Clearing

Chapter 3

Hello!

This chapter is a little longer than the previous ones lol.

I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Warnings for this chapter: mild violence

-------

My heart thudded in my chest as I sat atop my horse, the other scouts surrounding me visibly anxious as well. I scanned the group for Armin's face, eventually finding him a few rows behind me. He was tasked with looking after spare horses, and his face was even paler than it had been the night of the announcement.

I felt pity for him; he was so determined to do right, he wanted peace more than anything, but his life was now dedicated to violence. He was like a dandelion that had somehow been thrust into a furnace. I just hoped he wouldn't wilt.

The past three days had been made up of equipment checks and extensive revision of Erwin's formation. We hadn't trained, and had been given yesterday to rest, building up our energy for the mission. I took a shaky breath in as my hands tightened on the reins of my horse.

It's only a short recon mission. I thought to myself. We'll go out, get the lay of the land, and then we'll come back. We'll all be fine.

Armin looked over at me, and I hadn't realized I had been staring this whole time. It seemed to happen a lot recently, my mind rarely on the task at hand unless it was active combat. I smiled at him reassuringly and waved; no matter how nervous I might have been, I wanted Armin to be as calm as possible. He offered me a tentative smile in return.

The gate finally opened fully, and Commander Erwin released the smoke signal to start the mission. I steeled myself and kicked my heels into the side of the horse, moving her into a slow trot and then a gallop alongside the other soldiers.

The moment I was out of the gate, a smoke signal went off, and we split into the formation we had studied. I turned to the left, joining onto a small group made up of Jean, Connie, Mikasa and Sasha.

I assumed that Eren would be in the center of the formation, as he was too valuable to be left at the sides. Armin had been sent off with a few other people supplying horses, to look out for any stranded scouts. Being left out here without a horse all but guaranteed that you wouldn't make it back.

Our job was to ride out to some of the small villages that were scattered around the land and check what state they were in, and whether they would be easy to recover.

It didn't take long for us to reach the first village, and I used my ODM gear to get onto a rooftop and scour the environment. We found a surprising lack of damage to the houses, and marked it down as habitable on the small map we had been given.

After that, we moved onto the next village, then the next, then the next. We didn't have many encounters with titans, and the only ones we found were four meters. Mikasa dealt with them easily.

In the last village, however, there seemed to be far more than usual. We left our horses on the ground, aware that the titans would pay no attention to them, and ran across the rooftops to check the terrain.

I had been running across one of the rooftops when I heard a loud, high-pitched whistle from the ground. A little confused, I turned to see none other than Jean sprinting along the ground in the distance, his fingers in his mouth and panic on his face.

The dumbass must have lost his horse. I sighed, starting to make my way over to him to yell at him for his carelessness. The moment I started to move, I heard deafeningly loud footsteps. Anyone, scout or not, would knew exactly what that sound meant.