The weather was being entirely too friendly for my liking. I woke to a warm morning sun and the sensation of actually being too hot. Day six in the arena, fifteen tributes dead and nine remaining. It had been an action packed week for the audience certainly. I wasn't sure but I had a feeling the longest Games had lasted six weeks, the initial bloodbath taking twelve and the remainder dying two per week. I did remember the final two, both Careers, had stalked each other for five days until a final confrontation with the two of them sporting a dozen wounds each from the long chase.
I wandered along the river, wondering about other water sources. The lack of activity on this side of the arena led me to believe that there must have been another on the other side and perhaps that was where the others were.
Not so. I reached the treebridge again and though I was certainly no tracker, there were two sets of prints in the mud nearby, one set fresher than the other. Two tributes had crossed, one in pursuit of the other.
Two tributes… with six on this side of the river for sure, I decided to cross. I had already killed one tribute with wire, why not another two with the spear? By now the audience would probably have grown bored of me. I doubted I had any sponsors but if things turned against me, I might need them. Even if all I did was end up seriously injured, a parachute with something to dull the pain would be very welcome. It wasn't unknown for the Capitol to take pity on an injured tribute toward the end and fix them up, so they were in better shape to be finally killed.
The bridge was treacherous and having to hold a spear as I crossed didn't help. I also couldn't shake the feeling that it was a Gamemakers trap and the whole thing would suddenly break free and I would be swept down the river and drown. It would be a joke to them; grain spoiling in the wet.
Finally I was over and the mud once again betrayed the other tributes. My own prints were now added but I didn't especially care. All the mud did was point me in a direction.
There was something very off about stalking human beings, spear in hand, through the woods. Our lives were hard but never had I felt the compulsion to hurt others. The Games plucked us from our misery and encouraged us to turn it to hate against the other Districts. It was no wonder that the Careers nearly always won; the rest of us had no will to win, only to survive.
Home… If I made it home, I would never have to work again. I would be homed in the Victors Village and would receive a stipend from the Capitol for the rest of my life. The only cost was a slice of my soul as I mentored fresh tributes. At least there were other victors in District 9, others to share the burden. I was Ellis' surviving tribute. Perhaps he had written me off, perhaps he was garnering support for me. Probably he was swearing at the screen as I dumbfounded him.
I had no idea where I was going or what I was really doing. My only comfort was that everyone else was in pretty much the same boat.
The seventh day in the arena was cold and wet and reassuring. This was the weather the Gamemakers were supposed to inflict on us. My sleeping bag was growing progressively muddier but with little effort I could dry it out for the following night.
It was incredible how light my pack had become, how the food I had been laden down with had disappeared quickly. An apple a day and a couple of rolls, a biscuit if I felt my hunger especially gnawing… still dwindling away quickly.
There was one thing I had picked up in training, one thing that astonished me enough to stick in my head and that was that it was possible to eat the soft inner bark of a pine tree. With my serrated knife, I was easily cut out a piece and I munched on it, surprised by how palatable it was actually was. Perhaps I could survive off the trees if it came down to it.
I became aware of a stillness among the trees and not the one that usually surrounded me. This one was more complete, more ominous, more threatening. I put my pack down in the crook of a tree and held the spear, listening carefully.
They weren't footsteps, they were running steps and they came not toward me but from the side and I saw the streak of another tribute carrying a sword and then there was a scream and a clash. I started forward without thinking, knowing that I stood far more chance if I took advantage of this fight than if I waited for it to resolve itself.
F2 had stuck F8 in the flank with her sword in her surprise charge but F8 carried a long stick and used it to keep the shorter sword at bay though I could see immediately it was futile. A cruel smile played on F2's feature, her black hair drawn back in a tight ponytail that seemed to crack like a whip every time she stepped. The wound she had given F8 was brutal and I could see her weakening, her attempts to bat F2 away becoming more and more feeble. She stumbled back against a tree and F2 smiled in anticipation. She stepped forward as F8 collapsed back against the tree and then suddenly frowned, stepping away. She turned and looked right at me, some sixth sense having told her I was there.
The smile returned. The look on her face told me that she was glad now to have a real challenge rather than the helpless F8.
I jabbed the spear toward her to see her response and she slapped it mockingly with the flat of her sword. Both were made of the same metal and the metallic ring was almost welcoming after hearing nothing but nature in the arena for days. The spear had a considerable advantage over her but she didn't see it that way. As far as she was concerned, it was merely a hindrance. I saw F8 sliding down the tree, clearly resigned to sit and wait for whoever won to finish her off.
F2 was older than me though we were the same size and I knew our strength wasn't that different. She may have trained for the arena but I had worked all my life, I was strong.
She was fast though, faster than seemed possible. She sidestepped and came at me and I brought the spear around to slap her in the side, pushing her away. I turned and she grinned, still unconcerned. She was toying with me, sizing me up. She stepped again and this time I was ready, thrusting but only at air as she slid away from the questing point. She was calm, as if she was still training. Killing me meant nothing to her whatsoever.
"Alba right?" I remembered all their names and my voice felt gravelly from lack of use. "District 2. Volunteered. Came here with Sulla." Now it was my turn to smile. "How is Sulla?"
"Sulla's dead." She played along, her eyes darting about as she sought an opening.
"I know. He really struggled as I throttled the life out of him if it's any consolation."
Her smile disappeared. "You?"
"It was really nice of you to leave a pathetic cripple guarding all your supplies. I've been eating really well for days." The Careers knew each other far better than the tributes from other districts; often enough they had trained together for years beforehand and referring to him as a pathetic cripple hurt her in a place she probably hadn't known existed. It was insulting for him to have died at my hand and the jibe about eating well alerted her to another fact. "Do you think setting fire to your food was too much? I thought it was. But makes great television, don't you think?"
Now I was the one who seemed above her and the superiority complex of District 2 over the others came to the fore and Alba was incensed. I had killed her fellow tribute, ruined her supplies and now I was acting as if killing her would be no more difficult.
She swatted the spear out of the way and swung her sword but I brought the spear haft up to meet it and the two pieces of metal met each with a numbing force that made both of us drop our weapons in shock. More shock for me than her; Alba tackled me and I went down as her head struck hard into my gut, winding me. Her fist sailed into my jaw and as much as it hurt, I could see she had hurt herself just as much. Her next blow went into the softer tissue around my left eye and before she could deliver a third, I recovered enough to grab her fist in my hand and wrestle her off me. I was right about her strength, the two of us were comparable though she had far more control while all I had was brute force. We wrestled for a moment, hands latched around each other's arms, preventing further blows, kicking up the leaves and snapping twigs. I felt one jab into me and I felt Alba stiffen as we rolled and her back struck a rock.
With a sudden surge of adrenaline, she threw me off and gymnastically leapt to her feet. She had her sword before I knew what was happening and came at me swinging and I kicked from my space on the ground, both feet connecting sharply near her groin and she went flying back but she kept her footing though she was clearly agonised by the attack. I got up on my own feet, still winded, half-blind, weapon-less. Alba however didn't count me out, having already underestimated me.
She stepped to attack again and I dodged, grabbing the first thing I could, a pathetic little stick that became even more pathetic as she swung again and her sword cut it in two. I threw it and by luck rather than design it struck her in the forehead, making her reel and giving me the chance to dodge away again and seize my spear once more.
Alba stepped slowly, circling me, her left hand out for balance though clearly desiring to massage her bruised groin just as I wanted to rub my bruised eye. She stepped more heavily than before, no longer smug and confident.
"I had to sneak up on him. He never saw me coming, never even knew who killed him." I didn't know why I suddenly confessed this but it served to put her off guard after my previous taunts. "I could never have killed him in a fair fight. I knew that. We're all murderers here really… but strangling him from behind with some wire… that really is a murder, isn't it?"
Alba's sword had dropped almost entirely as she processed what I was saying. People died in many ways in the Games but often enough it was in duels like this, weapon against weapon. It made people forget the realities of the Games that no matter what, death was still death, whether clean or messy.
Suddenly the sword was up again as she cleared her heads of the doubts I had inflicted and her left hand shot forward to seize my spear and she tugged, thrusting the blade at me and pulling me toward it simultaneously. I stepped but not enough and felt it gouge my side. Without thinking I headbutted, smacking my forehead hard against her nose and feeling something give way. I threw myself forward, knowing the only way to end this was to keep the sword from her grasp. She lost it as we went down and punched me in the gut. I took hold of her arm again and rolled, trapping her left under her and bringing my left to my occupied right hand. I could feel my side growing warm and wet as I bled. My eye seemed to be swelling shut so my view of Alba became smaller, much smaller and her eyes widened as I released her arm to seize the knife from the sheath on my left. She had not anticipated a millboy carrying a concealed blade.
She managed to roll and seized my throat with her right hand as her left took hold of my right that was bringing the knife down on her. Both grips were like vices and I tightened my hold on the knife until I felt like my fingers were going to snap, leaning all my weight onto it, inching slowly down onto her as her left hand strangled me, giving me an all too terrifying glimpse into what Sulla had experienced.
The blade sunk inexorably down to touch her chest, sliding between her breasts. She released my throat, both hands resisting my right now and the only thing holding me up was my left hand supporting me in the dirt.
"Please."
Suddenly Alba was no trained killer, no lethal member of the Career pack. What I saw through my one good eye were tears in the eyes of someone who knew they would never live to experience adulthood, someone who was no more than a scared child. A pretty girl who had probably stolen plenty of hearts during her flirty interview with Flickerman.
Whose eyes widened as the blade slid into her, glancing off a bone and then she jerked as the knife pierced her heart. She died almost instantly, her teary eyes looking right through me with no expression, nothing at all. Ghostly. Her hands released me, her arms flopping grotesquely to the sides.
The blade was stuck firm and even if I could have pulled it free, I didn't want to. To do so would feel like I was desecrating her, pulling it free to tear her flesh and bring the blood pouring, gushing out of her. There was already blood on her face from her nose and I absently wiped it away and then closed her eyes. If not for the knife hilt sticking out of her chest, she could almost have been sleeping.
The cannon boomed, a little late it felt. I was still knelt over Alba, knelt over that sleeping form. I reached behind her head and released her hair from what felt like a scrunchy. I looked at it and wondered if this was her token. I slipped it around her wrist and then arranged her black hair in a fan. Finally I got off of her and found her sword, placing it in her hands on her chest, hiding the knife hilt. With her hair arranged in a fan and the sword held close, she looked like a splendid warrior in slumber. Like Snow White waiting for her prince to come.
No prince came. Only a hovercraft that plucked her from the arena in its metal teeth like it was picking up trash. I placed my fist over my heart, head bowed as it took her away.
I sat in the dirt. I had killed both tributes from District 2 and in equally brutal fashion. I had outright murdered Sulla and Alba… I had killed Alba with a trick. A concealed weapon was something the Careers would do, in fact the blade had been intended for one of them to carry, concealed in their sleeve for just such a fight. I talked of the Careers being dangerous but I had proved in seven days of the Games that I was just as deadly and dangerous as any Career tribute. More so maybe, because I didn't think I was dangerous.
I became aware of her slowly, still against the tree, watching me in silence, hands grasped to her side. My own side was gouged but I could feel the blood drying. I would be okay. I stood slowly, retrieving my spear and using it to support myself as my side protested against having any weight on it.
I wondered what I looked like to her, standing over her spear in hand, one eye swollen shut, bloodied, bruised… having just witnessed me stab another tribute in the heart. She looked up at me with big brown eyes, framed by hair that was as dark as Alba's though her skin had been pale while this District 8 girl's was a light warm tan. There was a curious slant to her eyes and the whole shape of her face was unusual. I remembered seeing someone like this briefly before once, on the far side of District 9.
She continued to look up in silence and then swallowed. "Just do it." She said.
