After the sound of Allure's childish laughter had faded, and I could no longer see their figures among the rocks and snow, I jumped down from my ledge, landing neatly in the snow next to the bloody body that had once been Raziel. I glanced across at him, a tangle of thoughts in my head.
The sight of the blood, seeping into the snow, made me hungry to be hunting and killing again. The restlessness that I'd felt in the cave was still twitching through my limbs and the scent of the blood was only increasing that.
I looked down at the bladebelt in my hand that moments ago Raziel had thrown to me, even though he could have used the weapons to defend himself against the Career pack. It hurt my brain trying to figure out why he would have done that. Every way I thought about it I couldn't find the ulterior motives behind what he did. But he had no reason to help me.
The sound of a Hovercraft somewhere above me broke me from my thoughts and I looked up, startled. Its silver shape was visible through the clouds. I needed to go.
I threw Raziel's body one last look, not even sure what I was looking for, and took off down the path that the Careers had taken. I had spent too much time in these mountains. I was craving the silence and familiar terrain of the forests. I had a feeling that if I could make it there then I could take on the Career pack. I doubted any of them were good at climbing, and I was forming a strategy of using my knives from above them.
Trying to descend the mountains was harder than climbing, which I hadn't thought possible. Almost every footfall shifted under my weight, sending small avalanches of shale and snow tumbling away from me, sometimes over dangerously high edges.
The sight of the forest before me distracted me for a moment and, almost at the foothills, I misplaced a step, feeling the lurch that meant the ground had given away beneath me. I tumbled a short distance, landing with a thump on a deep patch of snow that completely covered me. I lay still for a moment, trying to pull breath back into my body, and feeling the cold creeping back in. My entire body was already shivering again.
I only allowed myself a second of recovery time. Before my body really wanted me to I was struggling out of the snow, climbing back onto my feet and looking around me. One advantage of my tumble was that it seemed I'd taken the short route down to the bottom of the hill. The forest stretched before me, only a short distance away across the plain.
I looked around but there was no sign of movement and took off towards the dark line of trees. I hadn't gone a dozen feet when I heard a shout and knew that it was directed at me. Turning around my eyes immediately fell on a group running towards me from behind the Cornucopia. The side of the hills had blocked them from my view, but now they could see me as bold as anything dashing across the open plain. Manius was in the front of the group, followed by the others. They'd obviously joined back up and I could tell from their excited calls that they were looking forward to the next kill. I gritted my teeth, not today, and turned, moving as fast as I could through the snow.
This time though my size wasn't to my advantage. I couldn't move through the snow fast enough and with their longer legs they were quickly gaining on me.
Manius was the first to reach me. I turned at the last minute, still trying to put distance between myself and them, and met the downward strike of his sword with my pack, blocking a swing that could have taken off my head. But as I collected the blow I felt that it wasn't as hard as I knew it could have been. Without time to wonder about it further I was trying to spin away from him, made difficult by the snow. Allue and Luxor were coming up behind him now, Allure fanning out to come at me from the side.
Manius paused, his chest heaving and each breath escaping in a soft cloud of white. His eyes were gleaming as they connected with mine.
"Time to break the Alliance," he mouthed at me, and without giving me a chance to really process his words he suddenly turned on the spot and struck out at Luxor with his sword. Caught by surprise Luxor wasn't quite quick enough to deflect the blow and caught it on his arm, a deep well of blood appearing immediately. He cried out in fury and dove at Manius, lifting a mace above his head. I didn't have time to watch them further because from my left Allure had decided she had had enough. She darted towards me and I only just managed to dodge to the side as she tried to collect me. In her hand she held the knife that I had seen her use to torment Raziel and my hands itched to touch it, to grasp it and use it against her.
We circled each other warily, trying to block out the shouts and thuds of the other's fighting. From the cries though I knew that Luxor and Manius were still locked in combat, though I had no idea who was winning. Further away I could hear Lupa and Adrian, and I realised that Lupa must have decided it was time to end the Alliance as well. She had turned on her District partner.
"'I've been looking forward to killing you," Allure said, her eyes gleaming as she prowled around me. The blade glinted in her hand. I watched her movements closely, letting myself be filled with all the hatred for her of the last week.
"Not as much as I've looked forward to killing you," I promised, my words coming from my mouth in puffs of white as my breath frosted around me.
She snarled at me, not looking so pretty any more as her face contorted in anger. There was dried blood matting her perfect golden hair. I smiled at the thought and she lunged at me, the knife swinging. I spun to the side and lashed out with my own knife, sending a stripe of blood across the side of her torso. She cried out and rounded on me again, oblivious to the blood pouring down her side.
"You really should fix your hair," I said nastily, feeling the pure delight of a fight flooding my body. She spat at me and slashed out with the blade. Anger and probably exhaustion were making her careless and her aim didn't even come near me. It allowed me to dart in and jab at her body, sending my knife into her stomach. She reeled backwards, pulling me with her, and I saw the gleam of her blade out of the corner of my eye. Instinctively I raised the weapon in my other hand and brought to down towards her throat, always my primary location for a kill. It wasn't til the weapon slid with a sickening thud into the soft skin of her throat did I remember what I had been holding; Raziel's ice pick. I backed up, letting my knife slide out of her body and releasing the handle of the pick, my eyes fixed on her beautiful face. Her own icy blue eyes which I had thought so unusual had gone wide with shock, and slowly she fell to her knees, one hand raising slightly towards her throat before falling limply away again. I stared as her skin turned ashen before my eyes. She coughed, a trickle of blood escaping her lips and staining them crimson like some twisted version of Capitol makeup. The blade of the pick was bedded through the centre of her throat and as she gasped and spluttered through the blood it moved sickeningly in her flesh. It seemed like an age that she knelt on the ground before me, and I watched the colour drain from her face with the blood that leached down her front. Then, just as slowly, she fell backwards, landing on the ground with a soft thud, collapsing delicately as only a tribute from District 1 could. I couldn't pick the exact moment she died until there was a canon shot echoing around me. I watched the blood trickle down the side of her neck into the snow and flinched as another canon boomed. I turned to face the others just in time to see Manius pull his sword smoothly from Luxor's body. The body arched up towards him as the sword withdrew, almost as if it didn't want to be parted from the metal, but then flopped back lifelessly. He lay still.
I was breathing hard, my ribs aching with each breath where I had smacked them in my fall. I placed a hand to my side and watched Manius warily. He'd broken the Alliance just as I thought he was going to kill me, but that wasn't to say he wasn't going to try and kill me now. It had served him well to have me help him kill off the other Careers. As I watched him turn towards me another canon boomed and we both looked across to Lupa, standing over the body of her District partner with a manic smile on her face. Looking back at Manius I saw it instantly; we both knew Lupa was the threat and for now we would put aside killing each other.
"Lead her to the hills," Manius called to me and took off running in the direction of the mountains. I had no desire to return there, but Lupa was already darting towards me in the snow, her still bloodied weapon held out. I threw her one glance and took off after Manius, racing as fast as I could through the snow. I didn't know what his plan was but he'd spent the entire time with her, I had to hope he knew what he was doing. I lost sight of him as he crested the hill in front of me and as I reached the rocky top I paused, completely out of breath from the mad dash through the snow. There was a thud behind me and I spun around, weapon raised and already coming down. Manius blocked my smaller knife with his sword.
"Stop!" he called to me breathlessly. "Let's deal with her first." I pulled back my weapon reluctantly and followed his eyes to where Lupa was making her way up the hill towards us. Even from a distance there was something so predatory and terrifying about her. I hadn't wanted to admit it to myself but right from the start I had been nervous about the inevitable battle with her. I was only glad now that I had Manius on my side when facing her. It made the odds a little more favourable. I followed him up one of the rocky outcrops, wondering what he was doing. As if reading my mind he paused on a ledge and offered me a hand up, swinging me onto the small space next to him.
"She doesn't like heights," he said simply. "The higher we go the more advantage we'll have." I looked down at Lupa's dark form and found it hard to believe that she was afraid of anything, let alone heights. But as she paused and looked up towards us I saw it in her face. She was forcing herself to keep going, I could see it in the grimace that passed across her expression.
The knowledge gave me bitter pleasure and I gave a short, cold laugh. Manius grinned too and pulled himself up another ledge.
All three of us where a lot slower than we would have been at the start. Days of minimum food, freezing temperatures, complete exhaustion and various injuries were taking their toll, and by the time Manius halted on a patch of snowy ground I was almost completely done. My arms trembling I pulled myself up next to him and gave myself a few seconds to catch my breath.
A few seconds was all I had because I heard Manius shout and looked across to see Lupa pulling herself up to our level. She'd made fast progress, faster than we had, and had caught up quick despite her evident fear of where we were.
Manius lunged at her instantly, using the initial exhaustion of her climb, but she seemed prepared, lifting her sword to meet him. They spun around each other viciously a few times, gleaming metal flying out. The air was filled with the sound of limb thudding against limb and metal against metal.
I circled around them, a knife already waiting patiently in each hand, and tried to see a clear opening, but they were moving too fast and I had just as much chance of losing the knife or sending it into Manius as I did of cleanly hitting Lupa. I decided to wait, tensed and ready, and see how their little battle would go. I was itching to throw myself into it, but my small knives would be almost useless against their heavy swords at such a close range.
They seemed tireless, spinning and slicing at each other in an endless blur. My frustration and restless were growing overwhelming and without realising it I was dancing around them, desperate to find an opening to send one of my knives. It seemed the Gamemakers were growing bored with the fight too because just as my eyes fixed on Lupa's back and I raised my arm we were all thrown down as the ground beneath us buckled. We weren't on a lake now but it was the same, the rocks shuddering beneath me. There was a deep rumbling noise all around and every time I tried to get up the shaking earth threw me down again. Small rocks were flying loose of the mountains above us and rained down around us all. I lifted my arms in an attempt to cover my head against them and I felt small bursts of pain as they smacked against my body, some of them easily the size of my fist.
There was a deafening crashing sound and I risked a glance up. At first I didn't understand what I was seeing but then a shout from the other two made me snap into action. A wall of snow, ice and rock was racing towards us. I threw myself down the rocks, following the others as they scrambled desperately away, all thoughts of fighting forgotten as we tried to outrun the avalanche bearing down upon us.
Debris rained down upon my back as I ran and fell down the hills. Ahead I could see Lupa and Manius doing the same, dodging desperately around boulders and getting tripped by the deep snow, sometimes falling faster than they were running.
There was a loud crack and a sharp cry ahead of me and I looked up to see Manius go skidding to the ground, rolling a few feet. As I raced towards him I could see him desperately trying to get up, but I couldn't understand why he wasn't. Then I saw the blood and the angle of his leg. I skidded to a stop next to him, sending a small rush of snow under my feet, and threw him a quick glance. My stomach threatened to turn at the sight. Bone was sticking out of his leg where it had snapped clean. His usually dark face was a grey colour and he was twisting in agony. He wasn't going to outrun anything on that leg. I looked behind me again, seeing the wall of white cascading down the mountain towards us, and looked back at him. His eyes locked with mine for the briefest of seconds.
"I'm sorry," I said simply, and turned away from his pain. My legs started pumping again, carrying me away from him but I didn't hear him call out. He was a Career, he knew what the Games cost. He would have known the second he went down that he was as good as dead. The logical explanation was that if I stayed and even tried to help him, we would both end up dead. But that didn't stop a small bubble of guilt as I sprinted and tumbled away from him, fixing on Lupa's distant figure.
I didn't even know the point where the wall of white would have hit him. The sound of the avalanche was all around me, rumbling off the other mountains. It was so loud that I wanted instinctively to duck and cover my ears, just burrow down and wait for it to stop. But my legs kept carrying me down the hills, slipping on patches of icy rock. I was never going to be fast enough to outrun the crashing wall of white though. I saw the line of trees up ahead just as I felt a great force hit me from behind, slamming me forwards into the ground. Then everything was icy cold fingers jabbing into me. The world tipped upside down as I was tumbled over and over, slamming against things that felt as solid as stone and snow chocking any breath I tried to draw. Everything was white and then, just as suddenly, everything was black.
A/N: I know I don't need to apologise for the delay, but I will anyway, because I like to keep my updates frequent. I hope you're right Saphira and the wait is worth it.
Anla'shok I really love your take on Enobaria, especially your comments about her lack of maturity to explain feelings she's suddenly getting. I love it when my readers make me understand or see things about my stories I hadn't necessarily seen before.
Thank you everyone for the reviews. I sincerely hope I can get the next update up quicker.