At The Sign Of The Happy Helg

Chapter 1

Rodney sneezed. Then he sneezed again. He felt around underneath his rain poncho, trying to locate the pocket where he'd stowed his handkerchiefs, then impatiently pushed the slippery fabric up over one shoulder so that he could see his tac vest. It fell down again.

"Dammit! What's the point of this thing?"

"It's supposed to keep the rain off," said John, holding out one of his own handkerchiefs.

"Is that clean?"

"Yeah, it's clean!"

Rodney took it and blew his nose loudly, then shoved it up his sleeve where he realised several others were lurking.

"Why aren't any of you wearing your rain gear?" asked Rodney, peering out from under his hood.

Ronon, a little way ahead down the muddy track, stopped and turned round. He shrugged. "Don't mind the rain."

John waggled his P90, his wet hair hanging down and dripping on his face. "I don't want to get tangled up in one of those things. I'd rather be wet than shot."

Teyla smiled agreement. "Shall we continue?"

They carried on: Ronon on point, Teyla covering their six, John and Rodney in between. The woodland path was rough, muddy and strewn with fallen leaves; red and gold and orange. Rodney was oblivious to the mellow beauty of the colours. He kept his head down under the dripping peak of his hood and watched his boots plod rhythmically on the wet ground, one and then the other and so on, ad nauseam, ad tedium, ad infinitum. He was miserable and he didn't care who knew it. "Just a little sniffle," had said Carson, blithely clearing him for the mission. "Nothing to worry about!" Little sniffle, my drowning derriere. Rodney's nose was blocked so that he had to breathe through his mouth and his head was aching.

"Rodney."

And one of his boots was definitely leaking.

"McKay!"

Another pair of boots loomed into Rodney's limited field of vision. He looked up. Sheppard.

"We're here."

"Where's here?"

John stepped aside and gestured. Through the driving rain, Rodney could see a long, low building with exposed timbers, and dormer windows in a weathered-looking thatched roof. A wooden sign swung in the blustery wind, the script it displayed unintelligible to Rodney, the picture, some kind of bloated animal with too many teeth.

"What's it say?" asked John.

"It reads, 'The Happy Helg'," said Teyla.

John squinted at the picture. "Looks like a pig."

"Good eating," commented Ronon.

Rodney had gradually straightened up. He put back his hood. His eyes widened and his chapped lips twitched in a glimmer of a smile.

"It looks like an old English village pub!" Rodney, who had attended symposiums at both Cambridge and Oxford University, considered himself something of an expert on such old-fashioned hostelries. In fact, he had probably learned at least as much about the various local brews as he had about physics and math during his sojourns in England.

John looked at the building, doubtfully. "D'you think the beer'll be warm?" he said, with drawling distaste.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Not warm! Room temperature," he said, as if he were instructing a particularly obtuse lab assistant on the correct handling of dangerous materials. "If it's too cold you can't taste the subtle balance of malt and hops and, anyway, does this place look like it has refrigeration?"