Chapter four

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Rodney dreamed of Atlantis. He dreamed of its towers, and of the view of the ocean from his window. He dreamed of the smell of coffee late at night in his lab, when he was working on solving whatever new crisis somebody else's carelessness had unleashed. He dreamed of the chocolate cake they served in the mess hall on particularly good days…

He dreamed of its people, and he woke up missing them.

"Ow," he said, feeling sharp things digging into his side. People weren't supposed to sleep on the cold, hard ground; it wasn't natural. He was cold and wet, and his head was aching, and he also… He sat up carefully, grimacing at the painful stiffness in his arms and shoulders. Yes, how marvellous. He also appeared to be completely alone, abandoned by his mysterious rescuer or captor or whatever he was. Which is a good thing, right? he reminded himself. It's good.

The dream lingered. He pushed himself to his feet, supporting himself with one hand against the rusty engine when his head throbbed dully. Atlantis, he thought. What sort of a person would voluntarily take a one-way ticket to another galaxy? Freaks and misfits with nothing to lose back home, that's who. And even in a such a group of people, Rodney was the outsider. He was passed from team to team, never settling in any one. It was because they didn't have the wit to appreciate him, of course, but… Well, they still did it, and… and Rodney didn't care, of course, but…

But nothing, he thought, because he had other priorities right now, like… like, for starters, the fact that the mysterious man - Sheppard. His name is Sheppard - hadn't vanished after all, but, oh look, was stalking towards him from the trees.

Rodney sat down again, his head throbbing. "There's food," Sheppard said, nodding towards an unappetising something, impaled on a stick over an extinguished fire. "It's more smoked than cooked, because the wood was wet, but it'll do. Better than starving." He gave a quick grin, but it didn't reach his eyes.

"You spent the night cooking?"

Sheppard smiled again. "That and other things." He didn't look tired, though, or at least no more than he had looked the day before.

Rodney crawled towards the fire, reaching gingerly for the blacked lump of something. The smell was acceptable, if you liked things smelling of smoke.

Sheppard was watching him when Rodney turned round, the something still held in his hand. "Rabbit," Sheppard said. "Go ahead. I've already eaten one and it hasn't killed me yet."

"Then I'll wait a few more hours," Rodney said, "and see if you drop down dead from food poisoning."

"I appreciate your concern for my welfare," Sheppard said, his face giving nothing away. Then, in the same tone, he said, "The Wraith passed by last night. I hadn't taken the… what do you call it? The stunner?" He carried on without waiting for Rodney to reply. Rodney was busy wiping meat juices from his fingers. "By the time I'd come back for it, it was getting dark and I'd lost the trail, and there was you to consider, too. I had to let him go."

"Oh." Rodney's fingers still smelled of smoked meat. When he went to scrape the grime of the night from his face, he could taste it, too. He looked at the hunk of meat again. Sheppard, he saw, was still watching him. He had appropriated the stunner, attaching it firmly to his belt. "I see you're taking steps to prevent that happening again," Rodney said. "It is mine, you know."

"And you said you weren't good at using it."

"I said that?" Rodney swallowed. "I say a lot of things. You don't have to pay attention to most of them; most people don't. I…" He looked up at Sheppard's impassive face. "You remember me saying that? Do you remember everything? Silent people often do. It's not fair of them, you know, to be so silent, so you think--"

"I remember things when they might make a difference to my situation," Sheppard said, "and when a stranger who might end up proving to be an enemy admits that he isn't a good shot, then it's something worth remembering."

"Oh," Rodney said. Maybe he would try a little of the meat, he thought. A small amount couldn't kill him, and starvation wasn't pretty, and, well, hypoglycaemia. He ripped off a piece. Sheppard watched him. "What are you going to do with me?" Rodney found himself asking.

"Not going to do anything to you," Sheppard said.

"Good," Rodney said. "That's good." The meat tasted of smoke more than anything else. It was tough, but not entirely unpleasant. "Because I need to get back to the… I need to get back." He swallowed the lump, feeling it travel down towards his stomach.

"Back to the hill, you mean?" Sheppard knelt down beside the fire. He picked up a charred stick, not really looking at it. "They'll be guarding it, of course."

"Guarding?" Rodney echoed, his mouth full.

Sheppard looked sharply at him. "They think you're a murderer, and they think I helped you escape so you can murder some more. They're not going to let this one drop."

"Oh," Rodney said. He remembered those inhuman faces with their black slits for eyes. Masks, he realised now. He swallowed another piece of meat. "Can't you, uh…?"

Sheppard jabbed the end of the stick into the ashes. "I plan on hunting down the Wraith."

"What?" Rodney cried. "Deliberately trying to find a Wraith…? I travel to a different universe, and oh, look, I'm still surrounded by crazy people who want to get themselves killed."

"You knocked it out," Sheppard said. "We could have killed it. We didn't. That makes it our responsibility." He jabbed the stick in the ground again, then started to move it, tracing jagged patterns in the ashes. "Why didn't you kill it?"

"Because I wasn't thinking things through, okay?" Rodney shouted. "Because… because you don't. You use a stunner because it take them out of the picture and stops them from trying to kill you, and if you use normal bullets they keep on healing and you have to hit them lots of times, which isn't easy for me because, okay, yes, bad shot, I admit it, there. So normally we just stun them, and then we just get the hell out of there, and…"

"And then they wake up after you've gone, but I guess that's someone else's problem." The stick snapped in Sheppard's hand, the charred end falling to the ground. "I don't see it that way," he said.

Rodney chewed slower and slower. He thought of planets they had left, running like hell for the Gate, throwing themselves through, leaving a dozen stunned Wraith behind them. He thought of Sergeant Behr and the others, lying dead. His entire team had died and he hadn't even thought about them since waking up, not until now. The whole time he had cowered in the gate ship, it had never occurred to him to wonder who the Wraith was feeding on in the world outside. Rodney wasn't well liked on Atlantis. Perhaps they didn't like him with good reason.

Or maybe that was just the head injury talking, and the fact that he was cold and wet and trapped a very long way from home.

"I'm going to find the Wraith and kill it," Sheppard said, standing up. He turned his back, as if he meant to go there and then.

"Stop," Rodney rasped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and cleared his throat. It was crazy to voluntarily seek out a Wraith, of course, but now that he had remembered Behr and the others, it was hard to forget. "I want to come with you," he blurted out, "as long as it doesn't take more than a day or two, because, well…" His voice trailed off.

Sheppard turned, and he said nothing at all, but he smiled.

McKay was grumbling about the horse, complaining about aching legs, about his stiff back, about the fact that the animal kept bending its head to drink, "and there's nothing I can do to stop it," he said, "because pulling doesn't work, and if we'd been meant to ride on horses, we'd have evolved bendy legs, and there it goes again, the stupid animal. Stop it!"

John smiled. "Just wait till she rolls over."

"It'll do that?" McKay's mouth dropped open, and his eyes were wide. "It'll roll right over and try to crush me?"

John took a few steps forward, and pressed his hand against the animal's neck until it raised its head and carried on. "You can always walk," he said, "and let me take a turn in the saddle."

"I'm injured," McKay said stiffly.

"So quit complaining, then," John said, and smiled again.

It was strangely relaxing to travel with McKay. McKay didn't demand anything that John wasn't willing to give. He kept up a constant stream of shallow talk, and all John had to do was respond in kind. John had questions – of course he had – but he shied away from asking them, because questions would breed questions. If he asked, he had to be prepared to answer, and he wasn't, not yet.

"Can't we stop for lunch?" McKay asked. "My head hurts. I need to close my eyes. It's not as if we're likely to catch the Wraith, not wandering blind like this. I haven't even got the life-signs' detector, which is back in the… back there, though it isn't any use to us, anyway, on account of the fact that the only person with a functional Ancient gene got killed by a Wraith. Looking for the Wraith is like looking for a needle in a haystack."

John pointed silently at the single line of footprints in the moist ground ahead of them.

"Oh." McKay pressed his lips together for a moment. "And that helps how? Hundreds of happy peasants have probably walked across these hills and--" He broke off. "No, don't say it." He sounded almost angry. "Post-apocalyptic scenario. Most of the population dead. High chance that the only other living thing out here is the one who's trying to eat us."

"Folks round here wear nails in their boots," John explained, "for grip."

McKay subsided. They carried on, walking through an expanse of primroses where crushed flowers showed where the Wraith had gone before. John's knife-wound was throbbing, the skin feeling red and tight. His body still felt drained of strength, but McKay's head injury and his constant complaining cast John in the role of the strong one, and that was how he had always liked it to be. He walked, and let McKay ride.

They walked past a small cluster of buildings arranged around a courtyard. The roofs had fallen in and the walls were crumbling. Stairs to the door were covered with grass, only a faint undulating pattern showing that there had ever been stairs there at all. Trees grew out of the windows, but a wolf's head was carved quite clearly in stone above the door.

"How…?" McKay cleared his throat, his voice sounding dry. "How many people are left? How many died?"

"How the hell should I know?" John had lived with such places all his life, but that didn't mean he had to like them. There were so many more of them on this side of the sea; so many more ruins. "It was a long time ago," he said, when they were clear of it.

"Yes, but--" McKay started, but John held up his hand sharply, smelling smoke. The next rise showed a small cottage on the edge of a patch of trees, smoke rising from its chimney.

John's hand went to the stunner at his belt; the other gun, the large one, was strapped to the saddle. The ground was drier here, and it was harder to tell if the Wraith had come this way. The patches of mud showed other footprints, older footprints, some of them studded with nails.

"You should stay back," John told McKay.

"What?" McKay frowned. "Because you think the Wraith's there?"

"Even if the Wraith hasn't reached here," John said. Stories could travel faster than seemed possible. Even someone living entirely alone in the middle of nowhere might have heard of the short-haired Other and the stranger who had saved his life. "You should…"

His words trailed away. The body was visible, slumped in the dirty yard outside. John approached it cautiously, stunner in hand, then crouched down, not quite touching it. A noise came from inside the cottage, and he edged inside, but it was only a cow moving at the far end of the single room, behind the low partition.

"He kept his livestock inside?" McKay had dismounted and stood in the door, one hand pressed to his lower back. "That's--"

"A lot of people do," John said, suddenly not wanting to hear any more. His voice sounded dull.

"And… God!" McKay touched the wooden dresser, where a box lay open, its contents spilling out. "That's gold," McKay breathed. "Jewels. A fortune in it."

"A fortune?" John shouted, rounding on him, his fist clenched at his side. Gold meant nothing. The old coins could be scavenged in bucket-loads from the ruined cities and the fallen great halls. "He's dead."

McKay opened his mouth; closed it again.

"Dead," John said, and pushed past McKay to stand outside, looking up at the sky.

Rodney was worried by the fire. The flames were fiercely bright in the darkness, and when he wandered away to do… what he needed to do, the smell of smoke followed him.

"Are you sure that's safe?" he asked, when he returned to it. The warmth was good, though. He sat as close to it as he dared, his body angled away from stray sparks. "I seem to have survived the day without dying from bleeding in my brain, which is a definite plus, but I don't want to get murdered in my sleep by wild beasts, peasants waving pitchforks, or Wraith."

"You can't see it from outside the trees." Sheppard had his back to Rodney. He was almost invisible, sitting just on the edge of the circle of light cast by the fire. He appeared to be doing something to his upper left arm, perhaps wrapping bandages around it. "It's better--" His voice hitched slightly. "--than being too cold. Have you tried sleeping outside without any source of warmth?"

"I have, actually," Rodney said stiffly, racking his brains for a memory that would make his statement true. "I…" Then he frowned as he played back Sheppard's words, noticing something that he should have noticed days ago. "You're American." He hadn't meant it as anything other than an unthinking observation, but Sheppard stiffened slightly. Rodney's frown deepened. "And this is England, right? A post-apocalyptic medieval England which I doubt very much runs flights across the Atlantic."

Sheppard moved even further out of the circle of firelight, only faint glimpses of him visible as he finished whatever he was doing to his arm. "How do you know about it?" he asked at last.

"About America?" Rodney began, but Sheppard interrupted what he had been about to say.

"Stupid, huh?" Sheppard said. His voice was flat, his face turned away. "Ask a question like that to a man who has weapons like this." Fat dripped from the rabbit over the fire. The fire crackled, spitting out sparks.

"How did you get here?" Rodney found himself asking.

Sheppard moved over to the fire, and removed the stick from its supporting framework. He prodded the meat with the tip of his knife. "A bit charred in places," he said, "but edible. Wait for it to cool, though." He jammed the end of the stick into the ground, snatching his hand away quickly from the juices that ran down it.

Rodney almost repeated the question, but decided not to. Never let it be said that I don't know the meaning of tact, he thought. But then Sheppard sat down on the far side of the fire, bringing up one leg, wrapping his arm loosely around it. "We found a ship," he said. "Until recently, everyone was concentrating just on staying alive, but some of us… we started to think about bigger things. We found a ship, and learnt how to rebuild it and sail it. We wondered…" He brought his other leg up. "We wondered if things weren't so bad in the rest of the world. We knew there were lands across the eastern ocean, and we wondered if they'd managed to keep things going the way they used to be."

"And they hadn't?" Rodney asked.

Sheppard shook his head. "Worse, if anything, if these parts are anything to go by. Of course, it might be different somewhere else."

Rodney watched the patterns of light and dark in the flames. "What happened to the world?" he asked. "What went wrong?"

Sheppard's face didn't look quite human in the fierce light of the flame. "It was a long time ago," he said. "Darkness covered the sun. The crops failed. Animals died. People didn't have enough to eat. The few people who survived didn't want to talk about it. Some of them were very young, not much more than children, and they couldn't remember how the world had worked before." He straightened his leg again. "But, like I said, it was a long time ago. Nobody really knows how it went. All we know is what we've got now."

"Which is…?" Rodney asked.

Sheppard said nothing for a while, looking at the flames. "A broken world," he said at last, "but we hoped… I hoped…" He closed his eyes; opened them again. "I hoped to change it."

They were nearing the sea. John's arm was throbbing with the rhythm of each step. It wasn't a deep cut, just a jagged gouge with a blunt knife, but it wasn't sealing properly. His saddlebags held willow bark, which helped with the pain and could bring down fever, but the flesh around the wound was puffy, the redness spreading.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" McKay asked.

John shook his head. He had lost the trail, but the way ahead called to him. It felt like a natural way to go, west towards the setting sun. He hoped that the Wraith, too, had heard the call of the land that sloped down to the sea. If they lost the trail completely, he doubted they would ever find it again.

"Then how long…?" McKay said, then stopped. "My head still hurts, you know." There was a note almost of irritation in his voice.

Not long after noon, the sun broke free from the clouds. Although the underlying air was still cold, it was warm in the sun, and soon John was sweating, burning in the heat. When they stopped for a short break on the banks of a narrow river, he squelched through its reedy banks until he found a flat rock to crouch on, then scooped up handfuls of cold, fresh water to pour over his face and scrape through his hair. Then he walked a few dozen paces upstream, enjoying the dappled cool.

The man was sitting with his back to a willow tree, a rod and line in his hand. John held a sharp breath and let it out slowly, cursing himself for not having seen him, for lowering his guard sufficiently that he hadn't even looked for him. "Hello, John," the man said, without looking up from the water.

John had no memory of having seen the man before. He gave the man a cautious, neutral smile, aware all the time of the knife and stunner at his belt.

"At least, I presume you are John," the man said. "They came from Glaston way with news of a man enchanted, who had released a murderous Other from cold, hard iron. Is that you, John? Is that noisy man you travel with really an Other from beneath the hill? I don't like him. His talking scares the little fishes."

"It… isn't like they say it is," John said. Water trickled down the side of his neck, bitingly cold.

"Things seldom are." The man shook his head. "To tell you the truth, I don't place much store in stories, John. I prefer the little fishes. The waters were the last places touched by the years of darkness – did you know that, John? These rivers are like the seams of gold that the old world based its dreams on."

"Is that so?" John said.

A white bird landed on the water, leaving a long trail of splashes behind it. The man frowned in irritation. "Never mind, my pretties," he murmured. "The splashing will pass. It always passes." He looked at John, his eyes glittering sharply. "I don't hold with the stories," he said, "but the other folk do. They are prepared for you. They are waiting. Avoid them, John, unless you want to be like one of my little fishes, captured on a hook."

He tugged at the rod. John turned away before he could see the hook emerging.

McKay was pacing anxiously, his hands pressed together. "Is there someone there?" he said, in a whisper that was louder than a shout.

"Yes," John said, "and we need to leave." Water trickled down his back, and he felt cold, suddenly, as cold as the river had been, despite the heat of the sun.

They reached the sea as dusk fell. When Rodney stood on the shore, he couldn't see a single light anywhere along the coast, anywhere inland or out to sea. It made him wonder suddenly how Canada had fared in this apocalypse, and how…

He stopped breathing suddenly, wondering if there was another Rodney McKay out there somewhere. Stupid, he berated himself, because he hadn't thought about the consequences beforehand; had gone running off with Sheppard without ever thinking about the risks he was running. Two versions of the same person couldn't co-exist for long in the same reality, so if there was another version of himself out there, Rodney didn't have long to live. His head was hurting; was that the start of it? But if it wasn't, that meant that this world's Rodney McKay was dead, or else had never been born, his ancestors wiped out in the calamity.

I want to go home, he thought. Water lapping against the shore made him think of Atlantis, and Canada was out there somewhere beyond the sea. Which one was home? He had signed up to join a one-way expedition to Atlantis, but for two years, most of his energies had been expended in trying to find a way for them all to go back to Earth. Home was always somewhere else, he thought.

"I need to go back," he said. "We're on a wild goose chase. We've lost the trail. There's nothing we can do. I need to get back, to get back home. Apart from anything else, my life might depend on it."

Sheppard was tending to the horse, removing saddle and bridle. "Where's home?" he asked without looking up.

Rodney had expected the question throughout their days together, but suddenly had no idea how to answer. Where's home? He let out a breath, shaking his head. No, no, Sheppard didn't mean it like that. It was an obvious question for him to ask. "I come from somewhere a long way away," Rodney said at last. "I didn't mean to come. I came through a… a… it's like a… a sort of tunnel, but not a normal one – nothing that you'd understand. And I can't get back because I haven't got the gene… uh, the key. I tried to get back, but I can't. But if I try again, I might… Or they might come for me. I need to wait for them, or at least leave a note."

"What's it like," Sheppard asked, "where you come from?"

How to describe Atlantis? "It's a city by the sea," Rodney said. "It's warm and it's bright, and you get proper medical attention there, and proper beds, and… and I'm an important person there, and I need to get back."

Sheppard was still apparently concentrating on the horse. "Does everyone wear clothes like yours where you come from? Have they all got weapons like yours? And the Wraith…?"

"The Wraith are our enemies," Rodney said. "This one must have come through the same… tunnel at some point in the past, before we did."

"We?" Sheppard's hands stilled on the saddle.

Rodney looked away. "The others died. The Wraith killed them."

Sheppard said nothing for a while. "This tunnel of yours…" he said. "I'm thinking the stories aren't far off true. We're not talking a tunnel that just leads to the other side of the hill, are we? You came out of the hill. You started somewhere else entirely."

"Yes," Rodney said, then shook his head. "No. I mean, no. It's not magic. I'm not a fairy." It felt less ridiculous to say it than it had felt just days before.

"The way I see it," Sheppard said slowly, "magic's just another word for things folk don't understand any more. It's obvious that things used to be different. There's ruins everywhere, and you can dig up things that obviously used to do something, we just don't know any more what it was. Most people don't want to know, but some of us…" He paused, raking his hand through his hair. "I used to have a rifle," he said, "and it wasn't magic, it wasn't magic at all, but if the people in these parts saw me with it, they'd call me a warlock."

"It's hardly the same…" Rodney began, meaning to point out that equating the technology that had taken him between universes with early nineteenth century steam engines was hardly a good comparison, but perhaps it was best not to say that bit. "That's a good point," he said instead.

Sheppard smiled, perhaps understanding what Rodney didn't say. "See, maybe I'm making a fool of myself. Maybe the stories are true. Maybe there weren't Wraith before the years with no summer, and maybe people in the Time Before would have been as amazed by this stunner of yours as anyone alive now would be, but…"

He stopped speaking. A light appeared on the water, drifting slowly from left to right. Drawing the stunner from his belt, Sheppard hurried forward. Rodney followed, twisting his hands in front of him nervously.

The light was a lantern, a candle dying in a cube of panelled glass. It sat in a small wooden boat that moved without sails or oars, and of course without an engine. Rodney heard Sheppard suck in a breath, then let it out stiffly. "Probably scavengers," he said quietly. "I saw them at work when I first got here. They take things from the dead cities. Gold's no use, but there are other things, useful things…"

They were quite dead, of course, the faint light from the lantern showing their wizened faces and the screaming holes that were their eyes and mouth. Sheppard splashed into the water, as if he meant to wade out to the boat and drag it in. "Don't," Rodney breathed, the word coming out as a rasping gasp.

Sheppard stopped. The boat drifted on. Of course, Rodney remembered, the sea to the west of Glastonbury was actually the mouth of a large estuary, a river flowing from the right when the tide was going out.

It was a long time until the light was out of sight. Rodney thought that they both watched it until it was gone, and even then there was no way of knowing if the candle had failed, or if the boat itself had been swallowed by the waves.

They followed the coast throughout another day. Occasionally they saw fishing boats out on the water, but for the most part, the coast told the familiar story of ruin and desertion.

It was evening by the time they reached the edge of the city, with its densely-packed ruins covered in a mass of trees. "Do people live here?" McKay breathed, his eyes flicking from side to side in nervousness.

John shook his head, but his vision was beginning to swim. His arm throbbed from fingertips to shoulder, and he felt as if all the strength he had ever possessed was flowing out of his veins, as if the Wraith was taking it for a second time. "Cities aren't… good places," he said. "It's harder to grow food in them. There's too much of the past, too many reminders that once…" He pressed his lips together, suddenly aware that, all unguarded, he had been about to say more than he was prepared to say. "Good places to hide, though," he said, "if you don't want people to find you."

"Which we don't," McKay said, looking over his shoulder. "I mean… I do, of course, but only the right people, and they have ways of finding me. I don't…" He still had a few inches of chains hanging from each wrist, and he rubbed one iron band absently with his thumb. He hadn't said anything more about wanting to go home, though, not since they had seen the two bodies in the boat.

In places, the buildings still rose high. A large ship made entirely out of metal was rusting in the dock, but still afloat. John walked with the stunner held in his right hand, because a city offered a thousand hiding places for a Wraith. Movement stirred the trees and bushes. A feral cat ran past, and he saw a dark-haired child scurry away down a tunnel made of evergreen leaves.

"Some people live here," he corrected. Perhaps hundreds of them, perhaps more. It made sense, he thought, that people would run away, would be chased away, would sometimes go to ground rather than face whatever their fellows wanted them to face.

They passed a huge building, as large as a giant's palace, collapsed to red brick ruins, half covered with earth and grass. "What happened?" McKay asked, still speaking far more quietly than he normally did.

"It was worst in the cities," John said, as everything swayed, and he thought he saw flames and screaming, people running screaming. "People fought each other over food. They wanted light, so the cities burned. My grandmother wouldn't even speak the word 'city'. She thought they were cursed. She--"

He missed his next step. He lunged for support, his left hand finding the horse's neck. He had to bite his lip not to cry out at the pain of it. As he struggled to regain his balance, somehow McKay's hand fumbled against his arm. "God, you're burning up," McKay gasped. "Are you sick?"

"Yeah," John agreed, blinking into the fading light. "I guess I am." The stunner slipped from his hand. He knelt to pick it up, but everything lurched again, and he had to close his eyes, pressing his hand against his head.

And it was there, just as he opened his eyes, that the patrol found them.

end of chapter four

What was the world like in the Time Before?

We will never know for sure, little one, but many are the voices that claim that the world before the time of darkness was shaped by the hand of man. They claim that the marvels that have come down to us in stories were crafted by man, and that one day, one day long hence, we will make such things again.

But we know the truth, don't we, little one? Magic reigned in the Time Before, and the Others are the relics of that age. Giants, gods and fiery beasts, all are gone. Warlocks and magicians we sometimes see, with their fire-sticks and their things far worse, but the Others are the only beings that retain their former power.

Did they cause the time of darkness? We do not know. Do they prey on us in this world that came after? Yes, yes, and thrice yes.

But what of John, you ask me, little one. Ah, yes, what of John?

He followed the Other into the ruins of the Time Before.