Carnelian (28 page)

“Not someone I want to
marry. Someone my father thinks I should marry,” Seth told me. That
didn’t make it any better in my eyes. He was already being promised
to someone.
Someone that could spend her
life with him
. I really didn’t have a
chance. I wasn’t comparable. “It isn’t really an option to go
against your parents in this time, especially when your father not
only employs you, but is the head of the military. I have no
intention of marrying the woman my father likes,” Seth tried to
reassure me. He jumped back at me as soon as someone appeared from
the trees we were hidden behind.

Dee stood by the trees and stared at me. He
didn’t say anything, just stared. After a moment he shook his head
and turned to Seth.

“The general sent me to get you.” Dee bowed
his head as he spoke. This was not the defiant Dee from my time.
This Dee was younger, and more docile.

“Stay here with Mari, Nadim,” Seth replied,
before standing. He still kept his distance before he walked away,
but he was planning something. Seth winked at me before leaving me
in my secluded spot with Dee.

“Is it really you?” Dee asked, sitting
beside me.

“Um, yes,” I replied. Who else would I
be?

“I keep playing all those memories in my
mind. I had just about convinced myself it was a dream. Cars,
football, college, they don’t have a place here, and there’s no way
to describe them or even imagine they are real. I figured I had to
have hurt my head majorly or something. That it couldn’t be real.
But it was real, wasn’t it?” Dee asked. While Seth looked and
sounded exactly the same as when I last saw him, Dee did not. Dee
seemed younger than I remembered. A lot less confident and assured
of himself.

“If it wasn’t real, then I would have to
doubt this time is real,” I answered. “Because, to me, this is the
weird world.”

Dee sat a few more moments thinking before
he replied. “You came back for him, didn’t you?”

I was unsure how to reply. Seth didn’t say
anything to Dee before he left us alone, and I didn’t know what it
meant. Was Dee more loyal to the general or to Seth? Was this Dee
really that different than the Dee from my time? Dee was Seth’s
chariot driver, but I was unsure how far that bond went now.

“You’re right, don’t answer that,” Dee
quickly said before I could answer. “I don’t want to know. Well, I
do, or I wouldn’t have asked, but I don’t because I don’t want to
be the one to get Seth into trouble.” That answered that for
me.

“Can I ask you what is going on here? Or can
you not tell me?” I tried to change the subject.

“We returned two days ago to the army. No
time had passed beyond the night we left. We are exactly where we
were three years ago, about to go to war again. This has been a
long campaign, and I can’t wait to go home. Leaving your time was
about getting back here, but I had hoped the war would be done by
now. We made a run east with the guys you see here to check out a
scouting party that had been reported. We are now heading back to
the rest of the army to march to meet up with the Pharaoh. Then we
will attack to get back the recent loss of land. We once held the
lands all the way to Kadesh, and now we would be happy with just
half that back under our control. We will probably have to push
further a few cities before we head back to Kemet.” Dee watched the
trees, waiting for Seth.

Seth returned to usher me to his chariot. We
had hours to go to make it back to the army the men left behind. By
the time we made it back to the army, it was already getting near
dusk. We entered the camp, and I was surprised by the amount of
people I saw. I don’t know how I would have pictured an ancient
army, but the thousands of people dotting the hillside they were
camped on was not it. The sheer size made me wonder how they even
traveled. As we passed further into the group, I realized it was
all neatly divided into groups, which had to help. The groups
actually looked a bit alike as we made it further into the
camp.

“We hire people from the other cities and
countries to fight on campaigns along with native Egyptians,” Seth
explained, his breath warm on my shoulder. My ride back had been
between Seth and Dee on their chariot. They were the only two in
the group that could spare having extra weight on their
chariot.

“Those men there,” Seth pointed to the
light-brown-haired men that all had similar tightly-cropped hair
that included bangs. “They come from across the sea. We pay for
them, and they come as already trained soldiers. Good soldiers.”
Seth led me through more crowds on foot now, keeping close by.

We weaved between more men, some already
lying down and others that had begun drinking. Off to the side a
group of men were cheering and watching a fight between one man and
a group. The one man was getting beaten badly, but he continued to
get back up. Again he was knocked down. More cheers went up.

“Is someone going to stop that?” I asked
Seth.

“No, that’s punishment. He must have done
something wrong,” Seth replied, leading the way.

“Punishment?” I asked. By now the man was
bleeding not just from his face, but all around his head. It even
looked like his ear was partially torn. Some sort of punishment.
“Remind me not to do anything wrong,” I replied.

Seth smiled at me. “If anything goes wrong,
you wouldn’t be punished. As a potential princess, my father
wouldn’t risk upsetting your cousin who’s in charge.”

We stopped near a fire where mats were laid
down and men were talking softly. They were not halfway as
rambunctious as the men we already passed. It might have been the
age, most of the men being twice as old as those we passed, or it
might have been the general standing with them. He gave an air of
someone that you didn’t disturb with chatter. Seth motioned for me
to sit near his father. I sat silently and watched as Seth nodded
to his father and walked away.

“I am sorry, Princess, that we do not have
more to offer you at this point. We should be by a town in a day or
two after meeting up with the Pharaoh. Until then you’ll have to
make do with what we have to offer,” the general said to me. He
pointed to a guy some distance behind us, and the man
approached.

I wanted to jump up at the sight of him and
hug him, but I did not. Something about how he walked and held
himself told me not to. Ty was standing before me, handing me
something to eat with his head bowed. Ty moved back to where he was
before and didn’t meet any of the eyes of the men around the fire.
Not that it mattered. None of them were paying any attention to
him, either. I stared at him, but he wouldn’t look at me.

“You like that one?” the general asked
me.

“One what?” I asked in reply.

“Our slave over there. I got him on a
campaign to Nubia and brought him home with us. He’s Seti’s
personal slave. Seti trained him, and he’s a better fighter than
half the people we have here. It’s nice to have someone well
trained to watch over Seti,” the general replied. Seth had
mentioned Ty was his slave, but it didn’t register when I was back
in my time period. Ty stood there as we talked about him. Spoils of
war and slaves were beyond me. Seth was right. I wasn’t prepared
for this time period. I should have read more during the weeks I
spent searching for the chalcedony.

Seth returned to our side, and Ty brought
him food likewise. It wasn’t much. From what I could tell it was
bread and something meat, dried and leathery. I took a bite of the
leathery stuff and tried to chew on it. I doubted this was much
substance for an army, although no one seemed to mind. Everyone
conversed around me, but I didn’t pay much attention until Seth
spoke.

“Father, can we speak alone with the
princess?” Seth asked. The general nodded. Seth stood and offered
me his hand to join him. We walked into one of the few tents on the
hillside. Inside was sparsely furnished, but enough to give me
sense that it was the general’s tent.

“Father, is it your intention to give the
princess back to her cousin?” Seth asked.

“Yes,” the general replied. Neither guy even
looked at me as they talked about me.

“Then can I make another proposition? Maybe
one that would work better for us in the long run?” Seth asked. I
still was invisible to the men. It was a bit frustrating.

“You see a better way we can use her to our
advantage?” The general was very interested.

“Well, I was thinking that we don’t know
exactly who her father was. It might be better to keep her with us
for now. It could be that her father is from our country, and not
the Nahrin. You did have a delegation escorting the princess for
months before she ever disappeared. I’d be willing to marry Mari if
need be to appease the Nahrin,” Seth offered like it would be a
hardship for him. I slid my foot over a few inches, allowing me to
step on his toes, but the ground was too soft to make it hurt.

The general was smiling. He
was actually grinning. “Now
that
is a good offer,” he replied. “They might not
think as much since we are only a military family and not Pharaoh,
but I am sure I can talk to Horemheb to get his support behind it.
We could marry royalty into our family and link the Nahrin to us
more.” The general paced a bit. Now I knew where Seth got that
from. “This would all have to be because she wanted it, too. The
Nahrin will not accept a marriage without her consent.” He still
talked like I was not in the room. Both men finally turned to look
to me.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for marriage,” I
replied. It was the best answer I could give without being able to
stick my tongue out at Seth. He stood slightly behind his father,
and I could read the immediate agitation on his face. “I’d have to
give up my people completely,” I contemplated. People that I didn’t
even know I belonged to just hours before.

“For an even greater people,” the general
replied. He was apparently trying to butter me up to the idea. “The
Nahrin are slowly fading. Even now there’s talk of it being split
as Kemet was once. You’d be better off being with us. We are a
wealthy family and hold several estates from years of service to
the Pharaoh. Seti himself owns his own lands already. We are
personal friends with the Pharaoh also. I promise you, we are as
good as a family as you can get within Kemet without marrying into
the Pharaoh’s family.” He was truly trying to sell me on it. I
still didn’t want to give in easy with Seth suggesting that
marrying me would be a hardship. The general looked between me and
Seth. I could only look at the general, otherwise I’d be glaring at
Seth. The general turned to Seth. “I’ll leave you to convince her,
but the more I think about it, the better it sounds. Please, son,
be on your best behavior. Prove to this girl you’re
worthwhile.”

The general left the tent and I stood alone
facing Seth. He marched over to me, stopping only inches away. He
was more frustrated than mad at this point.

“I don’t get you. First you come all the way
here to see me and then you don’t want to stay with me? You’d
rather go off to a country you don’t even know?” Seth asked. Okay,
maybe he was a little pissed.

“Or, I’ll just go home,” I replied, matching
anger with anger. Not the best solution, but I didn’t exactly like
being treated like an invisible object that they could trade
around. Seth had tried to warn me that his time period was
different than mine, but I still didn’t like it.

“Good luck on that, the goddess shrine is
miles north in a secret spot. Without the stones kept there, you
can’t go anywhere,” Seth replied, smiling a fake smile because he
thought he had the upper hand.

“I can come and go as I please. I don’t need
stones or a shrine.” I pulled back the sleeve of my shirt and moved
closer to the only light in the tent. Seth took my arm and looked
at it. The lines were faint, but even I saw them in the dark.

“What is that?” he asked, tenderly turning
over my arm. His anger was gone.

“The stone the goddess left on me to keep me
from getting stuck anywhere,” I replied. My anger simmered down a
bit.

“You can leave any time?” Seth asked,
disappointment laced his voice.

“Yes, and if I’m such a burden to have to
marry, I can leave sooner rather than later.” My anger was now
turning into sulking. I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t sure if Seth saw
me as a burden or not. I knew back in my time that he loved me, but
I still wasn’t sure on where we stood in this time.

“Seriously?” Seth asked as he laughed and
wrapped his arms around me. I would have struggled if I could, but
I couldn’t refuse his touch. “You’d really think I wanted you to
leave? And what? Spend my days wondering why life just seems so
less bright without you in it?”

“Seriously? You missed me?” I asked. I
needed to be sure. This was crazy, considering marrying Seth and
having a life here that I had not pictured having for at least
another ten years. But somehow with Seth it just kind of seemed
right. It seemed like I could fit into his world, if he wanted me
there.

“I’ve missed you from the moment we
returned,” Seth replied, pulling me even tighter. All I could smell
was the fresh linen scent that was Seth. I closed my eyes and
inhaled again. I was truly in his arms. “It has been two days of
torture wondering how I was to go on with life when I left the best
part of it in the future, where I couldn’t reach her.”

“You’re lucky,” I replied before kissing his
chest. “I had to live through three weeks of you being gone.”

“Really?” he asked, pulling me back to see
his face. “I’m sorry. I should have taken you with me like you
wanted. You were right. You belong here obviously, since your
mother was from here. I get it now.”