by Rachel Aaron
“It does make good fertilizer,” Emmett said, his face deathly pale as he struggled to balance on his own cables.
“More like a good waste of time,” Willow grumbled, her own face even paler as she tried to stay still.
They were hanging off the edge on the Maria side. When they’d started before dawn, the titans weren’t an issue, but now that the sun was coming up, the monsters were moving again. A small group had already gathered below, their stupid eyes watching hungrily as Rosalie and the others scraped away at a year’s worth of filth.
“This isn’t even our job!” Willow said, bracing herself against the wall with both feet. “Cleaning is Supply Corps work!”
It was pretty disgusting, but Rosalie decided she preferred scraping dried poop to enduring Jax’s mockery. He’d ridiculed her gear’s decorated straps for five solid minutes, calling her “carriage horse” and asking if she’d brought ribbons to tie in the titans’ hair.
As if he could hear her thinking, Jax chose that moment to poke his head over the edge of the wall. “Pick up the pace!” he yelled. “We’re not going back until this whole side is done, so if you want to eat tonight, you’d better scrape faster!”
“You didn’t let us eat breakfast,” Willow muttered, stabbing her trowel into a large white streak of droppings. When she tried to yank it out again, though, the motion upset her already precarious balance, forcing Rosalie to stick out a foot to steady her squadmate before she flipped over.
“Thanks,” Willow grumbled, her sour voice shaking slightly as she eyed the titans thirty meters below, their hands already raised to catch anyone who fell.
“You’re welcome,” Rosalie said, trying not to look too confident as she hit her shiny new triggers with one hand, reeling herself up to the top of the wall to empty her bucket into the cart.
* * *
By midafternoon, Rosalie’s arms burned from all the scraping, and her core was watery from holding herself upright in her vertical maneuvering gear for eleven hours straight. She couldn’t tell if her aching muscles were shouting down her empty stomach or if all her discomforts had merged into a single throbbing agony. Either way, there’d be no relief. Jax had already told them they’d have no lunch. When she voiced her disbelief, he’d said:
“You don’t look like you’ve ever missed a meal in your life. But this is the wall, not a picnic. There’s no food and there won’t be any food until the work gets done, so I suggest you stop grousing and get to it.”
Rosalie could still hear those hateful words in her head as she hauled herself over the lip of the wall to dump her bucket full of droppings into the collection wagon. When she landed on her feet, though, she spotted something unexpected.
A new squad was walking toward them along the top of the wall. They all wore uniforms bearing the Supply Corps insignia, and their wagon was piled with buckets and trowels just like the ones Squad 13 was using. For a soaring moment, she thought they’d come to help. Then, as always, Jax opened his mouth and ruined everything.
“Took your sweet time, Markus!” he called, lips curling into a sneer. “What happened? Got lost on the way out of the tavern?”
The new squad’s leader, a short, potbellied man with a flushed red face, flashed Jax a sneer of his own. “I wasn’t exactly in a hurry, you crazy bastard. What kind of demented sergeant volunteers his squad to do two weeks’ worth of cleaning in one day?”
“Because it doesn’t take us two weeks on account of we’re not lazy wastes of space,” Jax replied. “Case in point, you were supposed to be here at noon. What were you doing? Stopping for a drink every block between headquarters and the wall?”
“That’s most unkind,” Markus said, winking at his men, who did indeed look suspiciously wobbly on their feet. “We got here fast as we could, and it’s not like you needed us.” He waved at the cart of bird dung that Rosalie, Emmett, and Willow had been filling all morning. “You’re almost done already.”
“No thanks to you,” Jax snapped, crossing his arms. “We’ll be done in half an hour. Since you arrived just in time to do nothing, you can push our cart back for us, assuming you idiots can manage two carts at once without falling off the wall.”
The way he said that made Rosalie frown. From the notation on his sleeve, Markus was also a sergeant, which meant Jax had no right to give him orders. She fully expected Markus to call him out, but to her surprise, the older man didn’t say a word. He just ordered his men to start shoveling bird droppings from Squad 13’s overloaded cart into their empty one.
The one-sided exchange was so odd, Rosalie actually went up to Jax when it was over, swallowing her anger, and asked, “What was that about?”
To Rosalie’s surprise, he answered without mocking her. “Markus used to be a wall sergeant like me, and then I caught him drunk on the job. I could have gotten him kicked out of the Garrison, but I fudged my story and he ended up in Supply Corps instead.”
That explained a lot. “So he owes you.”
“Everyone owes me,” Jax said bitterly. “Because everyone up here is trash. Bribes, drunkenness, extortion, corruption, good old incompetence—I know it all, and I use it.”
“Why?” she asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, if they’re all so bad, why not just have them tossed out?”
“Because then I’d have to do it all over again on a whole new crop of idiots.”
Rosalie scowled at that, and Jax sighed. “Look, Princess, this isn’t a nice job for nice people. It’s dirty and hard and there’s a good chance you’ll end your career in a titan’s belly. The only reason anyone does it is because the Garrison pays twice what anyone else does, and even mouth-breathers like Markus have families to feed. Not that you’d know anything about that.”
Rosalie ignored the barb and stayed on target. “Is that why you covered for him? Because he had a family?”
“I didn’t cover for him,” Jax said angrily. “I’m blackmailing him because a drunken idiot under my boot is safer than a drunken idiot running around loose.”
That made a strange sort of sense. “Do you have a family to feed?”
“That’s none of your damn business!” Jax roared. “Get back to work!”
Rosalie backed away, but inside she was smirking. That was the first time Jax had answered her questions rather than just insulting her. She hadn’t missed the softness in his voice when he’d talked about feeding families, either. Or how he’d boasted to Markus about his squad doing in a day what normally took the Supply Corps two weeks.
If he was a cynical man, rather than just a horrible one, maybe he could be reasoned with. The possibility made Rosalie grin as she hopped down off the wall to help Emmett and Willow finish the final stretch.
* * *
As Jax had predicted, it took their squad half an hour on the nose to finish. It was still an hour before sunset, too. Plenty of time to get back for dinner. When they hauled themselves triumphantly to the top of the wall, though, Jax was the only one waiting.
“Where’s the Supply Corps squad?” Rosalie asked, looking at the abandoned carts.
“Where they always are when they have five free seconds,” Jax said bitterly. “Down in Trost having a drink.”
She gaped at him. “And you’re not writing them up?”
“Oh no, they’re dead,” Jax growled. “But Supply Corps operates out of HQ. That means Markus works under Woermann, and the captain doesn’t listen to my reports. I’m still telling Brigitte, though. It’s not her jurisdiction, but she’s a sneaky old fox. She’ll find a way make those slackers pay.”
Rosalie certainly hoped so. If her father had discovered one of his Military Police squads abandoning their post to go drinking, he’d have had them all shot. Rosalie was feeling a bit like shooting someone herself when Markus and his team finally made their way back up the wall five minutes later.
“For the love of—” Jax marched over to grab Markus, who
was so drunk he was having trouble staying upright. “What kind of idiot gets falling-down drunk on the wall?”
“Don’t be such a stick, Jaxy,” Markus slurred in his face. “It’s just a bit o’ fun. Here.” He fumbled a flask from his pocket. “Have a drink. Might make you more likable.”
Jax smacked the flask out of his hand. The other drunken soldiers cried out in dismay, but it was too late. The flask had already tumbled over the edge of the wall, which meant the drink was gone, and now they were mad.
“What’d you go and do that for?” one of them yelled, turning to Markus. “Sergeant!”
“You done messed up now, Cunningham,” Markus growled, pulling a well-honed knife from inside his jacket. “I don’t care what you got on me. You give orders like you’re a damn captain, but you’re no better than the rest of us, you sorry piece of—”
He cut himself off with a strangled cry as Jax calmly grabbed his hand, bending his fingers backward until the knife clattered to the ground.
“That’s enough out of you,” Jax said calmly, giving Markus’s fingers one last shove before letting go. “Men as stupid as you are when you’re sober shouldn’t drink, Markus,” he said as the other sergeant dropped to the ground, cursing and clutching his swelling hand. “My squad’s done with their work and yours, so we’re leaving. Why don’t you lie there a moment and collect what little wits you’ve got, then you can—”
Rosalie didn’t see which of Markus’s men started it. They all seemed to come to the decision to jump Jax at the exact same time, charging him with a chorus of drunken roars. Jax dodged the attacks without batting an eye, ducking under one man’s fist while sidestepping another’s kick. The third had gone for a tackle, but he must have been even drunker than the others because he missed Jax entirely, running straight past him. When he turned around for another try, his foot slipped, sending him stumbling sideways…
Right off the titan side of the wall.
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The moment the soldier disappeared, everyone went silent. Even the falling man didn’t scream. It was so quiet, Rosalie could hear the whistle of his body as he plummeted, followed by a wet plop.
“Hans!” Markus shouted, lunging for the edge.
Jax raced after him like a shot, grabbing Markus seconds before the drunken idiot threw himself off the wall as well. Once he’d locked his arms around the bigger man’s barrel chest, Jax became still. When she ran over to help, Rosalie saw why.
The falling man hadn’t hit the ground. He’d landed in a titan’s open mouth.
It was a big one. Fifteen meters tall at least, with a distended potbelly, distorted thin arms, and a boy’s innocent face.
Its huge gray eyes were crossed in an effort to look at the man moving groggily on its tongue. The fallen soldier had managed to lift his head and look around, his drunken face confused as he spotted the wall of giant teeth above him. He was still staring when the titan’s mouth snapped shut.
The damp crunch, and then the echoing clack of its teeth snapping together, were sounds Rosalie knew she’d never be able to forget. The next was even worse. The titan’s throat flexed, moving with a gulp as it swallowed the man whole.
“NO!” Markus cried, lurching against Jax’s grip. “Damn you monsters! I’ll—”
“Shut up!” Jax snarled, wrestling Markus away from the edge, but not fast enough. His screaming had already caught the titans’ attention. The crowd of monsters Squad 13 had been attracting all day as they cleaned was now swarming the wall, throwing themselves against the stone in a frenzy to reach the humans on top.
“That’s just brilliant!” Jax yelled, throwing Markus down on the stone. “You just had to go and kick the hornets’ nest, didn’t you?”
Markus rolled away, clutching his wounded hand and screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. Jax kicked him in the ribs for good measure and turned to Willow.
“You’re the medic,” he snapped. “Fix his damn hand and shut him up before his noise brings more.”
Willow nodded frantically, throwing open her medical bag and grabbing a roll of bandages, which she proceeded to shove into Markus’s mouth.
“What about us?” Rosalie asked as Willow struggled with the raging drunk. “What do we do?”
“You do nothing,” Jax said, drawing his blades. “Just stay here and try not to die while I clean this mess up.”
“Are you crazy?” she cried, pointing at the giants slamming their bodies into the wall. “There’s a dozen titans down there, one of which is fifteen meters. Fighting that alone is suicide! Stupid suicide, seeing how we’ve got a cannon right over there.”
She started toward the cannon emplacement only a few meters away, but Jax stepped in front of her. “You are not using that cannon!”
“Then why have it?” Rosalie yelled back. “Why do we have any of this if you’re determined to kill titans by yourself?”
Jax eyed his razor-sharp blades with a sneer. “Who’s going to help me?”
“Us!” Rosalie shouted at him. “Your squad!”
“You’re not my squad,” he said in disgust. “You’re just recruits. You’re not even good recruits.” He jerked his head toward Emmett and Willow, who were both trying to hold Markus down. “They can barely stay upright in maneuvering gear, and you’re just a little girl playing solider.”
Rosalie clenched her fists. “I’m not playing,” she said through clenched teeth. “I trained four years for this.”
“At the Royal Military Academy, which is inside Wall Sina, as far from the front as it’s possible to get. You don’t know anything about fighting titans. You couldn’t even stand up in front of one yesterday. All you’ll do is get in my way.”
Rosalie winced as the memory of her failure came back sharp and hot, but she was too mad to stop. “So you’d rather die?” she cried. “You’d rather throw your life away than let us attempt to help?”
“Death’s the job!” Jax shouted, his blue eyes flashing with real anger. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re not heroes. We’re disposable! We’re up here to die so they”—he pointed at the city behind them—“don’t have to. You think I should give you a chance because you’re going to try really hard? That doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except protecting this wall and the people behind it!”
He turned his back to her and set his feet for the jump. “If you’re not willing to give up everything for this job, go home and stop wasting the time of those of us who are.”
Rosalie clenched her jaw. “That’s not—”
But Jax was already gone. She heard his maneuvering gear fire a second later, the clink of the hooks as they dug into the stone wall. The sound was still echoing when Rosalie turned and ran for the cannon.
He was wrong. They weren’t up here to die. They were here to live. To fight and protect so everyone could survive. That was the Garrison’s job, and she was going to prove it.
First, though, she had to get the cannon in position.
This gun was in far worse shape than the one they’d moved yesterday. The loading cap was so rusty, Rosalie had to kick it to open it. The firing chamber was a bit better, but when she ran to the ammunition crate, only two high-explosive shells sat at the bottom.
Rosalie was certain there was a special place in hell for the person who left only two shells in the stockpile for a frontline cannon, but she had no time to curse him for it. She was already shoving the first one into the cannon. Sealing the rusty loading cap was harder than opening it. The cannon didn’t look like it had been cleaned all year. There was even an old mud-wasp’s nest in the hole where the locking pin should go. Swearing under her breath, Rosalie knocked it clean and jammed the lock into place. When she grabbed the crank to turn the cannon to
the correct position, though, the handle fell off in her hand.
“We’ve shut up the angry man,” Willow reported, running over. “What’s going on? Where’s Jax?”
“He jumped down to fight the titans alone,” Rosalie said. She stuck the handle back on, but the crank still didn’t budge. “I’m trying to give him fire support, but the gear is stuck.”
“It’s rusted together,” Emmett said. “Let me try.”
He and Rosalie pulled together. Willow joined in as well, but even the three of them weren’t enough to get the cannon turning.
“Does nothing on this wall work?” Rosalie yelled, slamming her hand on the cannon’s barrel, which was still pointed in the entirely wrong direction. She was about to kick the crank with her boot when Emmett stopped her.
“I have an idea.”
He ran over to the carts and returned holding two of the flat-bladed iron trowels they’d used to scrape bird dung off the walls. Before Rosalie could ask what he meant to do with them, Emmett shoved the first trowel into the rusted teeth of the wagon-wheel-sized gear that turned the cannon. He wedged the second trowel beside it, then grabbed the boxy sheath containing his sword blades off his hip and turned it sideways, placing the length of it across the short handles of both trowels. When everything was in position, he leaned all his weight on the sheath, using it like a lever to put pressure on the trowels until, at last, the rust gave way and the gear turned with a deafening clunk.
“Emmett,” Rosalie said, her face breaking into a smile. “That was brilliant!”
Emmett retrieved his trowels with a flourish. “Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world.”
That sounded like a quote, but Rosalie had no time to ask from where. Now that the cannon was moving, she had to aim it before their idiot sergeant became titan food. Thankfully, turning the big gear had loosened the others as well. The crank still stuck and slipped, but she was able to maneuver the cannon more or less into the position she wanted: twenty degrees to the west and straight down the wall.
