Incendiary

by Cowardly Lion

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asc/clion/incendia.php
Summary: In the midst of a mission gone FUBAR, Jack has a flash of insight.

Crap. What a fucking mess. Once this was over, Jack would have a few words to say to His Honor The Mayor who had welcomed SG-1, shown them around the walled city, and spoken at length about history and goods and possible trade without once mentioning they were currently at war with a neighboring city.

While SG-1 had been surprised by the attack, their hosts had a more of a resigned oh no, not again reaction. The citizens had scurried up into the innermost portion of the city while the military forces, decked out in grey-metal helmets with red tunics over chain mail, had taken up position down in the outer rings. The enemy forces wore purple with yellow sleeves, making it easy to distinguish friend from foe even at this distance. With too little ammo to make a difference in the fight, SG-1 stayed out of the front lines, but close to the action. If the city fell, the team's chances of making it back to the gate fell also.

The pounding hooves of the attacking cavalry racing across the plain to meet the red ground troops was a stirring sound, a frenetic counterpoint to the sustained rumble of the battle cries from the charging warriors. Then the first wave of horses crashed into the defending line of pike men with a sickening impact of muscle and flesh against metal blades. For some reason, Jack found the screams of the horses far more disturbing than the screams of the men.

Roughly circular in shape, the city followed the contours of the hill it was built on. With a base three times as wide as the top, the first line of defense was the perimeter wall which squatted in a stone ring around the city. One level up was the sturdy wooden palisade behind which SG-1 and the archers were stationed. A volley of arrows went past, this time from the bowmen that surrounded him and Teal'c. Or were they arrows? Jack had a vague recollection that crossbow arrows were called quarrels or maybe bolts. Or something. Daniel might know, but Daniel was about ten feet farther down the line deep in conversation with Carter.

The cavalry had heavy losses, with less than half of the unit surviving to retreat out of the fray and regroup at the rear of their army. The charge had worked, though. The red soldiers had been pushed well back toward their gate. Purple infantry moved up to take the place of the horses and continue the backward press.

It was difficult for Jack to calculate the odds when he didn't have a working knowledge of any of the weapons or tactics employed. There were far more casualties and far fewer fatalities than he was accustomed to seeing. Even for someone battle-hardened like him, the carnage was appalling. The scent of blood and offal wafting up on the breeze didn't help. They never mention this part on The History Channel.

"O'Neill!" Teal'c's bass voice boomed over the tumult of the battle below. "They are deploying siege engines."

Jack looked down the line of archers between him and Teal'c, ducked a flight of arrows from the enemy entrenched outside the city walls and then looked down where Teal'c was pointing.Jack used the scope on his weapon to get a better view of the two large wooden structures were trundling across the field.

One of the structures was an enclosed tower completely covered in what looked to be stiffened animal hides. The other was clearly a trebuchet. The city's ground forces outside the wall had bunched up in a protective semi-circle in front of the main gate. It wouldn't be long before they were forced to take refuge behind the heavy stone of the outermost wall leaving the enemy forces free to move the engines into place. The trebuchet would stand back, its placement a consequence of vectors and trajectory. The tower would snug up against the wall, easily able to top the twenty feet needed to surmount the city's first line of defense and let enemy troops climb up through the tower and over the wall.

Great. Bad enough we're ducking arrows and and dodging swords, but now they can fling shit at us, too.

Jack looked down at the heads of the red infantry massed together in the first level, waiting for their brethren on the plains to finish retreating through the sally ports in the main gate. The pike men, with no more horses to target, covered the infantry's retreat. He watched as the last red-clad soldier slipped inside the wall and wished these people knew what a portcullis was. At least they had the sense to encase the front of the wooden gate with the same grey metal as the helmets. The one good thing in all of this was the size of the opposing force which was insufficient to attack the city on more than one side.

"Sir!" Careful to stay behind the crossbows and out of the line of fire, Carter had moved to his position with Daniel trailing behind her. "They've got a catapult."

In unintentional unison, Jack and Daniel corrected her. "It's a trebuchet."

Daniel cocked an eyebrow at Jack as he continued. "It's got a sling, Carter. That makes it a trebuchet. Let's hope they haven't invented ballistas yet, though they've got crossbows so they're halfway there."

Another hail of arrows zipped past and two of the archers fell; one lay unmoving with an arrow sticking out of the eye-opening of his helmet while the other writhed on the ground, clutching his throat and gurgling around the arrow lodged there. Daniel and Carter both looked horrified. Carter put a hand up to her mouth as though trying not to vomit. Jack knew how she felt, but was able to quell the nausea. Teal'c had his most stoic face on.

The next flight of arrows that rained down on them carried fire. Teal'c ripped the flaming tunic off of an archer to his right, threw the tunic on the ground, and stamped out the flames. Around them, rooftops caught fire. A new group of soldiers sprang into action, trundling water carts down the brick street to hose down the multitude of small fires. The water supply was quickly depleted, but another cart arrived and was switched out for the empty one.

"Jack!" Daniel pointed to the leader of the fired brigade. "He says there are more water carts up in the temple by the cistern. If we man one of those, we could--"

"We could stop this place from burning to the ground with us in it." Jack had no intention of going out as a crispy critter. Sending Carter and Daniel off to keep the water supply going would keep them farther from the action, too. Anything that helped their situation and kept those two safe was okay in his book. "Fine. You and Carter do the filling, Teal'c and I will do the hauling."

Daniel spoke to the fire chief who smiled gratefully and clapped his shoulder. They all followed as the man hurried up the street toward the temple above them. They passed more archers along the palisade and more bodies hastily moved out of the way. A anxious murmur went up from the troops they passed and the business as usual atmosphere became one of apprehension and fear. The murmur increased in volume, as exclamations of dismay rose around them. The archers were all pointing and staring down at something in the field.

Jack stopped and Teal'c stopped with him. Ahead of them, Daniel and Carter still followed the chief, not realizing the other half of the team wasn't with them anymore which was inconvenient since Daniel was the only one who spoke the language. However, one of the first things Jack had learned since joining the SGC was that many hand gestures were universal. Through those gestures and descriptive sound effects, Jack learned that the trebuchet was being loaded with an explosive device that the red team had only seen once before with devastating effect. Apparently bomb making was a new science here, one that represented an unknown quantity for the troops facing it and therefore a cause for much alarm.

This news changed things. Screw the water supply. Maybe his team should keep going up into the heart of the city and hunker down with the non-combatants. It wouldn't matter who held the city, red or purple, if SG-1 didn't survive the attack.

As he considered the best course of action, Jack watched the purple forces load the bomb into the sling of the trebuchet. He watched as one of the loaders touched the bomb with a long thin stick seconds before the counterweight was released and the machine activated. Watched as flames suddenly engulfed the bomb mid-flight and his stomach dropped in fear. Shit. It was a fucking incendiary bomb.shit!shit!shit!shit! Immolation was high on Jack's list of Bad Ways To Die. Mesmerized, he scoped out the trajectory that had it tracking to land in the city above him and realized it was headed for the temple at the same time that he saw Daniel and Carter slip through the temple door after the fire chief.

He was running flat out with Teal'c hard on his heels before conscious thought passed through his brain. They were thirty yards away when the bomb exploded across the roof of the temple. The shock wave knocked him off of his feet and made his ears ring. Staggering, Jack hit the brick pavement knees first as flaming debris and chunks of masonry rained down around them. Something hit him in the back again and again and it took a moment to understand that it was Teal'c putting out flames.

Pushing himself up to his feet, he ran straight toward the flaming ruin that had been the temple, bumping elbows with Teal'c the whole way. His skin prickled, tightening down on his bones which flushed with cold. He hadn't been this afraid since the day he'd heard a gunshot in his house. The thump of his boots on the pavement pounded out the rhythm for the words in his head. Please dont', please don't, please don't...

"Here, O'Neill."

Teal'c had found a way past the tumbled columns blocking the entrance and through a hole in the wall. With visible effort, Teal'c pushed aside a huge section of broken column that Jack and Daniel together couldn't have budged. Thank you, Junior. Teal'c entered first, squeezing through the cramped opening. Jack fared slightly better, but scraped uncomfortably against the jagged edges.

The temple was one of the few buildings in the city with a stone roof and very little wood in the interior. There were pockets of heat and flame but little smoke except from the smoldering remains of whatever had fueled the bomb. The stuff stuck to the stone in patches, burning itself out. The most important thing Jack remembered from their tour was the big honking pool of water in the center of the temple. He'd made a smart remark about the priests having spa day when no one else was around and Daniel had glared at him in disapproval. He'd do anything to see that glare again. He sent up a general prayer to a God he didn't really believe in for Daniel and Carter to please, please, please be okay.

The first person they found was the native. The lower half of the fire chief's body was charred, though most of the flames had died down. The upper half of the his body was flattened under a chunk of roof. Another part of the roof dangled down to the floor, blocking the view into the main room. Somewhere on the far side of it he heard noise. Spluttering. Coughing. Splashing. Dodging around the roof and stepping gingerly over the debris on the floor, he came to the edge of the pool.

Holding onto each other waist deep in the water and heading drunkenly toward the edge, were Carter and Daniel. The skin on their faces was bright pink as if from too long in the sun and Jack automatically assessed that as first degree burn. Carter was holding her right had away from her body. The skin had already blistered, so second degree. Looking at the scorch marks covering their sopping wet BDUs, Jack figured they were damn lucky not to have third degree burns. There was a bruise on Carter's cheek and a trickle of blood running down Daniel's face from his hairline. Both pairs of blue eyes were wide with fear, though Carter's missing eyebrow also gave her an air of confused surprise.

With Daniel helping from the pool, Teal'c and Jack pulled Carter up and sat her on the floor. Crouching next to her, Jack began a medical assessment, but Teal'c subtly shoved him out of the way with a murmured "See to Daniel Jackson." With Carter in good hands, Jack was more than happy to oblige.

As he reached a hand down, Jack could see Daniel's pulse beating rapidly in his neck, hear his shallow ragged breathing. They clasped forearm to forearm and Jack pulled as Daniel scrabbled at the side of the pool and made it up and out to stand next to him.

Overwhelmed with relief, Jack tried to make one of his trademark wisecracks, something to break the heavy emotional atmosphere, but still let the guy know he cared, but he couldn't do it. Couldn't shrug it off or downplay it. Couldn't pretend that it was just another close call, nothing special, when he'd just realized that he'd rather die himself than try to go on without Daniel.

Hell of a time for an epiphany, O'Neill.

Instead he settled for hugging the stuffing out of Daniel, who clutched him back with arms that trembled with fear or from the cold water or both. Then again, if Jack wasn't mistaken, there was some not-quite-nuzzling going on from Daniel. A press of his cheek to Jack's. A slight shift. Another press. Reluctantly, Jack relaxed his hold and Daniel did the same.

"You okay?" Jack's voice was gruff and he found it hard to look away from Daniel's eyes.

"Yeah. You?" There was a slight tremor to Daniel's voice.

"Yeah."

He didn't know what Daniel had seen when looking at Jack but his eyes softened and he smiled in response to it.

"Later," Daniel said as he squeezed Jack's hand then let it go. "We'll talk."

Jack nodded, but couldn't resist one last touch, one last exchange, one last message through his palm running lightly over Daniel's shoulder down to his bicep then off.

"Yeah. We'll talk." Jack checked the magazine in his weapon. "But first, let's go kick purple butt!"

Finis.

Author's Note: I really appreciate feedback. Also, check out my J/D friendship fic under Catsmeow at The Alphagate http://www.thealphagate.com/viewuser.php?uid=381