“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“What, you leave all the dangerous work to your lackeys?”
“I’m a lackey too. I started the resistance, that’s all.”
“Right, you’re the founder…” Gabriele folded his arms and studied Mathias.
“Although,” Mathias added, “it’s a fact that I’ve left the dangerous work to others. Precisely why I decided to come this time.”
Only a few days earlier, Gabriele had revealed some unexpected information. Although he had lost his horse just before arriving in Quinta, luckily he’d found a fissure in the face of a cliff and spent the daytime hiding inside.
A commotion had broken out among the members of the resistance.
They could leave Quinta with the Night Harvest, spend the day inside the hole, then rendezvous with Bernhardt. They could deliver the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment without braving a Titan attack.
It would be a dangerous gamble.
Mathias had given the go-ahead to the plan, even volunteering to execute it in person. He had to be the one to tell Bernhardt about the resistance and Quinta’s status quo. Derek had objected, but Mathias believed Bernhardt might refuse to cooperate if the rundown came from anyone else.
There was shouting from the front, and slowly, the gate began to open.
“Looks like we’re off.”
Prompted by Gabriele, Mathias trudged forth with the rest of the despairing civilians. There was a faint warmth as he passed by the watch fires. The dancing flames cast faint shadows of Mathias and the crowd onto the wall and the ground.
They proceeded toward the wall that parted the world of men from a world that was not theirs. By the exit, soldiers were handing out old boxes and baskets. Tonight’s destination was, once again, the abandoned orchard. The ripe fruit was easy to pluck from the trees by hand, without any special tools. Mathias and Gabriele patiently awaited their turn, then took one basket to share between them. The wicker looked splintered, broken enough to cut skin.
A woman approached from the direction of the street. She pushed her way through the people in line and pulled Mathias into a close hug.
It was Jodi. A teacher and one of the resistance’s earliest members, she was ten or so years older than Mathias but somehow still smacked of a girl.
“Be careful out there.”
She placed a hand on Mathias’ back and looked up with tears in her eyes. A convincing act? No, she seemed to mean it. Mathias felt a surge of genuine gratitude. Similar exchanges were happening around them. Husbands and wives, lovers, parents and children, all hugging and whispering.
The soldiers refrained from ordering them apart.
Jodi was dressed in baggier clothes than usual. The temperature dropped overnight and leading up to the morning, so Mathias and Gabriele wore thick overcoats as well.
Pretending to return the embrace, Mathias transferred the cloth bag hidden under her garments to the inside of his own coat. The bag contained the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment.
When his hand brushed over her hip, he couldn’t help but blush. He was glad his surroundings were dark.
The Vertical Maneuvering Equipment was made up of the wire-reeling machine, cylinders of compressed gas, and the anchors and their firing mechanism. It weighed its worth, but not so much that it couldn’t be carried in one hand. Since the system was designed to enable aerial combat, it was manufactured to be as light as possible. The blades used to slay Titans, meanwhile, were too bulky and had been left behind.
Jodi handed Mathias another package, this one the size of an adult’s forearm. Inside was a shotgun wrapped in cloth along with a belt to fix it on his leg. It wasn’t exactly the same kind as the weapon that slew Rita’s subordinate but was similar enough. It was the last thing Mathias wanted with him. At the same time, he couldn’t very well leave Quinta unarmed.
Jodi took a step back after confirming the success of the handover.
Double-checking, Mathias asked, “So, nothing’s changed?”
“Bernhardt’s scheduled for tomorrow. The same venue as tonight’s.”
They had been painstaking with their choice of day for the operation. It would all come to nothing if Bernhardt’s Night Harvest didn’t directly follow that of the residents at large. Jodi moved away, letting the crowd carry her towards the edge of the column.
“Bit plain, that one,” Gabriele commented, watching out of the corner of his eye as she left.
“She’s a good person.”
“Not my type.”
They crossed the passageway from the interior and were ejected with the rest of the civilians into the world outside.
The smell of the air changed. By now the odor of smoldering wood and the stink of putrefied corpses were long gone. Yet the air still felt as though it carried something offensive that cloyed on their hair and skin.
Under his clothes, Mathias slung his bag’s belt over his shoulder. The bag itself he swung around to the front. Gabriele was carrying the basket, which now contained the wrapped shotgun.
They kept pace with the others, who were visibly jumpy, no doubt beside themselves with fear, given that a Titan could attack them at any moment.
They reached the orchard after an hour of hiking through woodland. There they split into teams designated by the military and began the harvesting process. They were all careful not to leave too much space between themselves and the others.
Mathias and Gabriele slipped away from the ring of people, acting as though they were only going to take a leak.
Mathias stopped at the orchard’s boundary and accepted the package containing the shotgun from Gabriele. He unwrapped the weapon and studied it. He knew he’d never warm to this type of firearm. He would have preferred to entrust it to Gabriele, but the latter said he didn’t know how to use it. “You could show me,” he said airily, but Mathias hardly felt like it.
Despite his distaste, he used the belt to fix the barrel of the weapon to his right leg. His right arm was still below par, but it was his best bet if he needed to handle the thing.
He raised his head and looked around.
“Think you can find it from here?”
Before them was a grassy plain, with only the occasional tree. The terrain was bathed in faint light, and to Mathias every direction looked the same, but Gabriele responded with a firm nod.
“Yeah. Lucky the sky is clear.”