"And so, that is why I believe that camel's are in fact a superi'r thing to people. People have very much ought to be able to spit and carry water in their fats I would think!"

Richard O'Connell's eyes stung unbearably in the painfully eloquent dance of the desert sand, and this almost matched the pain of rolling them in all-night Ferris-wheels within their sockets at the truly, impressively incessant dithering of the young wretch his wife had insisted in hiring as a guide to the dig site. Every minute or five he would shoot a look from atop his camel at the dirty, heavily cloth-bound man atop a sore-encrusted and tired excuse of equestrian creation, and honestly feel a slight wretch. The fact that he hated the Irish gave no relief, especially since this one had failed to loose his accent in his time in Egypt.

"What'd'you think of camels, eh, Rick... Mr. Rick... Mr... O'Connell..."

Drostan was not making a very profitable impression on their new client. It was treacheros ground to him, conversation with the employers who were in a way employees – and though he made sure never to drop conversation, he had been tossing that dilemma to a stomach ache within the back of his head. Was he an employee, or were they the employee. Or were they the employed... was that even different? he had thought.

As he watched Rick's hands become white, and his eyes dilate in what he could only assume to be utter and unadulterated rage, he turned to his wife. He meant, Rick's wife, of course.

"And you, Mrs. O'Connell? Dun' ya' think camels are awful swell?"

Evelyn O'Connell was faring far better than her husband. She, who rode on the other side of Drostan from Rick on a separate rented camel, was fully engrossed in the subject of the other half to the compassing package. When she and Rick had returned to Egypt for this particular commissioned dig, and had found this young, boundingly talkative, and starving young man to be something of a guide in the deeper regions of the Sahara, she sniffed out the bluff immediately. But she insisted they be hired, for it was obvious they needed the food, money, and, perhaps, the civil company. But it was also his companion that had swayed her. Drostan looked nothing of a true adventurer, all thumbs and clumsy, with a rusty pistol and not two weeks worth of viable muscle left on his arms and legs, but the woman who sat with him on the street, at the base of the most magnificent white horse Evie has ever seen – one that would have surely caught them a month's worth of food – she seconded the cover of her own generosity, certain that there was something deeply wise beneath the fold of black cloth that the woman's face hid behind. At least something special under there, for a man so deprived to bind himself so faithfully to her side as Drostan seemed to.

And indeed, she wore cloth by the folds of hundreds. Blacks and grey, worn and new, possibly stolen. Evie was sure she would capsize under their weight, assuming that she was in the condition her spoken betrothed was in. He had called her by the name Boann, though she never spoke it herself. In fact she spoke nothing. But Evie was surprised to find the creature very able and strong, and excellent with the horse, as was, for all his clumsiness, Drostan. She rode gracefully though, a good four yards behind the other three, her horse glistening in a frothy film of sweat, but her own face never showing beneath the black. Evie wondered how she seemed to see so precisely.

"Mrs. O'Connell... Ms. Evelyn..."

Evelyn slapped her face back from it's peripheral examination of their rear companion to the sound of Drostan calling her name. "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. What was it that you asked?"

"Eh, nothing. You're tired, it's hot, and I'm hungry..." Drostan then pulled a slip of bread from his saddlebag and began to chomp on it rudely. He was filling out and livening up a bit once they had fed him a few times. Rick was certain that his physical state was a self-induced marketing ploy for pity, and that in truth he was perfectly healthy, just a bit naturally scrawny. Rick hadn't been so intrigued by his fiancee as Evelyn. Just another eccentric to him, though he seemed to find little else in Egypt. Evelyn and he had been married less than a year, and had thus had less than a year to recover from their last... "adventure" in Egypt, when Pembridge found it suitable to pack them back into the country for a dig concerning God-knows-what in God-knows-where for God-knows-who. Well, God and Evelyn, it would seem. She jumped at the idea, and had also, apparently, christened herself a "Generosa" as well. Rick loved Egypt, and he loved Evie, but for Christ's sake, he wanted at least a year. He had felt some trepidation over taken two strangers with them into the middle of nowhere, but it was clear that they would into be difficult to overtake, if need be.

Drostan actually fell rather silently as he ate. Evelyn was also quiet, her face crooked slightly to the side, as if observing something in the scenery. Rick noticed this, and reveled in it.

Just as the silence began to take a comfortable fit to the four travelers, Evie found herself turning her head to an unexpected surprise. Upon a sharply cut dune in the distance, to the side of them, was a line of darkly clad riders. Bedouins, for sure, and even more surely, Medjai, she thought. Evie became rather excited, having not seen their mysterious allies in so many months, and having been in hope that they may cross paths on this journey. She swerved her camel to the forefront, left-hand most flank of the small caravan and waved enthusiastically to the riders.

It was now that Rick noticed what had made his wife gasp and exhale so. Caught in her reaction, he also forgot himself, believing that they had spotted their friends as well.

But it was Drostan's familiarly thick voice that brought the two from their excitement.

"We're just waving to some friends. They are not dangerous... well, they are dangerous," Evie explained to Drostan, "but they will not hurt us. We know them."

"Are you sure you know them, they don't seem to be noticin' you, and I honestly don't think they were in a position in which they were expecting to be seen..."

"Well of course not, because they weren't expecting us," Evie scolded cheerfully and continued to wave at them from her camel and cry out.

Rick began to hesitate at Drostan words, and even more so when Drostan's silent half came riding up in amidst them. Her closeness emitted several sensory solicitations. She did not smell bad, as Drostan did, yet Rick could not say he liked the way she smelled. And she appeared much more brooding so near and on top of her horse. Far to strong then he was comfortable feeling a woman to be. She deliberated, and then quickly, she finally spoke to them. Her voice was muffled by the cloth, and from what Rick could tell, was even more heavily accented than Drostan's. He asked her to repeat, and as each of their eyes caught from atop te hill the metallic glint of a firearm, she threw down the cloth from around her mouth to encircle her neck and shouted in a crackling, enphlegmed and to an "I" Irish voice, "They are no friends!"

The bullet then lacerated the air between the shoulder's of Boann and Rick. Immediately Rick had his guns drawn and warm, but did this sluggishly slow compared to Boann, who, it appeared, was packing an impressive array of weaponry, and apparently had the pallet for it. Evie, not one to duck, also drew the small pistol that Rick had taught her to fire, and Drostan revealed a similarly astonishing pair of guns. But there was no way in Hell the four of them, even with the experience they seemed to present, would be able to rival a line of at least fifteen desert-grounded bandits, all wielding machinery to at least outfit theirs. This was made even more clear as the line began to move quickly, with expert movement, on fast steeds down the side of the dune.

Rick watched as Boann wiped her horse around itself and then forward into the onslaught. He signaled Evie to stay back, though Drostan edged forward as well. Boann took down three, and Rick was able to fall another two. Evie was edging backwards, her pistol still aimed, and Drostan continued to fire fiercely.

Evie couldn't describe the fear she felt. She had thought that nothing could daunt her after battling a creature who's body was not a body, and who's life was founded upon death. But she was wrong. She could feel death crawl under her skin and into her heart. Tears ripped her cheeks as she watched her freshly-made husband being flanked by oncoming attackers. She had lost sight of Boann and Drostan. Evie shut her eyes, her arm still outstretched, waiting for the final shot to take her, when she felt the wind cut her shoulders as horseman came riding in from the back of her at sportscar speeds. Her eyelids delayed, unsure if the wind was simply playing tricks on her, or if a saving element had really entered the sudden battle.

Sure enough, as her eyes opened, she saw the backs of what was this time unmistakably the Medjai, entering with gun and sword by the dozens. They sandwiched, stomped, sheared and obliterated. The battle flew through the minutes, as both Medjai and bandit fell in turn. But it was the bandits that eventually gathered their remains and fled.

Rick quickly found Evelyn, who had climbed form her camel and nearly collapsed on the ground, he clung her to him, completely out of breath and slightly brazed. As the Medjai grouped together, some still mounted, others tending to wounds and walking in review on the sand, Evie watched from over Rick's shoulder as some of them encircled a familiar friend, who was crouched to the ground next to a fallen man. Ardeth Bey.

The Medjai chieftain was not observed by only Evelyn. Boann, who had been dismounted in the battle, had also caught sight of the geometrically inclined Bedouins who had mysterious come to their aid. She could not see what they were doing, and thus stepped about the panorama from a distance in order to slip her eyes between two of their black-clad bodies. She did so, all the time keeping a hand on the reigns of her white horse. She saw a man, his head still shrouded, fall over another who lay breathing like a cat, so quickly he was surely sucking oxygen from the rest, she thought. She watched as he lifted the mans head. She saw blood, thick and inhabited by pieces of matter, fall from the side of his skull unseen to her. Yet he was alive. She watched his neck snap under the strong hands of the kneeling man. All of this at a distance from her, fascinating to her. She forgot herself...

Evie's eyes had crushed in tears as she watched the euthanasia take place. As they reopened she panned around and away from the warriors. She spotted Drostan, panting and nursing an arm wound. And then she saw something she did not recognized. Still and somber, a woman stood, dressed in black, with a sack's worth of black curls piled on top of her head. Her skin was as white as the sand under the reflection of her husband's watch, though it was unkept and a bit dirty. It took Evie a few moments to realize it was an unsheathed Boann, as she soon caught hold of her white horse's reigns. As the distant woman's attention fell from the regrouping warriors, and she turned her body to face the resting couple, her eyes downcast at her hands, Evie saw a black smudge across one side of her face... a bit on the forehead... she couldn't make out what it was, though.

But Evie could make out what just happened. A small-scale battle had just taken place, and these two near strangers, who she had sized to be half-starved and weak, had fought more readily and bravely than was certainly necessary. She stared at Boann, wondering who exactly she and her husband had invited along into the middle of the desert with them.

Ardeth looked up from his fallen comrade, having completed one of the more unpleasant requirements of his status, to assess the damage, and the addition of his band. He had spotted the four of them, Evelyn, Rick, and the two strangers, from a distant slope. They had distracted him from the bandits grouping on the other side of them, as he was sure he recognized the two on top of the camels to be Evie and Rick. Even from a distance, he was sure that that shot of black hair and that white-strapped-brown torso were them. As the bandits practically fell down the dune, shooting and crying out at the outnumbered, he quickly ordered his men into action. O'Connells or not, they were in danger.

And indeed, at the end of the battle, Ardeth spotted Evelyn and Rick, tending to their dissipating shock. He then sought out the other two who traveled with them. He spotted the boy, who was apparently a rather wispy man, and then the woman. She was tending to her horse – a creature of no contest in beauty and power – and he noticed two things. She was very pale, and very strong. As he stood to approach Evie and Rick, he watched the woman suddenly catch herself with a start, and quickly scrambled about herself for a stray piece of cloth. She was attempting to cover her face. She had lost her head covering in the battle, and had just realized this. Ardeth watched as long as his moving feet would permit as she delicately covered the affected side of her face before he diverted his attention to Evie and Rick.

They were both standing now, Rick checking Evie out for injuries and the such. Evie immediately stepped forward to address the nearing Ardeth.

"Oh, Ardeth, I am so happy that... that it is you!" Ardeth was slightly confused, but still overjoyed to see his friends safe, and to see them at all. Rick was the next to approach. He gave him a formidable handshake and a pat on the back.

"My friends, what are you doing back in Egypt and, of course, already causing trouble?" Ardeth said in a thick English, a twinged smile playing on his girthy lips.

"Well, we were on our way to a dig, when we found ourselves being, oh... I dunno... attacked?" Rick was a little more than agitated.

Evie attempted to calm her husband down slightly, as Drostan came up alongside her on foot.

"Now, that was an adventure, eh Mr. O'Connell?" He gave Rick a harder-than-need-be slap on the back, and Rick coughed with exhaustion and pain.

"Who is this man?" Ardeth asked full out-right. "And the woman, as well..." He looked in the direction he had initially seen Boann in, but she was no longer standing there.

"Well, they were guides, of a sort," Evie attempted.

"Though I guess this in't the best time to say this, but we aren't much for guides..." And then he added, "at all... in any way, really."

Evelyn gave Drostan an exasperated look while Rick clenched and turned his entire body around in an expression of temper. At this time Ardeth's head turned at the sound of quick and close coming hooves on the sand. It was Boann, the black cloth covering the entirety of her hair and forehead, and then strapped down around the right side of her face, tucked into the fabric clinging around her neck. Her one eye glanced quickly over the three friends and remaining warriors who had gathered about them, and though it was only for a second, the dark flame that rested within that eye would not so quickly escape Ardeth's memory.

"Drostan, get your bleedin' arse on this horse immediately! We're going back."

Drostan's eyes dragged on the ground sheepishly, "And she's not exactly my fiancee either." The thin man shrugged in his turn, while Boann continued to extend her hand to him.

"Drostan we've gotta go. Now. I mean it – up!"

Drostan looked about him, and acknowledged that indeed, his horse had fallen in the battle. But he did not see why they had to leave, and without their charges.

Boann looked hot at that, her face flushing with embarrassment. "Drostan, we... just do. Now please..."

"Madame," Ardeth decided, though unwise, it was perhaps necessary for him to intervene, "It is dangerous to head back now, alone. You could be attacked again, or worse, get lost."

"I know my way, sir. He dun't, but I do. Drostan, please..." the woman was becoming increasingly nervous. Her voice was deep, liken to a man's, almost. And her speech was clear, precise and strong. But her posture began became twitchy the longer Drostan openly defied her command.

"Look, Boann," Evie began, "this tribe has been our faithful ally in the past. Yo have nothing to fear." At the word "fear", Boann's torso bolted up-right in offense. Evie noted this, and continued more cautiously, "It would be dangerous to bolt off right at this minute. I mean, it isn't everyday that you are simply charged at by desert bandits." Evie gave a forced laugh at that statement. "There may be something... happening..."

"It'd be unusual had a certain someone not screamed and hollered like a madwoman at the bleeding Bedouins!"

"Hey!"

Rick's exclamation cut through the air as he shouldered his way in confrontation towards Boann. Evie stepped back in offense, while Ardeth put a restraining hand on Rick's shoulder. Drostan, feeling the tension rise and seeing the crowd assimilate quickly among the warriors, moved to compromise.

"Boann, at least let a few of them show us back. I don't have complete faith in your memory and am a bit scared of getting lost, in honesty." His voice was slightly more pleading now, and nervous at his vulnerable words. But Ardeth seconded his request.

"I would be happy to spare a few men for your return, if you wish to at this moment."

"Spare?" Boann shrieked lowly. Her horse took a few high steps at the sound. "Spare. No thank you, sir."

"Just..." Ardeth was cut off.

"We do not ride with desert peoples!" There was a pause thick with tension.

"Boann..." Drostan's voice was barely a whisper

"No Drostan. Now if you don't get your fucking arse onto this horse I'll sodomize you with your own leg!"

"We'll be the one's sodomizing you if you don't mind," cried one of the warriors from the back, who was now pushing to the forefront in a palpable wrath at Boann's prejudice-tinged exclamation. But Ardeth stopped him. He could see in Boann's eyes, not fear, perchance, and not offense, but something blank coat over them. They became two-dimensional at the threat, as if they would refuse to absorb the reflection of the sun any longer. It was more unsettling than fear, and it was one of many elements signaling to cut this brawl short.

"No. Let them go. If she feels she must leave, than they should be permitted to."

Boann shot him a short glance, her one eye flaring with dark colors Ardeth had never imagined before. But Drostan only gave her oncoming glance a rivaled one. He stood his ground. "No. Boann I'm staying. I want to go the rest of the way with the O'Connell's, with or without you."

Ardeth noted a slight metaphorical step back in Boann's half face. She was expressionless, but he could imagine that she did not expect such a response. There was a pause, sewn with tight deliberation. When Boann spoke, it was like a crackling rope being tied into a knot.

"Fine. We shall go. Evelyn, Richard, except my apology." She did not give them a chance to answer her request, and stepped up beside Drostan, offering a slightly kinder hand to help him up.

"Dun think I'm riding with you, lassy. I'll take my chances with one of these strapping young things." He gave one of the warriors an all-to-friendly rub on the back, only to find dark, and slightly lecherous eyes returning his gesture. He took a few steps back to the laughter of the tribe. Boann exclaimed formlessly at his response, and walked the horse off.

Ardeth was already conversing with Evie and Rick. Greetings and arrangements were fulfilled. Ardeth and a few of his men would accompany the couple and their companions the rest of the way to the dig. The rest of the men dispersed, and Drostan mounted with one of the Medjai. A quiet, older one, who seemed like he could hold his own against Drostan's chatter. Boann stayed silently atop her horse, soon wrapping the rest of her face in cloth. Though she tagged a ways behind the other six, Ardeth found his senses attaching themselves to whatever alert her presence might have emitted.