We stopped or more accurately, Ray dropped from exhaustion and now that the adrenaline had worn off, I caught her with difficulty. She was nothing like Sora. Ray was a solid mass of muscles and as I eased her to the ground, I vividly remembered wrestling with Alba.
I had abandoned my sleeping bag though at least I still had my pack. I placed Ray against a tree and sat down close beside her, putting my pack across us. It wasn't much but I felt a bit warmer. I wasn't going to make another fire. Renown wouldn't be after us again tonight, not with his leg but Kayla and M6 were still out there. Ray was unconscious and the fight had drained me of what little strength I had regained.
I fell asleep and not for long either, the daylight woke me. Ray was still asleep and looked terrible. Her nose was black with bruising and blood and her mouth and clothes were decked with it too. She was alive though. Carefully I drew back the shred of her left sleeve to have a look at her. The cut was long and deeper nearer to her elbow. It wasn't discoloured. That was good. I wasn't going to try and look at her legs for the source of her limp.
I inspected my fingers and as I had feared, Renown had broken two of them. My left hand was now pretty much useless and it was a blessing that it was my left. Broken fingers were commonplace in a mill and I set the bones with practiced ease though I had nothing to splint them with. The water had taken a lot out of me and I felt little pain. I didn't feel my hunger much either. I was numb.
It was quiet out there. I had no idea how big the arena had been to start with or how much it had shrunk since the flood but there were only five of us left now. Five of us and two of us were here beneath this tree. Perhaps Kayla was still spying on everyone.
Tyler. That was the name of M6. Kayla, Ray, Renown, Tyler and myself; all that remained. It was almost a completely clear field for Renown now. Tyler hadn't done anything to impress back in the training centre, Kayla couldn't hope to win a fair fight and Ray and I were both beaten down. My side had healed up nicely but my eye was still tender from the fight with Alba and I hadn't properly recovered from the lake yet. I had fresh bruising from fighting with Renown as well, leaving me with the feeling that it was risky touching any part of my body.
Ray woke slowly and then snarled at the sight of me. There was a little more colour in her cheeks though between her arm and her nose, she had lost more than enough blood to be getting on with. I batted her hand down. "Relax."
"Still here then?"
"You saw last night. Neither of us could fight him and he couldn't fight both of us together."
"Need me to protect you then?"
"I need you to distract him."
"Ruthless." She declared.
"I can't kill him on my own."
"And if we do? What then?"
"Then we try and kill each other, like we're supposed to."
"Really? You think you could kill me after we've teamed up? You're not like us; you're a soft little-"
"I killed Sulla. I strangled him with a length of wire. And I killed Alba by stabbing her in the heart." Ray's expression had gone from mocking to almost scared because what I was describing she didn't think I looked capable of. "I know you're thinking about how to kill me right now. But you can't. You're weak. I'm weak. We're both weak. If we want to get strong again-" I had to swallow some rising bile because even though I knew she had killed June for the right reasons, I was still allying with her killer. "We stay together, we kill Renown and then you can try and kill me and I really don't care if you succeed."
We were sat shoulder to shoulder, our noses were almost touching and her brown eyes had a yellow tinge that reminded me of a feral cat. She glared at me for what like several minutes before finally speaking. "You're full of surprises, millboy."
"Well I'm sorry I'm not a ruthless murderous bitch like you."
She grinned, increasing her resemblance to a feral cat. "You think it's murder?"
"You volunteered to be here. We didn't."
"It's the price of rebellion."
I rolled my eyes. I hadn't had enough sleep to deal with this kind of conversation. "Can you walk?"
"If I have to."
"Good. We can't stay here."
"No. We should head to the water."
"You really want to be near the water if it floods again?"
"It won't flood again. They've already had a flood." She was right. The Gamemakers wouldn't repeat the same trick twice. "Do you have any more food?"
"Some. You've got nothing?"
"It was in my pack. Renown's got that. Fiona's too. He won't go hungry."
"Do you know anything about foraging?"
"No."
"We're eating trees then."
She picked up her stick again though she used it as a walking stick and I knew she wasn't going to try anything with it.
In the brief time we had spent together, Sora and I hadn't travelled. I had carried her into the hollow tree and that was it. But this was the first time since I had been in the arena that I had been around someone for a prolonged length of time. The brief time she had been alone before encountering me had been the aberration for her. She hadn't had to cope with loneliness.
Ray had nothing but disgust for pine bark but it was something to put into her stomach. I would give her a biscuit, later, but for now, I used a stone to scrape us a passable meal.
"You burned our supplies." It wasn't an accusation. She had been slow to put the pieces together though.
"Yes."
"Good strategy."
"Thanks."
"It means it's your fault though. What Renown did to your girl."
"No." I had thought of this a long time ago. "What Renown did was Renown."
"True. Asshole." She clutched her left arm.
"Does that hurt?"
"No."
"You're lying, aren't you?"
"Of course I'm lying!"
"Just remember what we did to Renown's leg."
"I hope the bastard's crippled."
I hoped so as well. Perhaps there was a chance he was already bleeding to death. If a cannon went off, it would be very awkward for the two of us.
"You're destroyed our food and you killed Sulla to do it. And then you killed Alba. How did you get Alba?"
"I got lucky."
"Makes sense."
"She asked me not to kill her."
"Alba?" Her scepticism dripped from her lips. "Begged for her life?"
"Yes, she did." I shuddered as I recalled her soft 'please' and then the feeling of her dying beneath me.
The knowledge that, whatever passed as a friend for Ray, had died a sad and inglorious death seemed to shake her up quite a bit. Her attitude to the Games was completely alien to me. Alba had seen it from my point of view as she died and now perhaps Ray considered that fighting and dying in the games wasn't an honour; it was simply dying.
We made it to the water and I realised how much I had taken for granted the simple act of walking with an able body. My previous visits to the Cornucopia had been easy and nothing compared to this trek. We sat down against another tree and it was abundantly clear to me that we were done for the day. This little area by the water was as far as we would be ranging.
She was leaning against me and tenderly touching her nose. She winced and then stroked her arm with less of a reaction. Like me, she seemed numb to it all.
"Here." I reached into my pack. "Use it."
She looked at the tin suspiciously and then opened it. "This is medicine. Where did you get it?"
I lifted my jacket. "Alba did this. And after I killed her, they sent me that." It had only been a few days but the Capitol medicine had worked a miracle.
"And you're giving it to me?"
"You don't need all of it. And you're not much use to me if you get an infection and get sick on me."
My ruthless logic appealed to her and she added a neat layer of the oily substance to her arm, leaving plenty left. I wondered what Ellis thought of me sharing this gift with a Career. He probably hated me more than he already had.
"So you're going to use me as a meat shield?" She asked.
"You shield me, I'll shield you."
"I'm not encouraged."
Already I was wondering why the hell I had let this happen. The moment Renown was no longer a problem, I knew she would kill me without hesitation and probably before Renown hit the ground. I knew why… fortune. It had been her good fortune to find me with a fire when she needed it. It had been my poor fortune to have come out of the lake nearby two Careers.
Or perhaps meeting Ray had been the best thing to happen to me after the flood. On my own, I would have been easy meat for anyone. With my spear I had been a threat but without it, I didn't threaten either Career, I didn't know what Tyler was capable of and I wasn't sure about Kayla either.
I wasn't talking to myself now though. I had a psychotic Career to talk to.
"You aren't afraid when I get my strength back I'll snap your neck?"
"Meat shield."
She shrugged. "It was much better when we were too tired to think."
"I'm exhausted. I guess you've spent too many years training to murder to be tired."
"I kill a few people here and win, and me and my family are set for the rest of our lives. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing." I had to admit that from her perspective as a volunteer there wasn't. "But you chose it. I didn't. Eighteen of us didn't choose to be here. None of us were prepared to kill or die. June never wanted to leave her family and now she's dead and they'll remember the way she died for the rest of their lives."
"That's not how it's supposed to be. You fight and you kill. That's it. That's all. Renown… He likes killing. I saw him when he was watching replays. The rest of us came here to win, not to… get off from hurting people."
"Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"
"We were going to. If the flood hadn't happened… We were both going to gut him and split up."
I found this oddly reassuring but a thought occurred to me, one that reminded me how much an insect I was here. "When did you plan it? Where?"
"Why?"
"Just answer the question."
"In the woods, alone."
"When?"
"The day before the flood."
"You planned to kill Renown, and then there was a flood?"
It came to her slowly and she smiled. "I guess he's the favourite."
"Are you sure you want to be by the water?"
"We're fine. Imagine the speculation about the two of us, teaming up, planning to take on the fearsome and brutal Renown. They want us to fight."
"And they're wondering if we'll kill each other in our sleep."
"They'll be betting on you."
"Probably." I was the weaker after all and the weak didn't fight fair. They all knew it too. "Do you think I would?"
Ray gazed steadily at me and I knew she already had an answer, she wanted to unnerve me. "No. You meant it when you said I could kill you after we kill Renown." She extended a hand. "Allies." She declared. "And I know this doesn't mean anything to you. But it does to me."
"I'll take it." As I took her hand, I felt very much like I was getting friendly with my executioner. However, I already knew she would be a much more professional executioner than the alternative. For that reason alone, I reached into my pack and offered her a biscuit.
"I don't know how much you've got in there." She said as she took it. "But we'll run out before we get our strength back?"
"Probably." If we ate properly, which we hadn't been, we would be out in a couple of days and living off nothing but tree bark and grass. I gave her another biscuit. "But what are our choices?"
"Eat while we can, take the strength we can get and fight while we can. Better than wasting."
With the arena now half-flooded and only five tributes remaining, the Games were drawing to a close. The end was nigh and I doubted that these Games would be permitted to end with one tribute outlasting the rest.
"No fire tonight?"
"No fire tonight." She confirmed. "We won't make it easy."
"Can Renown track?"
"Not that I know. Probably not knowing him. We're okay. We'll just be cold tonight." She shuffled slightly closer to me and then placed my pack between the two of us, covering one thigh each. "I'm thinking about that asshole sleeping snug in a bag and what I'll do to him."
That was one way to stay warm, I thought.
The day wore on and we dozed as night fell. Both of us had slipped away for a few minutes to see to our needs but that was all the energy we could spare. I carved some more pine for us even though I was beginning to feel as if there were splinters on my tongue. It helped settle some of the growls in my stomach though. It would have been better if I had never eaten at the Capitol, I would have faced this much more easily.
The sky played the anthem but there were no new reports today. I was barely awake and Ray glared up with irritation before settling back. One side of me was bitterly cold, the other feeling oddly snug. Snug against a trained killer…
At least I was warm.
I woke to the sound of Ray groaning and she had clearly only just woken herself. The bruising around her nose had lessened but she still looked incredibly rough.
"Hurts?" I asked and it was difficult to sound sympathetic.
She growled in response. She really was a feral cat.
"That needs to be set."
"Set?"
Ray started as I knelt over her and there was no mistaking the primal instinct in her eyes as I put my thumbs on her nose.
Her nose shifted and crunched into place and she seized both my arms and if she had been stronger she would have had me on my back. The primal look disappeared. "Much better… Thanks…"
I extricated my thumbs from her nose and my arms from her hands. "How's the arm?"
She pulled up her sleeve and the medicine had worked the same magic as it had done to my side. She looked very satisfied.
"And the leg?"
"It'll get better."
"What happened anyway?"
"He knocked me down, I landed on a rock… it's just bruised."
"True?"
"Why would I lie?"
"To seem less weak. You can hide a leg." I held up my useless left hand. "I can't hide this."
"You really don't trust me?"
I shrugged. It wasn't that I didn't trust her; it was the Games that made me paranoid. She had to conceal weaknesses and keep advantages to herself. It was how you survived.
"I don't want to sit around again all day." She declared.
"What else can we do?"
"I don't care if we just walk for a few hours and then sit down again but I'm not sitting here all day."
"Shouldn't we be conserving our energy?"
"For what? For Renown to limp up and find us? We need weapons and we need food. We don't know how to get food but we can make weapons. When he comes at me again with that sword, I don't care if all I have is a pointy stick; I want the pointy stick."
It was a very compelling argument. As it turned out, you couldn't just stroll about the woods and find a stick that would make a good spear. All the wood on the ground was brittle, useless. I resorted to snapping off a low branch that was straight enough but took a lot out of me to retrieve. It was nothing compared to the weapon I had taken from the Cornucopia but as Rey had pointed out, it was better than nothing. She found a stick as well, and the two of us were left walking around with the sharpest stones we could find doing our best to put a point on our measly weapons and I knew she was every bit on edge as I was. We walked about a foot apart and keeping step so we wouldn't present our backs to one another. We hadn't been armed before. One hard thrust and there would only be four tributes left.
It would have to be one hard thrust; I didn't have the energy for a drawn out fight. We were both far too battered for it.
"So you received medicine?" Ray asked suddenly.
"Yeah…"
"Because you killed Sulla and Alba and suddenly looked like a good bet. What about now? How do you look now? Are you going to get sent some food?"
"Hungry then?"
"And you aren't?"
"I'm used to it." It was a stupid thing to say but it was true.
"There's five of us left, right? Who would you put your money on?"
"I don't have any money." But I thought about it. Kayla was young and small and her best strategy was to hide but eventually the Gamemakers would force her into a confrontation and she didn't stand much of a chance against me or Tyler and certainly not Ray or Renown. Tyler had made no impression on me in training and his score was low. The contest came down between me, Ray and Renown. But as we were together, that confused things. Alliances weren't made when there were this few of us left. No one would send anything to me if they thought it would end up in Ray's hands, or vice versa. They would all be waiting for us to kill each other and make the waters less murky. "Renown's going to get gifts."
"He's probably already gotten medicine for his wounds. Food too."
"Won't be much." At this stage, the prices would be vicious.
"More than us."
I nodded. "They'll need food too. The others."
"You did a great job destroying the supplies."
"Yes, I did." If I killed her, my supplies would last a few more days and perhaps I would receive some more from Ellis. All I had to do was kill Ray.
"We need to kill Renown. " She said, as if she had read my thoughts. "Tomorrow." She nodded and then gripped her spear tightly. "Tomorrow we killed him."
"How do we find him?"
"He's not imaginative. He'll be right where we left him, healing up. He doesn't need to hide, he wants to be found. Anyone he finds, he kills. Unless you think the little one could bash his skull in with a rock."
"Probably not."
"So what do you want to do now?"
"I want to eat, so I guess I'll be eating more tree bark."
Her tone was particularly bitter and I contributed a biscuit to her pathetic meal to keep her placated. It was not an easy night.
