At the edge of the chamber were the four thugs they’d encountered before, now armed with the butts of torches they’d picked up along the way. They had a prisoner with them, the girl who had stood with Nevin on the ship from Pelagia.
Crowding up behind Teyla, he let out a gasp. “That’s my sister,” he whispered urgently. “That’s my twin sister, Ailan!” He turned, clutching at John’s arm. “You’ve got to do something!”
John grimaced.
Two of the thugs were arguing, apparently debating the best way across the chamber. On the other side, a darkened doorway with carved lintels made it plain what the goal was. As they watched, more vents erupted in steam, almost obscuring completely the narrow, winding paths.
“This is a wretched place,” Teyla whispered to John. “I am not sure there actually is a safe way across it, except by chance.”
“Tell me about it. These guys have been going crazy with the hydraulics.” John hefted the butt of the torch himself, then ground out the flame against the stone.
“You’re not going to challenge those men,” Teyla said, her brows rising. “Four to one?”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
One of the men seemed to have prevailed to his companions, and now he and another thug converged on Ailan, pointing to the maze. She shook her head. One of them hit her hard across the face, snapping her head back. He pointed to the path, his hand raised for another blow.
Nevin scrambled up, Suua catching onto him. “Let me go!” Nevin pleaded, struggling hopelessly against Suua’s strong grip. “I have to help my sister!”
“They want her to walk the path for them,” Teyla said grimly. “To find the safe way through. That way, if there are traps to be tripped it is she who will be badly burned.”
John looked from Teyla to Suua. “Let’s take them,” he said.
Carson Beckett eased the jumper around in a long turn while Major Lorne leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat. The skies above the island had cleared of the night’s rain, and it was a lovely, bright day. “Having trouble finding a parking place, doc?”
“Just a bit,” Carson said. “This island is heavily populated. I don’t want to set it down in the middle of the street. Even cloaked, people will notice the ship when they walk right into it.”
The cloak did nothing to render the jumper immaterial. Anyone who touched it would know it was there. The island was rocky and a great deal of it that was level enough to land on was covered in trees. Some of the city streets were wide enough, but they were also busy. Crowds of people were out and about, bustling from place to place or doing their marketing in the city’s squares and streets. The chances of landing without making most of the city aware of them were slim.
“Unfortunately,” Lorne said. He tightened his grip on the back of the seat. “How about we go around the other side again? Some of those orchards over on the back side of the island might be spaced enough that we could set down without hitting trees.”
“If you say,” Carson said. “I don’t think there’s enough room anywhere except in the big plazas and such. But we can’t do that without people seeing us.”
“What if we don’t land at all?” Rodney said. Carson twisted around to give him a dubious look, but Rodney persisted. “What if we just hover? Can’t we let some people out?”
“Sure,” Lorne said. “If you don’t mind jumping.” Carson swept back over the city at a couple of hundred feet, wide plazas and narrow streets opening before them, all studded with trees and market stalls.
“I was thinking like on a roof or something,” Rodney said. “There are all these big, wide roofs. Carson could hover a few feet above the surface and we could get out. Climb out on a roof and then get down from there.”
Lorne’s face broke into a wide smile. “I think you’ve got something there,” he said. “Nobody’s going to walk into us by accident if we’re parked on the roof!”
“Hey you!” John shouted. It wasn’t the most memorable speech he’d ever made, but they weren’t really giving him points for that.
It did get the guy’s attention. The biggest of the thugs turned around. “You got a problem?” he yelled.
John nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got a problem. You.”
The thug didn’t seem disturbed. “Yeah? You and what army?”
“This army,” Teyla said serenely behind him. She and Suua stepped out, one on each side, each with a torch stick in hand. “I would let go of that girl if I were you.”
Instead he gave her a vicious shove and Ailan went sprawling on the sharp stones beside the path. Behind Teyla and Suua, Nevin lunged out, Jitrine holding on to his injured arm.
The guy laughed. He was almost as big as Ronon, only hopefully not as fast. “Women and a little kid. Yeah, you try it.”
“Suit yourself,” John said, stepping forward into guard, covering Teyla’s left so she could attack with her good side. Teyla’s good side with sticks was better than both his sides, any day. Three on four wasn’t bad odds. Time to plow on in. He rushed forward, stick in hand.
By himself. Three of the thugs bore down on him, and he barely countered their moves.
“What the hell?” John yelled.
Teyla waded in next to him, smartly rapping with her stick the guy who had nearly decked John. “I am sorry! I thought it wiser to let them come to us.” She spun around in a flurry of kicks and movement, letting the momentum of her attacker carry him past her straight into Suua’s fist. One down.
“Let them come to us?” John was incredulous. “They’re on the edge of a steam pit!” He ducked under the flailing club of one of the thugs, unfortunately catching the second man’s blow right across his back. That hurt.
Teyla reversed direction, coming around in a long kick that barely missed John and connected with the man’s knee, dropping his leg out from under him. “We had the better ground,” she said serenely.
“So what?” John hit the man in the back of the head, knocking him sprawling. He didn’t seem inclined to get up.
He heard rather than felt the blow coming, in the rush of air preceding it. The third man’s torch butt connected with his left side, full force and momentum behind it, right on the sore ribs from the crash. John staggered backwards, unfortunately completely fouling Teyla in the process. It was about all she could do not to hit him with the attack she had half completed.
The man’s second blow hit Teyla as she backpedaled, catching her in the upper left arm. The cry that escaped her lips was unexpected. He’d never heard her cry out, no matter how hard she was hit. This blow hand landed on her bad shoulder.
John lowered his head and butted the man in the stomach, which did in fact distract him from Teyla. Unfortunately, it also brought the man’s club down on his back again. John staggered, the world spinning around him momentarily. Bad plan, hitting something with his head, he thought belatedly. Very bad plan.
He raised his head in time to see Suua catch the man around the throat, shaking him like a terrier with a rat.
John took a deep breath, straightening up. Oh yeah. Bad plan. The dizziness made the room seem to swoop around him. Teyla had stepped back, her lips white, her arm once again at an odd angle. The blow had popped her shoulder out again.
“Stay back!” The fourth thug had retreated to the edge of the steam pits, and he held Ailan before him, a stick against her throat forcing her head up. “Don’t come any closer!”
He could break her neck that way, John thought, without very much effort at all. It would be a stupid thing to do, because then he wouldn’t have a hostage, but the wild look on the man’s face suggested that maybe he wasn’t thinking that clearly. He could kill the girl in a panic, even if it doomed him with her.