“Ok.” Ronon crossed his arms. “We need to know where they’re going.”
“Then let us depart this ship as soon as it comes to the dock and follow the procession,” Radek said. “We are strangers, but since there is a great festival there must be many people here who are oddly dressed and known to no one. We mingle with the crowd and find out what we can.”
“It’s a plan,” Ronon said, but he plainly hoped the plan turned into action soon. Radek only hoped that action would not be precipitous.
Teyla looked about the Holy Island with interest. She hoped that would not seem odd. After all, they were travelers who had never been here before, and the sights were indeed impressive. Surely a certain amount of curiosity would seem natural.
John had lifted his head and was walking straight ahead in the procession with a firm step, but she saw how his eyes darted one way and another, saw the tension in the set of his shoulders. Then he glanced at her, one eyebrow quirked, and she knew what he meant. When there was an opportune moment in the crowded streets, they would try to break away.
The way uphill was very crowded indeed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people lined the narrow streets, looking out from windows and porches of houses, cheering and shouting at the spectacle. Tolas and the other officials walked in great state beneath fans, surrounded by guards in glittering array. From time to time one of them would wave, or toss something into the crowd that set off screeches and a scurrying frenzy — small coins or candies, treats or amulets — Teyla could not tell. But whatever it was, it stoked the crowd to an even greater volume, pressing in on the procession and being pushed back in turn by the cordon of guards.
Where they were, toward the end of the procession, this was having a very salutary effect. The number of guards directly around them had diminished from eight to four, two walking on each side. The crowds were loud and people pushed one another, trying to get closer to see better, or to be in a better position for the tosses of goods. Once they got among the crowd it would be difficult to get to them, and from what Teyla could see the city was a rabbit warren of houses and lanes crowded closely together, leaning over one another on the steep hillsides, with terraced gardens and walls of various heights protecting buildings and streets. Fruit trees and growing plants filled the gardens, providing still more cover. If they could slip away from the guards, it would be very difficult to find them again. And perhaps it would not occur to Tolas to look until they reached their destination.
John stopped and bent down as though to retie his boot laces, and Teyla nearly ran into him. She saw, beneath his bent head, how he swiftly untied it before he made a production of tying it again.
Only one of the guards hung back. “Come on, now,” he said. The last of the other contestants passed them, two guards bringing up the rear.
“Sure,” John said with an affable smile as he stood up, ambling along behind them. Teyla had to admire the grace of it. They were now in the very back, with only one man behind them.
He did not need to say anything. She saw the set of his shoulders change an instant before he moved, and she was ready.
They were at a turn of the street, where it proceeded steeply uphill. Two small lanes ran into it, and there was a little square with a fountain, crowded tight with people pressed together. Behind the procession the crowd was breaking up.
John bent again, as though reaching for his boot, but this time he came up with a roundhouse that connected squarely with the last guard’s jaw, knocking him backwards just as Teyla seized his spear and broke it across her knee. Six feet long it was of no use to her, but a three foot section was very useful indeed. John darted back down the processional way with Teyla a step behind him before there were even shouts of alarm.
Dodging among the startled spectators, the broken shaft held to her side, there was no need to actually strike anyone. Most of the calls were not screams for help, but simply cries of startlement, with the occasional comment on how rude it was to shove past people.
Behind them, up the street, there were cries of alarm, but it had all happened so quickly, and at the end of the procession, that most of the guards now had to get through the crowd of spectators.
John dodged down a side street and Teyla followed. He did not even wait a moment before he took the first side turn, then leapt up a low stone wall covered in creeping vines and clambered onto the terrace above. Teyla followed. They slipped through the branches of three small fruit trees that hung low, then climbed over another wall into the alley behind a large house that faced the street above. No one was around. The inhabitants were probably in the front of the house watching the procession, or if this street was not one of the processional ways, perhaps they had gone down to watch. They hurried around the corner of the house and John flattened himself against the rough stone wall. He was breathing more heavily than she might expect, but he put his finger to his lips. She slipped in beside him and he leaned out a fraction, looking back.
There were no sounds of near pursuit. Away beyond the walls were shouts and music, but whether alarm or just the normal sounds of the festival she could not tell.
“It appears we have gotten away cleanly,” Teyla whispered.
John nodded. He turned away, checking in the other direction up the narrow space between houses, high walls rearing on both sides. It appeared this space was used as a refuse dump and sometime privy, as it stank badly. At the front of the houses it was masked from the street by a large bush and a dwarf fruit tree. They peered out.
The street ran steeply downhill to their right, presumably to join the lower street the procession passed on, while to the left it twisted around the side of the hill, houses and garden walls abutting it.
Come on, John said, and stepped out sharply, strolling along the side of the street going uphill. Teyla followed. It was true that if no alarm had reached this area it would be more suspicious to dart across people's gardens than to simply walk along the street purposefully.
Around the curve there was a drop to the left, a stone restraining wall along the edge of a bank that went down steeply toward the port. Above, to the right, a magnificent house took full advantage of the view, porches spread to catch the breeze.
Over the wall, Teyla said. Let us stop and plan. The wall was nearly as tall as she, and John had to help her up with her hurt shoulder, but once they sat in the shadow on the other side of the wall they were perhaps as safe as they could be. They could not be seen from above unless someone leaned over the wall and looked down, and the wall covered them from the houses above. Below, rough scrub and rocks made it a tough clamber of about forty feet to the trees and garden walls of houses. From the flat roofs of the houses below they would be visible, but at a distance that would make it difficult to tell who they were or what they were doing. Beyond, the sea stretched, the port off to their left. A few clouds littered the sky, perhaps signs of thunderstorms to come in the night.
John let out a long breath.
Ok.That was well done, Teyla said.
I thought so.
For a few moments they sat there companionably.
Now what? Teyla asked.
John pulled the radio out of his pocket and checked it again. It was still on standby, the low battery light on. If anyone had called they would have heard it. Which was in itself worrisome. What had happened that there had been no rescue team? Had the rescue team likewise run into the Wraith cruiser? Were even now Rodney and Lorne prisoners of the Wraith or, worse yet, dead?