Anita sits out our morning hunt. Marcellus leads us north-east past the lake and across the plains. I decided not to mention the movement I saw in the trees up to the north since Marcellus already had his mind set on heading this way, and I didn't want any comments about the little baby jumping at shadows in the dark.
He shows me where they found the gray scrap of cloth snagged on a thorny bush, and instead of following the easiest path like they did last night we spread out in a circle looking for any signs of passing. After twenty minutes or so I have nothing but some nasty scratches down my bare legs and an itch across my shoulders from bug bites and turn back in disgust.
Marcellus and Citrine are already waiting, my ally from One scratching an even worse collection of bites than my own. Carla joins us soon after shaking her head. Marcellus glares at the surrounding trees and snarls, "Where the hell is he. The day is getting on."
"Right here," Angelus replies, stepping out from a thick clump of bushes. He grins like a shark as he holds up another scrap of cloth, this time brown.
Marcellus snatches it and has a quick look before tossing it to his district partner. "How far?"
"About half a mile, though it's pretty thick. We'd be better going around."
The two glare at each other for a few seconds, then Marcellus backs off with a shrug.
"Fine, lead away."
Angelus' grin widens as he takes us off at an easy jog. It's a lot harder to run through the thick scrub, with sudden dips and ankle-tangling vines and tree-roots trying to trip me at every step, but I manage not to fall.
"Mind the stream" Angelus announces pointedly as he veers around a fallen tree and jumps to the first stone in the water. Five easy leaps and he's across. Citrine follows, wobbling slightly half-way, her foot dipping in to the gently running water.
"-just one good punch in the mouth-" I hear Carla mutter as she goes next, dancing across the rocks effortlessly. I've been climbing sea-rocks as long as I can remember, so I have no trouble either. Of course I've seen what sort of flesh-eating fishies these waters hold and with my leg bleeding already I don't want to give them any ideas.
Marcellus comes last, landing heavily and wincing slightly as his ankle turns. He shakes it out and waves Angelus on.
We don't go far before he stops us, pointing to another of the bushes that scratched me up.
"Right here."
While Marcellus and Citrine kneel to examine the bush Carla wanders a brief circle around. She gestures us over after a few seconds and points out a broken branch and, further along a stepped on fern. This time we don't bother with clever plans or splitting up and surrounding. Carla and Angelus lead us at as quick a run as we can manage and soon enough we reach another bend of the stream and a rough tent of branches.
No sign of any tributes though. Marcellus gestures for us to spread out and search. I head down along the stream, poking about with my spear trying to uncover any footprints in the mud. As I bend down to double check a clump of dirt a flicker of movement catches my eye up in one of the nearby trees.
I stand slowly, sliding my hand down to the balance point of my spear and turning slightly so that I can be sure of my target. I could just call out, but I think this will impress my allies more. I turn quickly and throw and am rewarded with a sharp scream and a cracking of branches, followed by a soft thud as the figure hits the ground hard.
My spear pierced her leg just above the knee and she grabs at it once before giving it up as a bad job and tries to crawl away on her stomach. She doesn't get far. Angelus rushes in, sword drawn and slashes across her back, drawing another agonized cry as a thin red band appears through the tattered gray vest. The girl looks up, twisting around so that I can see her face. It's Wheela from Six, and I can hear the exact words she said to me in the Training Centre a few days back: What do you care, it's you and your friends that are going to kill me.
I didn't really think about it at the time, but what chance did she ever have? I could have left her be when I saw her up the tree. Maybe one of the others would have seen her, maybe not. Of course it's pointless to think that way since everyone else in here will need to die if I'm coming out alive. I've tried not to think much about that either.
I don't move when Angelus cuts her again, crossing his first line down her back. He looks like he could keep going with this for a while. To my surprise Marcellus steps in.
"Come on One, we don't have all day."
Angelus sneers at him, but sticks the point of his sword through the back of little Wheela's ribcage. It doesn't take long for the cannon to fire. I avoid looking at her face as I pull free my spear before the hovercraft comes. The others are busy searching her tiny camp for anything useful. Angelus wipes his sword blade clean on the bottom of her shorts and stands.
"Shall we?" he asks pointedly, gesturing with the blade back towards our camp.
"Move out," Marcellus confirms, taking back command. The rest of us fall in behind for the long run home.
~xXx~
Our dinner is more bland dry food, and I notice I'm not the only one pulling a face at it. All my years of eating seafood means a week without it leaves me craving that rich, salty flavour and I decide if I get left guarding our supplies again I'll do some fishing for myself. I might even share what I catch with Anita. Carla slices up the last two apples and shares the pieces around as dessert. After nearly three days in the warm weather they are dry and powdery.
I force it down anyway—you'd be stupid to refuse any food in the Hunger Games—and sigh. Marcellus rolls his eyes at me then grimaces as his stomach rumbles loud enough for the hidden microphones to hear. "Maybe the next lot we find will have something decent to eat," he says with a rueful smile.
Not even five minutes later the parachute lands at my feet. A basket full of hot bread rolls, rippled green with seaweed and topped with salt. They are stuffed with smoked fish, fresh vegetables and my favourite spicy sauce. A bundle of warm choc-chip cookies like the ones Mags sometimes bakes quickly follows.
I cheerfully share them out with the group, though Angelus takes one bite of a roll and gags at the taste. Anita takes a massive bite out of her own roll to stifle her laughter. I look up to the sky and give a huge smile as I lick the last of the sauce off my fingers. Then blow Mags a kiss for good measure as I devour my cookies. Everyone else can assume it was meant for them, but I'm sure she'll know better.
The anthem plays and shows just little Wheela from Six in the night sky. It's been a slow Games since the bloodbath, and I start to wonder what the Gamemakers might do to speed it up if the Capitol audience starts getting bored. Hopefully they wouldn't target us since we're active players, though maybe if we keep hugging the Cornucopia rather than going out and tracking down the stronger tributes they might try and push us with something.
I guess the others are thinking it too, when Marcellus who seems to have appointed himself our unofficial leader announces, "Tomorrow morning I'll sit out the hunt. You five do one last sweep directly south. Three hours each way unless you find something. I'll sort our supplies out and we'll head out at sunset."
"Which way?" Carla asks, not arguing about Marcellus taking charge at all.
"North, then over north-east." He replies, cutting over Angelus as the boy from One opens his mouth, probably to argue. "I know I saw a few running that way and we haven't heard anyone else dying off yet."
He's probably right. I know better than to argue. Anita and Citrine seem happy enough with the plan as well, though Angelus starts pouting and announces he's going to sleep early. As soon as he's curled up in his sleeping bag Anita says, "So we're waking him for first watch in an hour or two, right?"
We all laugh, and when Angelus' grumpy face appears back out along with a rude gesture we laugh even harder. This leads into a series of jokes about who should take which watch, including plenty of comments about Carla sleeping with her eyes open, Citrine desperately needing her beauty sleep and me as the baby of the group needing a proper rest.
"I'll even tuck you in and sing you a lullaby," Anita offers as the others snigger loudly.
"You'll get a nice tasty knuckle sandwich if you try," I tell her, but I keep smiling. Make sure they and everyone else can see I can take a joke.
"I know a good lullaby my Grandpa taught me," Marcellus chips in. "It was go to sleep or I'll whack you over the head with my mallet."
"If you lot don't shut up, I'll put you to sleep with my sword." Angelus calls out, and while we all laugh once more, it seems like a cue to all start resting.
"I'll take first," Citrine says softly. "After that we go One-Two-Four, girls first?" No-one argues, especially not me since it means I get the best shift. As I adjust my bedding I realize that this was one thing I didn't count on: making friends in the arena. I've always enjoyed a bit of a laugh, and in different circumstances I could probably be friends with most of my allies, Angelus excluded. I wonder silently if that is why the boy from One distances himself from the group with his haughty arrogance. No risk of hesitating to strike a friend when you don't have any. Or maybe he's just an ass who really believes he's better than the rest of us.
I don't remember drifting off to sleep but I jolt awake at the touch on my shoulder, reaching blindly for my spear haft. My hand finds a sandal-clad foot instead and I blink blearily up at Marcellus in the early false dawn light.
"Wake us when the sun's all the way up," he whispers. He hesitates for a second, then adds, "I thought I saw something move in the trees up that way."
He points to where I heard the rustling the other night. It might be a stealthy tribute checking to see if we are leaving the supplies unguarded. Or maybe it's just an animal moving about. No point making a big deal about it.
"I'll keep an eye out," I say as I stand and stretch. I go through another set of spear routines in the hope it will scare off any potential tributes who are watching. As the sun slowly creeps above the horizon I see no movement and hear nothing unusual. I'm about to get up and wake the others when a fluttering sound catches my attention from above. Another parachute nearly lands on my head and I catch the small basket attached. I don't even need to open it to smell the cinnamon rolls.
"Thanks Mags!" I say, grinning at the sky. Mags is too experienced a mentor to send unnecessary food gifts unless she really can afford to. I take this as a sign that she has more than enough sponsors in case of emergency, and decide to enjoy the good food while it's still affordable for her to send.
I guess it also sends a message to the others in the alliance that I'm worth keeping no matter how much they joke about me being the baby of the group, because I may be the only one whose mentor can fund something we might need later on.
I wake the others by dropping a cinnamon roll on their heads. Angelus snarls at me and snatches it up to throw back before he realizes what it is and glares as he eats the smushed pastry off his fingers. I very deliberately lick the last of the sugar off my own hands, and lick my lips to catch any left in the corners of my mouth.
"Remember," Marcellus says as we ready our day packs and weapons, "South for three hours unless you find something interesting in the mean time. No later. I'll have what we need to take packed and ready when you get back."
As we start to jog out a booming cannon from the north makes us all pause.
"Let's just do the sweep south anyway," Carla suggests. "We'll be going up that way soon enough."
After an hour of jogging we pause to catch our breath on the edge of the deeper forest. Our path until now has only been grassy meadows dotted with thin clumps of trees, easy for running. Now we're forced to slow down and keep a watch out around us, both for tributes possibly lurking behind trees or even traps they might have set. I'd hate to be the tribute who is remembered for dying in some kid's snare or pit-trap.
Climbing over fallen trees and around thorny scrubs, we eventually reach a clearing and another stream. There's no obvious ford in sight so Anita leads the way across using her spear-haft as a depth tester. A third of the way over she's no deeper than her waist so the rest of us move to follow.
About half-way across quiet Citrine swears loudly and twists sideways.
"Something just touched my leg," she says, peering into the murky swirl around her, clouded from the mud she kicked up.
"Probably just a weed. Get over it," Angelus snaps. Then he yelps and stumbles.
"I...er...kicked a sharp rock," he says quickly.
"Are you bleeding," I ask, thinking back to the sharp-toothed fish I speared in the lake.
He sneers back at me. "I can handle a little cut pretty boy."
I don't say anything more. It's not my problem if the fish bite his leg off.
When I feel the brush against my own bare shin I try not to react. Most predator fish go after movement. I doubt these mutts, assuming that's what they are, will be any different. Because I'm not churning up the rocks and mud from the bottom of the stream I see the flicker of movement as the fish slides past again. I'm debating whether to try spearing it, or whether that might set any others off on the attack when Citrine in front of me stumbles and falls.
I hurry forwards to help her up by her shoulders. She gasps and splutters and holds out her hands, bright red and bleeding freely from cuts from the rocky bed. As if in slow motion I see the ripples on the water's surface where the blood drops hit, and the underwater flurry of motion directly below, one, two, five, twenty scaled bodies, rippling and twisting.
"Move, quick!" I yell as Citrine yells in pain.
"Something bit me," she shrieks as a cloud of red around her leg is split by a ripple of gold and bronze scales.
"Run!" I tell her and strike down with my spear, grinning as I feel the dull thud and wriggling weight that marks a successful catch. Then one of them bites me on the ankle, and another just below the knee and I decide getting out of the water is a better plan than trying to spear them all.
There's a few more sharp pains in my legs as I slosh rapidly through the water, though I can't tell if they are fish teeth or jagged rocks. About twenty feet from the other side I miss my footing and drop off into deeper water. It's actually faster for me to swim to the bank and I make it there before Citrine does, and use my spear-haft to hook onto a handy tree-root to climb out over the muddy edge. I notice with some amusement that there's still two fish stuck on the end of the point.
Anita glances at them as she comes over to give me a hand up.
"They eat me, I eat them," I tell her with a grin. She rolls her eyes, but gives me a small smile.
My head spins slightly when I stand. I'm bleeding from at least four places, though none of them look serious. Citrine is much worse off than I am, with around a dozen wounds on her legs and feet as well as the ripped hands. She also dropped her sword when she fell; none of us are willing to go back in and look for it. Carla also lost her spare knife and Angelus is bleeding from a few places and limping slightly on his left foot. Anita, who was well out in the lead is the only one uninjured. I imagine right now we must look pretty stupid.
Anita takes guard as the rest of us sit along the bank and try to clean up. Luckily I decided to throw a few first aid supplies in my day pack and smear all my scrapes and bites with a disinfectant cream before bandaging the larger ones. Carla has bandages as well but the pair from One apparently didn't think to bring any. I toss Citrine my cream and grab some bank moss and reed-grass for her hands. Not as good or as pretty as proper bandages but better than bleeding out. She can fix them up proper once we get back.
By the time we're done our clothes have dried out and the sun is getting higher.
"Let's head upstream until we find a proper ford," Carla suggests, wincing as she stands. We trudge on, a much quieter and probably humbler group as we follow the winding water. I hope that none of our stronger opponents are down this way. If the pair from Ten attacked now and got the jump, they might just beat us. After twenty minutes we reach a ford of sorts, a row of rocks to jump across that should keep us clear of the water. Anita and I clear it easily enough. Citrine takes so long to cross that Angelus snarls at her that he'll push her in again if she doesn't hurry up. Carla comes over last and loses her footing on the second last rock, splashing heavily into an eddy of twigs and leaves. She comes up dripping and gasping, bits of plant and river-weed stuck in her hair.
"I hate rivers," she grumbles as Anita helps her up to the bank. She wrings her hair out twice and reties it before we head back.