Ghhrrwuaghr--or Barney, as Jack wanted to call him--stepped out of the circle of dinosaurs, walked around SG-1, and stopped right in front of Daniel. The dinosaur greeted him with a word he couldn't recognize at first. It sounded like "daangghiich". Then he realized what it was. The dinosaur was trying to say "Daniel", as best it could.
Daniel smiled back at him, and greeted him with "Ghhrrwuaghr", which was the nearest he could get to the dinosaur's real name. It wasn't probably all that close. Neither of them could pronounce the other's language all that well.
Ghhrrwuaghr raised its clawed hands and placed them on Daniel's shoulders. He had no idea how to return the greeting, so he tried to repeat the dinosaur's gesture. The dinosaur let go again, and tilted his head up and down and from side to side, scrutinizing Daniel with his gaze.
"Are you well?" Ghhrrwuaghr asked in his strange, archaic version of the Goa'uld language.
Daniel wasn't surprised to hear that question. The last time Ghhrrwuaghr had seen him, he had been too sick to walk and only barely able to breathe. Daniel had recovered from those injuries months ago. He figured he'd not need to let the dinosaur know about the other near-encounters with death he had had since then--such as his addiction to the sarcophagus and the following withdrawal and the bodyswap with Machello.
So, Daniel just answered, "Yes, thanks to you," and then went on to ask the question he was most anxious about. "How are you? How are things on your world?"
"That river runs far," Ghhrrwuaghr said, or at least that was what Daniel thought it sounded like, though it didn't make much sense. "It is not safe here. Follow us."
By the time Daniel had decided that "that river runs far" had to be a dinosaur figure of speech for "it's a long story", Ghhrrwuaghr had already turned around and exchanged a few words with the others in a language Daniel couldn't understand. It was pretty amazing that these dinosaurs actually used two languages all along, one of their own, and a dialect of Goa'uld. Daniel wasn't exactly sure whether they were all bilingual. The way Ghhrrwuaghr would switch to Dinosaurian when speaking to his friends suggested that either they weren't, or if they were, they wanted to make sure the humans wouldn't understand, which wasn't an encouraging idea.
"What's up?" Jack called, stopping Daniel's linguistic musings.
"Umm, I really don't know yet. Apparently, it's a long story, and he wants us to follow the dinosaurs somewhere."
"Do we have any choice?"
"Well, I guess we do, actually, but I see no reason why we shouldn't go with them."
The dinosaurs had started moving, some of them heading out into the jungle, into several directions, a few stepping closer to SG-1.
"We should go," Ghhrrwuaghr repeated.
"He says we should go. So..." Daniel translated, and raised his eyebrows at Jack.
"All right, then. We follow Barney and friends," Jack quipped.
Ghhrrwuaghr stepped in front of SG-1 and began walking ahead. They followed him, moving out towards some unknown destination somewhere in the jungle.
"I think you were right, Teal'c," Daniel heard Leo's voice behind him. "This seems to be a new species. I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a dinosaur that would exactly match these."
"We came up with a theory that these may actually be an evolved form of some known species. That would explain their high intellect, ability to speak and other related capabilities. However, it does not explain why the other dinosaurs on this world have not evolved similarly," Teal'c told the paleontologist.
"That's definitely odd. I think we should get DNA samples and have them analyzed, maybe that would reveal something. Anyway, this new species needs to be named... Of course, it can't be official, since I know I won't be able to publish anything related to this Stargate project, not in a while, if ever during my lifetime..."
Daniel glanced at the paleontologist over his shoulder. Teal'c was wearing his familiar one-raised-eyebrow look, while Leo looked at least twenty years younger with the excitement of actually seeing living dinosaurs.
Daniel noticed that the dinosaurs seemed to be equally excited about the humans. They hardly averted their large, yellow--but not glowing--eyes from SG-1. Most of them had never seen a human from this close, if at all.
"The name should give some hint as to their unusual origin, and their superior intellect compared to what we know of the dinosaurs that used to live on Earth. I wonder... Sapient-saurus? Sapiosaur? Or Stellasaur? On the other hand, what I've seen of their teeth and jaws really points to Troodon ancestry..." Leo went on about the name. He clearly had some knowledge of Latin, too.
Unlike the other dinosaurs, Ghhrrwuaghr didn't seem all that interested about Leo. Quite the opposite. They had only been walking for a few minutes, with Leo talking all the time, when the dinosaur stopped and turned to face the paleontologist. He hissed a few less than pleased words at the man. "Speaking must wait. It is not safe."
Daniel translated the words. Leo looked a bit taken aback by that, but kept his mouth shut from there on.
They walked through the jungle in silence. The dinosaurs hardly made any sound as they made their way through the trees and bushes. Even Teal'c, whose skills in stealth surpassed even Jack's, sounded loud compared to them.
Teal'c actually spoke up at one point, whispering a few words to Jack. "Colonel O'Neill, I do not think we are approaching the ruins. We are going in another direction entirely."
"I noticed that too, Teal'c," Jack answered, keeping his voice low. "Let's just hope the dinos know where they're going, and have a good reason for it too."
Daniel was terribly anxious to learn why they needed all this stealth. Who were they so afraid of, and what was going on on this world? Hopefully Ghhrrwuaghr would let him know once they reached their destination, wherever that was. Unless SG-1's former dinosaur ally had switched sides and they were being lead to a trap, and Daniel was just too dumb to understand that.
After hours of walking at a faster pace than what SG-1 would've usually kept, Ghhrrwuaghr and the rest of the dinosaurs stopped.
"From now on, step only where I step. Be very careful," the dinosaur told Daniel, and he repeated it to the others in English.
They advanced much more slowly, in single file behind Ghhrrwuaghr, tiptoeing their way around roots and rocks just like the dinosaur did. Daniel couldn't see the other dinosaurs anymore. They probably knew their way around well enough so that they had no need to go on this slowly.
"There are countless traps around us," Teal'c noted after a while, offering a good explanation to their change of pace. Daniel looked around, but he could hardly spot any. Maybe that odd shape there among the trees? Or that smooth branch there? He wasn't much good at this stuff. The dinosaurs were apparently really good at it, if it'd taken Teal'c even this long to notice the danger.
"Seems we might be approaching wherever we're going," Jack muttered.
They stopped again in front of a green wall, a thicket so dense that Daniel couldn't see how they could get through it. Ghhrrwuaghr crouched low, near to the ground, and pushed his way through a certain part of the plant growth, which seemed to give in quite easily. He disappeared into the bush.
Jack shrugged at Daniel, and went in after the dinosaur. He seemed to get through without any trouble, either, so Daniel followed him, and heard Leo enter right after him.
They found themselves in a dim, green tunnel traversing the thicket. There was just enough space for a human or a dinosaur of this one particular species, crawling or crouching very near to the ground. It wasn't very long.
On the other side, they met another green wall that gave in easily, made their way through it and stood up. There were less trees around them, and the jungle seemed artificially sparse, as if the plants had been cut away--and they probably had. They had been turned into shelters, canopies rigged between trees. There were other dinosaur-made things around as well, such as tables and ropes with drying fish and meat hanging from them. Several fires were lit in circles of stones. This was a dinosaurian settlement of some sort, or maybe a camp.
It was a large area, and the green wall of thick plants that they had traversed didn't surround all of it. On one side, Daniel saw a wide jungle river, and on the other, two large rocks, half-hidden by several thick bushes and trees. He thought he saw dinosaur sentries standing between them, but they were hard to discern, just a few smaller, dark-green figures amidst the green.
Ghhrrwuaghr had run ahead to speak to some of the dinosaurs in the camp. Now he returned to SG-1, who were still standing in front of the green wall, gaping at the incredible camp.
"Welcome," the dinosaur said. "Now it is safe to talk. You are among friends."
Daniel had barely finished translating it to the others, when Jack told him to "Then ask Barney what's going on in here!"
Of course, Jack wouldn't have needed to tell him, since that was what Daniel had wanted to ask all along. "Who are we hiding from? What has happened on your planet?" he asked.
"There have always been those among us who have challenged the traditions and questioned those who rule us," Ghhrrwuaghr began his answer--the proverbial river that ran far, apparently. "When you arrived, we finally saw some proof that we may indeed be right, That the traditions do not hold, and that the rulers can be challenged. When your friend won the Remembrance of Choosing, there was a great riot. Prince Rrragrathssh overthrew his father. Many were loyal to him, but some of us wished to be completely free of these rulers who have come from the stars long ago."
"So, you turned against the prince?" Daniel wasn't exactly sure he had caught every word and understood it all.
"Not at that time. We stood aside and waited. The followers of the prince and those of his father fought each other, and many were slain. The aftermath took many days. We waited, and made our plans. We spoke to those who were hesitant, and asked them to join our cause. We built this hideout in secret. There were many of us, but still, in the end, not enough. We chose Rrragrathssh's first Great Hunt as our time to act. We attacked him, but his guards and followers were too many, and we were forced to flee."
"When exactly did this take place?" Daniel asked, only realizing after he'd said it that he had no idea how the dinosaurs measured time.
"Two cycles of the moon have passed since. We have been hiding here for most of that time. The prince and his followers do all they can to find us and slay us all, so we must be very careful. We are still hoping to overthrow the rulers one day, but it is very difficult. We have some agents in the Great Temple of the Rulers. They bring us news and seek to find new supporters for our cause. We patrol the forests looking for those who have been cast out and may wish to join us. We try to come up with plans, but we are weak and the ruler is strong."
"We can help you," Daniel told the dinosaur. They had liberated several worlds from Goa'uld rule before. They should do it here as well. He could imagine that it wouldn't be easy to convince Jack about it, let alone Hammond, but Daniel would try all he could. "We will help you free your world," he repeated.