by Rachel Aaron
They were on the ground in a field. An open field, on the Maria side. The air was so full of blowing snow, she couldn’t see more than a few meters in any direction, but the wall was nowhere to be seen.
Heart hammering, Rosalie shoved herself to her feet, spinning around as she searched the snow for a familiar glimpse, anything that would tell her where they were, but all she saw was white. No wall, no collapsed buildings, not even a tree. Their team was on foot in a blizzard with nothing to shoot their maneuver gear at, no horses, and no way to see other titans coming until it was too late.
“We have to go,” Rosalie said, discharging what was left of her broken sword before plunging the handle into her sheath for a new one. “We have to go!”
Willow and Emmett stood at once, but Jax didn’t move. “You all start running,” he said, turning back to the downed titan sprawled in the crimson snow. “I’ll be right behind you after I finish the Gobbler.”
“You didn’t finish it?” Rosalie cried. “Why not?!”
“Because I could hear you in its throat,” Jax said angrily. “If I’d attacked the weak spot, I might have sliced through you too. But it’s fine. All I’ve got to do is pop ‘round to the back of the neck and—”
A crash cut him off. Without warning, one of the Gobbler’s arms swept across the snow like a plow, smashing into their group and sending them flying. Jax recovered first, yanking the others to their feet as the wounded titan began to thrash, flinging globs of acidic blood from its wounds as it tried to roll over.
“Run,” Jax ordered, eyes wide. “Run!”
Rosalie ran, her legs pumping as she threw herself through the snow with the rest of her team. But though they quickly left the Gobbler behind, nothing else came into view.
“Where’s the wall?” Willow yelled over the wind. “I can’t see anything but snow!”
“North,” Jax replied without missing a beat.
“Which way’s north?”
Jax opened his mouth, then stopped, looking around with a curse that froze Rosalie’s blood. He didn’t know. Between the fight and the snow and the fall, they had gotten turned around. If they couldn’t see the wall, which way should they go?
Jax knelt and shoved his hand through the snow until he hit the dirt beneath. “The fields in this area slope down from the base,” he said, sliding his hand along the ground to feel its incline. “If we head uphill, we should find the wall.”
“And the wind’s been blowing from the west all day,” Emmett added, leaning on Willow. “If we keep the wind on our left, we have to run into the wall eventually.”
Rosalie nodded, but she kept her eyes on Jax, whose hand was still pressed into the ground beneath the snow. She knew he wasn’t just checking the slope. He was feeling for the vibrations of giant footsteps, and from the grim look on his face…As if reading her thoughts, Jax met her eyes and brought a finger to his lips. When she nodded, he stood and started to run silently through the snow, motioning for the others to follow.
They moved as fast as they could without making a racket, hurrying up the gentle hill with the wind on their left in what Rosalie desperately hoped was the right direction. Several times she saw shadows looming in the snow, but it was impossible to tell if they were trees or titans. Either way, all they could do was keep moving.
The Gobbler didn’t seem to be coming after them. It had to be healed by now, but Rosalie didn’t smell rotting meat. She was using that grim fact to keep her hopes up when the blasting snow suddenly began to die down.
As fast as it had started, the blizzard slacked. The world was still white, but Rosalie could see farther with every step until, amazingly, a giant shadow emerged from the snow.
“There!” Willow cried.
The wall was right in front of them, only half a field away. Jax didn’t even have to give the order before the squad broke into a sprint, charging toward safety.
Rosalie reached the wall first, but just as she aimed her maneuvering gear to pull herself up, the ground began to shake. When she looked over her shoulder to see why, the Gobbler was staring straight back at her.
Rosalie hadn’t realized just how far Jax and Willow had gone to save her and Emmett until this moment. The titan was almost a kilometer away, stomping its feet in the middle of the snow-crushed fields like a child throwing a tantrum. She’d never heard of a titan showing emotion, but Rosalie swore its face lit up with joy when it spotted them, and then the whole world shook as it began to charge.
“Go!” Jax yelled at her. “Get to the cannon!”
Rosalie fired her hooks as far as they would go, pulling herself to the top of the wall in a single shot. When she landed, she ran for the nearest cannon, the same big twelve-pounder they’d originally been sent out to check. The gun was already prepped thanks to their inspection earlier, and was even still loaded with Emmett’s test shell. Yet when she spun the crank to aim the barrel at the Gobbler, her stomach clenched.
“I can’t hit it!”
“What do you mean you can’t hit it?” Jax yelled, running down the wall at her. “Just shoot the damn thing!”
“It won’t do any good!” she yelled back. “Look at it!”
The Gobbler was charging across the snowy fields faster than a galloping horse, but it wasn’t moving in a straight line. It ran in a zigzag, swinging unpredictably from left to right like a drunken soldier. Rosalie prided herself on being a good shot, but this was an impossible target, and as fast as the Gobbler was going, she’d only get one chance before it reached the wall.
Jax drew his swords. “I’ll go.”
“No,” Rosalie said, grabbing his arm. “You’ll get crushed.”
“What else is there to do?” Jax cried, yanking out of her grip. “That thing can jump onto the wall! What’s to stop it from jumping down into Trost after it’s done with us? We have to kill it now. If you can’t take it down with the cannon, then we have to use these.”
He held up his swords, but Rosalie wasn’t looking at him. She was watching the Gobbler, who was terrifyingly close, charging the wall at breakneck speed…
“I think I’ve got it,” she said, spinning the wheel to tilt the cannon straight down. “We just need to get the titan in position.”
“How are you going to get a titan into position?”
“By knowing where it’s going,” Rosalie said, aiming down the cannon sight. “I can’t shoot him while he’s weaving like that, but we know where he’s weaving to.” She pointed at her face. “Us. We’re his target, which means that”—she pointed at the ground directly below them—“is where he’ll be.”
“Assuming he jumps straight at us,” Willow said, looking up from where she was bandaging Emmett. “He could come from the side. That’s how he did it before. He landed behind us.”
“Then we’ll just have to hope he takes the straightest path,” Rosalie said. “Because this is the only shot we’ve got.”
“Hope doesn’t do much good with titans,” Jax said. “But I can do you one better. I’ll get him to go where you need him. But Rosalie…”
She looked up from the cannon, and he flashed her a grim smile. “You better not miss.”
And then he jumped off the wall.
Jax fell a long way. Rosalie was soaked in sweat by the time his line snapped taut, leaving him dangling less than ten meters from the ground, within easy reach of the long-armed titan. “Oy, ugly!” he shouted, clanging his swords. “Come and get it!”
His taunt rang clear through the winter air, and the charging titan changed course. It was no longer zigzagging toward the wall. It was coming straight for Jax, arms extended, ready to snatch him into its mouth.
“Rosalie,” Willow said anxiously. “You might want to shoot it now.”
“Not yet,” she said, keeping her eyes on her target. “I’ve only got one shot.”
“But it’s right on top of him!” Emmett cried, his voi
ce panicked.
No, it wasn’t. Not yet. There was still a good stretch of space between the titan and the spot on the ground where Rosalie had aimed the cannon, a little stretch of snow exactly fourteen meters from the wall. Only when it reached that point could she fire, so Rosalie waited, holding her breath as the Gobbler got closer and closer and closer.
When the titan’s long fingers could almost reach Jax, its feet finally entered the zone Rosalie had marked off in her mind. The moment it crossed the line, she yanked the string, firing the cannon shell not at the Gobbler, but into the ground at its feet.
The explosion was instant and enormous, blowing dirt and snow high into the air. As she’d planned, the charging titan hit the crater at full speed and tripped, falling forward. Since Rosalie had been careful to aim her shot fourteen meters out, the last meter of the fifteen-meter-tall titan’s body—its head—hit the wall directly below Jax, caving in its skull with a sickening crunch.
“Now!” Rosalie screamed. “Jax, kill it now!”
She hadn’t needed to yell. The moment the titan dropped, Jax landed on top of it. Even with its head smashed open, the Gobbler was still alive, its long limbs flailing in a desperate attempt to push itself up. Jax placed his boot on the back of its neck and sliced both of his blades through the weak spot. The Gobbler went still the moment Jax finished his cuts. Then its huge, distorted body started to steam, melting the snow around it. Rosalie was still staring when Jax hauled himself back up the wall and grabbed her off the cannon.
“You did it!” he cried, spinning her around. “You killed the Gobbler!”
“But I didn’t,” she protested when he finally set her down. “You were the one who—”
“Only because of your shot,” he said, hugging her tight. “You were brilliant, Rosalie! The Gobbler is dead! Do you know long I’ve wanted to gut that bastard for what it—”
He stopped there, his face right above hers. In his excitement, Jax had gotten very close. Closer than he’d ever been. Closer than anyone had ever been, including her fiancé. The whole situation was wildly inappropriate, but Rosalie didn’t want it to stop. Quite the opposite. Her heart was hammering in her chest, urging her to move even closer, to press her lips against his smiling mouth and celebrate the fact that they were still alive. She was teetering on the edge of doing exactly that when Jax suddenly stepped back.
“Sorry,” he said, looking at the ground, his gear, the dead Gobbler, pretty much anywhere except her. “Got carried away.”
“It’s—that’s fine,” she stuttered, pressing her hands to her burning cheeks. “The Gobbler’s not going to gobble anyone else ever again. I think that’s cause for getting carried away.”
Jax nodded, still looking at his feet. Willow, on the other hand, was looking very smug, wiggling her eyebrows at Emmett, who looked embarrassed by the whole thing. Rosalie was desperately searching for a way to change the subject when she spotted something in the distance.
“What’s that?”
Jax squinted through the last of the snow flurries. “I think they’re soldiers.”
He was right. A large group of men was running down the wall towards them. Their uniforms marked them as Rose Garrison, but they weren’t Brigitte’s; Rosalie didn’t recognize any of them. Also, their gear was far too nice. As the men came to a halt, Rosalie realized that she did in fact recognize two of them: Markus, the drunken Supply Corps sergeant who’d nearly gotten them all killed a few weeks ago, and Captain Woermann, bringing up the rear.
“Miss Dumarque!” the captain called, panting from the exercise he was clearly not used to. “Are you all right?”
He sounded utterly terrified, but considering that her uniform was drenched in titan blood, Rosalie supposed he had reason to be.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “But what are you doing here?” She’d only fired the cannon a minute ago. It was way too soon for any response, much less a personal one from the captain of the Garrison.
“I was doing a routine inspection when we heard the cannon,” the captain said. “Naturally, we rushed to—”
“A routine inspection?” Jax scoffed. “On the day after Longest Night? In the middle of a blizzard?”
“Sergeant Cunningham,” Captain Woermann snapped, “Lieutenant Brigitte tolerates your outbursts. I will not. You will keep any further opinions to yourself.”
Jax closed his mouth with a suspicious glower, but before Woermann could continue, one of the soldiers gave a shout.
“Sir! Over here!”
Captain Woermann dragged his glare off Jax and walked to the edge of the wall where the man was pointing. “It’s just a titan,” he said.
“With respect, sir,” the soldier replied, “that’s not just a titan. That’s the Gobbler.”
“Come off it,” Markus said nervously. “The Gobbler’s a myth.”
“He’s not,” the soldier said angrily. “He killed one of my squad two years ago right near here. Our sergeant claimed he went AWOL, but I saw that thing skulking around with blood on its face afterward. There was no one else it could have eaten.” He looked at Jax. “You killed the Gobbler?”
“It was a team effort,” Jax said proudly. “After he swallowed Rosalie, we—”
What little color was left drained from Captain Woermann’s face. “Swallowed Rosalie?” he squeaked. “A titan swallowed Rosalie Dumarque?!”
“He tried to,” Rosalie said, grinning at Jax. “But my sergeant cut me out.”
“Only after Willow sliced its knees to stop it from running,” Jax said, winking at Willow. “Nice job on that, by the way.”
Jax turned back to the captain. “We couldn’t finish the Gobbler off in the field, so we escaped and started back to the wall on foot. We made it all the way to the base before it spotted us, but Rosalie kept her head. She let him charge in close and then shot the ground out from under him. After that, all I had to do was swing down and make the final cut.”
The moment he finished, all of Woermann’s soldiers rushed to congratulate them on taking down a mythical titan. Everyone was asking how Jax and Willow had chased a fifteen-meter titan through an open field with nothing to use grapple gear on, and Rosalie was surrounded by soldiers eager for all the gory details of how she’d avoided getting eaten. It was absolute chaos, with everyone talking over one another in happy, excited voices, but it felt more like a victory than anything Rosalie had experienced since she’d come to the front. It didn’t even matter anymore that she exhausted, freezing, and covered in still-drying blood. She could have stood there telling the story of how they beat the Gobbler forever if Captain Woermann hadn’t elbowed his way in.
“Enough,” he said sternly. “Miss Dumarque has had a very traumatic experience. We will escort her back to the base so that she may rest. And she shall have tomorrow off.”
“My team and I will have it off, you mean,” Rosalie said, giving the captain her sweetest smile. “With pay.”
“Of course,” Captain Woermann said after a long pause. “If that would please you.”
“It would,” Rosalie said, turning to grab the repair cart. “Emmett, I believe we were pushing this cart full of tools back to the storehouse?”
“Yes, we were absolutely doing that,” Emmett said, limping over. “Blizzard or no, we would never leave anything this valuable out on the wall.”
They both smiled at Woermann, but before they could start pushing, Jax grabbed the cart’s handle.
“Hold up,” he said, his lips curling into a cruel smile. “We pushed it out here because we were filling in for the Supply Corps, who were too drunk to do their job. But Markus is here now, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind pushing it back. Would you, Markus?”
He turned to Markus, who looked like he’d just swallowed a bug. “I—”
“Surely you’re not going to let Miss Dumarque push your cart for you?” Jax said. “That’s hardly acceptable behavior
for an officer. Don’t you agree, captain?”
“Now see here,” Markus began, but he stopped when Woermann said, “Do it.”
Markus held up a bandaged hand. “But Jax broke my—”
“I said push,” Woermann growled, holding out his arm to Rosalie.
Rosalie took it with a forced smile, glancing over her shoulder every few meters as they walked back to the base to make sure Jax was close behind.
* * *
By the time they’d changed into uniforms that weren’t drenched in titan blood, news of the Gobbler’s death had spread through the entire base. Even the combined force of Captain Woermann and Lieutenant Brigitte wasn’t enough to rein in the chaos, and Markus used that confusion as an opportunity to slip away. He was shoving the repair cart into the armory when a shadow appeared in the door behind him.
“Nice to see you doing work for once.”
Markus kicked the cart and turned to glare at Jax. “You made me push that thing the whole damn way.” He held up his bandaged fingers. “On a broken hand! Which is also your fault, you bastard.”
“I’m sure you’ll live,” Jax said, stepping closer. “What were you doing out there with the captain?”
“My job,” Markus said. “We heard one of the big cannons was broken, so Woermann—”
“Woermann can’t be bothered to keep all the cannons stocked with shells,” Jax snapped. “You really expect me to buy that he bestirred himself from his cozy office to personally inspect a cannon in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“It was an emergency,” Markus said. “The cannon—”