The Chase
Chapter Nineteen
Breaking west at the sandcross had been the only option available to them, but the Poet knew that the move wouldn’t fool an experienced pirate. Normally, Peary would have had them make camp at the sandcross for the night, but the diver had thought it best that they try to get a few more hours’ distance between themselves and the pirates who followed them. Not that that’ll do much but delay the inevitable, the old man thought. Maybe they’ll catch us tomorrow, or maybe it’ll be a few days from now, but they will catch us.
“Maybe they’re not even chasing us,” Marisa had said.
“You don’t know the sand,” the Poet had replied. It was all he had to say.
Once the darkness was so complete that they could continue no farther, Peary had finally given the word for them to stop. They tied off the sarfers and prepared a small camp.
They slept for only four or five hours before Peary had them up and loading the sarfers again. Surely he knew that the pirates were gaining ground, and would continue to. But perhaps he was foolish enough, or wishful enough, to maintain that stubborn mirage of human hope: perhaps he thought that they might still be able to get away.
The Poet was under no such illusion.
Two more days heading due west, but their progress was slowing. The mountains to the west kept growing larger, but the sand, like the ubiquity of despair and hopelessness in the world, never did give way.
“How much longer until we clear the sand?” Marisa asked as they loaded up the sarfers yet again. This was the fifteenth day, give or take, since they’d first fled from Low-Pub. She’d never been gone from home anywhere near this long, and she wasn’t sure she could stand another day out on the sand.
“I don’t know,” Peary said. “Hard to say. Hopefully it won’t be much longer.”
The Poet knew that if the pirates didn’t catch them today, this would probably be their last night before the brigands overtook them. But he didn’t say so. He knew Peary knew, but there was no need to frighten Marisa or make things worse for Reggie.
The sandal hop was sick, no doubt. Mortally ill, probably. Sicker every day. He wasn’t responding to any of the meds Marisa had bought in the trader village, and the scarcity of water and moisture-rich foods wasn’t helping the man’s fight.
Their stops became more frequent, and however close the mountains looked, they never seemed to get any closer at all. It was like the sand haulers, an infinite number of them, just kept depositing endless dunes in front of them, and the mountains were never quite close enough to touch.
When they finally did stop for the night, the inevitable—the unspoken—hung in the air like sift.
“No fire tonight,” Peary had said as they prepared camp.
The Poet noted that there were moans at this proclamation, even one from himself, but what could they do? The wind was blowing from the west, which meant that even a pyrinte fire, which gave off no light (nor sufficient heat, the Poet thought), could still be detected from the scent alone. It would be a long, tough night without a fire. Reggie was getting worse, and over the last few nights the temperatures had dropped down into the chilly range. Cold. Not unmanageable, but not comfortable either.
Marisa had done whatever she could to make Reggie more comfortable in the haul rack of the sarfer, which was parked in the lee of a dune and out of the breeze, and joined Peary and the Poet a good distance away. The three of them spoke together in hushed tones.
“Can we outrun them?” Marisa asked. She’d asked before, and she knew the answer, but she asked again anyway.
“No,” the Poet said. Peary just shook his head, agreeing.
Marisa didn’t fully understand. “Why are they so much faster than us?”
The Poet smiled. She’d not spent much time on the sand before these past few weeks, and he knew that the ways of the sand people were strange to someone who’d spent most of her life in the towns. “We’re loaded down with gear weight and coin,” he said. “Add to that the fact that we have two people per sarfer. Of the four of us, only Peary does this for a living.” The Poet shrugged. “We’re just slow.”
Peary agreed. “And I’m not very fast at the best of times. I never have been. These people who are chasing us have lighter craft—some of their gear is being carried by tri-hulls and skidders, who usually trail the frontrunners by a few days. They can travel twice as far in a day as just about anyone else.”
“So they’ll catch us,” Marisa said. “Then what?”
There was silence for a half minute and then the Poet spoke up. “If all they wanted was the coin in our bags, I don’t think they’d bother.”
“Are you saying they don’t want to steal the coin from us?” Marisa asked.
The Poet shook his head. “No, I’m not saying that. The amount of coin Peary managed to wrangle out of Joel is significant, and any pirate worth his salt would kill for it. I’m just saying that the coin isn’t all they want.”
“What else could they be after?” she asked.
“They’ll take the coin,” Peary said, “and then they’ll want someone—either me or the old man—to take them to Danvar.”
“But they have the map!”
“Maybe they do, but the map means nothing if they don’t trust it!” the Poet said, a little too loudly. “As far as they know, it could have been faked. It could be wrong. In fact, we should have been suspicious when Joel gave you double the coin just for the map. He was just biding time until he and his man could get a crew up to go after you.”
“I can’t believe my uncle would do this,” Marisa said.
The Poet laughed mockingly. “Any man would do this.”
“That’s not true,” Peary said. “You didn’t do it when you had the chance. You didn’t run straight to the money-changers or to the Legion heads and tell them about Danvar. You didn’t sell off the salvage or my gear.”
“A momentary lapse in judgment,” the old man said, closing his eyes.
Marisa waved her hand and then stood up. She was frustrated, and it was obvious that she didn’t want to listen to the Poet and Peary bickering. “So what?” she said. “They’re going to kidnap us and force us to take them to Danvar? So they’re going to take our coin? Is that it? So we let them! Give them all of it! I don’t care about any of it. They can have it. We’ll take them to Danvar. We’ll give them all of our coin. If that’s all they want, then we’ll live and head west without any of the stupid riches!”
The Poet shook his head. “No, Marisa, that is not all. These people are not going to take what they want and then let us walk away.”
“What else, then?”
“They’ll kill us all,” the Poet said.
The old man didn’t notice until Reggie was standing amongst them that the sick sandal hop had climbed out of the sarfer and limped to where they were talking.
“There’s another way,” Reggie said. His breathing was labored and the short walk had taken a toll on his strength.
“Another way to do what?” Peary asked. “Why are you here? You should be resting where we left you.”
Reggie tried to lower himself to the ground to sit, but the strain was too much, and he ended up flopping on the sand and rolling over onto his side. After a few moments’ rest, he pushed himself into a seated position and took some deep breaths.
“Another way that maybe you two can escape,” he said, nodding at Peary and Marisa.
“Wait a minute,” the Poet said. “What are you talking about?”