The Titan cranked its arms around, pushing up a dirt-covered face. It didn’t seem to be in pain. Its expression was as jubilant as before.
The muscles around its enormous shoulders tensed. It continued towards them using only its arms, moving like a gecko on a wall.
“Not a pretty sight,” panned Bernhardt. He continued to drag Mathias relentlessly, and they rounded the corner of the building. Just as the ex-soldier muttered, “Sorry to keep you waiting,” one of the wagons appeared before them, overshooting five meters before it ground to a halt.
Jarratt was at the reins. Klaus was in control of the second wagon a little farther back, and Nikki was scrambling onto it.
Jarratt’s eyes blinked repeatedly as he took in the sight of the Titan chasing them. “First one I’ve seen in a while. Gotta admit, they’ve got impact.” Even he had tremors in his voice.
Tossing the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment then Mathias into the wagon, Bernhardt chided, “You might not weigh much, but I wouldn’t say you’re light as a feather.”
Mathias felt a sharp jab of pain when he hit the floor, but that, too, felt like something happening in some far-off world. The wagon tilted as Bernhardt clambered on beside him.
After that, they came across Titans a total of four more times.
The first encounter was with a couple of seven-meter specimens that were distant enough not to notice them.
The second encounter was close enough for Mathias to come out in a cold sweat. They had just entered a wooded section of the road when a single five-meter-class appeared from behind one of the tall trees. It raced alongside them, reaching out, but ended up crashing head first into another one of the great trees. It fell, then simply receded behind them.
The third encounter was also with a single Titan. This one they only glimpsed beyond a ridge. At first they hadn’t even recognized it as a Titan.
They crested the top of a hill to discover four Titans below them for their fourth encounter. Looking up and noticing the party at the same time, the creatures began to give chase almost as if they were racing against one another. These the humans eluded by lashing their horses.
Now they were in another forest, letting the animals rest. The sun was already low in the sky. The many-layered foliage masked the light, so the reddish glow hardly reached the ground.
“Three hours from here to Quinta?” Jarratt asked Bernhardt. They had both disembarked and were standing side by side, stretching.
Bernhardt turned toward the wagons. “They’re pretty much empty. We should be a little quicker than that.”
“Not too long after dark, then.”
“This is really tasty, you know.” Seated underneath one of the towering trees and paying no heed to the exchange, Nikki was wolfing down mouthful after mouthful of the smoked meat they’d snatched from the farmhouse earlier in the day.
Klaus was also against a tree, tending to his gun.
“There’s something wrong with all of you,” Mathias couldn’t help accusing. “How can you act so composed? Like everything is normal?” Two soldiers had died, both slain by Bernhardt, one with a blade, the other with an anchor fired from the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment. “Those men… They hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“You mean the soldiers?” Bernhardt queried, adjusting the positioning of the very piece of equipment he’d appropriated from them.
“Clearly!”
“They hadn’t done anything wrong, but they were unlucky.”
“Specifically, the problem was that they were there,” Jarratt elaborated, putting a hand on his waist and twisting to one side.
“What are you saying? You can’t justify it like that. There was no need for it!”
“Hm, I wonder if that’s the case.” Bernhardt walked closer, stomping over fallen leaves and undergrowth. “How can you be so certain? Did you have another idea? Could you, in the heat of the moment, have offered me a better alternative? I would love for you to tell me what. Or rather, I would have loved for you to tell me. Had you done so, I might have gotten through all that without murdering anyone. Well?”
“Now that you put it that way… No, I can’t offer any alternative. I might not, but it didn’t need to be right then. If you’d waited just a little longer, we might have gotten away without anyone dying.”
“Yeah, if we could spend days mulling it over,” Nikki said, sucking on a bone from the smoked meat.
Bernhardt gave a dramatic nod. “She speaks the truth. Who is to say whether we would have had another chance? By acting immediately, I guaranteed us a means of getting away. That was why I made the decision.”
“Still!”
“Sacrificing the two soldiers was simply part of that decision. You disapprove.” Bernhardt arched his eyebrows. “But suppose I left them alone…”
“Now, that’s reckless,” Jarratt chimed in. “We couldn’t have taken the wagons, and they would have called for backup. What could be worse?”
“Suppose I knocked them unconscious─which by the way requires a more advanced technique and is much harder than killing them, even for me. Anyhow, supposing I left them sprawled unconscious on the ground…”
“Chomp chomp, munch munch, same thing,” Nikki completed. Her incredible appetite seemed to know no bounds; she had all but finished her hunk of smoked meat, originally the size of a pig’s leg.
Bernhardt made another deep nod of his head. “Excellently put. Whichever the case, the soldiers would have ended up as Titan feed. Better to be dead, then, than to be eaten alive. It was a consideration, as well as a form of taking responsibility. They weren’t just eaten, they were eaten because of me. Call it a ritual to make sure I was fully aware of my culpability.”
“But…”
“Hypocrite,” Klaus spat, his eyes still down on his firearm. “We’re a shameless bunch. I don’t remember us ever hiding that. You knew well enough the type of people we were when you asked for our help.”
“But I never thought you were so…”
“You only saw what you wanted to.”
“We are beyond the wall here,” Bernhardt pointed out with a hint of sadness. “The rules of the interior no longer apply.”
“Maybe you just lack the nerve.” Klaus looked up, his eyes cold and sharp.
“The nerve?” To survive beyond the wall, to turn his back on the royal government, to forgo all dependence on his father, and to rely instead on his own wit and grit to help Rita.
Perhaps it was true that he lacked the nerve. Perhaps he’d been naive.
The scene from earlier replayed itself in his mind. The matter-of-fact way Bernhardt had killed the two soldiers, then fired the anchor at the Titan. The look on his face, detached somehow from the events taking place. Was that it? Was that the look of someone who had the nerve? Was that how Mathias had to be?
“Anyway, we needn’t be so serious,” Bernhardt said, trying to lift the mood. “We should probably get going. I believe this should help us all get past the wall.” He slapped the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment on his back. “I’m all for staging a glorious entrance, but I’ll wager it’ll be safer to sneak in.”
“Plus, we have no idea what it’s like inside,” Jarratt agreed.
“Precisely. Once we’re in, we can head straight for the treasure.”
“You know what it’ll mean if you’ve been lying?” Klaus clutched his gun’s grip and wrapped a finger around the trigger.
“Of course.”
“Our arrangement expires the moment we confirm that the horde exists. After that, you’re free to go after your sweetheart or to commit suicide─whatever pleases you. We assume no responsibility for your means of escape, either.”
“Meaning it’s up to you to find your way back out through the wall.”
Mathias responded with a resolute nod to Jarratt’s clarification of Bernhardt’s terms. He wanted nothing more than to part ways with these people as soon as possible.