"You want me to describe you as if I didn't know you," he repeatedly slowly, coming toward her and mock seriously feeling her forehead. "You don't feel feverish." He put his arms around her and slid a hand down her back. "I could maybe, oh, make you hotter though."
She looked up at him, a little exasperated knowing life in a sod hut fishbowl prevented any such thing during the day, and said, "Quit it. Come on, tell me what you would see as a stranger."
He held her at arms' length then, rotated her slightly to one side and the other and finally said, "A beautiful, pale woman, with lovely blue eyes and a glorious mane of blonde hair, very feminine but very strong looking."
"Do I look like Colonel Samantha Carter? Dr. Samantha Carter?"
Daniel stopped grinning at her and answered softly, "Sama, those are just roles you've played." He gestured at the equations on the walls and at the area where they had just finished exercising. "You still have what it takes to play them. You've added another as my lover and my wife. That just shows another side of you. You aren't different because your roles have changed."
"It's crazy Danny but I can be really happy here for hours at a time. I forget where I am, forget my responsibility as an officer to try to escape, and I'm just here in our little world with you. I'm not sure who I am any more."
Daniel had no answer but to hold her and murmur against her hair, "I love everything you are now and always."
One night they woke to find one of the Black Horde standing in the center of the room. He had his arms spread wide and his hands held out palms up to show that he was no threat. Daniel and Sam sat up and he approached them slowly, still making it very clear that he intended no harm. He stopped a few feet away and whispered, "Come with me. I can get you out of here."
"Who are you?" Sam demanded. "Why should we trust you?"
"I am Kloterian. I infiltrated the Ghei shortly before your capture. We have learned in the last week that their shaman is arriving in tomorrow morning and we believe he was planning some sort of unpleasant spectacle involving you. The Lord of Kloteru does not think it wise to leave you in the hands of the Ghei any longer."
"What does the Lord of Kloteru have in mind for us if we go with you?"
"My Lord Choko does not believe that only evil comes through the Circle and he wants to learn more about your people. To consider whether we can treat with one another. The Ghei are so superstitious that they will not even speak where you can hear them for fear you will send evil spirits to follow their voices back into their souls." He looked nervously back up the stairs and pleaded urgently, " Please, you must come with me. We have just minutes before the sentries I silenced are discovered." Sam thought for a moment. She would like to have known more but this called for an immediate decision. She whispered very softly to Daniel, "I don't think we have any choice but to go with him." Daniel started to say something but this wasn't time for a committee decision. She whispered more loudly to their would be savior, "We'll do it."
The man drew out two black robes and two head clothes from under his robe. "Put these on quickly."
The little group slipped through the camp, threading between sod huts like their own and a few tents, and then out of the camp where they discovered that the two supposed sentries were really confederates of their savior who had somehow silenced and replaced the original sentries. As they followed the three men into a moonless night, Sam couldn't help but wonder if this was the end of the nightmare or the beginning of a new one. Had it really been a nightmare at all?
They moved swiftly toward the east until close to dawn. Suddenly men and horses rose out of the ground in an outcropping of low boulders. Sam admired the tactic of teaching the horses to lie down so they would be less noticeable here where there little or no cover. Sam and Daniel mounted up and rode for three days with the small band. Their escort was deadly serious about speed and stopped only when the horses needed rest. It was obvious they were still in a lot of danger. The men treated them courteously but the secret agent who had helped them escape was the only one who could communicate with them in Jaffa.
At the end of the third day, they met a large band of mounted men with an enclosed wagon and spare horses. Sam and Daniel were bundled into the wagon and driven away, their original escort riding off in a different direction on fresh horses. There was a soldier next to the driver and a soldier at the back and the large mounted escort formed up flanking them. The atmosphere was now much more relaxed. None of them appeared to speak Jaffa but they were very interested in teaching their flowing language to Sam and Daniel.
The wagon interior was fitted with sumptuous rugs in vivid colors and bright silky cushions. There was a beautifully carved box with unfamiliar but delicious food inside and bottles of water and other beverages. The rear guard was a young man who appeared to be in his late teens. He pointed at himself to indicate that his name was Chako. Chako was very eager to please and to make them understand. Although dark eyed ,he had fair skin and long reddish blonde hair hanging in a braid down his back. He wore leather pants and a tunic with the chest and back protected by padding and many layers of leather in small plates over his legs and arms. After pantomiming and pointing and introducing words for everything in the wagon, he showed them curtains they could draw across the front and between themselves and his perch for privacy.
Sam was really uncomfortable at just how private a mere curtain made things and that night she stopped Daniel at kisses. He got noticeably grumpy and she got annoyed with him for it. He starting leaving the curtain in the back open, or what hurt more, leaving it in place and going behind it, focusing on learning the language from Chako as quickly as possible. She accused him of being passive aggressive to which he merely said, "I guess the honeymoon is over."
When they did talk, they ended up discussing the repercussions of being rescued. Sam suggested that it might be well to keep their relationship secret for the time after they got back. "Let's assume that I don't get in trouble for what's happened so far. I mean you could argue extenuating circumstances but Danny, we would never be able to be on a team together again. I couldn't bear your being out there and my not knowing how you were doing, not being there to watch your back." This wasn't going down well and then she really drove the wedge in the rest of the way when she said, "I mean, now I understand what Pete meant when he talked about the problems he had dealing with my job." The P word was definitely not a good thing to bring up.
"Yeah, right, whatever," he said, closing the discussion and turning away but she didn't let it go.
"Unless we are ready to give up other worlds, we have to think about this." He looked back at her reproachfully over his shoulder and went to talk with Chako.
They rode in their curtained little world for 4 weeks. The wagon only stopped to change horses and replenish supplies. At the first few stops there were armed camps, established perhaps to act as depots in hostile territory. The mountains grew on the horizon. They spent three days threading through a mountain pass. Then they began to descend, the temperature rising and fragrant, balmy breezes blowing through the wagon. There were scattered trees.Daniel confirmed with Chako that there were coming down from a plateau. They started to encounter small villages next to rushing streams. At the first of these, Chako took them into a bath house. A couple came forward beaming. Sam wasn't sure whether it was out of respect for Chako or Daniel and her but the greetings were effusive.
The proprietors wore loose trousers of an unbleached linen and sandals. The man had an open, sleeveless vest with a border of intricate, swirling embroidery. The woman's sleeveless tunic was tight fitting and low cut and she wore a long red sash wound several times around her waist. Like their military escort the man had long hair worn in a single braid and was clean shaven. The woman had an corona of intricately woven braids wreathing her head. From the covert looks she was giving Sam's general appearance, Sam could see that she qualified as a "project."
Chako grabbed Daniel's beard and said something laughingly to him. Sam couldn't understand it as well as Daniel but it clearly was along the lines of "You don't have this because you want it do you?" Daniel vigorously agreed and suddenly he was seated with a towel around his neck and their hostess was shaving his beard off. Sam could look at Daniel all day under any circumstances but she was stunned by how delicious he was without the beard. All her annoyance with him since their journey had begun vanished.
They were taken into a room with a small heated pool sunken in the floor. The walls and pool were tiled with bright mosaics. The woman gave detailed and mostly understandable explanations of the bewildering array of items laid out on shelves. A large, less luxurious version of the rugs in the wagon lay on the floor at one end of the pool. After the orientation was over, the couple left. Before he followed them, Chako gestured at the rug and said something to Daniel that Sam didn't get at all. Daniel looked slightly embarrassed and Sam suddenly did understand what was intended.
Without any discussion with Sam, Daniel selected his idea of the appropriate soap and dropped a towel next to pool. With his back to her, he then shucked off the bedraggled Ghei robe, took the tie out of his hair, walked down the shallow steps into the water, and floated, resting his arms on a ledge immediately below the water that ran all around the pool. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Sam was left standing rooted in the same spot with her mouth open. She had never seen him naked before. It made her stomach turn over and her heart beat faster. He was so muscular in her preferred lean swimmer's mode. (Had she ever gotten over that embarrassing girlhood crush on Mark Spitz?) And then she realized he had never seen her naked either. Suddenly she felt very awkward and unsure of herself. What if he wasn't as dazzled with her as she was by him? Daniel continued to relax, looking almost asleep in the warm water. Sam thought He knows how I'm feeling. He's trying to make this easy for me. Feelings of love rushed over her and appreciation for how open he was when she had a hard time not being closed. Okay Sam, just do it. And she took of her clothes and went into the pool. He opened his clear blue eyes and looked up at her and the awe on his face made all her doubts disappear. He showed her how much he appreciated her there in the water and again on the rug. They made liberal, laughing use of the various lotions and that had its inevitable conclusion. By the time they got ready to get dressed their hair was almost dry. Sam was slightly embarrassed by how long they had taken but doubted that Chako was surprised. She did not regret a minute of it.
It was interesting to discover that the clothes provided for them were far more expensive than those worn by the bathhouse couple. Daniel's vest was covered with embroidery in gold thread and his trousers were of a very soft closely woven fabric. Sam's pants and shirtwaist was a silky fabric shot through with silver and her waist scarf was a beautiful paisley weave with tiny silver bells on the fringes at the ends. They were to be treated as very important people.
When they emerged, the woman came forward and managed to be both respectful and no-nonsense take charge at the same time when she offered to braid Sam's hair appropriately. They went into a little alcove and when Sam emerged quite a while later, she not only had braided hair, she also was perfumed and wore a heavy necklace, bracelets, and an anklet. Her scarf had been rewound and tied so it enhanced her cleavage. The woman was a regular steamroller that Sam was only able to derail when it came to trying to pierce her ears. When she finished braiding Sam's hair, she had gotten the point across that Sam should never let anyone but her husband and perhaps her children, when they were very little, see her hair unbraided again. She had been scandalizing everyone with it hanging freely. When Daniel saw her, he visibly gulped and the primping was all right. She was now some exotic creature, not Colonel Samantha Carter, and she felt free to move in this fantasy for awhile.
Things were much more pleasant in the wagon after that even though Sam didn't relent on the rules she had imposed. They talked no further about rescue. Sam, instead, joined Daniel in the language lessons and by the time they arrived at the end of their journey she was almost fluent.
As they looked over the driver's shoulder down on a beautiful gleaming seaside city with winding streets shaded by tall trees and alabaster houses with red tile roofs, Sam couldn't put off thoughts of the future any more. Nestled close to Daniel, Sam prayed fervently that somehow she wouldn't lose everything that mattered when – if – they went home.
