Six.
The countdown was almost finished, and I fastened my eyes on my goal, the Cornucopia.
Five.
The sunlight, sharp as knives, glinted off the curved surface of the horn. I looked to my left, searching for Glimmer and Marvel.
Four.
I pinpointed the location of three swords that would be ideal for the bloodbath. Of course, I could use any weapon I got my hands on, but swords and knives would be ideal for fighting at close quarters.
Three.
I looked to my right, spotting Clove on the platform between the boy from Ten and the girl from Five.
Two.
The boy and girl from Four, whose names I hadn't bothered learning because they were too weak to be in the alliance, in my opinion, were obscured by the golden arch of the Cornucopia.
One.
Every muscle in my body coiled automatically, ready to propel me forward as soon as…
The gong tolled, its throaty reverberations making my blood sing. I leaped toward the horn, knowing I was the first one to move, because my reflexes had always been the best, even when I was five years old. I grabbed the first sword I could reach and spun, putting my back to the Cornucopia for protection.
Beside me, Clove scooped up a brace of throwing knives. She flicked her wrist once, the hand and knife becoming a blur of flesh and silver. The knife buried itself to the hilt in the back of the boy from Nine, who was brawling with the girl from Twelve over an orange backpack. He went down hard and didn't get back up, so I ignored him.
A frail-looking boy ran past, making the fatal mistake of coming within reach of my sword. I separated his head from his body. Good. The blade was sharp.
From the other side of the horn, a boy shouted in pain and rage. The sound stopped abruptly in a way that told me he was dead, even without the cannon I knew they wouldn't fire until things had calmed down a bit.
A boy and girl, partners from one of the outlying districts – I couldn't remember which, and I didn't care – were fleeing toward the forest, each clutching a bulging pack of supplies. Any enemy alliance is a threat, said Enobaria's voice in my head, so I bent, picked up a spear, and flung it in the direction of the boy. He dropped at once, my spear buried in the back of his neck. Marvel, who was closer to the pair than I was, finished the girl with his own spear when she turned to help her companion.
Together, Clove and I took down two tributes I recognized as the pair from Six. Clove retrieved her knife and my spear while I warded fleeing tributes off with my sword. "Nice shot," she called, grinning. I gave her a curt nod, unwilling to disrupt my focus by returning the compliment.
Clove was young, just fifteen, or the trainers would've beaten that flighty nature out of her by now. Still, she'd won the tribute trials, defeating girls my age, so she'd earned her place in these Games. I turned my back on Clove, kicking out at a girl who had been sneaking up on Glimmer from behind. I'd taken her by surprise and she went down with a huff of expelled air. I put my sword through her heart and jerked it free, bracing myself with a boot on her chest.
Things were beginning to quiet down now, and from the number of bodies strewn around the Cornucopia, I could tell it had been a good bloodbath. As the final outliers disappeared into the forest to one side and the meadow to the other, my pack drew inwards, gathering around the mouth of the horn.
We were missing a member, I saw; the boy from Four was dead, sprawled facedown across a crate of food with a knife in his back. He'd never seen the importance of guarding his blind spot, and his carelessness had caught up with him. I hoped his blood hadn't tainted the supplies.
"Look at it all!" Marvel enthused, holding his arms wide in a gesture that encompassed both the wealth of weapons and the field of corpses. Either, I agreed, was cause for celebration, but it wasn't necessary to demonstrate such unrestrained emotion. Emotion in weakness, whispered Lyme's voice in my head. Except anger, Enobaria's voice interjected. Channeled properly, anger is strength.
I shut both voices behind a door in the back of my mind, because those were lessons they taught when you turned twelve, in the first serious year of training. I'd learned them long ago, and the reminder now was nothing but a distraction. More important things took precedence at the moment, and the second of them was assuming command of the Careers.
The first was dealing with the blond boy who stood on the fringes of our group, appearing poised between stepping forward and running away. He was from District Twelve, the worst of the outliers except perhaps Three. I recognized him only because he'd received a training score of eight, as high as some Careers, and because we looked enough alike for him to be my brother.
"What do you want, Twelve?" I asked him. I was gratified to see everyone but Clove jump, having failed to notice the boy until I pointed him out. That meant Clove was the one I'd kill first, when the pack finally fell apart. She was the biggest threat.
"I want to join your alliance," the boy said. I gave him credit for not allowing his voice to shake. "I killed one of yours," he added, gesturing to the body of the boy from Four. "I should take his place."
While I was deliberating, Marvel shoved to the front of our group. "We don't need your help, Mellark," he growled, leveling his spear at the boy. Wisely, the blond refused to flinch, instead looking to me for confirmation.
"He stays," I said levelly, gesturing the boy forward. "An eight for an eight." He and the boy he'd killed had gotten the same training score, so there was a sort of poetic balance in permitting one to replace the other. Marvel spun, glaring at me, but I raised my sword in an offer to fight for the right to lead and he backed down reluctantly.
Cautiously, the boy from Twelve stepped within reach of our weapons, and when no one made a move to harm him, relaxed infinitesimally. The rest of us got down to business, sorting through our new surplus of food, weapons and other supplies.
On the orders of a trainer I'd had when I was fourteen whose words still rang in my head, I put together a survival kit of my own in case I became separated from the pack or we lost our supplies. I placed packets of dehydrated food, two jugs of water, a first aid kit and several small knives into a midsized backpack, which I would keep with me at all times.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clove and, to my surprise, the boy from Twelve, doing the same. Either Twelve was smarter than I'd given him credit for, or he was watching and mimicking me. Either way, I'd need to keep a close eye on him.
When the cannon fire began, I automatically drew myself up and tensed, counting the number of blasts. There were eleven, which meant that one tribute had made it out of the clearing before dying, since there were only ten bodies on the ground. I waved at the others and they backed away from the horn, allowing a hovercraft to swoop soundlessly in to retrieve the dead.
"Should we hunt?" asked the girl from Four. She'd been oddly twitchy since the death of her district partner, and I knew the distraction would be the death of her.
"We'll hunt tonight," I announced, making sure everyone heard me. "For now, we need to secure our supplies and scout out the arena. Marvel, Twelve, you come with me. Clove, the rest of you stay here and guard the Cornucopia." Clove gave me a sharp nod that said she knew why I was forcing us to separate and disliked the necessity, but approved of the decision.
Marvel and the blond boy – Mellark? – glared at each other, of course, but trooped into the woods after me without further urging. We explored the arena for several hours, and I found nothing out of the ordinary about it. It contained two of the standard environments, ones the Gamemakers used most often: grassland and evergreen forest. An expansive freshwater lake spanned the distance between the two, with a slow-moving stream running through the lake in the direction of the grassy area.
By the time we returned to the Cornucopia, Clove and the others had organized our supplies into neat piles. Glimmer was arguing with the girl from Four while my district partner sat nearby, idly flipping one of her knives from hand to hand. Judging from the expression of mingled boredom and anger on her face, I'd gotten back just in time to keep her from prematurely killing off our other female allies.
"This arena is basic," I told the others. "A forest and a meadow. There's a lake to the east, so we aren't going to run out of water. I didn't see anyone else while we were out patrolling, but everyone should've settled by tonight."
"You'd better be right," snarled Clove, rising to her feet and stopping just outside the reach of my blade. "This is getting old already. I want more kills."
"You got three during the bloodbath," complained Glimmer, tossing her ridiculous blonde hair. "You and Cato have to save some for the rest of us."
"You can have whatever you manage to catch on your own," her partner said, tossing her an impatient frown. "This is the arena, Glimmer, not your daddy's mansion." Glimmer gave Marvel a pout she probably intended to be endearing, and I rolled my eyes.
"That's enough, One," I told them. "Let's eat some dinner, then we can go hunting."
"What about our stuff?" asked Clove, gesturing to the piles around the horn.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "You think anyone's going to be stupid enough to come back here this soon? We can afford to leave it unattended for one night. I'll find a permanent solution tomorrow." She nodded, more because she wasn't willing to fight me over it than because she agreed, I knew. Reaching into my pack, I withdrew a pair of night-vision glasses.
"How many more of these have you found?" I asked the others.
"Enough," said the girl from Four, gesturing to a crate that, on closer inspection, yielded several more pairs of goggles. I counted, and she was right, there were enough for all of us, even the Mellark boy.
"Good. Eat and suit up," I ordered, obeying my own command by taking a seat with my back against the Cornucopia and laying out a spread of carbohydrate-rich food that would keep me going through the night.
When I'd finished, Glimmer looked up and me from under her eyelashes, giving me a flirtatious smile, which I ignored. "Forest or meadow tonight?" she asked.
"Flip a coin," I grunted.
Marvel smirked at me, thinking he'd outsmarted me for once. "We don't have a coin, stupid," he taunted. "Arena, remember?"
I pulled a golden circle from my pocket, holding it between thumb and forefinger to examine both sides. One bore a picture of President Snow's profile, the other, the Capitol seal. Both sides were marred by deep gouges, because this was the token Enobaria had given me, the coin I'd shot out of the air the day I finally mastered the bow.
I flipped it, and Marvel called it in the air. "Heads for forest."
"Heads it is," I announced, bending down to retrieve my weapons and gear.
"Look out, kids in the forest," Clove called, adopting a singsong voice. "The odds are definitely not in your favor tonight." She flipped both her knives into the air, catching one in each hand with a flourish. I didn't bother telling her off, because if the likes of Brutus hadn't taught her that flashy tricks didn't win fights, I certainly wouldn't be able to.
Instead, I looked over my shoulder and called, "Keep up or you're out, Twelve," and started off and a ground-eating jog, the other Careers tailing me. Our feet crackled in the underbrush, but that didn't matter. Stealth wasn't my intention. Nothing in this arena could outrun me, or even if someone managed to, I'd track him and kill him that way.
Overconfidence is your weakness, hissed Enobaria's voice, loud and sibilant behind my eyes. I blinked twice, silencing her. Whatever she claimed, there was no such thing as overconfidence in District Two, because the trainers tortured it out of you before it could affect your fighting style.
Behind me, there was a rustle and a muffled thump as someone ran into a tree and got up, cursing. I turned to find Marvel brushing himself off. "Watch out for those," I cautioned mockingly. "This is a forest, if you hadn't noticed. Full of trees." Marvel snarled at me and I laughed and ran faster, forcing the others to accelerate to keep up.
After another half hour of loping through the darkened woods, I caught the glow of a campfire ahead, its light flickering warmly between the trees. "We've got someone," I called softly, sliding smoothly into a noiseless prowl.
I heard the others breathing hard. Glimmer and the boy from Twelve especially seemed to be having a difficult time. I smirked, knowing I was hours away from reaching the limit of my endurance. Still, I led them forward, removing my goggles when I got close enough to navigate by firelight alone.
A girl huddled in front of the fire, shivering. Fire draws your enemies, Brutus whispered in my head. If you're strong enough, light a fire and they'll come to you, ripe for the killing. If you're weak, they'll flock to your fire and extinguish you and it.
At a gesture of my hand – not the one carrying the spear, of course; my weapon was already leveled at the girl's heart – the pack fanned out in a semicircle, trapping our prey. I strode into the ring of light cast by the fire, and the girl screamed. She tried to run, but Clove darted in and caught her by the upper arm, laughing.
Glimmer and Marvel came forward too, laughing and mimicking the girl's frightened shrieks. Behind them, the boy from Twelve lurked just outside the light, watching us closely. Well, if he didn't have a stomach for blood, he shouldn't have tried to join my pack.
Now, the only question was whether to go for the slow kill or the fast one. Torture only if you need information or you're trying to make a point, Lyme had told me. Sponsors evaluate you based on the length of your kill list, not how long it takes you to make the kill.
I buried the point of my spear in the girl's heart and twisted, withdrawing it only when her cannon fired. Marvel made a disparaging sound, but I turned my dripping spear on him and he shut right up.
"We'll camp here tonight," I decreed, tossing my pack onto the ground. "We can head back to the Cornucopia at dawn, before anyone has a chance to get brave and go poking around."
"And look, the little girl was nice enough to get a fire going for us," added Marvel, tossing another branch on the blaze.
"Back off for now, let them take the body," ordered Clove. "I don't want a corpse stinking up our campsite." Glimmer made a face, and all six of us retreated a little way into the darkness until a faint whirr announced that the hovercraft had ascended, taking the body with it.
"Anyone know who that was?" I asked offhandedly, not particularly caring if I got an answer.
"Eight, I think," replied the girl from Four, unrolling a puffy sleeping bag with her foot and tossing her pack down on top of it. I nodded my thanks.
"Clove, you and Twelve take first watch," I said. Clove made a face, of course, but I disregarded that. "Wake me in two hours. Marvel and I'll take second."
I unrolled my own sleeping bag, crawling inside and tucking a knife carefully inside within easy reach of either of my hands. It wasn't likely anyone would try to dissolve the pack this early in the Games, but… If you let your guard down, you deserve to die, Brutus growled in my head.
Looking up at the stars, I considered my strategy for the remainder of these Games. I'd hold the Career alliance together until we got to the final eight, then eliminate my district partner and head for the woods on my own. None of the others posed a significant threat.
There were some unusually strong outliers this year, though. It still galled me that the girl from Twelve had gotten an eleven in training, but that had to be some kind of fluke. And the boy from Eleven, the one who had refused my offer to join the pack – refused – had gotten a ten, just like me. Neither of them had spent the better part of their lives preparing for the Games the way I had, though, and I was confident neither the girl's audacity nor the boy's brute strength would prove a match for my skill.