The Lost and the Forgotten

Chapter 9

The knife hit a stone again, with a metallic crack.  Ronon scraped the soil out of the way with the blade and his fingers.  The ground was baked solid and it wasn't worth expending the energy needed to get any deeper.  He cut the root off, awkwardly in the narrow hole, then held up the scruffy plant and hacked off all the top growth.  The root was an uninspiring sight, knobbly and gnarled, but twist it til its skin split open and chew it to release the juice and it would help keep infection at bay.

Ronon pushed through the undergrowth, limping back into the shade of the woodland.  The clearing had given him leaves to replace his dressings and the medicinal root, but back under the trees it was cooler and the walking was easier.  The ground had been rising steadily since he'd left the beach and Ronon had followed the rise.  In the underground city he'd ridden a long way down in the mining trucks, so it followed that he needed to climb to find his way back to the Gate environs.

He strode, not fast but steadily, the miles passing.  He crossed a stream, drank, washed the root, twisted and worked it in his hands until it split, and then chewed it as he walked, the bitterness catching at his throat.  Dappled shade became patched with midday brightness and the ground fell away in a tumble of rock and briar.  A vista spread out before him.  To his left a high, blue peak wreathed about with spiralling vapours and to his right, far away on a sun-bleached plain, a city; a city hazed with green encroaching nature, long abandoned and long harvested for its resources by those that dwelt beneath.  Ronon gazed at the mountain.  It was really a very clever disguise, the rocky peak bare of growth where poisonous vapours seeped forth from the volcanic core within; except this was no volcano.

Ronon skirted the treeline, edging around the steep fall.  The Getters would have ways; no matter how careful they were, how wary of alerting the Wraith, there'd be tracks between mountain and city and he was the man to follow them.

oOo

"What if a train comes?" he'd said.

"Flatten yourself again the wall," had been the blithe reply.

Rodney was flat.  As flat as he could make himself against the cold, rust-flaking surface, his head turned to one side, his eyes closed.  The tunnel shook with approaching thunder and then, with dragging turbulence, the roar was all around him.  His bones, his teeth vibrated and his whole body threatened to shake into the path of the hurtling trucks.  He breathed out and pressed himself still further into the wall, reduced to simple endurance, his mind a blank well of noise and fear.

"Rodney!"

Cold against his cheek, hard metal at his back, press tight, keep pressing, keep living.

"Rodney!  It has gone!"

A firm hand on his shoulder, a flickering light on his eyelids.  He opened his eyes.  Teyla was there, her face concerned in the steady, narrow beam of light from her P90.

"Gone?" he croaked.

"Yes.  Come, Rodney, we must keep going!"

"Oh.  Yes.  Right." He was rigid, unwilling to risk movement.  Teyla took his arm and apparently his body trusted her without his mind having to think about it, because he began stumbling along the track beside her.

"It should not be much further." Teyla's light flickered up and down over the wall to their right. 

"I hope not."