Chapter 5 - Warning
"My lord," Ardeth began formally, after seating himself on a stool across from his grandfather. "There is a team of archeologists headed for the site at Tirza. "
Lord Asim looked back at him, his face inscrutable. "What is your plan, Ardeth?"
"I will gather the men and ride out. At first we will merely watch. If we are fortunate, the team will not find anything of interest and will deem the site unsuitable for excavation. If so, we need do nothing. If they do decide to dig, we will warn them. If they pay us no heed, well, we'll do what we must."
Lord Asim nodded slowly. "Yes, that will be best. I will pray that they heed your warning."
"May I request your women to provide supplies for me?" Ardeth asked, a slight smile on his face. Confidently he waited for his grandfather's reply. It was not long in coming.
"When are you going to find a woman of your own, boy?" Asim said with great exasperation. "At your age, still relying on your grandfather's house for your needs!"
Ardeth grinned as he rose and headed toward the back of the tent. Moving a flap aside slightly, he called out. "A'isha?" As if in answer, a hand reached through the gap, grasped his wrist and pulled him through the flap into the back of the tent. Ardeth grinned again at the woman in front of him. No doubt she'd been listening to his conversation with his grandfather. Save for a few strands of gray in her dark hair, A'isha looked scarcely old enough to have a son of Ardeth's age. She'd been sixteen the day she'd married Ardeth's father, and Ardeth had been born a mere nine months later. If Ardeth hadn't been the image of his father, there would have been much gossip about it. Upon the death of Ahmad ibn Asim, her husband, she'd moved into Lord Asim's household, and assumed the management of it when Ardeth's grandmother had died several years ago.
A'isha glared at her only son. "So you want me to put together provisions for you, do you?"
"Yes," he replied, still grinning.
She glowered even more darkly. "When are you going to marry and relieve me of the responsibility of taking care of you?"
Ardeth was glad she'd stopped there instead of including her usual lament about grandchildren. "When I find a woman as beautiful and as fascinating as you," he declared extravagantly, taking her hand and kissing it reverently.
"Hmmmph," she snorted, taking her hand back. I'll send a boy over with your saddlebags before you go. I assume you'll be leaving today?"
"Within two hours, I hope." Ardeth replied more seriously. "If we ride hard we can be there by nightfall."
A'isha nodded. "Very well. Now get out of here! You're a grown man – far too old to be in the women's quarters!"
He didn't bother to protest that she'd been the one to pull him in there in the first place, and merely leaned forward to kiss her cheek before striding out. There was much to be done.
Just under two hours later, Ardeth and a dozen mounted Medjai warriors rode out of the encampment.
Tia sat cross-legged on her bedroll and gazed dreamily into the fire. She couldn't wait for the morning. Her job on the dig was to keep records of everything they did and everything they found. An important job, certainly, but Tia was hoping she might be allowed to do a little digging herself. Smiling she fiddled with the end of her long braid, and smoothed some of the dark blond curls that had escaped around her face. Something about the site was drawing her. She had an incredible urge to uncover the tomb, to see the mummies of the Pharaoh's' children, to wonder at the decoration considered suitable for the royal dead. Lately she'd even been dreaming about it. In these dreams there was always a young child. He stood staring at her, his eyes beseeching her to do something, but she didn't know what.
Silent as a stone and invisible in the shadows, Ardeth crouched behind an outcropping of rock and studied the archeologists. A slight frown creased his brow as he watched. Why were they all so young? Not an experienced face among them. And then there was the girl. She was far too young and pretty to be out in the middle of the desert at a supposedly secret tomb. Ardeth crouched in the darkness for nearly an hour, listening to the excited chatter of the young men. Any hope that they didn't know where they were or what was hidden here was dashed. They'd been led here deliberately and their guide planned to head back to Cairo at first light. We'll see about that, Ardeth thought savagely. He wanted to speak to that guide. Carefully he eased backward until he was fully out of sight of the campfire, then rose and walked, as silently as a cat, the two miles back to where the Medjai warriors had made camp.
On the second day, near sunset, Ardeth and the other Medjai tacked up their horses and mounted. Judicious spying on the archeologists had proved that the team was unlikely to leave on their own. The guide had in fact, slipped away several hours before dawn. Two of the Medjai warriors had gone in pursuit, but Ardeth was not confident of their success. The man had obviously known that he would be pursued. Something about this whole business was very wrong. Ardeth clicked his tongue to his mount and moved off, the remaining ten warriors following closely. Time to see if they could frighten the archeologists enough to cause them to leave.
Tia crouched near a rock face at the base of a small hill, her hand moving rapidly as her pen filled in a description of all she could see. Three members of the team were carefully removing dirt from what appeared to be a stone slab covering an opening in the hill. Her tawny brown eyes shone as she copied down the symbols on the stone. They were losing the light rapidly and would soon have to stop for the night. She reached out and ran her hand over the rock. Soon they would be in!
She was just sketching the last of a row of hieroglyphics when a blood-curdling cry shattered the silence. She spun around, her notebook tumbling to ground. To her horror she saw that a group of Arab horsemen, all robed in black and brandishing swords had surrounded the small team. One, a tall stern man with eyes as cold and dark as the tattoos on his face, nudged his horse a few steps forward. "You are trespassing on the lands of the Bey Tribe," he stated coldly in accented English. "You must leave here at once." His eyes scanned the tense faces of the archeologists. "If you are not gone by sundown tomorrow we will return and we will....hasten your departure. To your god if not back to Cairo." His eyes flicked briefly to Tia's. "For the sake of the woman, if not yourselves, heed my words or you will die." After a moment's pause, the man barked out a command in Arabic and the riders turned their horses. In a heartbeat they were mere murky shadows in the setting sun, the sound of their horses hooves growing fainter and fainter.
Author's notes: Once again, thank you for the reviews! I'm having a good time writing this, and I very much appreciate anyone who is having a good time reading it.
Warning – Big Digression! A couple of reviewers have mentioned the horses: I don't have any firm documentation about the Arabs mostly riding mares – but it's pretty anecdotal in the local horse community where I live. The group I ride with does a lot of the medieval horse games, so the type of horses ridden by the medieval warrior is much talked about. The European knight needed a large, strong, aggressive animal that would mow down anything in its path. The Saracens needed a smaller, lighter, more agile animal that would suit the more 'hit and run' fighting style that they had. The average Arabian horse isn't particularly large (Sorry Nakhti!), but is strong, swift and very beautiful. Check out the horses in the Mummy and Mummy Returns – they got the horses right, they are Arabians. That's about the size animal you should be picturing. As far as stallions go, obviously they had them (you can't breed horses without the boys!), but a really good stallion would probably have been too valued as a stud to ride into war much. Can't risk it being hurt or killed. Take the modern Thoroughbred racehorse. The really good ones are retired to stud after their 3- year old season, because they're too valuable to risk injury on the racetrack. (The Triple Crown races are for 3-year olds.)
The modern Arab horse can pretty much do anything asked of them, but they excel at endurance competition, and are pretty much the top breed of choice for people who are into that. Centuries of breeding for long desert treks. (The mustang is also a good choice for endurance – anyone see Hidalgo?) :)