapsing with laughter. “There were many heroes much greater than any mule skinner.” The joke was going too far, and he doubted he could keep a straight face for much longer. “The mule skinners were only soldiers. Others did much more in the war.”
Gomja nodded, though Teldin wasn’t sure the giff accepted his answer. “Did your army win, sir?”
“Win the War of the Lance? I suppose so – yes, we did.” Teldin was relieved to be off the topic of mule skinners, but the question was certainly odd. He assumed everyone knew about the War of the Lance. “We chased the dragons and most of the draconians out, thanks to the Knights of Solamnia and the dragonlances.”
The giffs ears suddenly perked up. “Dragonlances? What are those?”
Teldin paused to spit out another mouthful of dust. “It’s a weapon, a lance. Dragonriders carried them. They were supposed to be special against dragons.” Teldin had never seen an actual dragonlance, and everything he knew about them came from camp tales. “One touch and, poof, the dragon was slain,” he explained with a wave of his hands.
“These must be mighty weapons,” Gomja said, awe-struck.