Dunes Over Danvar Omnibus

by Michael Bunker

  A Man’s Breath

  Chapter Eight

  When the Poet regained consciousness, he found himself in the haul rack of a sarfer. The man who was sailing the thing was talking non-stop and was in mid-story and mid-sentence. It looked to be early morning, and from the angle and direction of the first glows of sunrise, he figured they were heading south. He tried to rise and to speak, but couldn’t. He raised his hands to his head, and found that it had been wrapped thickly in a heavy cloth. The fabric of the cloth was so dense and luxurious that it was altogether something he’d never felt before. He’d only seen such things in the black market, coming from salvage found from the old world.

  “…so when I found my spare tank, I’d been holding my breath—I don’t know—maybe four minutes or more. I was blacking out when I saw the red of the spare in my visor…”

  The young man kept on telling his story, even though the Poet had obviously missed most of it, and didn’t care about the rest.

  “…I broke through the surface about a minute after my spare tank ran out, and I thought I was dead. I’d sucked in so much grit I thought I’d never cough it all out…”

  The Poet felt up under the head cloth; it seemed that he was no longer bleeding, that the blood had finally clotted up. The diver had put a thinner cloth directly on the wound, and that cloth was stuck in the dried blood. He didn’t want to peel that off because he was afraid the bleeding would start up again. But the heavier material—the luxurious fabric—he unraveled from his head.

  The diver looked down at him and saw him working on his head cloth and smiled. “Try not to do anything stupid. Seeing as how you already got yourself near-enough killed once already on this trip.”

  The Poet glared at the diver. “I’ll have you know that I am known as the Poet, and I—”

  “I don’t care if you’re one of the Lords himself or maybe one of the gods of Danvar!” the diver spat. “They just call me Peary, but surprise, looks like we both bleed the same. And if you start up bleeding again I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it stopped again.”

  “Well, I do thank you for saving my life, but—”

  The diver stopped him with a raised hand. “I don’t care what else you have to say, but your thank-you is received and appreciated. Now shut up while I finish my story. You see, the two cases I’d found and pulled up were heavy and full…”

  The old Poet stared at Peary, not knowing what to think about the young man. The unraveled cloth was now whipping in the wind as the sarfer cut in an angle down from a very high dune and sped toward a long area of flats. The light was enough now that he could see the mountaintops off to the south and west, and he guessed they must be getting close to Springston—or maybe they were already west of it. He held the cloth up so that he could see it in the light. It was some kind of garment, and it was the brightest orange he’d ever seen. It was a color that didn’t happen in nature. Almost electric, like the orange you’d see in a visor. There was an emblem on the front of the garment, and words that he couldn’t yet make out.

  “…and the cases were full up with clothes and trinkets. More stuff from the old world than I’d ever seen in one place! Just one of the larger items would probably bring more coin than I could make in a year or more.”

  The Poet interrupted. “Are we going to Springston?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” the Poet asked.

  “Springston’s gone.”

  The Poet looked up at the stranger. He stared for a moment before daring to speak. “Springston is… gone?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “That’s what who says?”

  Peary jerked his head back, as if to say back there.

  The Poet tried to straighten himself in the haul rack, but he was hemmed in by some large, hard cases. “Who says Springston is gone?”

  “The divers. I found the information in a dozen notes and messages left between the wastes and here. Someone blew up the walls with bombs.”

  The Poet raised his hand to his head, pressing on his wound, feeling for the pain. “How long have I been out?”

  “Excuse me?” Peary asked. “You have to talk over the wind, old man!”

  “How long have I been with you?”

  Peary shrugged his shoulders. “I found you the night before last. Took a long time to get the bleeding stopped, especially once I got you hydrated. I had to stop the sarfer every few miles to check your wounds and give you water. I watched over you all last night. I didn’t think you’d make it to sunrise, to be honest. I dripped honey water into your mouth, making you swallow it, on and off until morning.”

  The Poet just stared at Peary. For several minutes he just watched as the sailor/diver handled the sarfer like a professional. It seemed to him, for the longest time, that there were no words to say. Perhaps the blood loss…

  “Got going early this morning,” Peary said. “Carried you to the sarfer just hoping you weren’t going to die on me.”

  “Why did you save my life?” the Poet asked.

  Peary stared back at the old man and narrowed his eyes, then looked back at the dunes. “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Why did you save my life? You have your treasure. You have riches.” The Poet rubbed the hard cases and then looked back at Peary. “All you needed to do was leave me there to die and head home. Where is home, by the way?”

  “Low-Pub.”

  “You could have just gone back to Low-Pub and not risked your life and wealth on me.”

  Peary just shook his head.

  The old Poet pressed him. “Why did you save my life?”

  Peary looked at the man again and sighed. “Because it’s a life, man. Besides, you would have done the same for me.”

  At that, the Poet felt a chill. It ran right down his spine and made him look away. Now he held up the electric-orange fabric again, looking at the image emblazoned on the bright cloth. It looked to be a horse’s head, with a fiery mane flowing back—as if the horse were running at full gallop. There were words below the horse’s head, and having learned some of the old world words, the Poet recognized the bottom one.

  Danvar.

  The writing was odd-looking, and the word was spelled with a couple of funny symbols, but it was clearly recognizable as the word Danvar. The poet touched the print with his hand.

  D E N V E R

  The word below the emblem of the horse and above the word for Danvar… that one the Poet could not decipher. It was in larger symbols that stretched all the way across the cloth. Peary, and then the whole sarfer, leaned into a high dune, and as they climbed it, the Poet’s finger traced the old symbols.

  B R O N C O S

  The sarfer sped southward, and in the wind, when he paid attention, the Poet could hear his driver still talking.

  “…and when we get to Low-Pub, I know someone who’ll move all this for us… Maybe we make two coin for every ten it’s really worth, but even at that we’ll be rich and no one will know we are. I’ll get Marisa… pack up and head west… you can come along if you’d like…”

  ----------------------

  Knot 2: Salvage.

  Relics

  Chapter Nine

  Circling around from the north took time, but with a priceless case of salvage from Danvar one can never be too careful. Peary brought the sarfer in toward Low-Pub from the Thousand Dunes, instead of from the north, from the direction of what used to be Springston. This was the long way around, but once word got out that there really was salvage hitting the market from Danvar, every single detail would be analyzed. Every action leading up to Danvar relics appearing in Low-Pub or anywhere else would be sifted; connections would be made. Every diver and merchant and pirate would start trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The location of Danvar was a riddle that everyone in every hovel and shanty would be working to solve.

  Peary was relatively certain Marisa’s uncle Joel had the right connections. He should be able to ge
t the stuff into the black market without dragging Marisa and Peary into it, but that privilege was going to cost plenty, and until the stuff was out of his hands, Peary knew to be on his guard. The life of a diver—or of anyone else, for that matter—meant nothing to those who wanted to capitalize on the greatest discovery ever in all the land of the sand.

  Twenty miles out, Peary pulled up in an area where he used to practice diving with Marisa. No sense trying to make it in tonight. Be dark soon. People might notice. They might wonder if he had a reason to press so hard, and when relics from Danvar show up in the black market soon after, maybe someone remembers. Hard to tell what might happen then.

  To Peary, fame wasn’t as alluring as it once was. He’d seen dead men gripping riches, but with no life left to spend. What’s fame to those men? Men who had reached for it, who were now forgotten by time and everyone in the land of sand.

  As a young diver, regaled with stories of diver-gods who became legends, Peary had been captivated by the possibility of being a great discoverer. Of being the first to find Danvar. Free drinks at every pub, they’d say, just so dreamers can hear stories and losers can breathe the same air as the living gods. But in the last year, Peary had learned differently. A diver newly rich and famous could be safe only if the location of his find instantly became common knowledge. It was that window between nobody knowing and everyone knowing that was the danger. The trap that could kill as surely as coffining in stonesand.

  And the word was already out that someone else had found Danvar. Confusion and competing claims didn’t bode well for anyone’s safety. Now there was word that Springston was gone. No one knew what to think of that. The only reason he’d be trusting Joel was because, for all intents and purposes, Joel was family. Blood and water and all that nonsense. Although whoever came up with that blood being thicker than water thing probably wrote it down in something other than blood. No man could be trusted when Danvar was involved, but Joel was the best Peary was going to get.

  And then there was this: in a month, or maybe three months, the goods he’d gotten from Danvar would still be valuable, but a whole lot less so. Right now they were priceless—because they were part of the trail, and as far as he knew, they were likely to be the first to ever hit the market. The information that Peary held in his brain—the precise location of where he found the goods—was information a whole lot of people in the salvage business would kill for. And killing is the easiest transaction in all the land of sand, because not even a grieving momma sifts the dunes looking for a dead diver. The Lords don’t care and neither does the sand.

  As Peary tied down the sarfer, the old man in the haul rack groaned but didn’t fully wake. This man who called himself “the Poet” had been in and out of consciousness for the entirety of the last day’s sail. Maybe he was just healing, or maybe an infection had him. Peary felt the man’s forehead and couldn’t discern any fever, but he didn’t look too good, either. He carried the old man from the sarfer and laid him down in the shadow of a dune.

  Good thing the wind isn’t blowing. Another night in the dunes was going to be bad enough, but it would be miserable if the sift was up and stinging like needles. Thankfully the evening was still and the temperature was pleasant. And after tomorrow, he’d have enough coin to never again spend another night out in the dunes unless he wanted to.

  Maybe he’d even head west with Marisa. Top the mountains and keep on until they hit the sea. That’d be something. If oceans really existed. The old joke was that it was hard to imagine diving in something like water when the most you’d ever seen at one time was in a canteen cap, taken one sip at a time. Enough water to be immersed in it? To dive in it? Unthinkable.

  He put up the small tent, and as he built a pyrinte[i] fire his mind rehearsed the things he would tell Marisa, and how together they would approach her uncle in order to get the goods dealt with quickly. When the fire was established, Peary put a small pan of water on to boil, then he crushed two squares of dried goat meat and a dozen dehydrated berries with the heel of his dive knife before scraping them into the water.

  The old man stirred, and with some struggle sat up on the sand and glared at the diver who worked over his pot. “Why won’t you let me die?”

  Peary didn’t turn around or make an attempt to catch the Poet’s eye. “Why don’t you shut up, old man?”

  “I didn’t mean to disturb your meal… I’m sorry.”

  Now Peary turned and gave the man an intense look before turning back to his stirring. “This is not my meal, Poet, it’s yours. I’ve had my meal. A hunk of dried fat chewed while we sailed and you slept. We’ll be in Low-Pub tomorrow, and then we’ll have a proper meal with Marisa. You’ll like it, trust me.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” the Poet said.

  “You haven’t asked one worth answering again. And it would be ‘again,’ since you asked it when you first gained consciousness and the answer hasn’t changed.”

  The Poet dug his heels into the sand and pulled himself forward until he was closer to the small fire, though it provided him with no warmth. “Why keep me with you?” The old man pointed to the wrap around his head. “I can only hurt you. I know where I was when you picked me up; I can describe you, your sarfer. That’s info some folks would like to know. With what I know, people can figure out who are, find you. And hurt you. Or they can just figure out where you must’ve been diving when you pulled up that salvage.” The Poet looked back at the small fire and paused for a moment before continuing. “I know too much. You should have let me die. In fact, you should kill me now.”

  Peary stopped stirring the pot and reached into his tool bag. He eyed the old man, who looked on closely as the diver’s hand came back out of the bag. Peary wondered if the old man thought he was going for a dive knife. He pulled out a small spoon, put it into the pot, then walked the three steps over to where the Poet sat and placed the pot in front him. “Eat that, and shut up.”

  Adrift

  Chapter Ten

  The old Poet finished his bowl and lay back against the sand. He didn’t feel well, what with the blow to his head and the resulting crack in his scalp, but he wasn’t as sick as he was showing. He wasn’t sick at all. He was still trying to see all the angles.

  Don’t let on and show strangers your strengths or your weaknesses, boy. That’s what his daddy would say. Keep somethin’ extra. Give ’em less or more than what they expect, dependin’ on what you need to say to maximize the situation.

  He still didn’t know what to think about this diver. This Peary. This hero. His savior. The surface story didn’t add up. No diver went to such extremes to save a tinker. Especially no diver with a secret the whole world of the sand would kill to know. At first, when he still had the spins and wasn’t all that right in the head, he’d felt something for this diver. What was it? Thankfulness? Maybe. But no man acted in another man’s best interests unless those interests wedded with his own. That’s what the Poet’s daddy used to tell him.

  Besides, what did this diver gain from heroics? Had to be something. There was an angle here. He just needed to get his fingernail under the edge somewhere. Something. Pick at it until it all made sense. The Poet just didn’t know what it was yet, what made this diver tick. And who needed that much money? Surely not some low-life sand fish, probably living in a shanty a meter deep in drift and sinking fast. What did this Peary have to spend coin on? Whores and liquor? Had a diver ever spent his salvage coin on anything more than whores and liquor? What a waste.

  “We’ll need to push on in the morning, old man,” Peary said.

  The Poet didn’t rise. Didn’t lift his head. “I can’t go no more,” he said. “Won’t make the night, for certain. Think I got the sickness in me from the wound. I feel my blood running hot.”

  He could hear Peary exhale sharply.

  “Your skin’s not even warm,” Peary said. “I’ve checked you every half hour for two days.”

  “I’m an old man and I know my
ways. I’ve seen the sickness take a man looked full healthy to a diver like you. Back when you were still digging grit out of the ker your momma used for a diaper.”

  Peary hit the sand with his open palm. A flash of anger. “You just want to die, and I’m not going to let you.”

  There was silence again for the space of a half hour. The Poet had his back turned, but he heard the diver scratch at the sand with his dive knife, and then relieve his bowels.

  The diver whistled for a bit, then stopped, and somewhere in the distance the Poet heard a sand-hawk call. If he were in his home, the old man thought, he’d pull out his skrendl[ii] and play a tune to the night. But he didn’t have his skrendl, so instead he spoke…

  An ancient song of sand and sift,

  of rush and spill and grit.

  As some exotic land and gift,

  ’til turned o’er hell and spit.

  Dive deep oh friend, and spare

  the top of lack; and may fair

  winds drive thee

  atop the ancients’ lair.

  “That’s why they call you the Poet?” Peary asked.

  “A long time ago, diver. A long time ago they did. Maybe you just heard my last poem, writ just now in my dyin’ head.”

  “Tell me another one over a meal tomorrow in Low-Pub.”

  “Just leave me here and move on. Go sell your salvage and take that woman and go to the west. Leave an old man to die.”