A/N: Sorry again for the lateness, but I wanted to double check this chapter. Thanks for the reviews and the patience.

Ch. 17

Shadows

The ax whistled through the air as it sailed down toward the helpless log. The whistle became a thwack, and the cleanly separated halves fell to the dusty ground. John strolled over and bent gingerly to pluck them both from the ground and toss them onto the pile. There was a twinge in the muscles of his left side, docile enough for him not to make a face. The one pathetic rib that had given way to the abuse and cracked was snugly immobile beneath his skin and the tolerably tight bandage around his chest. Three days of not doing much, with two of those days spent mostly in bed, was in no way time enough for the bone to heal. But John was pretty sure it was at least starting to fuse. The pain had diminished to an ache easy enough to ignore yet still annoying.

" I like this ax," Maj said. She hefted it onto her shoulder, lifted, then let it fall onto the next helpless log. Whistle, thwack, and the wood had a literal split personality. " Has bit more of a heft to it than the last one, and a better head."

" Give it time," John said as he grabbed the two halves of wood and set them on the pile. " Prolonged use'll make it just like the old one."

Maj set another log on the stump and held it in place to shoot John a smirk. " Why, John Sheppard, are you being pessimistic?"

John dusted bark chips off his hands then held up a single finger. " Realistic. I'm being realistic. There's a difference."

Maj hefted the ax and swung. Whistle, thwack, and two more pieces of wood were born. " Not in my experience." Maj dropped the head of the ax to the ground so she could lean with one arm on the handle. " I mean if the world were ending I doubt there'd be a soul grinning about it and saying 'oh joy, the world is ending', but much of the outcome of life depends on how you look at it. Yes, the ax will go dull in time no matter how often I sharpen it, but I can still bask in its unblemished newness." She leaned to the side, grabbed another log, set it on the stump, and swung the ax up then down.

John grabbed the pieces. " I won't argue with living in the moment."

Their conversations, of late, had been idle and mundane chatter, and John found that he enjoyed it. He hadn't become resigned to the fate of living on Ioth for the rest of his life. The pass would come even though the time for it was still days away. John had simply become thoroughly comfortable in Maj's presence, almost like having a second life apart from Atlantis. And when the time did come to return home, he would ensure some way to contact Maj again. Perhaps some monthly meeting on some world somewhere just for a quick 'hello, how are you' kind of rendezvous, just to ensure that the other was well – and alive.

John went to the pile and set the split wood on top. A snap sounded sharp in the woods. John snapped his head up and searched the twilight gloom of the forest. A silent breeze made the branch of a tree creak.

" John? Something wrong?"

It took effort to pull his gaze away and move back to the stump. He shook his head. " Nothing."

Maj kept the ax resting against her shoulder and regarded John searchingly. " It might be just me, but you've been seeming a little jumpy lately. I doubt Jorsek's going to have a second go at you. His first go was risky enough. He's lucky I hadn't come sooner. Then I would have had every right to stick him full of projectiles." She lifted the ax and let it fall, like a human guillotine. John snatched up the pieces.

" Jorsek's a pansy-ass when it comes to torture. I've had worse." John would have brought up the little ditty about being wraith-sucked, but neither wanted to explain it nor skip down that particularly dark hollow of memory lane.

" Hmm," was all Maj said before setting another log on the chopping block. The ax swung, and the log split. John took the pieces and headed for the pile.

Within the sudden silence came a shout, high-toned and young. John froze and tuned his hearing toward that sound alone until it came again, closer and longer. He looked up, then to his right to see a small form bundled in a fur-trimmed brown coat racing toward Maj's back yard. The hood of the coat was up, but John didn't need to see the face to know who it was.

" Kari!" John moved swiftly toward her to meet her the rest of the way.

" Mr. Sheppard Miss Maj he's got my brother he's got Dev...!" she called in a single breath. She grabbed the sleeve of John's coat when it was within reach and began tugging frantically. " He's got Dev he's got Dev!"

John crouched and took the gasping girl by the shoulders. " Kari, calm down. Who's got Dev?"

" Mr. Leyn!"

Maj came up beside them. " Leyn took Dev?"

" Mr. Leyn was trying to take me but Dev attacked him and started kicking him. Dev told me to run and when I looked back I saw Mr. Leyn chasing Dev into the woods. He needs help Mr. Sheppard! Mr. Leyn's going to kill him!"

Maj was already in motion running to the house, then two minutes later returning with her rifle slung over her shoulder, John's bladed sticks in one hand, and Ris trotting along side her. John rose, and Maj tossed the blades to him.

" I'd of grabbed your projectile, but the council will skin you alive if they caught you with one."

John pulled opened his coat and slipped the blades into his belt. " Lead the way Kari."

They took off at a run back the way Kari had come. John was about to ask why Kari hadn't run home to get her parents. The answer came when they arrived at the spot of the confrontation only three houses away.

Closer, duh. The girl wasn't dumb. Go to the nearest person you know you can trust.

" They went in there," Kari said, pointing to the woods.

Maj nodded sharply and brought her rifle around. " All right then. Kari, I need you to go wait in Mrs. Holven's house right behind us and get her to contact your parents. We'll go find your brother."

Kari nodded and scurried off to the back door of the house behind them. Maj started off into the woods first, and John followed. John took a glance over his shoulder to see the back door of the house open and Kari step inside.

" Sniff 'em out Ris, you sniff 'em out," Maj urged. Ris snuffled the ground then took off at a trot straight ahead.

" Ever consider Leyn's sick interest to go beyond kids?" John said, keeping his voice low so as not to spook Leyn and give him a reason to run... or kill Dev. " And that he's the one you should be looking at as the reason people keep vanishing?"

" Come now," Maj replied just as quietly. " You've seen Leyn. Some of the folks who've vanished could deal with him easily, and that includes many of the women."

It took a moment for John's eyes to adjust to the gloom, but his hearing was sharpened in the silence. So far, all he could hear was the groan of the trees, and his and Maj's breathing, and their thumping footfalls. " On my world," John said, " original world – the worst killers in history have been nothing more than the scrawny geek next door." He fell silent, listening, then spoke again. " This one guy was able to convince a whole bunch of people to kill for him." Again, silence, listening, then speaking. " Some have stuffed bodies under floors and in cooling units, and never get caught until years later."

Maj flashed him a disgusted look. " Is this supposed to be encouraging? Because it isn't."

" Just letting you in on what I know. People go to a lot of nasty lengths not to get caught." John decided to refrain from the horror stories of killers going as far as turning humans into hamburger and serving them up to house-guests in the form of spaghetti sauce. His cousin had told him about that one, and it still made John's flesh crawl whenever he told it to anyone else.

Ris had slowed to relocate the scent. He kept going forward, but at a pace where he could keep his nose to the ground. The mini-iaret took them up a small rise that revealed nothing on the other side, then down to the other side. The path the scent led them on was erratic, veering, even circling, meaning that Dev had pulled some drastic moves trying to escape his pursuer.

Movement flashed out of the corner of John's eye on the left, and he reacted by whipping around and raising his blade. Except nothing was there.

" See something?" Maj asked.

John shook his head. They kept going. The silence was heavy, almost like an actual, physical weight pressing on their ears, even with the branches creaking and clacking together when a breeze rushed by. John rolled and twisted his neck trying to take the entire forest in at a glance, even craning his head back to look up into the trees in case the boy had got it in his head to climb instead of keep running. The branches were burnt umber dark against the solid gray sky, knobby, twisted, and clawed like fleshless limbs reaching for one another, and not because they wanted to shake hands or embrace. John looked back down to the less intimidating trunks.

If some spiny monster in a red cloak comes at me, I quit.

Ris led them deeper into the forest to where the trees grew taller, thicker, and more clustered in some areas. The iaret suddenly lifted its head, and trotted over to a gnarled gray tree with a wide base. Ris began nipping and pulling at the bare shrubs tangled around the base of the tree, then hopping up and down.

" You find something, boy?" Maj asked hiking up her skirts in one hand to hurry over. " What is it, Ris, what'd you find?"

" Miss Maj?" A small, pale hand poked out from between the shrubs, followed by a second, and pushed the shrubs apart. Dev's head followed after, and the boy's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. " Miss Maj! Mr. Sheppard!" Dev squeezed his skinny body out from between the shrubs. John snatched a glimpse of a deep alcove within the base of the tree, big enough for the boy to hide in if he curled up tight. Dev stumbled to the ground as soon as he popped free, picked himself up, and threw himself into Maj's arms, sobbing.

" He was gonna kill me, miss Maj, he said he would! Said he was gonna skin me! I was just trying to get him off of Kari...!"

Maj patted and rubbed the boy's dirt-stained back. John came up beside them and lowered into a crouch to study the part of the boy's face he could see. There were smudges of dirt, and a hairline scratch, but no bruises or a split lip, which meant that Leyn had never been able to grab him.

Dev opened his eyes to look at Sheppard, then wiped them. " He was going after Kari again," he said, as though there could never be enough explanations for almost being killed. John nodded in understanding.

" I know Dev, she told us. Did you see where Leyn went?"

Dev lifted his head away from Maj, wiping his other eye. " I was able to lose him long enough to hide. Then I saw him run past where I was hiding, shouting how he was going to kill me..." the boy's breath hitched in a hiccup, but he quickly composed himself, his voice growing steadier the more he talked. " He walked on by, up that rise." He pointed to the small hill several feet away on the boy's right. " He was still shouting, but it was getting farther and farther away. Then..." he squinted in perplexity. " Then... I think... I think I heard him scream. And not angry scream either. Kind of really high. I've never heard anyone scream like that, so I don't know what it was. It stopped real suddenly too, and not like a short scream. It was really long, then gone."

A hiss from Ris brought all three of their gazes to the iaret. Ris was standing on the other side of the tree, staring at the small hill Dev had pointed to, head down and back arched like a pissed cat.

John rose and pulled both the blades from his belt. " Cover me."

Maj didn't ask questions. She pushed Dev behind her, and moved her rifle back to the front of her. John approached the hill, slowly, listening and watching. He slowed further as he crested the rise toward the top, keeping his head low should he need to drop for any reason – namely the reason of getting shot at. Movement flickered in and out on his right. John turned only his eyes and only for a breath, and saw nothing. When he was closer to the top, he craned his neck trying to catch a glimpse of a hand or piece of cloth of someone lying low on the other side. Foot by foot, as he saw nothing, he approached the top until he was finally there.

Below, he saw nothing. More trees, bare shrubs, and not much else.

Movement came and went quick as lightning adjacent to the left and several yards away. Then, from somewhere to the right, he heard a voice. He felt a presence, there and gone, and another brief snatch of motion straight ahead, deeper in the forest.

John's heart thundered like a train engine. A drop of sweat ran down his spine, tickling the sensitive nerve endings beneath the skin.

More movement, but John didn't try to see it. He knew damn well he wouldn't see anything.

He knew this, was familiar to it, conditioned to it, and the familiarity made his heart beat timid and fast.

" Oh no," he breathed. He snapped around, and raced back to where Maj and Dev waited. " Time to go," he said in his flat, no-argument and no-wasting-time tone of voice, pointless on someone who knew not to waste time or ask inane questions. John scooped up Dev and they moved at a brisk trot back through the woods with Ris leading the way.

They slowed the moment they stepped from the woods back into the open. Maj set Dev down and ushered him off into the house to wait for his parents, and she was about to follow him inside.

" Maj, wait," John said. Maj stopped six feet away from the door and turned, waiting for an explanation as to what was going on, but not pushing for one.

" We need to find Jorsek," John said and swallowed back the bitter taste the words brought. He swallowed again, cleared his throat, and continued. " We need to find Jorsek, tell him what happened."

Maj calmly swung the strap of her rifle onto her shoulder. " He'll blame you, John. He'll accuse you of having done something to Leyn."

John swallowed a third time. Hell yeah he knew. " Doesn't matter." John set his features into a grim look of determination. " Leyn's more than likely dead right now, but Jorsek's still the chief protector of this village, and the people need to know. Jorsek'll catch on anyways, probably blame me anyways, so might as well get it over with."

Maj just stood there, still as stone, and face just as blank. Then, she lifted one eyebrow, and smiled. " I swear, every day, I see a little more of my Fiel in you."

John grinned back. Maj stopped trying to imitate a tree and walked up beside John so they could head into the town together. " Your heart's pure as new-fallen snow, John..."

John huffed a dry, caustic laugh. " I doubt that. More like snow with a few yellow spots."

" You didn't let me finish. But you don't always have the sense to go with it."

" Hey, it's the right thing to do."

Maj held up a hand. " I'm not arguing that it isn't. But it isn't going to turn out pretty."

John snickered again. " You're preaching to the choir, Maj."

" Huh?"

" Never mind."

They slowed almost to a stop when the otherwise tense silence was scarred by the distant ringing of a bell.

John's heart did a little uncomfortable skip. " No way they could have found out that fast."

Maj's brow lowered forming two wrinkles in her forehead. " No." And they sped back up, climbing to a brisk run toward the center of town and the Gathering Stage.

People were already starting to mill in like lost sheep, but it would be a while before the entire population congregated around the platform. John's stomach twisted as he searched the incoming faces until he caught Jorsek's auburn hair bright like a flame in the gray world. He snagged the sleeve of Maj's coat, tugged, and indicated Jorsek's whereabouts with a jerk of his head.

John tried to convince himself that his need not to confront Jorsek alone was simply a precautionary measure. And it was. People were more inclined to listen to two witnesses than one. John's ego wouldn't have him admitting to anything else – at least out loud. Internally, all someone had to do was check his pulse to know the truth. His heart was beating harder now than when he'd been running. Jorsek alone wasn't so much a reason to be nervous, but the entire posse of eight was plenty reason.

They were going to blame John. Blame him and take him down in front of an entire town of onlookers hell bent on cheering the posse on as they mutilated the filthy off-worlder into impossible new shapes.

And still John headed toward them, heart pounding, instincts screaming, but neither brain nor legs listening. As with all fears and all worries, he shoved them into the garbage pit of his mind, and sharpened all thought to a pinpoint line honed directly on the goal.

" Hey Jorsek!" John called.

Jorsek, engaged in a conversation with Mris he appeared only mildly interested in, glanced around until his sights fell on John and narrowed dangerously. Jorsek's posse already began forming around him like iron pellets to a magnet. Jorsek pushed away from Mris and stepped up toward John.

" Sheppard?" his voice was low, dead-pan, and heavy on the warning. He gave Maj a twitch of a glance that acknowledged her presence without showing that her presence bothered him in any way.

John hooked his thumbs into the belt normally used to hold up his BDUs, adopting an air of calm while simultaneously keeping his hands near the handles of his bladed sticks. He then tilted his head toward the stage.

" Is this current get together something important?" John asked. " Or do you think you could spare a couple of hours for a man hunt? 'Cause I thought I should warn you that your buddy Leyn's up and vanished in the woods. And since you're so dead-set on protecting him, you might want to be doing that protecting thing right now."

Jorske's eyes glittered with the onset of gradually burning rage. " What did you do to him Sheppard?"

John darkened his own gaze, and fought fire with ice. " Not a damn thing. It was your buddy's own fault. He took off after a kid, we took off after him to get the kid back, found the kid, but didn't find him. According to that kid, he heard Leyn make a really loud yelling sound that from the kid's description sounded like a scream of fear. So you can either stand there having a pissing contest with me, or pull your head out of your ass and go look for Leyn."

Leyn the younger stepped forward, his rage already forest fire blazing. " He's lying! He hates my brother! Why would he come tell us that something's happen to him? Unless he's covering up for what he's done!"

Leyn the younger took another couple of forward steps with violent intent, only to stop when Gidel showed up next to Maj, his rifle already unslung and still looking menacing resting against Gidel's shoulder.

" Because I'm not a murderer," John said. " Yeah, I think Leyn is a dirt bag, but I'm not all that quick with the vindication. And he's not the first dirt bag I went out of my way not to kill. Look, I'm doing you a favor here, giving you the heads up, so either take it and go find Leyn or leave it and let his name top the casualty list."

Jorsek went unreadable. Even the spark of heated rage had sputtered and died. John maintained eye contact with the man, and through that alone John knew that Jorsek was witnessing pure honesty, which was something Jorsek had probably never really seen before. In turn, he probably didn't know what to make of it.

Except to say that he couldn't deny it. Jorsek only had two choices here, after all. Ignore what Sheppard said at let Leyn the younger beat Sheppard into oblivion, or listen to Sheppard and go help Leyn the older. Except to not listen to Sheppard, even laying the blame on John, wasn't going to keep Jorsek in Leyn the younger's good graces for long. Younger Leyn would still end up hating Jorsek for not doing away with Sheppard sooner. Which would still happen, because Sheppard was pretty certain that older Leyn was no longer amongst the living.

Out of the frying pan and into the nuclear fallout. Losing one man could very well cause the others to pull away, believing that Jorsek was no longer reliable as the man who could ensure giving them whatever they wanted.

Jorsek took another step forward, right into John's personal space. The rage didn't return. There was only suspicion – deep, calculating suspicion.

" What is this?" Jorsek asked quietly for only John to hear. " What have you done?"

John's jaw clenched with frustration. John's injuries began to throb as though Jorsek's presence had reawakened them. Never had John wanted anything more than to tell that man to go burn in hell with Leyn. John hated Jorsek, like he hated Koyla. Never any love loss for his tormentors. But darned if John wasn't better than either of them. He was better than them, and he could say it without coming across as prideful or self-elevating. John let Koyla live, and Koyla doubled the pain of their next encounter. Jorsek wouldn't hesitate to shoot John even if Leyn came back alive and unharmed. Jorsek was just that kind of guy, like Koyla. They didn't deserve having done right by them, and here John was, doing right by everyone he despised. Everyone who caused him pain.

" I didn't do anything," John gritted out, roping in his indignation – yet again. " What I'm doing is the right thing. Something's happened to Leyn, and you need to go out there and find him while you still can."

" He's lying!" younger Leyn screamed, and surged forward to shove John back. John would have fallen if Maj hadn't caught his arm. Leyn stalked forward for another shove. " He hurt my brother!"

But Sheppard beat Leyn to it, and shoved him instead. " I didn't touch your brother! I'm trying to help him, and I don't even know why the hell I am!"

" Shut up!" Leyn screamed. " You killed him! You killed my brother!" Again the younger Leyn lunged with hands outstretched going for Sheppard's throat. John grabbed Leyn's wrists, while several people – not of Jorsek's posse – grabbed at Leyn trying to haul him back. All around them, people shouted, and the bell tolled.

Then it stopped.

" I said what is going on here!"

The struggle ceased, and everyone stilled for a breath. The crowd began to part in either direction. Leyn was pulled back, and John released him, stepping back himself. A man only an inch shorter than Sheppard stepped between the two men. He had an oval face, with a narrow chin made arrow-head sharp by a neatly trimmed gray goatee. His head was completely bald except for around the base of the skull where a few iron gray wisps remained.. He wore a long coat of salt-and pepper gray, black gloves, and black boots. He tugged on the gloves, adjusting them, as he looked indifferently between John and Leyn. Accompanying him was a young soldier dressed in dark blue fatigues and a dark blue jacket with a rifle hanging from his shoulder.

" Would someone be so kind as to answer my question?" the man said. Had the man a mustache, he would have completed John's picture of the devil in his golden years of life.

" Who are you?" Leyn snarled, thoroughly pissed at being denied his violent go at Sheppard.

" You may call me Mr. Tarl. I was sent here by the heads of government per your council's request for someone to come and investigate your string of recent disappearances. And now that I have answered your question, would you please answer mine?"

Since everyone else seemed too bewildered to do so, John took the opportunity to say his peace.

" There may have been a recent disappearance," he said. " I came in to spread the word and, um," he pointed at younger Leyn, " he kind of got upset. It's his brother who vanished."

Tarl raised a thin eyebrow and looked at Leyn. " And you felt this warranted a reason to attack this man?"

Leyn the younger, gritting his teeth, pointed a trembling finger at John. " He did it! I know he did! He hated my brother!"

" And I didn't deny that I hated him," Sheppard jumped in. " And I told little boy Leyn here that I'm not the kind of guy who's into revenge."

Tarl looked from John, then back to Leyn. " One would have to wonder why a man would kill another man, then attempt to rally a search party to find that man."

" To cover up for what he did," Jorsek calmly, self-assuredly, stated.

Tarl frowned thoughtfully. " Mm, yes, I suppose. Is there a river nearby where he could have dumped the body? A ravine? Cliffs?"

" Iaret cliffs," said the bearded man.

Maj grinned. " Iarets don't consume the flesh of the species that feed them. All those times someone's died falling from those cliffs, the bodies have never been touched."

Tarl inclined his head as though absorbing this piece of information. " My point, good people, is that I have read the reports concerning these disappearances, and in every one you have been unable to find the body, even with the use of iaret's. If this man had indeed done away with your brother, good sir, I doubt there would be sufficient places for him to hide the body where an iaret would not be able to locate."

And John was an off-worlder who knew his way around the unexplored halls of Atlantis better than this valley. He wouldn't know where to stash a body. Of course neither side said this out loud since there was no reason to. They all realized it.

Unless Jorsek wanted to bring Maj in on the accusations, but he had yet to, and John doubted he would. There was just no messing with the good friend of one's mother, and an off-world traveler who may have nasty alien devices at her disposal. For once, it paid to be an off-worlder of one kind or another.

Tarl sniffed, and clasped his hands behind his back. " It seems that I have arrived just in time. Apparently, the situation has escalated to each of you being at eachother's throats."

" No," said Gidel. " It's always been that way."

Tarl didn't seem to hear, or probably didn't care. " I am stating now that unless the body of the recent victim is found, there is to be no finger pointing. We must all work together if we are to discover the culprit of these atrocities. Starting with a search for the most recent victim. Those already armed in some manner I would ask to accompany the search." Tarl then turned to John. " Do you know the location of the recent victim's last known where abouts?"

John nodded. " Yeah, I think so."

Maj bent and gathered Ris into her arms. " My iaret can sniff out the trail."

Tarl inclined his head. " Good. Then let's not waste any more time, and see what there is to discover."

Tarl moved the rest of the way through the crowd, starting the charge at a swift walk. Everyone just gawked after him, until Gidel sighed, shrugged, and followed, snapping everyone from their bewildered stupor to do the same.

SGA

A/N: We are nearing the exciting stuff. Things are about to be gradually revealed.