Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Cornucopia - Venus

Venus

The boy attacking Cole from Twelve crumples for no apparent reason as a girlish scream tears through the air and stutters to a halt. Cole scrambles to his feet and flees, unarmed except for a small bag. I start to head off after him, for an easy kill, but he's obviously faster than I am and even though I could probably beat off any of these other tributes with a brick, I don't want to risk being stranded from the Careers. Not yet, and not with Aspen from Seven hovering nearby, jumpy and swinging her axe when anybody comes into her view.

Her partner is dead at Portia's feet. Portia herself appears unscathed; what a shame.

The bloodbath is down to the dregs, but several fights are still in full flow. From roughly where the more recent scream rang out - out of my vision - there's another stifled female cry, but it doesn't last long. Another one down.

How many is that now? At least five by my reckoning, but there's always the ones I haven't seen. Watching the bloodbath on screen isn't that different to watching it in real life, only on screen the camera decides where you're looking and in real life the blood splatters your clothes. There's blood, closer to deep brown than red, down my arm where I caught the boy from Thirteen. Not good enough to kill, really, but...

"Venus!"

Oh, right. The bloodbath. Not a good time to tune out, Venus. Though nobody is attacking us; Chase must have shouted to warn me about the surly boy from Nine, even though he's not close enough to be any trouble. He obviously thinks he's got the time to be choosy because he's rifling through a disgusting yellow backpack with quick, hurried movements.

"I've got it," I tell Chase, "You keep an eye for anybody sneaking up around the back." Chase nods, snatches up a machete - his weapon of preference - and hurtles around the corner of the golden horn.

Flax - I think that's his name - looks up at just the wrong time and sees me coming. Alarm flashes in his eyes, but it's quickly replaced by a darkly sullen expression when he sees my weapon, something halfway between a dagger and a sword. Too heavy to throw, light enough to be dealt with easily with one hand. It has a proper name but I've forgotten and it doesn't matter anyway. What matters is that I've trained with it enough for it to be like an extension of my arm, hardly even noticeable until I need it...

Flax keels over, blood bursting from his back, which conveniently has an axe sticking out of it. He chokes briefly while I look around for Aspen, who is jogging over and looking very pleased with herself.

"Jasper down!" Chase's voice shouts, and both of us turn to see the kid from One tumble backwards, one hand to his throat, while Chase snatches up his knife. He's a brave kid, if he stood up to Chase, and his district should be proud. More proud of him than they are of Onyx, anyway, who is limping away as fast as he can, nearly on the edge of the woods by now. Something stings at my throat; he abandoned his partner.

Luxury and Diamond are shouting at each other, again. It's hard to tell what they're bickering about, but I hear Ade snap, "Oh, I'll do it then!"

There's no scream so I assume that it's not another death.

"I'm useful," Aspen informs me, wrenching her axe out of Flax's shoulder blades. Blood pours from the wound. I don't doubt that she is. I've been keeping an eye on her and she could be plenty of help. But I've also seen that glint in her eyes; as soon as she got the chance and didn't need protection anymore, she'd cut and run. And she'd probably cut me.

I'm not sure what to say now. I should probably kill her but she's just out of my range and even though I'm pretty quick, she could hit me before I could hit her, and an injury now - however small - could cause real problems later down the line. That's where a lot of Careers have gone wrong before, and one small act of bravado has eventually killed them. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, and especially not when Chase depends on it too.