Chapter three
___
John had never meant to be a wanderer.
As a child, he had loved his family fiercely, and had declared with child-like confidence that he would never let anything happen to them. Back them, he had thought that he would spend his whole life in those few square miles that were home. But then he had grown. His journeys had become longer and longer, and he had started to watch the path of migrating birds, and to wonder where they went. "Why don't you follow them, then?" his father had screamed, the winter after everything had changed.
And so John had, starting the long course of years that had led to him getting onto a ship. That ship had offered a tantalising hints of a new kind of home, but then it had gone down in a nightmare of stormy water.
Since then he had wandered, putting down no roots, interacting with people as seldom as possible. Two months he had lived in the most recent village, and he still didn't know its name. He left it without the tiniest shred of regret. It didn't mean anything to him.
It should mean something, he thought. Life wasn't supposed to be like this. Once upon a time, life hadn't been like this. Once upon a time, he hadn't been like this.
"Once upon a time…" he said aloud. "You're as bad as they are, John."
It wasn't a story. Immortal Others didn't emerge from below ground to entice mortals to join their dance. But a man with a marvellous weapon had saved John's life, and now, if John interpreted the situation correctly, was at risk of losing his own. John had always been quick to act when people were in danger; how had he lost that? You know that very well, John, he thought. But two wrongs didn't make a right. He'd failed to save lives in the shipwreck, but by turning his back, by shutting himself off from the world…
He stopped that thought; rode on steadily through the rain, conscious of the miles that his horse had already ridden that morning, but conscious, too, that delay could be fatal. Certain things still hurt, but perhaps, in a very small way, this could feel like an awakening. The old John Sheppard was dead, never to return, but perhaps, if he saved this man's life…
"Stupid, John," he berated himself. This wasn't a story, where revelations came quickly, and one good deed could wipe out everything bad in your past. Nothing had changed. He was leaving because he was losing another piece of himself with every day that he stayed. He was leaving because…
That thought, too, he halted, letting himself drift in the rhythm of the hooves. He came down from the hills, down into the marshy plain. Marks in the mud showed that a large party had been this way before him, travelling first in one direction and then the other. The lone hill with its single tower rose ahead of him, visible for miles around.
And the hill was where John made for, following hoof-prints in the mud. Once the ground started to rise, the tracks grew harder to follow, and John dismounted, tying his horse to a thorn bush that was bent nearly double away from the prevailing wind. It was a strange hill, worked into terraces by people who were long gone. A race of giants? he thought, but that was just a story. The only people who had built on the earth were humans, until the long years of winter had almost wiped them out and made them forget so much.
He saw the guards before he came upon them, of course; the bleak hillside offered little protection. They stood beneath a solitary thorn tree, looking cold and wet and miserable. It was too late, of course, to slip away unnoticed. John decided to brazen it out. "Hi," he said, raising his hand.
They were still wearing their masks, their eyes invisible behind narrow slits. As John approached, he mentally kicked himself. He'd noticed all along that the party returning to the village had consisted of most of the able-bodied men, but it hadn't occurred to him to wonder where the others were. Just six months ago, he thought, it would have been very different.
What have I lost? he thought, but then that thought became irrelevant, because no thoughts except those of the here and now could be allowed to matter.
Focus changed. He saw the way they stood, slow and heavy, like men not trained for combat. He saw their blunt eating knives at their belts, and the way that one was nervously opening and closing his hand at his side. He saw their iron chains and their iron talismans. He saw how one of them favoured his left leg, and he marked the terrain between them as he closed the gap, to stop a dozen paces from them.
"John," one of them said, his voice muffled; John didn't know his name. "Have you been sent to relieve us, John?"
The other one shook his head. "They wouldn't. Not a stranger."
John rubbed his neck, wiping away rain. "I… Uh, here's the thing. I heard what had happened, and I, uh, wanted to see the… Other for myself. I didn't tell you guys, but it nearly killed me the other day. I want to see it safely bound in iron." Their masked faces were blank, staring at him. "So if you could, uh… point the way…" He gave them a quick encouraging grin.
The first man shook his head. "We can't do that, John." His voice sounded apologetic, but his hand went to his knife.
The other one took up the tale. "We knew about the Others from songs and stories," he said, "but they haven't been seen in these parts since before the years of darkness. But now this one comes just two turnings of the moon since you arrived, John."
"It's not that we don't trust you, John," the first man said, "but… well, you are a stranger."
A stranger, always a stranger, John thought, because you could live in a place for fifty years without them forgetting that you weren't born there, and the doors of his birthplace had long since been closed to him.
He moved swiftly, closing the gap between them, grabbing the second man with an arm around the neck, bringing up his knife to his throat. "Tell me where you left him," he hissed. "Bound in iron, was it? Where?"
"In the ruins of Glaston, John," the man forced out through lips that hardly moved. John could feel the man's heart racing in his throat.
"Anyone watching him?" John demanded.
"No. No." It was the other man who spoke, his own knife trembling uselessly in his hand. "We're watching in case the Other's kin emerge from the door down yonder, but there's no-one there, John, no-one there at all."
"Good." John tightened his grip on the man. "I don't want to hurt you," he said. "I have a past, you see. This whole mysterious stranger thing I had going… It wasn't a lie. I know how to hurt you. I don't want to, but I strongly advise you not to follow me and not to try to stop me."
He let the man go. The man fell to his knees and gasped for breath, ripping the mask from his face. He was little more than a boy, barely twenty. John was fairly sure that his name was Sam.
What have I become? he thought, but he couldn't let it show on his face. Edging backwards, knife in hand, he walked away from them, until he had made two dozen paces, when he turned his back to walk away.
He heard them bearing down on him, of course; prepared to defend himself, but he had no desire to hurt them for real. They had no such qualms. John's foot slipped in trampled mud, and that gave them the opening they needed. Two on one gave him little chance, not when he couldn't use his knife freely. "You've got it wrong," he said - stupid, stupid words. A knife gouged across his upper arm. A foot found his side, kicking again and again, and he gave a ragged howl of pain as they struck the marks left the Wraith on his chest.
He tore himself free in the end, his hand ripping up a handful of grass, his fingers sinking into the mud. He slid down the hill, then gravity took him, carrying him further than he intended, rolling him over and over, depositing him on a terrace in front of a dark tunnel into the hill itself.
Two items lay in the grass. Panting, gasping for breath, he laid his hand on one of them, rain slithering against his palm. Two faces, one masked and one uncovered, looked down from above, clearly reluctant to approach the opening.
John pulled himself to his feet, and it was all he could do to remain upright, not to curl in on himself with pain. He felt blood on his upper arm, oozing from the jagged line of liquid fire. "Call it quits, guys?" he rasped, and then he ran.
The rain grew heavier, the visibility becoming more and more limited - or maybe that was just his own fading vision, because, hello, injured man here? Rodney had struggled until he was panting and exhausted, but there was nothing he could do to free himself. Best brain in two galaxies, he thought, and he couldn't undo a piece of technology straight out of the Middle Ages.
His head sagged. The throbbing grew worse and worse, his vision blurring. His stomach churned, and he swallowed and swallowed, trying to keep himself from throwing up. "Because, oh, yes, I seem to have a concussion," he said, "on top of everything else. Isn't that enough to make this the perfect day?"
Nothing he could do. Nothing he could do. A bird of prey circled overhead, screeching. Rodney looked up, and rain fell in his eyes. He screwed them shut, blinking, and instinctively tried to bring his hand up to rub at his eyes. The sharp pain in his wrist made him moan aloud.
When he opened his eyes again, a dark figure was approaching on horseback from the trees, stooping low to avoid the overhanging branches. Rodney's mouth went very dry. He saw the long shape of a gun across the man's lap, and saw the easy way he controlled the horse, holding the reins one-handed. It made him think of Westerns, and then he almost laughed – it was either that, or cry – because it struck him suddenly how unfair it was in real life that you couldn't tell by the music whether someone was a hero or a villain. This man looked as if he could be either.
The man dismounted, turning his back on Rodney as he tied his horse to a tree. He's come to kill me, Rodney thought. I am so screwed.
The horse snorted. The man pressed his hand to the creature's neck for a moment, then turned round, his face impassive. "Oh," Rodney gasped, recognising the peasant he had saved from the Wraith. "It's you. I saved your life, you know. It really wouldn't be fair if you paid me back by killing me, you know."
The man said nothing at all, merely paced closer. He stopped a few feet away, and Rodney had to peer upwards to see his face. It hurt his neck, the stone pillar pressing against the back of his head.
Rodney swallowed. "Or you've just come to do the silent gloating thing. I get that. Not content with--"
"That," the man interrupted, indicating Rodney's situation with a jerk of the chin, "wasn't me."
"Oh. Well." Rodney moistened his lips. "Then what about, oh, I don't know, setting me free?"
The man remained standing. It suddenly occurred to Rodney that he should probably have tried lashing out at him with his feet, but then he saw that whether by accident or design, the man had positioned himself just out of reach.
"People have been dying," the man said at last, "all shrivelled and old. That the Wraith guy's doing?"
"Of course it is." Rodney could feel his heart racing in his chest, sending prickles of pain up and down his cramped arms. "And this is relevant how?"
The man crouched down. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, as if they were somewhere else entirely, somewhere where they had all the time in the world. "They tell stories in these parts," he said, then gave a quick smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Scratch that. They tell stories everywhere, but it's worse round here. These guys really believe them."
"Stories?" Rodney sneered. "Forgive me for forgetting that I'm in kindergarten and this is story time."
"Stories," the man said. A thick drop of rain rolled down his cheek like a tear. He wiped it away, catching it low on his chin. "About… creatures who live under the hill. They call them Others, but I've heard other folks call them fairies. They like to invite mortals home with them, but time passes differently down there, so--"
"And this is relevant how?" Rodney demanded again. "Are you going to rescue me, or are just planning on boring me to death?"
The man looked at him mildly. "You came out of the hill, you see…"
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Rodney cried. "You think I'm a fairy? Oh, please don't let Zelenka ever get to hear of this."
The man stood up again. There was a look in his eyes that didn't match his peasant clothes. "See, I don't believe in the Others," he said, and then he turned away, heading back towards his horse. "But then," he said, the words carrying clear over his shoulder despite the pounding of the rain, "until a few days ago, I would have sworn blind that nothing like a Wraith could ever exist."
Come back! Rodney thought, then wondered why he was thinking such a thing. A dangerous-looking stranger going away and leaving you was a very good thing to happen, really.
But the man didn't mount the horse. When he turned back, he was holding the Wraith stunner in one hand and had the heavy P90 resting across the other arm. "You attacked the Wraith with blue fire," the man said, as he raised the stunner and pointed it at Rodney's chest. Am I right in assuming that I can get the same effect if I press this--"
"No," Rodney gasped, as pain erupted in his shoulders and his wrists, and metal scraped as he struggled. "I mean, yes. Yes, you're right, but don't… you don't understand. I've got a head injury, probably a concussion for sure. I don't know what'll happen if I get stunned on top of a concussion, but I'm willing to bet it's not good. It might kill me. So don't, please. Please, just… don't."
The man lowered the stunner a few inches, and stalked forward again. His eyes raked Rodney over from head to toe. "Where do you come from?" he asked.
"A very long way away," Rodney said, "somewhere you've never heard of, and I'm trying to get back, but I can't, okay? I can't." His voice cracked on a stab of pain.
The man lowered the stunner even further. Something flickered across his face, before all the muscles tightened. Then a dog barked not too far away. The man glanced round and the horse raised its head. The horse was the first of the two to relax. The man was breathing fast, Rodney noticed, and there was fresh blood on his arm, and wet smears of it on the back of his hand.
"They're going to come," the man said simply, his voice showing none of that. "Neither of us want to be there when they do."
"Oh, d'you think?" Rodney said, and the man smiled – a quick flash of a smile that almost looked genuine. "So how's about getting me out of these things?" Rodney demanded.
The man walked round Rodney in a wide circle. When Rodney twisted his neck, he could still see him, but only just; a dark figure kneeling on the ground, his head bent, his mouth set in an intent line. Rodney moaned when the man touched the bands at his wrist. Then pain flared in his head, and he had to close his eyes; had to face forward again and swallow hard to keep himself from throwing up.
The dog barked again, nearer this time. "Well?" Rodney demanded, when he could.
The man's voice gave nothing away. "It needs a key."
Rodney breathed in and out again. "And oh, yes, I've got the key right here, but I thought I'd sit on it rather than use it to get out." He felt the man's fingers brush the back of his hand, the touch wet with blood or rain. He swallowed again. "We haven't got a key," he said.
The dog was nearer. Was that someone shouting? The horse stopped eating, and looked up warily, tugging at its rope. Screwed, Rodney thought. Screwed. He wasn't going to…
No. No. Focus. Think. Try to push away the hammer-blows of pain. Try to clear his fading vision. Try to forget the fact that he was probably dying from bleeding inside his skull. Try to forget…
"You'll have to shoot the chain," he said. His voice sounded high, shrill. "Not with the stunner but the other one. It's… Have you ever fired a gun before? I… Listen, I don't know anything about guns, okay – don't know the proper words for things. This one fires out lots and lots of bullets. Practise on something that isn't me first, because I don't feel like being the victim of friendly fire, and…"
Rodney's words ran out. The man said nothing, nothing to show that he had heard, nothing to show that his idiot peasant mind had even understood. But Rodney sensed rather than saw him stand up.
When the gunfire started, Rodney jumped, his head impacting against the pillar. Pain surged in a wave, and he tried to cling on, he really did, but the wave swept him away.
John kept going through the rain, through a day that was getting darker and darker. The man he had freed was lying face down across the horse's shoulders, his head pressed against John's knee. It was an awkward position to ride in, but John had done it before; remembered riding one-handed, the other pressed to the savage teeth-marks on his brother's flank.
It had been raining then, too.
"Stupid, John," he berated himself, then gave a harsh bark of laughter at how often he had called himself that - more than ever in the last few months. The past was still relevant, but others things mattered more. Like the fact that he had no idea where to go. Like the fact that the villagers were probably already hunting them, and the Wraith…
No, he thought, focus on the first of the problems. When he twisted in the saddle, steadying the man with a hand on his shoulder, he couldn't see anyone following them. Low cloud and driving rain had taken most of the countryside, but there was no movement in any part of it that he could see. Even the birds had retreated, turning the land into empty, dead space.
Where to go? All he knew was that west lay the sea. He'd come from there, and had lived in two other villages before the latest one, but they wouldn't want him back. Or maybe they would, he thought, remembering the watchful attention of certain girls, but he had no desire to go back to them and risk putting them in danger.
The man stirred, groaning, then settled down again. A few inches of chain trailed from each wrist, and his hands were smeared dark with blood. John had parted the man's hair and looked at the wound there; had gently wiped away the blood with a corner of his coat, and had known that there was nothing he could do but get the man to safety as soon as possible, and then…
Rain drove into his face. A tree took shape from the rain like a ship coming out of the mist. "And then…?" he said aloud, but he had no answers.
He shook his head briskly. "Cross that bridge when you come to it, John. First things first. Concentrate on the here and now." Truisms that his mother had said before she had stopped smiling. Lessons that his commanding officers had taught him in his days in the militia, when focusing on the wrong problem could bring about your death.
He reached a line of trees, too straight to be accidental. Once, long ago, humans had planted these here. John considered it just for a moment, then headed into the trees. The rain eased when he was underneath them, but there weren't enough leaves to keep the rain off entirely, and heavy drops fell from the branches.
The ground started to slope downwards, and John suddenly realised that he had been here before. But then the leaves had just started to turn brown, and he had been sick and barely aware of his surroundings, injured in more ways than one.
"Stupid," he told himself again, and he smiled again, because he had to. None of that mattered. What mattered was that this was a good place to bring this… what was he? Prisoner? Travelling companion? He didn't know. He had no idea what was going to happen as a result of freeing him.
But he knew one thing, and that was that if he had left the man to die there in the ruins, it would have meant that he was no longer John Sheppard, but something dead inside, not deserving to live.
Rodney heard himself groan before he had fully processed the fact that he was awake. He brought his hand up to his throbbing head, but it felt heavier than normal, as if…
His eyes snapped open. He remembered everything. "Is a bit of amnesia too much to ask for," he demanded, "so I can at least pretend that everything's okay?"
No-one answered him. Rodney had a dim memory of half awakening to find himself slung over a saddle, but he now he appeared to be lying on the ground, and, "oh, how nice," he sneered, because someone seemed to have covered him up with a sodden, filthy coat, doubtless riddled with germs. He pushed it down his body, and managed to sit up.
The man who had freed him was dragging branches around, like a boy scout struggling to make some sort of shelter. "You okay?" he asked, when he saw Rodney moving.
"No, I am very much not okay," Rodney snapped. "I'm trapped in some post-apocalyptic nightmare, I can't get home, I've got chains on my wrist, and I'm probably dying of a head injury. You?"
"Me? I was nearly killed by a creature who can't exist, and got myself cut up by a kid with a butter knife," the man said, with a smile, "but I'm good."
Some sort of structure rose up behind Rodney, and he pushed himself backwards until he could lean against it. His head was pounding. He pulled the coat over his legs. "Oh," he said belatedly. "That's, er… good."
They appeared to be in a thickly wooded area, which kept the worst of the rain off. Rodney swallowed hard, and looked at his hands. The metal bands were still on, but his fingers were a healthy colour, better than he'd feared they would be. There was much less blood than he had thought there would be, or perhaps the rain had washed it away.
"Head injuries can be nasty," the man said, laying down the heavy branch he had been hauling, "but there's nothing that can be done except for rest. I think we're safe here. I've covered our tracks."
Oh, Rodney thought. Nothing that could be done. Again nothing that could be done. But a small and stupid part of him wanted to close his eyes and just let things happen. At least he wasn't by himself any more. This man looked competent enough, and…
"What's your name?" he asked. "And can we answer once and for all the question of whether you're trying to kill me? I mean, you freed me, but…"
"John Sheppard," the man said, "and I have no intention of killing you." His expression was suddenly sharp. "Do you intend to kill me?"
"With what?" Rodney snapped. "A twig?" Then it occurred to him that a few inches of chain attached to each wrist could make quite a deadly weapon, if he chose to wield them. He closed his hands around the chains, and said nothing, his eyes flickering innocently around the woodland.
The man smiled, as if he'd seen exactly what Rodney had done, and was amused by it. "And you are…?"
"Rodney McKay," Rodney said. "Doctor Rodney McKay." He moistened his lips, frowning. "Why did you bring me here? What…?" The construction behind him was metal, he realised - old, rusting metal. He twisted round, his head throbbing with the movement. "It's a steam train," he gasped. Its wheels were gone, and its body was almost rusted away, but the iron rails were still there, still visible in places, where animals had dug up the soil and let the metal shine through.
"Iron," the man called Sheppard said, with a sheepish smile that suddenly made him look a lot younger than Rodney had imagined him to be. "Can't be too careful. These superstitions have a way of catching hold of you." His smile faded, and he was the stern Western hero again, expressionless and aloof. "Makes sense, too. Folks round here are afraid of the iron rails, so won't want to follow us here. They think they were built by giants and that fiery monsters raced up and down the country--" His words snapped off, and his face changed again. "You know the truth of it?" he asked, crouching down, his expression burning. "You called it a steam train. You know that they're wrong?"
Rodney scraped his heavy hand across his face. "Of course they're wrong," he said, and he closed his eyes; rested his head against the decaying wreckage that proved quite how lost this world was, and how incapable of sending him home.
The man was called McKay, and he was as human as John was. He bled, and he felt pain. He was afraid. He was tetchy and acerbic… and that, more than anything else, was what convinced John of what, really, he should have known all along.
McKay was sleeping now, huddled beneath John's coat. John had built as much of a shelter as he could, but it served for little more than to keep off the worst of the rain and the wind. As for John, he was shivering. He had bound the wound on his arm, but it was still bleeding, blood slowly seeping through the strips of torn-off cotton. His whole left arm felt heavy, as if the fingers were swollen to more than their normal size, although they looked normal enough when he flexed them.
What happens now? he thought. He crept to the edge of the woodland, remembering old lessons about moving silently. Where do we go? He had no idea. He…
He stopped, his hand pressed against the coarse bark of a tree. "Where do we go?" he murmured aloud, and it seemed like a far bigger question than the issue of where to set out in the morning. Thoughts swirled in his mind, but he couldn't pin them down to anything approaching a decision; couldn't even complete each thought.
The day was ending. Light was fading, but the rain was easing, the visibility briefly becoming better than it had been all day. Ruins were visible in the deserted landscape, reminding anyone who saw them that they lived in a fallen world.
And then something moved against a distant ruin. John edged back into the shadow of the trees, and stopped breathing.
It was the Wraith. The Wraith was stalking, looking for prey.
end of chapter three
The Others cannot lead a man to do something entirely against his will. Oh, they can trick you with their words and dazzle you with their glamour, but the final choice is your own. They cannot destroy you unless there comes a time when you say, "yes." As you crumble to dust, you know that you alone were the author of your own doom.
"Will you dance?" the Other had asked, and John had said no. "Will you dance?" the Other asked a second time, and this time… This time John said yes.
From that point on, every single thing that John said or did was just a step in the dance written for him by the Other. He would have denied it, but we know the truth, don't we, little one?
From that point on, the Other owned him heart and soul.
