It took us a few days to ride back home on the camel since they are slower than horses. We'd traveled night and day, only one of us would sleep on the camel while the other made sure we were going the right way. When the camel walked into the camp the warriors and the people excitedly surrounded us and helped me down from the camel before Ardeth dismounted. They immediately started asking us what had happened. Why did Hamunatra disappear into the sands? Where did Imhotep go? What about the woman who woke him? One of the warriors walked up to Ardeth and whispered something in his ear before walking away.
"We have a meeting with the elders." He told me, pulling me away from the crowd.
"So soon?" I asked him. "You still need to need to see someone about your injuries."
"I'll be fine." He told me and I rolled my eyes. He always did this, pretended his injuries were nothing.
"You were in an area that was blown up, Ardeth. You had rocks and mummies on top of you. You need to see someone about your injuries." I told him.
"After the meeting." He said walking away from me.
I was walking slowly in the market, looking at the many items that were being bargained off to tourists and locals alike. There were so many people that it was a surprise no one had been trampled yet. All the venders seemed to say the same thing to everyone, their trinkets were thousands of years old and were once worn by Pharoahs and their Queens. I smiled and shook my head at them before moving on to the next stall. A woman who was moving quickly through the venders pushed past me knocking me into a man in all black and strange tattoos on his face. He caught me so we wouldn't be knocked over and helped me get stable on my feet.
"I'm so sorry. Are you alright?" I asked him finally getting a good look at him. The tattoos that adorned his cheeks were strange and matched one another under each brown eye and he wore thick black robes and a black head dress to protect him against the sun.
"I'm fine. Are you okay?" he asked me.
"Well I'm pretty sure no one can die of embarrassment so I'll make a full recovery and hopefully not bump into anyone else today." I joked he cracked a smile before nodding to me.
"Good day." He said before he began to move on.
"Good day and thank you for helping me." I said before continuing my shopping, his brown eyes swimming in my mind.
We made our way to the elders tent in silence. This was the way the tribes worked. Ardeth, as Chieftain, made the final ruling on everything and the only ruling on major things such as Hamunaptra. The elders made rulings on minor things before reporting to Ardeth for his agreement or disagreement and on things concerning Ardeth, such as who to marry among other things. They had tried to make him marry before but he turned the woman down we left to a hidden oasis nearby and I let him vent to me before we started laughing about it. I could see him limping slightly and it worried me greatly. He needed to see someone who could take care of his wounds and make sure they were properly bandaged not delivering a report to the elders.
"After this you are going to see your sister." I told him and he shook his head.
"No, I'll see a healer but she doesn't need to worry about me so much." He said and I rolled my eyes.
"She'll worry more if you go to someone else and you know it. You'll go and see your sister so she worries a little less about your injuries being taken care of right. Then she'll do what she always does and go find you mother and other siblings and tell them all about it making your tent a very busy tent today." I said.
"Is that how it always does?" he asked me and I nodded my head.
"Yes, it is. You have a big family that worries about you, don't worry about worrying them so much because it's going to happen anyway." I said and he sighed.
"When did you become so knowledgeable about my family and how they all thought?" he asked me and I smiled at him.
"Because I have a brother who worries me all the time like you worry your family. And I worry about you as well." We walked the rest of the way in a comfortable silence before entering the elders tent. The elders tent was the largest tent in the tribe and was in the very center. If robbers ever found the tribe then this would be the tent they'd try and hit first, and they would find it empty for no one lived in this tent. It was used for the elders to meet in and collect reports from the groups who guarded Hamunaptra.
"Ardeth. Katherine. Welcome home." The former Chieftain's wife and Ardeth's mother said with a smile. The elders made of the highest command from each of the twelve tribes scattered throughout the Sahara. All the elders resided in the central camp while the twelve tribes moved from the central camp to their residential camp. Ardeth stayed in the central camp as Chieftain and I, as well as his family, stay with him. Ardeth's mother fought her way onto the counsel and after her husband died and Ardeth became Chieftain she fought to keep her seat. One thing could be said for the Bay family, they were incredibly stubborn.
"Thank you mother." Ardeth greeted her. I nodded my head to her and the others that surrounded us.
"We have many questions," One of the elders told us. "The first one is who awakened the creature?"
"A British woman named Evelyn Carnahan." I answered them.
"Were you there?" another asked me.
"No. I was giving a report to Ardeth, trying to make a plan to get them to leave when we heard the cry of one of the men." I said.
"Could she have been stopped?" he asked me and I thought about the situation for a moment.
"No. She was a curious woman as were the American's who were also there. Nothing could have been done." I answered.
"When the creature awoke what happened?" he asked. I sighed lightly before thinking of the answer. None of the questions were questions Ardeth would really answer because he wasn't there, I was. I told them what had happened from being attacked by locusts to the names he'd called both Eve and myself. Once they heard the name Amunet they all shared a look before looking back at us.
"Thank you Katherine. You may leave us." One of the elders told me. Some of them didn't trust me with all their secrets like Ardeth did.
"She stays." Ardeth told him.
"Ardeth, she is not one of us." One of the elders reminded him.
"She nearly died to defend us and helped defeat the creature. She deserves to be here." Ardeth defended me and I smiled slightly before turning back to the elders. They all shared a look before continuing their question. The report seemed to take hours and Ardeth was getting weaker fast.
"If I may make a request." I said to the elders. "The battle against the creature was long and both Ardeth and myself sustained wounds which need attention. Could we finish this later?" I asked them. They all shared a look before one nodded to us. We nodded and left the tent. Once we were out of the tent I grabbed his arm and drug him to his sister's tent.
"Dana? Are you here?" I called to her. She came out of a smaller tent connected to her larger one and gave us both a look.
"Sit down." She ordered before getting started on bandaging our wounds, never asking questions on what happened.