Amanda Lynn's Arc

Chapter 14 of 14

The horn blew. Amanda Lynn pushed off the line with the pack. Bodies pressed close on both sides. Feet hammered the dirt. For one breath she had her lane. Then a shoulder slammed into her ribs. A taller runner cut across her path, chasing the inside track. His elbow caught her arm and spun her sideways. Her cleats bit the wrong way. One foot crossed over the other. She felt her weight tip past her hip, past the point she could pull it back. The ground rushed up at an angle. In half a second she would be down, and the whole pack would trample over her. She did not fight the fall. She let her tangled leg go and threw her other foot wide, like a diver reaching for the pool wall. The iron cleat stabbed into the packed dirt and held. The poison coating gripped. Her body swung over that planted foot. Her hand brushed the ground, then lifted. She was up, still moving, still running. The runner who hit her glanced back once. He had an animal carved on his shirt, a wide flat shape with gliding fins, the kind of mark a courier wore to claim a route. He did not slow. He had meant to break her stride and own the front. He had failed. Amanda Lynn fixed her eyes on his heels and ran them down. By the first turn she had closed the gap. The ridge rose ahead. Above it the swifts lifted and traced the path she had walked a dozen times. She knew every pinch and every slab. The runner ahead of her did not have her feet. She let him set the early pace and tucked in behind his shoulder, out of the churn, saving herself for the wet slabs where bare iron would betray him and her cleats would not. Her breath settled. Her feet stayed quiet and sure under her. The near-fall had cost her nothing but two strides, and she took those back before the climb began. But the jostle had taught the pack something. The front runners now knew she could be shoved and would not drop. One of them, a broad woman with a diver's heavy build, swung wide and boxed Amanda Lynn against the inside bank. Stones clattered where the path narrowed. A man ahead carried a courier's strongbox strapped to his back, its iron bands scraping the rock wall as he squeezed through the pinch. The gap shrank. Three runners fought for one line of clean footing, and the ridge climb had not even started. Amanda Lynn was still on her feet. She was still in the race. But the fast runners had marked her now, and they would not give her room. She would have to take the ridge not alone, as she had practiced, but in a packed, elbowing knot of rivals who wanted her gone.