Hello! Here's the new update. As you must have guessed. I think it's a respectable length, being 2100 words long, and that's not counting the author's notes footnotes things. The parts in bold, basically. Anyway, thanks to TimC for their review, short but encouraging, it made me very happy so thanks again, I mean of course the longer the better but as you know ANY review is very, very welcome. So, there.
I don't really have anything else to say… apart from that I think this well be the rough length of my chapters from now on. I do NOT know where those 3000 word chapters at the beginning came from, but I've not seen them since. So… enjoy!
Oh and of course, I own NOTHING, do I really have to keep saying it? Hmm, well, I don't want to be sued, so I guess I do. How boring.
And of course don't forget to R&R! (That means Read and Review, remember?)
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Gaia, Blaze and Sharker
How am I going to escape?
Eragon crouched on his branch and turned the six words over and over in his head. He knew that he wasn't really in any danger as long as he stayed in this tree, as he was nearly entirely hidden by clumps of needles and the frost engrained in the bark allowed him to easily blend in with his mottled white clothes. But he also knew that he couldn't stay here forever. He'd been hiding up here for a little longer than an hour and a cramp was tugging painfully at his left calf muscle, not counting the thirst and hunger that had him in their grasp. The tributes in the glade below had cut up the deer and built a fire, and were now cooking bits of meat on long sticks they'd collected . For lunch, Eragon guessed. The morning had flown by faster than he would have thought possible. The greasy smell of roasting venison wafted appetizingly through the air, and Eragon was finding it hard to keep from jumping down and massacring the lot of them just for a bite of that wonderful-smelling food.
But of course, he couldn't. He just couldn't. He couldn't slaughter other tributes. It was a promise he was determined to keep. If he killed these three, what would the limit be? Were would he stop? Why should Blaze die any more than Katniss? He'd already killed people before, soldiers mainly, but other people too, and regretted it. However, Eragon knew that he'd done what he'd had to do back then. He was sure that there had been no alternatives. Whereas here, in this icy arena, in this strange land, there were alternatives. There were other choices. And the one Eragon had picked and was going to stick to was to not play the Capitol's game of bloodshed and fear. He'd decided that the night when he'd dreamed – or seen – Saphira. Before that he'd been in a kind of daze, a fog, almost like he was in shock. Well, if that was true, then the dream, the vision of Saphira had been the bucket of cold water thrown in his face that had woken him up. He was going to rebel, in this small way. He wasn't going to give the Capitol what they wanted.
He realized then that he'd rather die.
Down in the clearing, the Careers were talking, their mood somewhat calmed down now that they had food in their stomachs.
"So, we head north, then?" asked Gaia, biting into her portion of venison. "At least, more north than we are now?"
"Yeah, that's right," replied Sharker. "That girl, what was her name – Zulaka? Zuleika? – headed up there. I saw her footprints. She's dangerous, I'm sure of it. The sooner she's dead –" here he swiped his hand through the air "– the better."
"How do you even know it was her?" grunted Blaze. "Could've been anyone."
"Did none of you notice?" sneered Sharker. "God, you're more stupid than I thought. She walks with a limp. I saw that during training. So, her footprints are lopsided. It's really basic tracking. And besides, even if we don't find her, I'm sure we'll find some other tasty little tribute on the way." He flashed a grin so carnivorous that for a second he ressembled his namesake.
"How do you know how to track when you're from a fishing district?" asked Gaia sceptically.
"In case you didn't notice, there was this place that we stayed in before the Games began," Sharker retorted, skewering another slice of meat with a thrust of his arm. "Called the Training Center. We learned things there. Like, for example, how to track." He rolled his eyes and bit into the venison.
"I know that," Gaia shot back. "Don't be an ass. I was curious, that's all."
It looked like their conversation was turning into yet another fight. Eragon shifted slightly in an attempt to dispell the cramp in his leg, and heard a crack. A huge slap of bark had detached from the branch that he was crouched on, and even as he watched, fell down towards the ground as if in slow motion. It landed with a muffled thump in the snow, a quiet sound, but one that Sharker's sharp ears picked up nonetheless.
"Barzûl," Eragon hissed, as he closed his eyes and mentally cursed the metal studs on his boots with the blackest oaths he could find. Hopefully Sharker would ignore the noise, and even more the suspiciousness of a piece of bark falling from a tree that was supposed to be deserted.
He didn't have any such luck. As soon as the wood landed on the ground, the tribute from District Four whirled round, his crossbow flying into his hands. He loaded it more swiftly than Eragon would have thought possible, sprang to his feet, lifted it to his shoulder and took aim at the exact branch where Eragon was hidden.
"Okay," he called into the frosty air, his breath pluming in front of him. "Come on down. I know someone's up there and unless you're standing in front of me in the next three seconds you're going to have a bolt sticking out of some very painful part of you, like your head, or your chest, or perhaps your stomach if I'm feeling magnanimous. Just a warning: I never miss my targets."
"You haven't had a target until now," said Blaze, getting up too, along with Gaia. He squinted dubiously at the tree. "You sure there's someone up there?"
"One hundred per cent," replied Sharker. "I'm starting counting now!" he shouted up to Eragon. "One!"
"You're making a mighty fool of yourself," snorted Blaze, but he kept his eyes on Eragon's tree despite his scorn.
"Two!" yelled Sharker.
"Keep it down, would you?" snapped Gaia, going back to the smouldering fire and picking up her stick, still with a slice of venison on the end.
"Thr-"
"All right!" Eragon shouted, dropping off the branch and sinking into the snow below. "All right. I'm down. Don't shoot." He held his hands up in a clear display of surrender.
"Hah!" laughed Sharker at Blaze's expression, who had his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging out of his head. "Didn't think I was right, did you?" He turned his attention back to Eragon and his face grew serious once again, his black eyes gleaming with that almost palpable menace Eragon had seen in him before. "So," he said almost conversationally. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't send a bolt through your brain."
"I don't know," Eragon replied, realizing that everything depended on the side of him he'd shown during the interviews. The cocky, arrogant side. "You're the one holding the crossbow."
"Hah!" Sharker said again, but this time his harsh face held no trace of humour. " 'You're the one holding the crossbow,' he says. Quite right. Why am I even giving you the chance to defend yourself?"
Eragon shrugged disinterestedly, as if he didn't know and didn't care.
"Come on Sharker," said Gaia, who'd returned to stand next to Blaze. "What are you waiting for? Kill him and let's be done with it. Or unless you like being a big macho man? Flashing your crossbow around, acting all menacing?" She laughed.
"All right, all right, you can stop there," growled Sharker. "All I'm doing is giving him a chance to explain what he was doing up in that tree watching us eat for over an hour, but if he doesn't want to then I'm not going to complain." He shifted the crossbow on his shoulder and stared daggers at Eragon, who realized that he was going to have to say something.
"Well," he said, "I was hunting the herd of deer like you, but when you shot that bolt I climbed into the tree, and since you didn't go away I had no choice than to stay up there. It's simple." He shrugged again.
"Why didn't you attack us?" asked Gaia.
"It would have been three against one," Eragon replied. "You can work it out for yourselves, I think."
"Okay, then," said Sharker. "Thanks for the info. Now, goodb-"
"Wait!" exclaimed Eragon. "Don't shoot me. I can be useful to you. I got an eleven in training, remember? I can help you. It would be a waste to kill me."
"Hmm," Blaze grunted. "Don't listen to him, Sharker. Shoot him. I don't understand why you haven't already done it."
Sharker shrugged, raised his eyebrows and said, "Yeah, sorry Eragon, but I'm afraid I can't leave you alive. I would if I could." On those words, he fired his crossbow.
Eragon had been expecting this and ducked swiftly, so the only thing the bolt tore through was the outer layer of clothing over his left shoulder. He lunged forwards, flicking Blödhslytha up into his hand as he did so in a flash of sunlight on steel, and smashed the pommel of the sword into Sharker's temple who hadn't been expecting Eragon to move so inhumanly fast. He crumpled inert to the ground.
Eragon whirled around and saw Blaze charging towards him, hands outstretched, like a crazed bull. This confirmed what Eragon had already suspected; Blaze had a sword but preferred to use his own body as a weapon. He rolled easily beneath Blaze's swinging fists – he was strong, he did grant him that, but with strenght came slowness – rose back up to his feet and as he did so, slammed the heel of his hand into the soft patch beneath his jaw, not as hard as he could have, but hard enough to incapacitate him. Blaze went down like a felled tree.
A whistle of wind behind him alerted Eragon to Gaia's presence. He jumped into the air, turned a backflip over her head, landed lightly as a cat behind her and before she could turn around, he touched the tip of Blödhslytha to the spot between her shoulderblades, hard enough for her to feel it but not enough to hurt her.
"Right," he said, not even slightly out of breath, " I suggest you do what I tell you. Unless, of course, you don't mind a little pain."
Gaia kept still as a statue, her body taut as a drawn bow.
"First," he continued, "you can drop the knife."
The weapon splashed into the snow.
"Good," Eragon said. "I see that you're not totally devoid of common sense." He bent, without taking Blödhslytha away from Gaia's back, and picked up the knife which he slipped into his belt. Then he said, "Go over to Blaze and unbuckle his sword. Know that if you try to use it against me, you'll fail." So saying, he prodded her with his own weapon and she stumbled over to where the largest tribute lay senseless on the ground. As she obeyed his order, he went to Sharker, who was groaning and moving slightly but still far from being ready to fight again – if "fight" meant attacking someone and being knocked unconscious before managing to land a blow – and removed from him his quiver and his crossbow, both of which he slung across his back, after tossing his rucksack onto the ground. He didn't think he'd have to make a quick getaway anytime soon. Then he wrenched the bolt that had been fired at him free from the tree in which it was stuck and pushed it into the quiver.
Eragon was becoming quite well-armed.
Gaia handed him Blaze's sword in its scabbard, and he slipped it into his belt alongside Blödhslytha. Of course, Eragon didn't intend to keep all these weapons. He would return them to their respective owners in time, but first he wanted to be sure that they meant no further harm to him. He didn't allow himself to kill them, nor did he want to have to engage in another conflict. And he did want to be part of their group; he needed human contact. Well, maybe "needed" wasn't a good word, but he did want human contact, and that was for sure.
Eragon didn't really have a plan. All he knew was that he couldn't kill any other tribute, that he was going to have to travel with the Careers a while – and do his best to avoid having to kill anybody while with them, and ideally stop them from killing anybody, but he knew that was a bit optimistic of him and very unlikely to actually happen – and that was it. He was really making it up as he went along.
Gaia was still standing in front of him. Eragon jolted out of his reverie and looked around the clearing. Blaze was groggily sitting up, rubbing his jaw and gazing around blearily, and Sharker was still lying semi-conscious in the snow. An ugly purple lump was beginning to form where Eragon had whacked him with Blödhslytha.
"Right," said Eragon. "I think we're all going to have to have a little talk. But first," he said as he saw the smoldering fire and the butchered carcass of the deer lying beside it, and became aware of the painful growling in his empty stomach, "I'm going to have to eat some of that venison."
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And that's the end! Next chapter soon, I prom- , actually no I think I'd better not promise anything like that. Well, at least I didn't leave you on a cliffhanger like last time.
Anyway, everything I wanted to say I said in the autor's note footnote topnote thing in bold at the beginning of this chapter, so I have nothing left to tell you… apart from, you guessed it, REVIEW!
(And it rhymed! How's THAT for style?)
Review. Please. Thank you.
Goodbye! See you soon!
(Hopefully, I'll see you soon, that is…)
