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 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.