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Chapter Nine

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"It was slow going," Jack continued. "At first, Daniel could go for more than half an hour without stopping. As the day went on, and his pain got worse, he was lucky to go for fifteen minutes at a time. So three hours later, we were still two miles from the gate. We were just starting out after another break when Teal'c spotted them …"

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"O'Neill!" Teal'c called over his shoulder. "There are several armed individuals concealing themselves behind the trees."

Jack glanced around, careful to make the movement seem as casual as possible. "What are they doing?"

Teal'c kept his eyes forward, but his hand went to the sheath on his belt and his fingers tightened around the handle of the knife that hung there. "They appear to be attempting to contain us. They are on all sides, and are moving closer to us."

Jack glanced over at Daniel. The archeologist had been leaning heavily on Jack and Sam for the past hour. He was barely holding any of his own weight any more. His right leg was dragging behind him, and he kept his eyes closed almost constantly.

There was no way Daniel could run.

"Okay," Jack said, turning his eyes away from Daniel. "Options? Ideas?"

"Jack," Daniel gasped suddenly, and all three turned their attention to him. "Put me down."

"Daniel, I'm sorry, but we can't stop right now."

"Put me down," Daniel repeated, opening his eyes just far enough to look Jack in the eye. "Please."

"Okay," Jack conceded. He gave Carter a quick nod, and together they lowered Daniel to the ground. They placed him next to a large tree, and then leaned him back against it. "Okay, Daniel. Now what?"

"Now," Daniel answered, closing his eyes, "you run."

"No!" Sam protested.

"No way, Daniel," Jack said.

"We will not leave you, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c stated calmly.

"You don't have… a choice."

"Oh, yes we do," Jack argued. "We can try to talk to them. If worse comes to worst, we can fight. What we will not do, Daniel, is leave without you. Is that clear?"

"You can come back… later. When it's safe …"

Jack shook his head vehemently. "Uh uh. Not even an option. You go with us, or we don't go."

"Please, Jack," Daniel pleaded, opening his eyes to look at his friends once more. "Just go. Sam… and Teal'c… get them… out of here."

"O'Neill!"

Jack spun quickly, coming up to one knee as he did so. The locals had apparently grown tired of the team's lack of progress, and had stepped out from their hiding places. Jack found his team surrounded by a dozen large, long-haired men armed with a variety of low-tech, but effective, weapons.

"Um… hello," Jack said slowly. "So this is the great hunting party, is it?"

A pain-filled cry from behind made Jack turn back around. Tuathal himself had emerged from behind the tree Daniel had been leaning against, and was now dragging the archeologist away. Before Jack could react, Daniel was on his knees at the large bearded man's feet. He was being held upright by the man's left hand, which twisted cruelly in Daniel's long hair. The jagged blade of the knife he had held on the altar was pressed against his unprotected throat.

Jack, Sam, and Teal'c reacted quickly, and pulled the only weapons they had in their possession, their knives, immediately.

"Unless you want to die today," Jack said menacingly, "you will get your hands off of him. Right now."

Tuathal did not speak, but a wicked grin spread across his face. Before any of the others could move, he lifted his right foot and drove his heel mercilessly into Daniel's lower back.

Daniel's screams echoed through the forest.

"Stop that!" Jack commanded.

Again Tuathal was silent. His only response was to jerk his head in the direction of Jack's knife. The meaning behind the gesture was perfectly clear.

Jack hesitated while he glanced around and judged their situation. There were a dozen of them—all large, all unkempt, and all armed. The weapons these men had trained on his team ranged from swords to spears. On any normal day, they would have been no match for SG-1.

But it was no normal day.

Jack had no weapons to speak of, and he had a seriously incapacitated archeologist in what had clearly become a hostage situation. Daniel had been isolated from the rest of his team, and demands had been made. Daniel's health and safety, possibly even his very survival, depended solely on how pleased Tuathal was with the team's compliance. And while Daniel might have been able to defend himself under normal circumstances, his weakened condition left him incapable of doing anything more than wrapping his hands around the man's left wrist.

Almost as if to remind Jack of the power he had over Daniel, Tuathal twisted his fingers more tightly into Daniel's hair and pulled his head back further. He pulled the blade of the knife up tighter against Daniel's throat, eliciting both a moan and a thin trickle of blood.

"Stop!" Jack cried out. "Okay! Okay. We're putting them down, see?" Jack raised his knife above his head in a sign of surrender, and then glanced back over his shoulder at the rest of his team. "Carter, Teal'c, do what he wants."

"Sir? Do you really think that's a good idea?"

"I don't know, Captain," Jack answered. "But it's better than standing here and watching him kill Daniel."

"Captain Carter, I believe O'Neill is correct," Teal'c said as he placed his own knife on the ground and took one step back. "If we fight, Daniel Jackson will surely die."

"But, sir …"

"Just do it, Carter," Jack ordered softly. "It'll be okay. Trust me."

Sam knelt down and laid her knife on the ground slowly. As she stood, she looked up at her commanding officer. The look in her eyes made it clear that she really hoped Jack was right.

Jack turned back to Tuathal. "All right. We put down our weapons. Now let him go."

Tuathal smiled again, and nodded.

Before Jack could think, he felt strong hands grab his upper arms. He pulled against them instinctively. "Hey!" Jack cast a frantic glance at Carter and Teal'c and found them being restrained in the same way. "What the hell …?"

More men stepped forward. One man went to each of the three standing team members, pulling what appeared to be lengths of chain from their belts as they walked.

"No!" Jack called out, trying once again to wrest his arms from the strong grips. "Oh, come on!"

"We did what you said," Sam explained. "You don't have to do this."

"If you allow us to go free, we will leave this world," Teal'c promised, his voice calmer than either Jack or Sam had managed to be. "We will not return. Your way of life, and your honor, will remain intact."

The man who had walked to Jack reached out and grabbed his left wrist. A large metal cuff with a two foot length of chain attached to it was snapped into place before Jack could protest again. After repeating the procedure on Jack's right wrist, the man grabbed the chains in his hands and stepped back, pulling the chains taut.

Jack looked back at Teal'c and Carter again. When he saw them receiving the same treatment, he felt his heart begin to sink. All three of them were now being held in place by three of the large natives. Even if Tuathal did release Daniel, Jack realized that there was nothing the three of them could do to escape.

Jack glared at the chieftain. "Damn you!" he growled. "What the hell do you want from us?"

Once more, Tuathal only smiled. He removed the knife from Daniel's throat, stepped in front of him, and leaned down. With his face only inches from Daniel's, he twisted his fingers in the archeologist's hair. Daniel gasped in pain and his fingers tightened around the man's wrist.

Jack fought against the three men that now held him. "Leave him alone!"

The man paid no attention to Jack's command. He leaned closer to Daniel, until his lips were almost touching the younger man's ear. Daniel started to tremble, and his eyes suddenly shot open. Jack had no way of knowing what the large man was saying, but from the panic in Daniel's wide blue eyes, he knew that it couldn't be good.

Daniel's expression changed from one of fear to one of anger. As the large man pulled back to stand in front of him again, Daniel gathered every ounce of strength he had and put it into three words.

"Go… to… hell."

The backhand was not unexpected, but it was more forceful than Daniel had been prepared for. He crashed to the ground with a cry. His glasses flew from his face, only to be crushed under a large booted foot. As Daniel raised his upper body on quivering arms, he saw his teammates struggling against the men holding them. The tide was beginning to turn. Jack and Teal'c were rapidly gaining the upper hand against their captors; Sam wasn't far behind. But Daniel also saw the two men stepping forward with spears aimed directly at Jack and Teal'c's hearts.

"Jack," Daniel choked out. "Jack, don't!"

The frantic plea stopped Jack cold. One look at Daniel's face and at the panic there, and Jack understood exactly what was happening. "Don't fight them," he said suddenly, jerking his head in the direction of his team. "Teal'c, don't fight them!"

"Colonel?"

"They'll kill all of us, Carter. They'll start with Daniel, but they'll kill all of us. For now, we just need to go along with them. Got it?"

"But, Colonel," Sam asked quietly, her eyes riveted to where another set of chains were being roughly attached to Daniel's wrists, "what do they want with us?"

"I think they want us to die," Jack answered with a deep sigh. He watched Tuathal haul Daniel to his feet again. "Daniel?"

Daniel shook his head slowly. One of the men with the spears stepped forward and grabbed Daniel's right arm tightly. Tuathal grabbed Daniel's hair once more and pulled his sagging head up. "Just don't… don't fight them. Not for me. Don't die… for me."

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"He passed out right after that," Jack said softly. "They locked our chains together—well, me, Carter and Teal'c, that is. They dragged us off to that cave, cell, whatever, and chained us to the wall." Jack snorted in disgust as he remembered the small stone room. "Thing didn't even have a door. They put us in there, and they just left. We had no resistance on the way back to the gate. I think they thought we were just going to sit there and die."

"And Dr. Jackson?"

"They kept him with them the whole time. Tuathal the great and his crony… just dragged him along. He didn't wake up until we got to the cave. Even if the three of us had managed to escape …"

"Daniel Jackson would have been killed," Teal'c finished.

"And did you ever find out what it was he said to Dr. Jackson?"

"Thank you," Jack whispered.

"Excuse me, Colonel?"

"He said, 'thank you,' General," Sam repeated.

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

Jack's head shot up and his eyes hardened. "He thanked Daniel. We… I… damn it, I handed him to them! I might as well have just hung a sign on his chest that said, 'use me against them.' And that bastard thanked him for it!"

"Colonel," Hammond began, waiting until he was certain that Jack was listening to him before continuing. "Jack, you did everything you could have, under the circumstances. You couldn't have pretended that what they were doing to Dr. Jackson didn't matter to you any more than I could have."

"But, sir, I know better than to …"

"You know better than to let a member of your team be killed for no good reason, Colonel. And no matter what you might think about your actions, that is exactly what you did. You did what you had to do to make certain that your team, all of them, survived."

Jack risked a glance back over his shoulder at where Daniel lay, heavily sedated and seemingly hooked up to every machine Dr. Fraiser could find. "I didn't order us to leave at the first sign of trouble. I was careless in eating or drinking whatever it was they drugged us with. Daniel paid for both of those decisions. I ordered my team to surrender, General, and we ended up chained up in a cave because of it. And the whole time, he just kept getting worse and worse. If I hadn't given that order, we could have been here hours earlier. If he dies anyway… How is he ever going to forgive me for that?"

"Forgive you for what, Colonel? Saving his life?"

Jack turned back toward his commanding officer in shock.

"That's all you did, Jack. They didn't sacrifice him because you made the decision to not let them. They didn't kill him in the forest because you made the decision not to give them a reason to. He didn't die from this… whatever it is… because you made the decision to bring him home rather than wait for rescue. All in all, Colonel, I'd say every decision you made was accurate. It was a mission that couldn't have been salvaged. Like Captain Carter said earlier, you were all in danger before anyone could have realized it." Hammond gave Jack a few seconds to let the words sink in before he leaned toward the microphone again.

"I think I've got everything I need to make a recommendation about this planet, Colonel. SG-1, you're excused. And welcome home. All of you."