Chapter 26 – On the Line #2
My fingers flexed around the hilt of my sword, my toes curling inside of my boots. I could wait.
How long could it have been? It felt like it had been two minutes and also two hundred. Sweat was causing my base layer to stick to my neck uncomfortably, where some dust was chafing against my skin every time the collar moved.
I had to look again. I shifted my weight and leaned out, searching the spot where I'd last seen that dark shadow of armour. I narrowed my focus on that dense area of thorn bush and hip-high rocks, and saw nothing.
Maybe she'd gone. I let out a quick exhale, giving the rest of the slope a perfunctory scan. I could leave and be back on my way. As I glanced to the bottom portion of the slope, the western side, my stare caught on something, a strange upright shape against the sand.
I squinted, my skin crawling with some animal instinct, and as I narrowed my eyes, the shape came into focus.
Two black eyes stared up at me from a sea of gray.
Andiri of Creche Ena stood perfectly, eerily still at the base of the slope, as gray as the rocks around her, her dead eyes pinned on the hillside where I was hiding.
Her armour was gone, only a gray base layer remaining, and in her hand she held a club of some sort.
She was as gray as the arena around her, and still as a statue except for the rustling of her dark crest. She blinked, impossibly slow, the blacks of her eyes vanishing for a moment before they flared wide again.
When she opened her eyes, her stare found mine, and I saw the slow curl of a smile across her features. A jolt of panic twisted my stomach, cold terror sluicing down me.
Evasion hadn't worked. So it was time to run for my fucking life.
I turned and bolted up the hill. The ground was loose under my feet, and my left foot gave under me.
My elbow cracked down and I forced myself up again, scrambling up the surface.
Behind me, I heard rocks clattering and skittering down the slope, the sound of footfalls across the grit and dirt.
Every nerve in my body was screaming to run, to run faster, to climb harder, and I put everything I had into escape.
Some primal, frantic part of my brain kicked into overdrive and while my body hurtled itself as fast as it could up the slope, scrambling and flying, all discomfort forgotten in the frantic need to run, there was another chorus inside of me. She was coming. She was coming.
The top of the slope was lined with thorn bushes, except a gap that I'd been aiming toward, which made this whole thing a funnel. Up top, I could see another flash of black armour.
Someone else was waiting. Stupid, of course they'd designed the arena like that. Why the fuck had I come this way?
I fought against the urge to turn and see how close Andiri was – I imagined I could feel her cold breath on the back of my neck; I imagined the hard blow would come any second – and instead I turned sideways and started sprinting laterally, to the east. Farther away but where else could I fucking go?
Running lengthwise across a slope was a hell of a lot easier than running up it, and I picked up speed, legs pumping, heart thundering. I heard a crash behind me, and couldn't beat back the impulse to glance.
Andiri's body had pitched down the slope, a flash of tan scale and dark armour on top of her as both figures tumbled across the shale.
They snarled and howled, and I took my chance and just kept going.
I bolted away, looking frantically for another way up the ridge, but the dense thorn bushes were everywhere.
Fuck it, I thought furiously. I looked again: Andiri and the voltaari were locked in a fight, beating each other mercilessly.
They were screaming and shouting, weapons flailing.
Andiri had the lower ground but I watched as she cracked her club to the voltaari's knee, and I heard the audience scream as it looked like the joint gave way to a mess of bone and gristle.
I swallowed and looked up at the bushes, which seemed to run in a solid wall all the way to the east, as far as I could fucking see.
If they hadn't given me a way through, I'd have to make one for myself. I climbed up the rest of the slope, a spray of gravel kicking out behind me, clambering until I reached the thorn bushes. And then I started hacking.
I was sure I was being disrespectful to voltaari cultural practices in about sixteen different ways, but who the fuck cared – a sword could be a machete if you tried hard enough.
The branches of the bushes gave way easily, the wood soft and pulpy.
I hacked and then reached in and grabbed at the tangled branches, hauling them out even as they cut the shit out of my palms. By the time I'd cleared a section to squeeze through, my blood was spattered across the gray ground, violent red against the monochromatic landscape.
I didn't look to see what was happening with the other fight. Instead, I threw myself between the bushes, sharp lines of pain blossoming over my skin, a thorn catching the side of my neck, another scraping at a gap in my armour at my waist, while I shielded my eyes with my free arm.
And then, in a burst of movement, I tumbled through onto hard, flat ground, my chest heaving.
I stopped for just a moment, wiping blood and sweat from my eyes, scrubbing my bleeding palms on my pants.
I held my breath and listened as best I could, but I couldn't hear anything beyond the sound of my pulse throbbing in my ears and the murmur of the crowd. But no footfalls, no rustling branches.
Good enough for me. I sheathed my sword again, and took off as fast as I could.
This section of the arena was different: hard-packed dirt underneath a skeletal canopy of trees, their thin silver trunks spaced out and leaving ample room for fighting. Roots tangled across the ground, making it an incredibly treacherous path to take.
I guess I'd gotten to see trees in real life after all, but these all looked dead – totally denuded of leaves, gnarled and spindly.
I kept an eye on the ground beneath me, slowing my run to a jog and trying to stay quiet. I'd mostly stopped leaving a trail of blood behind me, so at least I couldn't be tracked that way.
Because I couldn't shake the feeling that Andiri was hunting me. Although if she was, she didn't need my blood to do it. She could probably smell me, scent me down because I was virra and find me wherever I went. There'd be no hiding if she set out after me.
Fine. She could try. But I'd been sparring with an abaya for weeks now, and Araxis was a cut above Andiri in every way. I'd be fine.
I had to be fine. I had to make it to Araxis.
My hands and arms were throbbing, the cut in my neck still oozing blood when I checked it with my fingers. I slowed even further, down to a walk, and continued aiming myself at that north wall.
It was less hot here under the trees, although they didn't have any leaves to cut the sun.
Instead, the shade came in slices, lines of dark and bright burning against the backs of my eyes.
The crowd was a little quieter at least, although I still heard the surge of excitement as something else happened, the feral screaming of thousands of people being entertained.
It hadn't looked good for the voltaari – maybe Tulsu? – when I'd left. Had that been the crowd's frenzied response to seeing his death? If so… how much time did I have before Andiri was after me?
Certainly not time to walk. The minutes were slipping by, and although I squinted through the trees, I couldn't see the wall yet.
Part of me thought it was smarter to head straight to it and then follow the line toward the meeting place, but if Araxis got to our planned location and I wasn't there, he was going to head back along the path he expected me to be on. I had to be where he would find me.
I picked up the pace, breaking into a run and dodging around loops of roots and past silvery trunks as sun and shadow flashed above me. I arced toward my original trajectory, trying to get back on track.
I alternated running and walking as best I could, all the while feeling like the strength was being leeched from my body.
I stopped twice to look at the cuts on my hands and arms, which weren't dripping but were definitely still tacky with fresh blood.
I touched the cuts, prodding the skin on either side of the gouges the thorns had left in me.
The skin felt hot and tender, even though the cuts weren't too deep, except for a puncture wound near my shoulder.
I didn't like that they were still wet.
I flexed my hands, studying them, and the movement made blood patter out again, forming little craters on the dusty ground beneath me.
"That's not good," I muttered. I'd gotten a nasty cut on my calf too, which had been throbbing every time I started to run, so I knelt down to take a look at that too, although who knows what I thought I'd be able to deduce or even do once I'd come to some conclusion.
It was that impulse that saved my life. I guess curiosity saved the cat this time.
I knelt, and then I heard a scuff behind me, followed by a shuddering thud as a club slammed into the tree above to my shoulder, exactly where my head had been.
I'd like to say that instinct took over and I tumbled forward and grabbed my swords and surged up into a perfect ready stance, prepared to fight Andiri.
But I was never a warrior. I was a dancer, and my instincts were decidedly different.
"What the fuck," I yelped, throwing myself down onto the ground and covering my head.
I rolled, looking up at the snarling grin of Andiri above me, her chest heaving as she hauled her club back up for another strike.
My swords were pinned under my shoulder. My hands frantically searched the ground around me, and then I threw a fistful of dirt and rocks into her face.