See… I did the math this morning and realised its been two weeks since this was posted so… you get a new chapter! Ain't I a lovely person :D
Disclaimer: Once again, I own known of the guys from the Mummy (unfortunately) I can only claim rule over the characters you don't recognize.
Princess of the Nile
Chapter 2: No News is Good News?
Ardeth Bay was not in a particularly good mood.
He walked the length of the Medjai village, the sun just rising over the dunes in the distance, he nodded to the men and women, already up and working that morning, but otherwise stayed in his own gloomy world.
She should have sent a message by now. It had been weeks since he had heard from her, and he had people in Cairo all the time - for any news that was coming in from other countries or to stop grave robbers selling stolen goods from the pyramids to others in the city or take them abroad - yet he had still received no word.
It worried him to think that.
Not that he was that worried. After all, she was Medjai herself. Her father was one of the men serving under him, still fairly young in years as he'd not been older than nineteen when he'd married, and had had his first child the year after. She had grown up with Ardeth, though he was nearly six years older than her, they were better friends than Ardeth had been with many of the other boys. And they'd both been devastated when her mother came and pulled her from the village, dragged her over to London, where she still lived. Ardeth had not seen her for many years after that. Though they had written to each other often, kept the friendly connection between them.
It had only been about six months before hand that he had met her for the first time in nine years, and even then it had only been briefly.
It had been when he had gone to retrieve the key from the O'Connell's and had stopped off in the library where he knew she spent most of her time, reading the texts on Egypt there, mainly to ask her if she knew where the O'Connell's lived. Luckily for him, she did, and he had promised to see her soon and to 'keep in touch'.
Except it had been over a month since the last letter, and he'd not heard anything since.
Ardeth remembered the excitement she had poured into her last letter, she had said that she was sure she was close to finding out something important, and was sure she'd be able to work out and tell him in the next letter what it was. He severely doubted that the information was so amazing that she had forgotten to write to him, she was not the forgetful sort of person. However, Ardeth had a feeling, one that he hoped was not true, that what she had found was so important that someone else had heard of it and had silenced his friend. He hoped that it was not the case, but knew, at the back of his mind, that it most probably was.
The certainty in this had increased so much by the time he reached the long building the animals were kept in at night that he entered and immediately walked over to his horse, saddling it and pulling himself up into the seat.
He was just leaving the stable, to go to Cairo and then on to London, to find her, when his second in command, Amin came rushing over to him.
"Ardeth" he called as he stopped beside the horse "You have heard then? I didn't think anyone could find you."
"Heard what?" Ardeth asked, thinking for a moment that it was news of her, maybe a letter or something
"There is a party of Americans at the Giza pyramids, we think they might be grave robbers. The elders want us to go over there with some of the warriors." Ardeth sighed at this information but nodded his head; Amin disappeared again to gather the warriors, leaving Ardeth alone again. He turned his head away from the village and towards the vast lengths of sand. He really wanted to find her, but his people needed him and Egypt came first, he would go to Cairo as soon as he'd sorted the grave robber problem.