Precious

Standard disclaimers apply. Original story and characters © E. Phillips 2002. The Character of Ardeth Bay and other associated characters from The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are © Steven Sommers, Universal and associated companies. No infringement intended.

Chapter 1

It was vicious, it was bloody and there were few that survived even half of the battle. The British soldiers fought to support their unlikely reinforcements, black clad demons that seemed to have appeared out of the very dust of the desert itself. Those that still lived were exhausted. She found it hard to believe that the locals were all backing away from the survivors stumbling off the dunes that had been the battlefield, into the compound where the fight still continued.

Automatically her feet began to more forward, moving toward the robed figures coming off the bloodied sands, toward those fights and skirmishes were still unsettled, raiders fighting for the women and children they had come to claim for their own.

"What are you doing?" A hand grabbed hers but she shook it off as she moved toward the man that had come in like some dark, avenging angel, beginning the turn in the tide of the battle… opening their path to freedom.

"Let go of me!" she said. "Can't you see they need our help?"

"We can do nothing for them!" the girl's voice was desperate… afraid. "We must get away… we must…"

"Go then." She took off her necklace, gold and jet and pressed it into her sister's hand. It had been their mother's… but Rabah had murdered her… killed her long before rescue could arrive. "Take this, it should buy you passage enough to be safe. Go home. Find our brother and tell him that mother is lost, but that I am safe."

"No!" Her sister moaned, pulling again at her hands as the dark shadow bore down on them. "You have to come with me. You…"

"No, Louisa," she turned her sister around and lifted her onto the back of a nearby horse. "Go. Go with the others, please."

"Get them out of here…!" The voice made her spin around again to face the warrior. It was deep, rich, it rolled around the sounds of the English words and made them seem exotic and beautiful as she had never before heard them. "We will cover you… get them OUT!

"Come on, Miss," the British soldier that suddenly appeared at the side of the horse onto which she'd thrown her sister grabbed her arm and started to pull her up. "We have to go now. Plenty of room up there…"

"No." She struggled with him, the sleeve of the silk robe covering her nightdress ripped as she pulled away. "Take her."

"We can't wait…" The soldier acted as though he hadn't properly heard her.

"Go!" The accented voice shouted again, and steel rang against steel. "Get out. Get. Out!"

"I'm not coming." She turned and slapped the horse that held her sister. "I won't leave these people."

She slapped the horse again and this time it leaped forward, and the soldier had no choice but to follow the bolting horse.

**

What was she doing? Why didn't she leave with that others? The Medjai warrior had no time to think further as two raiders came out of nowhere. He raised his blade and his other empty hand, punching out at one man while his blade danced a deadly rhythm around the defences of the second.

A third man joined the fight, a triangle around him as the first recovered from the punch. He had to finish this… and fast. On the edges of his vision he saw the flapping green robe that was the raider heading for the woman.

A sharp slice across his forearm reminded him of the immediate danger. He brought his guard up in time to deflect the next thrust that came at him from the right hand side, following through with a hard, fast punch, aided by the momentum of the movement his body made in the block.

His opponent went reeling away; only to be replaced as one of the others stepped into his place. Silver flashed toward the Medjai's head and he was forced to reverse the direction of his blade to deflect the incoming blow to his shoulder. He didn't let it connect though. Pivoting on his rear most foot, he almost rolled around the man, ducking under the blade and thrusting upward with his own. He felt the scimitar bite home, sliding between ribs to slice into the lung beneath. Not wanting to cause needless suffering, he turned the blade upward, finding the raiders heart and ending his life.

As the body fell away from before him he caught sight of the woman. A raider was almost within arm's reach of her. Second nature, obeying the call of his heart to keep to the oaths he'd sworn those many years before, he snatched the knife from the sheath at his back and sent it flying end over end toward the one that threatened the woman. The raider didn't even get the chance to scream in denial as the knife buried itself in his throat, ending his life instantly.

As the threat to her fell away the woman looked in the direction her sister and the British soldier had taken. The Medjai saw the way relief escaped her, a long slow sigh, before she looked up and met his eyes with her own. He could not tell their colour at that distance and in so dark conditions as the flickering shadows of the fires served only to darken the compound, not to give it light. He let his gaze question her… why did you not go with them?

He had no time to see if she would answer it. She would have though… had we the time. His remaining opponent roared in anger and came at him, blade high and swinging in a figure eight. He had no choice but to give ground and counter strike after strike.

Through the blur of motion he saw, incredibly, the woman start toward where he fought. Was she mad? What did she think to achieve, bringing herself so close to danger as she did?

"No." he cried out toward her. "Get back. Stay back!"

Still she came onward and the danger to her lent him an unexpected strength, a ferocity that surprised even the Medjai himself. He struck twice at a single thrust his opponent made and broke the rhythm of the attack, and in the next moment moved his feet to press himself forward, inside the guard of the raider. His scimitar slashed up and took the man's arm, but he did not stop there. He would not let the man suffer the shock and the pain of bleeding to death, even though an enemy. He turned the hilt of the scimitar around his hand to turn the blade and struck again in a downward crosswise motion and relieved the man of his head.

**

It was bitter battle he fought and sorrow filled her heart as she moved toward him. She knew she should have been afraid… terrified… but none of it came. None of the familiar tightening of her stomach or the frantic pounding of her heart in her chest, that she so often felt when she awoke from her nightmare, touched her.

She was consumed by the need to reach him. It was urgent; a thought that screamed at her that it was where she had to be.

A flash of his blade in the moonlight and a fount of darkness that fell to stain the packed sand that was the ground heralded the fall of another of his opponents, the final one… but then again…

"Medjai, taalu!" The man in black called out into the darkness, before he turned to her with an almost angry countenance that halted her steps a few yards from him. More raiders were coming. She knew without turning her head that they were coming from the building almost like rats from a woodpile.

Still he didn't speak to her, but walked a few steps in her direction, his eyes tracking the new threat that she could sense behind her, seeking to provide her with protection. He held out his empty hand in her direction… the message was clear. She was to go to him. Once more she began to move.

His fingers closed around her wrist. He gripped her tightly… the strength in his fingers as overpowering as his presence now that she was so close to him. She looked up at him into the strikingly handsome face. Fierce and hawk like he looked back into the soft oval of her own. His mouth, full lips framed by a neatly trimmed goatee beard, were set into a grim line that showed the danger they were truly in. His eyes, dark, were still full of the same astonished question… Why…?

An answer found its way to the chance of expression through her suddenly dry mouth, but before she could speak a word of it, movement behind the warrior caught her attention. One of the men he had been fighting… the one he had punched in the face was moving, finding his feet and had a knife in his hands.

She wanted to call out a warning but the words stuck in her throat. She could get nothing to come out, just stood in frozen shock as the man came on, knife extended… as he pulled back the blade and moved it quickly forward again. It was aimed for the warrior's lower back, deadly and the aim was true.

Suddenly her paralysis snapped away and she threw herself forward, closer to the warrior who still held her wrist, which she tore free of his gasp.

"No, stay here!" he ordered, his accented voice rolling through her.

The threat to him was still there, and she could not obey. Her heart twisted seven different ways at once to think of him hurt and all for saving her, when she had stayed behind to answer… what? The pull of something intangible… unknown?

Her shoulder connected with the warrior's chest and she extended her left hand around his side. How could he not feel the man behind him? How could he not know?

She felt him move against her body, even as her hand connected the knife, ignoring the tearing slice across her palm to push it down, deflect it, turn it away. He had known… Her face turned toward the warrior and she saw him stab back with his scimitar, and the roar from the raider behind him, whose hand held the knife, told her he had found the man's flesh with his curved blade.

A combination of the tangled strands of the moment unbalanced the three of them, and they went tumbling to the ground. Still the warrior tried to save her from hurt as she had saved him. He held her against him, trying not to let her fall on the hard ground.

Impaled on the warriors blade, the raider stilled at last… finally dead… no more a threat. His hand slapped against the ground, revealing the knife, still held in his fist, locked there grimly even in death, but his companions, those she had sensed coming from the building finally reached them and from where he was pinned beneath her there was nothing the dark clad warrior could do to save her.

Hands reached down to hook her by the arms and lift her away as rifles pointed down at her would-be saviour to keep him in place.

She didn't struggle. It would be worse for both of them if she did; somewhere in her heart she knew that. She just allowed them to pick her up. To hold her, making what sounded like lewd comments in Arabic and touching her body through the nightdress she wore.

She turned a frantic look on the warrior on the ground as he started to rise… ignoring the guns that would surely take his life. No… stay there…

Shadows moved in the darkness as the moon drifted behind a cloud, but as the light returned the few raiders that held her were surrounded by black robed figures… the same as the man on the ground.

They let her go and, relieved of their weapons, raised their hands in surrender, as the warrior was helped to his feet by one of his fellows. His eyes found hers again and she couldn't look away as he came toward her.

As he came within reach his fingers hooked the sleeve of her robe to raise her hand. She followed his gaze and saw the gash that ran along the palm of her hand. He snapped something in Arabic to one of the others and was handed a length of cloth which he bound around it. She winced at the sudden pressure against the cut in her hand, but looking once more she saw the sticky mess oozing over her fingers where her blood ran from the cut and she knew it must be bound and soon washed and properly dressed.

Then the warrior looked off into the darkness, as though trying to see the retreating British soldiers.

"Why?" he finally voice the question held in his eyes, still holding her now bound hand in his.

She turned her own gaze in the same direction, offering up silent prayers that her sister would be safe in their keeping; would reach home and that her brother would not worry.

"We do what we can," she said at last, her voice was quiet and soft as a whisper, "to protect the little ones."