‘O’Neill I think we should not disturb them.’
‘To hell with that, Teal’c. I’m done waiting; they’ve been talking for two hours.’ He rose and walked purposefully towards the seated group. A figure popped up and pressed a hand against his chest.
‘It is the council’ the young boy said earnestly, ‘you must stay here.’ O’Neill pressed forwards. ‘No, no, sir, you must wait. We must all wait.’
‘Look, kid, I don’t have the time to wait. My people may not have the time to wait for whatever it is you’re doing. I want my weapons and I want to leave. Now.’ He had progressively raised his voice as he said this, so that those seated nearest turned to look at him. He glowered right back at their disapproving stares. For the last hour they had sat, watching Lief holding ‘the council’ with a select group of the people in the gorge. The others had hung around the boundaries, catching snippets of what was said, watching the strangers. Teal’c’s two ‘friends’ had brought him some food and talked to him in low voices. They had seemed awed by him, but now they were standing up, Teal’c at their side, watching him in horror. ‘Well, in for a penny…’ Jack thought and he pushed his way into the seated group. ‘Lief? I’ve got something I want to say to this council: ‘I want to go, right now.’’. He paused, made uncomfortable by the white face of Lief as she rose and stood a few yards before him. ‘We’re going.’ He stated as firmly as he could.
‘Going?’ She asked, ‘just like that? Gone?’ Her voice was taut with a cold anger and she flicked back her hair and placed a hand on the hilt of the sword she wore. ‘You do not know us, O’Neill. You do not know our ways. You do not know this land. You do not know what lies beyond the brim of your hat. You do not know what goes on here and most of all,’ O’Neill caught a glimpse of red reflected light as she drew the cloth wrapped around the sword’s hilt away, ‘You do not know me’. And in a flash she had drawn the blade and O’Neill saw not dull grey, but a searing wave of blue-tinged energy that arced, ringing, around the sword’s trajectory and clung to its strange surface.
‘Holy…’
Lief looked right into O’Neill’s face which lay open with wonder. She stepped towards him, the sword crying as she cut it through the air before her. He stumbled backwards, feeling the sharp movement of the air as though the sword was a scythe pushing it towards him.
‘This is Odin’s blade, strange man. Do not cross me. I will not brook it.’ Jack could not draw his eyes from the weapon. Beyond the blue grey aura surrounding it, was the shape of a normal sword, doubled edged, and yet each edge was strangely faceted, crailed. The hilt looked of gold, set with many red stones that threw light themselves adding to the forceful presence of the blade.
‘Odin’s blade?’ he held out his hands in a gesture of appeasement, ‘weapon of the gods. I’m not going to argue with that.’ She looked at him and her council watched her, the numbers swelled by all the people of the gorge who had appeared at the council’s edges. She held the sword up for a moment, looking at it. The light fell on her face. The audience was rapt. Then she glanced back to him.
‘Sit, then.’ She did not resheathe the sword but leant back against her boulder, the blade resting across her body. ‘If you must, sit in the council, and listen, and learn to keep your council, until you understand those around you.’ People immediately shifted to provide O’Neill with a space, as though he were a feared thing, a strange, but daring entity. He mutely sank to the ground. She held up a hand, the seated figures gave her all their attention, the peripheral watchers melted away. She nodded slightly, ‘It is not well to hold the call of force at this council, let me lay it down.’ The girl to her left, without a word, held out her cloak and Lief took it and laid the blade part wrapped within it at the council’s feet. O’Neill saw the sandy-haired man look from the sword, to Lief and then to him. He could not read the look in the man’s eyes. ‘Then Nethran, continue as you were saying,’ Lief commanded.
-
‘Why is it’ said Sam, ‘that the locals are never happy to see us?’
‘Well … that’s a … rather ethnocentric… way of seeing it.’ Replied Daniel through clenched teeth.
‘I don’t follow…left a bit’
‘Ah … that enough? … calling them the locals, I mean.’
‘Keep still.’
‘I’m trying’ his voice was gritted
‘Oh come on, Daniel, you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, yes I do… can we take a break?’
‘Mmm, ok. Ready?’ She lifted first one leg and then the other, jamming herself into the narrow shaft of the souterrain entrance, Daniel walked away hastily, rubbing is shoulders, then swinging his arms.
Having been woken by Daniel, Carter had attempted to keep watch while he slept, but finding that she was in danger of drifting back into sleep herself she had directed her attention to escape. Eventually, when Sam had fallen off the upturned pail a third time in her attempts to reach the trapdoor shaft, Daniel had woken and was now, somewhat testily, aiding her attempts by allowing her to stand on his shoulders freeing her hands to work on the hatch.
‘We’re always outsiders, that’s all’ came Daniel’s voice. ‘They’re no more hostile then we’d be… in fact, they’re probably a lot less. If you think about them as ‘locals’ you make them sound like village rustics compared to us, the suave metropolitan types, but, you know we’re hardly that, we’ve only known about the gate for a few decades and been able to use it for less, we’re fumbling round the galaxy, the new-kids-on-the-block.’
‘So basically, we’re as rustic as they are?’ It was Sam’s turn to sound clenched as she held herself in her cramped position several metres above the floor, twisted like a spider-cast.
‘You have to see things from their perspective…’
‘Even if their perspective is looking down on us in a poky hole?’
‘…their response is no different to that we’d receive in many communities on Earth, if we turned up saying we came in peace, but holding guns, saying we’re just explorers, but quite happily taking whatever we can get.’
‘Hey, come on, we use what we take against the Goa’uld. Are you ready to have another go yet?’
‘Just a second. Yeah, I know and, of course, I’m with you on that, but its not always what the SGC’s about, is it? I mean we take for America too, don’t we?’
‘So taking stuff for science is alright, but not for politics?’
‘All I’m saying is that it’s difficult. We don’t exactly come with pure hearts and the intention to take only memories and leave only footprints. Like explorers of the past we’re mixed up with the politics of nation state and of military strategy… we’re not just here to learn.’
‘Ok. Yeah, I get it… add to that the new dimension of intergalactic politics and threats and you get SG1 looking for weapons as often as sentient life… or even in preference. Can you hurry up, I’m slipping.’
‘Besides, half the time we’re popping out of the portal known mostly for its association with the Goa’uld - not necessarily the best introduction.’
‘So… I can’t see you, are you there?…’
‘Here, I’ll guide your foot’
‘… you win, its perfectly acceptable for the locals, sorry the various Tauri inhabitants of many worlds, to be so unhappy to see us.’ She had got one foot down onto his shoulder now and was about to shift her weight back onto it when she froze. She had no time to do anything more than this before the trapdoor opened and a burst of rain-bearing air thrust itself into the souterrain. A ruddy face appeared looking straight down on the surprised expression of the contorted Captain Carter. She blinked. His face broke into amusement.
‘Well, well.’ He said. He stared at her for a long moment. ‘I brought you some food… and something to drink.’
‘Thank you.’ Sam replied, not moving. Daniel, standing below, recognised the voice, it was the same man who had given them his cloak the night before.
‘I brought you a couple of blankets as well, since I reckon it’s none too warm in there.’
‘Not especially.’ Sam agreed.
‘Hmm... You going to take these then?’
Sam gingerly removed an arm from its bracing against the shaft. She had quickly drawn her left foot back off Daniel’s shoulder but hadn’t found a secure purchase for it. As she reached up for the first parcel, she felt its grip slide and then shoot loose out of the base of the shaft. Daniel half caught her, half was flattened by her. The parcels bounced onto their prone bodies.
‘Goodnight, then.’ The Norseman seemed all the more cheerful for the incident. He was moving to lift the door shut again. Sam stumbled upright.
‘Please, you have to let us go.’ He paused to look at her.
‘And why is that, hmm? Why is that?’ When she didn’t answer, he snorted. ‘No good demanding things of me.’
‘We’re not demanding.’ Daniel’s voice seemed very small and caused the Norseman to pause again at his work. He squinted down at their upturned faces in the low light of the overcast evening.
‘What do you think I can do?’ He asked, shaking his head. ‘I brought you food, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, thank you, but…’ He made a humphing noise as he pulled the trap shut. For a few moments longer, they listened in the resumed darkness, then Sam began to seek out the bundles.
‘You alright?’ Daniel asked as he squatted to help her
‘Nothing damaged except my dignity. How about you?’
‘I didn’t have much dignity to start off with.’ He was eagerly unwrapping a large loaf from within a woollen cloak.
‘Right, but anything else damaged? You did kinda break my fall. Urgh, that’s not water.’ She handed Daniel a canteen. ‘Mead?’ He gave it a sniff, then took a swing.
‘Probably small beer, but I’ll drink to that.’ He raised the canteen for a second, then took a satisfyingly long draft. ‘You caught me in the ribs with one boot, but I’ll live.’ Through a mouthful of bread Sam asked,
‘Broken?’ He shook his head too busy to reply. They fell silent, engrossed in their urgency for food. After they had consumed more than the edge of her mind told her they should, Sam held out a hand to stop Daniel from finishing the bread off. She stood abruptly to rap herself in one blanket, clasping it shut with a cold hand. Daniel squinted at her,
‘I bet you look really Nordic.’
‘I bet I look a complete sight… at least the Colonel isn’t here to have a good laugh.’
‘You never know, he’ll probably turn up in the night.’ Daniel wrapped himself up as well. ‘He doesn’t like to pass on an opportunity...’
Sam listened to the rain outside. ‘He’s not coming tonight,’ she thought. The wind was banging something nearby, rhythmically. Had the Viking forgotten to batten something down? ‘Shall we have another go at the trapdoor?’
‘Why not?’ said Daniel, whilst thinking of several good reasons why not, prime among them being his desire for sleep. ‘Can I stand on your shoulders this time?’
-
The trouble was, O’Neill decided, that they spoke too quickly. Try as he might he hadn’t followed the Council, neither its arguments nor its conclusions. Now the group had broken up and he went to sit with Teal’c on a hard ledge, none the wiser for his interruption. He moaned that the cold rock was no good for his butt, but Teal’c merely raised an eyebrow. After a moment, when nothing else was forthcoming, Teal’c decided a prompt was in order.
‘O’Neill, it appears that they are packing up to leave.’
‘Yeah,’ O’Neill agreed, watching the movement of people all around them. ‘Looks like it.’ Again, Teal’c waited, again O’Neill offered nothing.
‘The Council ordered that they should leave?’ He eventually suggested.
‘Mmm.’ Came the non-committal reply from O’Neill, as he adjusted his boot.
‘Are we to leave as well?’
‘I sure as hell hope so, Teal’c.’
‘You do not know?’
O’Neill pushed back his cap with one hand, slipped on his sunglasses with the other. ‘No.’ He conceded. Teal’c considered this in silence. O’Neill sighed. ‘From what I could gather at their meeting, council… thing, they were disagreeing over what to do. This man called Nethran wanted to do one thing, but Lief didn’t agree. After a bit, Lief put her foot down and said what was what.’ If Carter or Daniel had been there, thought O’Neill, someone would have said ‘and what was that?’, but Teal’c simply waited patiently. ‘I haven’t a clue what she said. It could have been a different language. I think it was a big deal though. It was definitely a big deal.’
It began to rain. O’Neill looked disgustedly up at the small patch of grey sky above the gorge. He slipped off the ledge and sort shelter in one of the caves, removing his shades and squinting in the dim. Bodies moved around them. He sensed the same restlessness among them as had stirred during the council. A figure pushed up against him. It was Nethran, shaking water from his sandy hair. He stared at O’Neill a moment and then said abruptly,
‘Perhaps it is as well.’ He looked down at the sword in his hands. O’Neill looked too, saw it was the sword, carefully wrapped up once more, its leather strap swinging below.
‘By which you mean…?’
‘That you came. Perhaps it is as well.’ He was strapping on the blade. ‘Some things will be.’
‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know what the problem is and frankly, I’m not sure of I care, but please, tell me one thing straight – can Teal’c and I have our weapons back and go?... now.’ Nethran had his hand resting on the sword’s pommel, in exactly the way Lief wore it.
‘Of course.’
O’Neill looked thrown.
‘We’re gone. You’re gone.’
‘Hey, I said straight.’
Nethran smiled. It was a patronising smile to give to a man more than twice his age, but he was feeling charged. ‘Why don’t you go and find Lief?’ Then, suddenly, he reached forward and took O’Neill arms, saying earnestly. ‘I do not wish you ill. This is dangerous. You have brought this danger, but I wish you good fortune.’ O’Neill was again thrown by Nethran’s sudden change in attitude.
‘What’s going on?’ Nethran looked hard at him.
‘We are disbanding, the gaterunners and the Picti.’ He saw O’Neill’s lack of comprehension. ‘The runners, we are fifteen, the rest of the people here are of the Picti. They have come because they seek leadership that their elders do not offer. They find what they are seeking in Lief, but she does not know what way lies ahead for them, or for her. She cannot endanger them, so she is sending them back to the Pictish dwellings where they are safe. I will lead the runners on. There is much to be done.’ He pushed past O’Neill into the cave. O’Neill made to follow, but Nethran was calling orders into the cave and instead, he went back to the entrance, where he found Teal’c.
‘Well, that made everything clearer.’ He commented to the big man. They watched the rain and the closer, denser streams of water drizzling from the cave mouth. O’Neill found himself wondering where Daniel was. He would understand what was going on, would have been able to communicate with these people. ‘Have you seen Lief?’
‘I have not.’ A group of people moved past them and hurried out into the rain. A further group followed them. ‘Do you wish to find her?’ O’Neill did not reply. Nethran strode past into the rain, his voice calling people urgently. O’Neill stepped out of the cave and surveyed the scene. A motley group heading out of the gorge, Nethran, hair plastered down, moving quickly towards another group, two boys of no more than twelve standing forlornly at the burn’s edge. Lief was there. She appeared suddenly, spoke to each boy carefully, bending to instruct each, making direct eye contact. She straightened and O’Neill watched a strange look pass between her and Nethran. He was an intruder here, suddenly he felt it strongly, and stumbled backwards into the dry.
Two hours later, he looked out again. The gorge was deserted, but running hard with water. A little later, Lief appeared. She sat with them, soaked to the skin. O’Neill didn’t dare say anything.
-
Daniel looked up at the carved entranceway. The wood working was impressive interlace of a style he recognised as late 11th/early 12th Scandinavian Urnes ornament. Despite himself, he was impressed, squinting in the torch light to better see the designs. Beside him, Carter shifted uneasily. His eyes rested on a figurative panel among the interlace. He moved closer to the woodwork, causing their guards to stir from their casual postures. He lifted up an appeasing hand, but continued to study the carving. Sam came to have a closer look as well. There was a raven, similar to that caved in the broch, but beneath it were figures engaged in some strange activity. Daniel reached out a hand and touched the carving. One of the guards, holding a torch, came close behind them to see what they were about. The flickering light drew out the designs and Daniel muttered as he traced the figures, nodding.
‘Daniel?’
‘A smithy.’ He said in a low voice. ‘These people are casting metal and these are heating a furnace… there that’s a crucible….’ He pointed to a figure, directly below the raven, which was holding a crucible with a pair of tongues. The crucible was being tipped and the liquid metal pouring from a spout. Daniel reached out and touched the carving of the liquid metal.
‘Whoa.’ He pulled his hand back as if stung.
‘That’s not wood.’ Sam thought. She had seen the carving glow slightly as Daniel had touched it. Now she reached out herself and softly rested her fingers on the ‘wood’. Instantly she felt uncomfortable warmth, but she held her hand as it was and the cascading liquid metal, flowing from the crucible, glowed brightly. The guard reached from behind her and pulled her arm away. She turned and faced him, but saw only bewilderment in his eyes.
‘Sam, what do you think it is?’ asked Daniel, but Sam wouldn’t answer, not in front of the guard.
‘Naqueda,’ she thought ‘or some derivative. It has to be.’
Since they had been summoned from the souterrain they had been brought first to one longhouse, then another. Now they stood outside the great hall building, apparently awaiting admittance. Sam was on edge. She had given the same straight replies to the same strange questions in each house. It was quite clear that they were not believed. Stranger still, there was no getting round the fact that people kept referring to them as being ‘of the faeries’. She could imagine that O’Neill would find this extremely amusing. In another context she would have done too, but they were captives and it was quite clear that their captors held potent animosity towards ‘the faeries’ of which they spoke. The last house had been the worst. The abode of Sven Sturlesen. Swainarse. She shuddered again as she thought of his lecherous stares, the way he had put his warm, sweaty hand over her mouth to stifle her answers. His other hand had tightly gripped her arm, Daniel had begun to protest, Swainarse to angrily silence him, but then a messenger had appeared. They had been called to the Dinhalle. They must go immediately. Sven Sturlesen must attend the Røthejarle directly. So now they waited, with their escort, outside the large doors of the hall.
Swainarse emerged from the doors, halting suddenly as he moved towards them, his eyes on Daniel. The archaeologist, oblivious to the attention, had his bespectacled face inches from the wood and was noiselessly mouthing something as he traced his hand across the foot of the panel.
‘Daniel.’ said Sam, sharply and he quickly straightened up. In a brief moment of contact his eyes told her there was much he wished to communicate, but on the order of Swainarse, they were swiftly marched into the hall.
It was an incredible sight. Lit by torches that caught and animated the carved wood, the high hall was divided by huge, ornate posts into three aisles. Halfway down a group of men stood around a hearth, but their eyes were drawn beyond that. At the opposite end, on a dais raised a good four feet off the ground stood a vast box-like chair, on the back of which perched a raven. Beside the chair, a tall figure in a dark red cloak stood. His yellowed eyes were trained directly on them. Indeed every eye in the room followed them as they self-consciously walked toward the dais. The raven suddenly flew up, its flapping surprisingly loud as it careered into the roof space. The man arranged himself into the framing of the chair, resting his roughly bearded chin on a blotchy hand and Sam and Daniel came to a stand before him.
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