Stargate SG-1: Sacrifice Moon (28 page)

He brought the MP5 to fire position, steady on Eseios.

The man was carrying a Jaffa staff weapon, and there was blood
splashed on his arms, his hands, his face. His eyes were as wide and
dark as the black stone in his collar.

"Come," he said. He said it like Carter, as if the words no longer
made sense to his mind and he had to consciously fit every sound
together.

"Where?" Jack demanded.

If Eseios was capable of telling him, he didn't choose to; the figures still in the shadows seemed to melt away like ghosts. Eseios himself walked away, moving deceptively fast, and looked back over his
shoulder at Jack with unmistakable irritation in his face.

"Come," he repeated, and slid down a small hill of rubble, out of
sight.

Jack looked back at Carter, who had gotten to her feet without him noticing. She was vibrating again, but he didn't get a sense of
imminent danger. Not that it necessarily would mean anything; she'd
surprised him at every turn, so far. He'd probably still be thinking
everything was a-okay when she stuck a dagger up his -

"Come," she said, and offered him a hand. He looked at it, then up
at her face, and grabbed hold.

They moved pretty fast, with Carter's arm under his shoulders
and his draped around her neck; awkward, but effective. The pain in
his ankle had ratcheted up another notch - where was it now, eight?
Getting close to the record - and he couldn't put more than half his
weight on it, at best.

Not that she was letting him.

Whatever trail she was following, he couldn't spot it; apart from
that one hallucinogenic vision of the Dark Company surrounding
them, Jack saw no sign of them at all on the streets. No sound, either.
It was suspiciously quiet. He couldn't check his watch, but the moon
was sliding toward the horizon, so maybe the worst was over for the
night. Carter's moonstone still showed a fraction of white, maybe an
eighth of its surface.

Even making pretty good time, it took a couple of hours to close
the distance to where they were heading, which seemed to be deeper
into the city, toward the gleam of the Acropolis. It was close enough
now to shine over the tops of the ruins, and Jack had an idea of how
massive the thing was. Immense. Something on the scale of Ra's pyramid ship. Man, Daniel will drool...

If Daniel was still alive.

"Rest," he finally said, panting, and Carter stopped to let him slide
down to a sitting position on some cracked stone steps. "How much
farther?"

She crouched down, hands loose between her knees, and nodded
down the street. Which didn't tell him much. He stretched out his
cramping leg and swore softly at the pain. Whatever he'd managed
to mess up in there was well and truly screwed; he was looking at a
couple of weeks of rehab at the very least. Maybe surgical pins. Not
like he didn't have some experience of that...

Carter grabbed him and hauled him back to his feet.

"Ah. Right. Moving on," he choked, and felt the world start to unravel at the edges when his weight came down wrong. Carter, either
oblivious or not bothered by his moaning, dragged him forward. He
managed to get going again, after a few drunken seconds, and focused
hard. Weakness was not going to be rewarded.

Two more blocks, and then a sharp right turn, and then, suddenly,
there were black robed Dark Company guys standing in the way. They
parted to let the two of them through, and Jack saw Eseios crouched
next to a fallen body, staff weapon held at ready position.

Defending it.

Jack sucked in a deep breath as he recognized Daniel, shoved free
of Carter and hobbled forward without worrying about the pain. Pain
was something you locked away, dealt with when you had to. Right
now, he had other things to worry about.

He pressed his fingers to Daniel's cold, pale throat, and felt the
rhythmic surge of a pulse. Thank you.

Eseios, who continued to hold the staff weapon like he was about
to fight a small war, was glaring at the other hunters, including Carter.
When he looked up, Jack saw why. Daniel was down, wounded; Jack
was prey, pure and simple. Even Carter was looking tempted. The rest
of the Dark Company... feral. Predatory. Ready to spring.

"Teal'c?" He yelled it. "Teal'c!"

"O'Neill."

The voice was weak, and came from somewhere off to his left.
Nothing there but an impenetrable wall of rubble. Jack looked up and
saw a bombed-out shell of a building with half its outer wall slagged
into volcanic glass...

... and Teal'c. Burned, bloody, but aiming his staff weapon down
at the hunters surrounding him and Daniel.

"You okay?" Jack asked. Teal'c nodded. "Can you get down here?
I need you to help me with Daniel."

"A moment."

It was longer than that, and the Teal'c who finally dropped down
out of that broken jagged window didn't look like the same Jaffa he
knew. He looked slow, clumsy, and just two steps behind Jack in the
injury race. He limped over, and Jack got a good close look at his
face. Blistered. His shoulder was bleeding freely from a deep gash.

"Your version of okay looks worse than mine," Jack told him.

"My symbiote will heal me. I have had more serious injuries."

"Let's hope he has, too." Jack pointed down at Daniel. "Help me
get this thing off him." He grabbed one end of the column and heaved;
Teal'c barely broke a sweat, lifting the other and flinging it aside. Jack
hissed in agony when he had to go down on one knee to field-check
Daniel for injuries. "He's out. I don't think his legs are broken. Can
you carry him?"

Teal'c shook his head.

"Yeah, me neither." Jack looked at the hunters, checked his watch,
and said, "We wait for morning. Got a deck of cards?"

Before dawn, Daniel started to stir. By that time, Teal'c was already
improving. The blisters had receded to an uncomfortable-looking texture, and the wound on his shoulder had stopped bleeding entirely.
Daniel had woken from time to time to murmur Sha're's name and
phrases that Jack assumed might have been Abydonian, but for all
he knew might have been in one of the twenty-something other languages the archaeologist spoke.

If Teal'c understood any of it, he didn't let on.

When Daniel did come out of it, it was abrupt, as if somebody
had flipped a switch. He sat straight up and went berserk, yelling
in - again, a guess - Abydonian; Jack held on and talked to him until
he felt some of the tension easing away. "You're okay, Daniel," Jack
finally said, and let go.

Daniel sat up slowly, feeling his head as if trying to press the pain
out. "Jack..." He twisted to give him a wordless look, then turned to
Teal'c. "Teal'c, I thought you were - "

"I am fine, Daniel Jackson. I am relieved to find you are well."

"Don't know if this qualifies as well..." Daniel pressed his forehead and looked nauseated. "Artemis. Sha're was - "

He stopped talking and leaned forward to hide his face in his hands.
Jack moved to sit next to him, between him and Eseios, and the other
hunters who were still prowling the perimeter.

"Oh God, Jack," Daniel whispered. "God." He sounded shaken.
Dangerously shaken. "Where's Sam - "

"She's fine. She's right there." Jack indicated her with a jerk of
his chin; she was sitting against a wall, hands on her knees, watch ing them. Still had the predator's shine in her eyes, but it was fading.
"Talk to me, Daniel."

That got nothing but silence. Daniel sat, head in his hands, as the
dark spun into day, and the pale blue sun rose in half-hearted glory
over the horizon.

And then Eseios put his bloodied hand on Jack's shoulder and said,
in an utterly exhausted voice, "My men will help you now."

-t took half the morning to get back to the Dark Company's camp.
When they arrived, it looked like a completely different place.
Eseios led them into the big, open area that Jack guessed had once
been a theater, and it was full of people with a purpose - armed men
patrolling the entrances, women and children cooking and washing
clothes and sewing together rags for tents or cloaks or blankets. A
living, breathing settlement.

Some people looked hungry, but nobody was starving.

"My wife unlocks the cage at dawn," he said, when he saw the
question on Jack's face. "We come home to this. It is - helpful."

"Eseios!" Briseis came running, then slowed when she saw him.
The joy in her face flickered when she saw the blood on him, then
turned determinedly back on full shine. "You are safe, husband."

"We lost six," he said. He sounded exhausted, and sank down on a
camp stool that looked as if it had seen better days as a pile of scraps.
It creaked, but held his weight. "I - I tried not to - I will speak with
their women. Landes had a son..."

"Later," she said, and touched his hair with gentle fingers, then
turned away to snap out an order for water. Someone lugged in three
full pails. Eseios washed his hands and face clean, then cleared the
way for the next man who needed to wash away the night, the hunger,
the blood. Some spit and rinsed rust from their mouths.

SG-1 watched, silent but still together. And none of them, Jack
reflected, was having to wash murder away.

Not yet.

Briseis turned back to them, frowning, and said, "The boy who
came last night, Pylades. He wanted to talk with you. Will you...?"

"Yeah," Jack said, and sighed. "Guess we'll go to him." His ankle
reported it had a problem with this plan. He told it, for the forty-fifth
time this morning, to shut the hell up and follow orders.

Surprisingly, Briseis shook her head. "He is as bad as you and your friends. I have not been able to keep him resting," she said. "I will get
him. Stay." She shoved a pail of water into Jack's hands. "Drink."

It was clean and fresh, out of the underground cistern; he drank
until the water felt heavy and glassy in his stomach, then passed it to
Carter. She shared with Teal'c and Daniel first, then took two mouthfuls and splashed handfuls over her sweaty face. As she mopped
the moisture from her skin she looked a little better. Maybe. Daniel
concentrated on wiping his mouth but - Jack watched carefully - it
wasn't to get rid of the taste of blood. Apparently.

This was going to be one hell of a debrief, if they ever managed
to make it home.

"Jack!"

It was the kid, Pylades, coming fast but still supported by Briseis.
He was bandaged, and one arm was strapped securely down. His face
was thick and purple with bruises, one eye swollen nearly shut.

"Hey, kid." Jack offered his hand, and Pylades gripped it with
furious strength, then sank down to a sitting position on the sandy
ground. Briseis lingered, frowning at all of them as if she was tempted
to put them in some kind of traction, and finally went to speak with
her husband. "You look better."

Pylades shook that aside. "I was lucky," he said. "You - the four
of you - I did not believe you, before. But now I think you can do
anything. You survived - and the goddess was hunting you - "