“Apparently not,” Cumby said, stepping over to the screen. He rubbed his arms to ward off the chill that had suddenly stolen his voice.
There was nothing in the center of the arena save for a mechanical horse, which stood motionless for want of a rider. The crowd in the balconies above stomped their feet and cheered, hungry for the massacre that was about to take place. They obviously knew something about what was to come, and they knew that horse.
The camera drew in tight on the doors as they slid open. For several long beats, nothing at all happened. Then a figure appeared, dressed in armor and apparently shoved into view. Once he was free of the door, a lance sailed through the air, landing at his feet with a clunk and kicking up dust where it fell. He stumbled several times, the armor clanking and jingling as he did so.
“Is that Rodney? Or the other guy?”
Ronon frowned and tried to find something that would tell him who was in that armor. The uncoordinated stumbling soon gave it away.
“That’s Rodney,” Cumby said.
“Sure looks like it,” Ronon agreed. “And what’s up with the horse?”
In the arena, Rodney was having his own problems.
“You can’t do this!” he screamed. The sound echoed inside his helmet and he took several clanking steps toward the doors through which he had just passed. “Hey! Open up! This isn’t even a fair fight. I have no idea how these weapons…”
Suddenly, the doors at the opposite side of the arena slid open. A wall-shaking roar filled the arena, inspiring the crowd to scream even louder. They were whipped into a frenzy now, calling for the fight to begin.
Rodney turned, pressed his back against the wall and stared, eyes wide. “Swell! Just swell! They send me a monster and all I have to fight with is this toothpick.” He glanced down at the lance and frowned, then shook his head.
Whatever was beyond that door, whatever the thing was that he was supposed to fight, it was loud enough to rattle his brain inside the helmet, and heavy enough that the ground shook with each step. Rodney was rooted where he stood, staring into the open portal and waiting for his fate. His knees shook and his mouth had gone dry. All about him, the crowd screamed, jeered, and cheered, but he heard nothing but the loud pounding of his heart and the roar of his blood in his ears. He tried to think. He tried to make sense of the symbols on the armor, and to figure out what might be special about the lance, but he couldn’t calm his nerves.
The beast poked its head through the door, body sliding through after it. It was huge and covered in bright green scales. Rodney’s wide eyes took it all in and all he could mutter was, “Holy —”
“ — crap!” Ronon groaned. “It’s a dragon. He has to fight a freaking dragon.”
“Poor Rodney!” Cumby exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”
“You got that right.” Ronon said. “That thing is huge.”
“Great. Just great. I get cast in my first Arthurian role, and they send Merlin in to be Lancelot.”
Somehow the sight of the creature released him from his paralysis and he hefted the lance clumsily. The tip was heavy and it dipped to the ground. He lifted it, just for a moment, and then it dropped again.
The dragon still stood in its entrance, and Rodney realized it had not been fully freed yet. Saul was waiting for something — biding his time. Not far from where Rodney stood, the mechanical horse waited, poised but motionless. For all Rodney knew, it would remain so forever. Still, the weapons were designed to even the odds, and the horse was half of what had been provided to him.
“Well, why not?” he said. His heart was hammering, and he kept talking just to try and prevent his mind from sliding over the edge. “I mean, how much worse could it be? When in Rome and all that.” He paused. “Wait! Were there dragons in Rome? What am I saying? There weren’t dragons anywhere! Dragons don’t exist. At least, they don’t exist on Earth. They exist here, of course because I’m standing right in front…”
The dragon let loose another fierce roar. It shook its head, trying to free itself of whatever bonds still held it, and its eyes flashed with an animal intelligence.
Rodney screamed. It was a low sound, rising slowly in pitch, and quavering. Like a shot, he lunged for the horse, struggling as he ran to keep the tip of the lance from hitting the ground and tripping him up. Never mind that he had never ridden a horse before; he was about to get a crash course. He knew very little of horseback riding, and all that he did know he’d learned from watching movies. He remembered, for some odd reason, that he should mount from the left. He paused for a moment to ponder whether that was the left as you approached from the front or the back. A second roar from the dragon told Rodney that it didn’t matter. It was a mechanical horse and it wasn’t moving.
He rested the lance against the horse’s side and rolled quickly up onto the thing’s back. It wasn’t very large, as horses go, but it was big enough that Rodney could sit on it comfortably without feeling like he would slide off. With no small effort, he hoisted the lance’s tip upward until it was level, and then shoved the shaft under one arm.
“Just like all those Errol Flynn movies,” he muttered.
He expected the lance to do something, anything, when he held it. After all, they had said these were Ancient weapons, activated only by one who has the gene. Rodney had the gene and still there was no sign of life from the lance. Had they sabotaged it somehow? Or had they merely lied to him? Or maybe —
“Of course!”
He braced the lance against the horse’s head and shook off his glove. The moment his bare hand slid onto the grip, the lance hummed to life, glowing blue and pulsing. Very suddenly, it was as light as a feather.
Across the arena, the dragon snorted and pawed the ground restlessly. It was anxious for a taste of flesh. One great foot left the ground and thudded back down, then the other. The dragon was ready for him, hungry. He knew that whoever or whatever still held it in check wouldn’t be doing so for very long.
Rodney shuddered. His heart felt as though it might drive its way right through his chest. He shook off the other gauntlet and gripped the reins with his free hand. The horse hummed to life, its eyes lighting up with a mechanical click and its back shifting slightly as some sort of inner hydraulics compensated for Rodney’s weight. There were dents and dings all over its body, obviously from previous battles. At the edges of each metal panel was a fringe of corrosion. Rodney worried about its ability to move, about his own ability to command it.
“The tin man had nothing on you!” he exclaimed with a heavy sigh.
Through the small slit in his helmet, Rodney surveyed the crowd. They were on their feet and yelling, some shaking their fists and drinks in the air. To his left was Saul’s glass-fronted box and Rodney saw a figure inside, pressed tightly to the glass. He couldn’t tell who it was. Saul, probably, but there was no way to be sure. At the side of the box the monocular gaze of a camera followed him and, inside the helmet, he managed a little smile, though no one else could see it. Then he saluted, raising and dropping his lance in what he thought to be a farewell gesture to his friends watching from their cell. He imagined they were saluting back.
With a scream of rage, the dragon was freed. It lunged into the chamber, winding right and left, flowing out of the hole like a giant serpent and heading straight for Rodney.