Hagane no Renkinjutsushi - Volume 4 - Chapter 2

ROY’S VACATION

IT WAS ANOTHER day of work at Eastern Command when Roy opened the documents from Lieutenant Hawkeye, and his face, weary from many late nights of work, twisted into a frown.

“I knew the orders would come someday, I was just kind of hoping it wouldn’t be today.”

Roy Mustang was a military man in the unwelcome position of possessing two duties: one as a state alchemist, the other as ranking officer at Eastern Command. Though the dark locks of hair that fell over his forehead made him look boyish at times, he had talent enough to make him a colonel at an unprecedented young age, and though he had made many enemies, his peers always held him in high esteem.

The orders he referred to were for a bit of training. If you belong to the military, particular duty required that, once every several years, you be assigned to go for extensive training sessions. The frequency and content of these sessions varied by rank. Some people found themselves spending a week listening to lecture after lecture in the halls of Central, while others were sent to work under an officer at a different command.

Roy’s orders were neither of these. He was to go to a command center well off the beaten path. He would polish his skills as a commanding officer in unfamiliar territory, and hopefully do some polishing of the local troops along the way.

Either way, it meant a long trip, a disruption in his daily lifestyle, and ordering around people he’d never met. Training orders never thrilled anyone—most people accepted them only begrudgingly. Roy’s sour expression showed he was no exception.

In one corner of the bustling room, Roy paused in his desk work and sighed. “I can’t believe they’re sending me way out there … ” His assigned destination was so far away from Eastern Command that it raised doubts as to why a base had been built there in the first place.

“You aren’t seriously considering going?” one of his subordinates sitting nearby asked incredulously.

“I don’t have a choice,” he replied. “Can’t refuse an order from Central.” Roy looked up at Lieutenant Hawkeye standing in front of his desk, still waiting for his response.

“I’ll do my job as a soldier … tell them that.”

“Understood. The commanding officer from one of the other branches will be taking your place here in the interim, Colonel. I’ll need you to get on those transfer documents as soon as possible.”

“Fine. I’ll be working in the officer’s room, if you need me.”

“Wait!”

Just as Roy was starting to stand, a crowd of men swarmed up to his desk, each jostling to be first in line. It was second lieutenants Breda and Havoc, Warrant Officer Falman, and Master Sergeant Fuery.

“You can’t leave that giant pile of work behind!”

“If you’re really going, at least write an opinion for that weapons development proposal I gave you. It’s been on your desk for ten days now, and you haven’t written a word!”

“What about those materials I loaned you a week ago? I’ll need those back soon … ”

“Please, before you go, sign the reports from our meetings with the other branches, please! I gave them to you two weeks ago! They’re already way past deadline for submission to Central!”

Roy quietly shook his head. “I’m sorry, but my training orders have come through, and it’s my duty to go. Believe me, it’s hard for me to leave all this work in your hands. Please understand.” A sincere look on his face, Roy clapped each man on the shoulder in turn. “Look, anything I haven’t done, I’ll do as soon as I get back!”

“That’s what you always say, but you never do it!” Breda grumbled. If they’d learned anything during their service at Eastern Command, Roy’s subordinates knew never to trust a promise to do work from their colonel.

Roy was short-tempered, quick to take action, and swift at decision-making, yet when it came to desk work, slugs moved faster.

Fuery tugged on his arm. “Just sign them, please!”

“All I want is my materials back.”

“You can’t leave, I still got three stacks for you to look at!”

Roy waved one arm in a sweeping gesture. “Enough! Can’t you see I’m too busy to deal with these … clerical things?” Roy brushed off their clinging hands and, carrying his training orders, retreated into the officer’s room.

The door shut behind him with a slam, and there was the sound of a lock turning.

Roy let out a long sigh of relief, alone at last. After a moment to calm himself, he held up the letter in his hand and looked at it again. Roy grabbed the files and documents occupying his desk and shoved them into a drawer. Then, from the same drawer, he pulled out a map and spread it in the newly created space on his desk.

“Not bad. Not bad at all,” Roy said with a chuckle, his frown loosening and eventually curling upward into a smile.

His destination, though provincial, was far from the border, which meant far from any real danger. It was a tiny town, surrounded by wilderness. There would be nothing for the military to do there.

This suited Roy perfectly.

If all went well, he could probably get away without doing any training either. By the time they were formally part of the military, all soldiers had been through boot camp. Why would they need anything more than that?

In fact, this training was beginning to look more and more like a vacation. No more long, hard days working like a dog at Eastern Command, having his subordinates shout at him, pressuring him about deadlines and paperwork. Sure, he had a responsibility to his men, but even colonels need to take a break sometimes.

He had realized this from the moment the orders came, of course. Fortunately, he had mastered the art of feigning disappointment.

“I think it’s time for a hard-earned vacation.” Grinning to himself, Roy spent the rest of the week counting off the days till his departure.

THINGS HAVE A WAY of never going as smoothly as planned. Everything went fine as Roy handled the transfer of authority to the interim commanding officer. He waved goodbye to his subordinates, who came running after him all the way to the station, piles of papers awaiting his signature stacked high in their hands. Everything kept going fine until, after a long train ride, he arrived at his destination in the middle of the biggest rainstorm in years. The convoy sent to greet him was an hour late, by which time the rain had thoroughly soaked Roy and all his baggage. When he asked the reason for the delay, the driver nervously explained that a flock of sheep had been blocking the road. They hadn’t been able to get through.

Roy had expected to find himself in the peaceful countryside. He just hadn’t expected it to be quite this peaceful.

Once on base, Roy looked at his schedule only to find nothing written on it at all. When he asked why, the sergeant on duty explained that there had been nothing to write. Normal duties for the base included fixing broken bridges, chasing runaway cows, and helping organize local festivals. When Roy wondered out loud what the point of keeping a schedule was if no one used it, a sergeant helpfully went up to the board and wrote, in the blank space for that day: “No activity planned on account of heavy rain.”

Scratching his head, Roy went to examine the base munitions and found the door unlocked. Everything inside was covered with an inch of dust, and birds had built a nest on one of the rifle crates. Fearing that the soldiers here might have forgotten how to use their weapons entirely, Roy sent out a call for all soldiers who weren’t otherwise occupied to draw their holstered sidearms for an inspection.

It turned out that only half of them were armed at all, and only a handful of them had actually loaded their weapons. Worse, when he counted the assembled soldiers he realized with a start that he was looking at the entire base. He had asked for soldiers who weren’t occupied, and got everyone. Even the men on guard duty and the communications officer, who was expressly forbidden to leave his post.

Roy was not impressed. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he soon found himself far from enjoying a pleasant vacation in the countryside—and busier than he had ever been at Eastern Command retraining the troops.

FOR SIX DAYS, Roy ran around, barking orders until he was hoarse. He nurtured his twentieth headache of the morning as he prepared for an emergency simulation drill.

“Lord Colonel! I wrote up a plan for the training, I was wondering if you could check it? I wasn’t entirely sure if I got everything right … ”

“Lord Colonel, am I holding my gun correctly? Oh, and when you tell us to assemble with our weapons, which weapons did you mean, exactly?”

Sergeants Natts and Cayt stood before him, asking question after question, utterly oblivious to how ridiculous they sounded. If it weren’t for the serious looks on their faces, Roy would have thought they were joking with him.

Natts gripped the training plan in one white-knuckled hand. His large, dark eyes stared at Roy from beneath a neatly trimmed brown forelock. He was the son of a shepherd in town, who seemed most at ease when he was moving and talking slowly, yet after seeing the fullness of Roy’s wrath six days ago, his voice had gone up a full octave, and everything he did, he did with the desperation that comes from trying to avoid having wrath rain down on him.

Next to him stood Cayt, squinting his brown eyes beneath a shock of blond hair as he fixed his grip on his rifle. He was a year older than the other soldier, but both were still barely old enough to grow whiskers on their chins. The other soldiers claimed Sergeant Cayt had the happiest disposition of anyone on base, but even he withered before Roy’s glare. He had glanced nervously back between his rifle and the colonel no fewer than forty-seven times since entering the room.

Roy looked across the desk at the two young sergeants and sighed.

“Whatever happened to that vacation … ”

“Excuse me, sir?” Cayt asked, leaning forward and putting a hand to one ear to hear his mumbling. Roy glared at them both. “The plans are all wrong. And you’re holding your rifle wrong, too. Why can’t you folks perform even the simplest tasks here? And don’t ask me about every little thing. Try putting yourself in my shoes, having to answer the same inane questions over and over.”

“S-sorry, sir!”

“Our apologies, Lord Colonel!”

The two saluted, looking truly chagrined, and Roy’s heart sank. Now he felt like a bully.

“I need a break,” he muttered, when there was a quick knock at the door.

“Come in,” Roy growled. He found himself wondering which basic question or which failure report he was about to be subjected to.

Yet the first sound he heard from behind the opening door was a deep belly laugh.

“Hey, how’re you doing?”

Roy’s expression transformed from a cold glare to wide-eyed surprise. In front of the open door stood the last two people in the world he had expected to see. “Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and Major Armstrong?!”

“Well, you look all the worse for wear! I see the rumors are true—they’ve finally put the ever-unflappable Colonel Mustang to work!” It was Maes Hughes. The laughter had been his.

Hughes, with his short cropped black hair and trademark square-rimmed glasses, was a military man to the core, much like Roy. He was as smart as they came, yet he always seemed to be laughing at some private joke. He never ran out of biting wit when his friend Roy was the subject. Even now, though he sympathized for the obviously harried Roy, he couldn’t help but seem immensely pleased.

“Why the sudden arrival? I didn’t receive any word about this visit!” Roy blustered.

Armstrong stepped forward and gave a crisp salute. “It’s been a long time, Colonel Mustang. As for our sudden appearance, we did send word before leaving, I assure you.”

Armstrong carried himself with a refined, dignified air. He wore a well-groomed golden moustache beneath his round, kind eyes. A major in the army, he, like Roy, possessed the title of state alchemist. He was a caring, cautious sort, with a warm character, but the most impressive thing about him was his sheer physical mass. He stood so tall he practically touched the ceiling, and every inch of his massive frame was covered with muscle, making the spacious room seem almost cramped. “We informed your communications officer to advise you of our imminent arrival. Perhaps there was some mistake? Hmm? Colonel? Are you feeling ill?” said Armstrong, tilting his head.

Roy’s head fell forward and his forehead slammed into his desk with a resounding thunk. “How many times did I tell him he needed to make those reports!”

“Lord Colonel! We’ll have a word with the communications officer at once!” Sergeant Natts shouted eagerly.

“Leave it to us, sir!” Sergeant Cayt chimed in.

“Look,” Roy sighed. “Drop the ‘Lord,’ and instead of worrying about other people’s jobs, work on getting yours straight first. We’ll hold off on the emergency situation training until later. Go back over your plans again before then. And you—make sure you know how to wield and present those arms. Dismissed!” Roy’s head still pressed to the desk, he waved his hand to dismiss sergeants Natts and Cayt from the room.

“Yes, sir!”

“Sorry, sir!”

Their shoulders slumping, the two young sergeants shuffled out the door.

The moment the door slammed shut, Roy’s head jerked up from his desk. “I can’t take it anymore! Let’s go get a drink!”

Hughes laughed uproariously, and Armstrong chuckled beside him.

“Things must really be bad. I’ve never seen you look so down,” Hughes remarked, going over to stand by the window where he could look down on the soldiers running through their drills in the courtyard below. They were apparently attempting to run in single file, but from above they looked more like a drunken snake. The cause of Roy’s despair was clear.

“I’m fine with going to get a drink. We just reached a break in our work anyway.”

“You had work to do? Out in this backwater?”

Hughes fingered his shirt, showing it to Roy. “Just the usual investigation detail. That’s why we’re dressed liked this.” By which he meant civilian clothes, as opposed to uniforms.

This sort of investigation was common. Most revolved around reports of people trying to overthrow the government or engaging in other subversive activities. Investigations were always carried out incognito, to avoid causing a stir among average citizens and tipping off truly dangerous people.

Basic inquiries came first, but when dangerous elements were found, they would call in the army to come clean things up. This enabled them to catch and quench potential fires early on, as well as send a message that if you stood against the army or planned acts of terrorism, you were being watched.

Hughes and Armstrong were on their way home from one such investigation.

“It was a contract renewal for a weapons factory. Everything looked to be going smoothly until a competitor’s owner contacted our people, wondering whether we really wanted to keep a contract with a place that was hiding weapons from the military. Word was, these weapons had been hidden near a town not far from here.”

Though the war was officially over, small conflicts and terrorism meant that weapons orders were ever on the rise. Weapons manufacturers could do worse than take the military as a client. Factories competed to get contracts, and it was a common thing for one factory to squeal on another’s shortcomings in an attempt to get an edge over the competition.

The charge in this case was serious. If a factory contracted to make weapons for the military was making even better weaponry and keeping it hidden, possibly even selling to another buyer, that would be a huge problem. Dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists and separatists was bad news for the state.

As it turns out, the lion’s share of these inquiries turn out to be little more than wild goose chases. As a rule the assignments went to men of low rank. If there existed a shred of truth to these rumors, however, a thorough investigation was required. And this was how Lieutenant Commander Hughes ended up on the job.

“So did you find what you were looking for?”

Hughes and Armstrong shrugged simultaneously.

“It was nothing, as always. We went to the village to find that the village itself had been abandoned … ”

“So, we figured after coming all the way out here for nothing we might as well stop and see your tired, old mug.”

“I’m the consolation prize, am I? Great,” Roy scowled.

Hughes laughed out loud. “Easy there, Colonel! Don’t worry, we’ll help you unwind. In fact, I have the perfect suggestion.”

“What’s that?”

“How about we head out for a little hike? I got a lead on a place with great views when we were pounding the pavement in a town near here. What do you think, Major?”

“Huh? Scenic location?”

“Ah, it seems the major wasn’t listening. It’s supposed to be near here, up on a hill. Clean air and a great view. It’s still morning. We could probably get out there and back by noon.”

Hughes stood up, all ready to go. Producing a map, he began to pore over it with Armstrong looking over his shoulder.

Roy was hesitant. Unlikely though it might be, the thought of something happening while he went off for a sightseeing tour sent shivers down his spine. He could already imagine his two young sergeants running around in a panic, looking for him. “Uh … I don’t think I can leave for a whole half-day. Why don’t we just go to the next town over after hours?”

Hughes clapped a hand on Roy’s back. “What? It’ll be fine! Nothing will happen. Did you know your base here has a perfect record? Not one incident since it was built! Hah! You need to take it easy, you know that? Just think of it as a vacation!”

“Vacation … ” Roy couldn’t hide the way the word made his eyes shine. “You’re right. Nothing will happen, will it? I should take a break!”

“That’s what I’m saying! Now, go change into your civvies. Can’t have officers romping through the hills during work hours!”

“And you won’t feel like you’re really taking a vacation in that uniform!”

Happy for the first time in weeks, Roy changed clothes and cleaned up the books and papers spread across his desk. Armstrong opened the door and called out to a soldier walking by.

“Excuse me, but we’re borrowing the colonel here for the morning. It’s a matter from Central, er … ”

“Observations,” Hughes chimed in. “We have orders to do some observations. Just do everything by the book while your commanding officer’s away, got it? Good!”

“Book?” the man stammered.

“Right here!” Roy grinned as he slapped a thick manual in the flustered soldier’s hands. “Think of this as training for an emergency situation, got it? Good luck, soldier!” With that, he left the still unsure man behind him and trotted off. “If you want a vacation, you have to seize the opportunity!”

“That’s right. And after coming this far, I can’t go back home without a good tale to tell my daughter!”

The two officers looked at each other and smiled, looking for all the world like two students playing hooky. Behind them, Armstrong chuckled, shaking his head. “Boys, boys … ”

The three opened the base gates (made out of leftover fencing from a nearby sheep ranch) and stepped out onto the road.

“Great morning for a hike!” Roy said, feeling free for the first time in a long time, when he heard a surprised voice behind them.

“Eh?!”

He turned around to see sergeants Natts and Cayt standing just inside the gate. “We had some questions, and we heard you were leaving,” Natts said, pausing between each word to catch his breath. “But what’s this about hiking? I thought you were leaving to make observations … ”

Roy scratched his neck and grinned sheepishly. “Well, uh … ”

Once again, Hughes came through with the follow-up. “It is observations. But it’s, er, top-secret. So we gave it a code name! Operation: Hiking!”

“Oh!” Natts and Cayt nodded vigorously.

Roy was still uneasy. If word got out that he had gone hiking, and one of his superiors heard it, it would be reflected on his report. He looked at Hughes and immediately the other officer understood.

Together, they walked back through the gate and grabbed the two young sergeants by the shoulders. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us! Quick, get into some civilian clothes.”

“Today, you’ve been promoted to investigators!”

“Really?!”

The thought of a secret assignment wiped away the chagrin from being chewed out by Roy not less than thirty minutes ago, and their eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

“Th-thank you, sir! Thank you!”

“We’ll do our best, sir!”

“I expect nothing less!” Roy beamed, though inside, his stomach was churning. The things I do for a little vacation. Still, there was a bright side: a little interaction with their commanding officer off base might help relax the two young sergeants a little. Heaven knows they need it!

Roy waited for the two sergeants to change into their civilian clothes, and looked up. The sky stretched far over pastures where sheep and cows grazed, and the morning sun hung bright over the ridgeline to the east.

He was getting away from work, if only for half a day.

Roy smiled, fully prepared to enjoy this little slice of vacation for all it was worth.

LIFE SUCKS … 

Several hours had passed since they left base. Roy stood, his smile frozen on his face.

Before his eyes towered a wall of rock. Here and there tufts of grass peaked through crevices in the rugged cliff face. Roy glared at the wall as though its presence in his path were a personal affront rather than an innocent act of topography. It was just one of many such rises they had scaled since their “leisurely hike” had begun.

“Exactly what about this is a ‘hill’?!” Roy gasped between ragged breaths. A short distance ahead of him, Hughes looked back and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Secret mission! I couldn’t come out and reveal we were actually going to a mountain!”

Roy considered retorting. Realizing it would only tire him out even more, he instead reached out and grabbed onto Hughes’s extended thumb as hard as he could.

“Ouch! That hurts! Sorry, okay? I’m sorry! But I really did want to do something to change your mood!”

“This is supposed to change my mood? I thought you said this was supposed to be a light hike, not some death-defying mountaineering expedition!”

Roy wiped the sweat off his brow with one hand and looked up. The sun had already climbed high in the sky. Hughes’s scenic spot supposedly lay somewhere at the top of this mountain—this impassable, unassailable peak. They scrabbled at the steep hillside, using both hands to work their way up, the close contact with the rain-sodden ground leaving them all caked with mud.

In the lead, Armstrong used his much-famed strength and muscles to their full extent, pulling up the lagging Natts and Cayt and guiding Roy and Hughes to the more manageable rocks and footholds. If not for his help, they all would have given up some time ago.

They had slipped countless times and scraped and bruised themselves on thorny bushes and bare rock. By linking hands, they pulled and tugged until all five of them were out of breath. Finally, they reached a clearing on a woody section of hillside where they could rest.

“It’ll be near evening by the time we reach the top. Maybe we should have tried going up the other side,” Armstrong said, unfolding his map of the area to determine their position. The contour lines on the map clearly showed that this steep cliff led to a rather gentle descent on the other side.

Of course, going around to the other side meant returning to town and getting on a train. It would take them half a day just to reach the trail base—and despite all that, it was still probably quicker than trying to go up this shorter, more treacherous route.

“We should’ve gone around,” Roy spat.

Hughes shook his head. “No, if I spend too much time tromping around these mountains, then that’s time I won’t have to spend with Elicia, isn’t it?”

It was well known in military circles that Hughes was utterly devoted to his daughter, Elicia. Roy opened his mouth to complain.

“Wooooooo … ”

Roy jerked up, for a second thinking that the low moaning sound had come from his own mouth. The low, growling rumble sounded like the howl of some beast. The other four, sitting exhausted upon the ground perked up their ears. They had all heard it.

The five hunkered together and peered into the dense undergrowth ahead of them, leaning ever-so-slightly toward each other, as though physical proximity would save them from whatever terror they had found. Vines grew thick on the trees ahead, forming a veritable wall of vegetation. The sound came from somewhere within that wall.

“You bring your sidearms?” Roy asked in a small voice, his gaze never wavering from the bushes.

Everyone nodded. Still, there was no guarantee that whatever made that sound could be taken down with pistols, and running didn’t seem like the best option on this steep, treacherous slope. They would more likely than not end up tumbling to their deaths.

A light breeze blew against the tensed cheeks and jaw lines of the hiking party. They heard the sound again, a guttural growl that crept around them, resonating as though it were part of the rocks beneath their feet. Whatever made that noise was big. Really big.

“What the heck … ” Roy shook his head, feeling the need to act like the ranking officer he was, yet not knowing what to do when Natts and Cayt tugged on his sleeve.

“Lord Colonel, sir, leave this to us!”

“Huh? What are you two doing?” Roy looked around to see the two young sergeants staring at him with determination in their eyes, their hands gripping their weapons tightly.

“We know … ” Sergeant Natts began. “We know how hard it must have been for you to teach us to do jobs we should already know how to do. We know you’re tired … ”

“We’re sorry for making mistakes—we really are, sir! Let us handle this beast! We’ll give you three time to escape!”

“What nonsense are you babbling?” Roy shook his head, but Natts and Cayt had already begun walking forward, trembling as they stepped softly through the rocky grass on the hillside, moving themselves between the source of the growling and the officers behind them.

“We’re not very good aims, and we don’t take orders well. But we can at least buy you some time, sir!”

“Once whatever it is has eaten its fill, I’m sure it will leave you alone! I’m sorry we can’t join you on the secret mission, but we go to our deaths proudly, knowing that we saved you, Lord Colonel!”

“You two … ” Roy was dumbfounded. He hadn’t had time to order them back before the low rumbling growl drifted from the bushes again. Roy’s ears pricked up. “Huh? Wait a second … ” He tilted his head into a brisk wind that had blown up, chilling the sweat on his brow; he had noticed something. “Hey,” he began, turning to Hughes next to him, “does that sound like … ”

Hughes had his back to Roy and was poking one of the two young sergeants on the shoulder. “What if it’s still hungry after it eats you, what do we do then?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I think after then we would have to go in order of ascending rank.”

“We’ll be waiting for you on the other side, sir!”

“Stop this nonsense and listen to me for just a second, would you? I have a theory,” Roy said. His eyes fixed on the two sergeants’ grips on their weapons as he spoke, when Armstrong interrupted him with a veritable howl of emotion.

“Never have I seen such devotion!” Tears flowing from his eyes in two waterfalls, Armstrong embraced the two sergeants. “Thinking only of your superior officers! You’re amazing!”

“Just hold on, Major,” Roy began, but Armstrong could not be stopped.

“Genuine paragons of military men!”

“Major, you’re hurting us!”

Armstrong squeezed the two so tightly they could barely breathe. Next to him, Hughes had produced a photo of his beloved daughter from somewhere and began kissing it over and over as he stumbled backward across the rocks toward safety.

“Everybody just calm down and listen to me!” Roy shouted, running ahead to push his way into the thicket from where they had heard the growling emerge.

“Lord Colonel, it’s too dangerous!”

“Stay back, sir!”

The two sergeants quailed, certain they were about to see their new superior officer torn limb from limb, but no beast emerged. Instead, a blast of fresh air, cool and crisp—not the thick, wet air of the woods—brushed against their faces.

The thicket ahead of them was dense, but not deep. Beyond, the view widened. They saw brown rocks, reflecting the sun so brightly that it hurt to look at it after having seen only the dark rock and green of the woods for so long.

“It’s not a beast at all. It’s just the wind!”

They stood on the edge of a precipice. A ravine opened neatly before them, forming a narrow valley through which the wind blew. This was the source of the low grumbling sound.

The five breathed a communal sigh of relief, then turned their eyes to the edge of the ravine. A single rope bridge swung ahead of them.

“Well, let’s get going.”

“Onward, onward!”

Suddenly coming back to their senses, Armstrong and Hughes ran forward to cross the bridge.

Roy shook his head. He had already decided he would go no farther, but going back meant descending the sheer cliff they had just climbed. And besides, the view Hughes had been talking about might be right on the other side of this bridge. Shaking his head again, Roy stepped out on the swaying planks.

The first rope twanged at the exact moment that Sergeant Natts stepped on the bridge behind him. Roy froze and slowly turned around. “Wait till we’re on the far side, then cross. We don’t want to put any more weight on the bridge.”

“Right, sir,” Natts said, saluting, while Armstrong, Hughes, and Roy shuffled forward, gripping nervously at the swaying rope handles on either side of the bridge.

The wind blew with a loud keen and tousled their hair. When they stopped halfway and looked down, they could see the cliff walls on either side descending to a thin white line, like a thread, at the bottom. It had to be a river, though there was no sound of water. Nor could they judge whether it was an extremely narrow river or an extremely large river from very, very far away. After going a bit farther, the wind against their cheeks became noticeably stronger. At the very middle of the bridge, the wind howled in their ears, and the bridge swayed treacherously.

“You think this bridge is okay?”

“No rocking it on purpose,” Armstrong said with a meaningful glare at Hughes.

“Do I look like the kind of guy who would do a thing like that? Of course, if you want me to … ”

“Rock it, and I shoot you,” Roy shouted, the tip of his shoe connecting with a loose piece of wood, knocking it off the edge. The fragments fell spinning out of sight, but they never heard it hit the river below. They watched it fall for some time, then the three looked up at each other.

None of them would admit to being frightened, but their tension carved deep lines in their faces.

Snap.

The sound had been quiet but clear. The three froze.

“You hear that?” Roy asked.

“I might’ve heard something,” Hughes whimpered.

“I heard it, all right,” Armstrong said. “I heard it, but I didn’t like … ”

Snap.

Roy looked quickly forward and backward along the bridge. Neither end seemed especially close, but it felt like they were nearer to the opposite side at this point.

“We go forward. Walk slowly,” Roy announced to the others, taking a careful step.

The faint snapping sound they heard came almost certainly from the lighter threads in the center of the support ropes. One by one, they broke with a loud, precise “snap!” Even though the wind still howled at their ears, the unsettling sound seemed to reach them with frightening clarity.

Behind them, still on the cliff edge, Natts and Cayt heard it, too.

“Uh-oh … ” they said in unison, gripping each other by the shoulder, as they watched the three upon the bridge. They wanted more than anything to go help them, but if another person stepped onto those swaying ropes, it would likely send them all to the bottom.

The three already on the bridge stepped forward step by careful step. Each tried desperately not to do anything to hasten the unraveling of their precarious support. For them, each yard seemed like a mile.

Then a high-pitched noise shot through the air, like the whistle of some bird. The entire bridge thrummed like an instrument, the sound shifting from a high pitch to low. Then, there was a moment of silence, followed by a loud snap as one of the bridge’s main support ropes gave way.

“I take back my last orders! Run!” Roy shouted, and the three broke into a dash.

The bridge shuddered and began to tilt as the remaining ropes broke one by one. All the boards rattled, the vibrations running through the bridge sending one of the severed ropes snaking up into the air above them, before gravity pulled it down past the bridge toward the depths below.

On the edge of the ravine, Natts and Cayt closed their eyes.

Meanwhile, Roy and the others ran for their lives. With each breaking rope, the bridge rippled like a wave, making it difficult to run upon. They grabbed onto the rope railings so as not to fall, until one of the railings broke free and began to sag.

The bridge gave one final lurch. Roy looked up to see the other side just beyond the swaying hulk of Armstrong in front of him. It seemed close enough that he could reach out and grab it … 

The last rope connecting the two sides snapped.

For a moment, the three hung floating in the air, as though gravity had decided to wait until they realized what had just happened.

“Aaaaaaugh!”

Their screams echoed through the ravine. When everything fell silent once again, sergeants Natts and Cayt fearfully opened their eyes. Gripping one another by the shoulder, they looked out over the edge. The rope bridge was nowhere to be seen. The wind howled through the rocks below, oblivious to the tragedy that had just taken place.

“Lord Colonel … ” Natts muttered, dumbfounded. Cayt flopped down on the ground in tears.

“I don’t believe it. Colonel, Colonel, Colonel! Colonel?”

The two swooning enlisted men opened their eyes at the same time. There, across the ravine, the wreckage of the bridge hung from a single post, and clinging to that was … 

“Colonel Mustang!!!”

Armstrong had already made it to the top. He pulled Roy and Hughes up arm over arm as they clung to the remains of the bridge.

“Hooray!” Natts and Cayt shouted as they leapt and twirled in joy.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Roy dropped to his knees and sighed deeply.

“If this is a vacation, I choose work.”

Next to him, Hughes and Armstrong echoed his sigh.

“That was a surprise.”

“I felt my life shortened by about ten years.”

It seemed nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t fallen to their deaths. But the bridge was broken. Roy examined the remains briefly before turning back to Hughes and Armstrong. “We’re not getting back this way. We should rest here first and find a place to camp … ”

“No, let’s keep going forward.” Hughes stood, cutting off Roy. “Now that we’ve come this far, we have to go to the top and walk down the other side anyway, right? No point in standing here! I say let’s make some progress while we can. I feel bad about leaving those two sergeants behind, but after everything we’ve been through, I’m going to see that view.”

“That’s right, Colonel. We should walk until the sun sets at least. The road from the summit down the other side is gentler, so we should be at the bottom by evening tomorrow. Well, unless we encounter some difficult terrain or lose our way … Maybe it’s safer to say we’ll definitely be off this mountain by nightfall two days from now.”

Roy was exhausted, both mentally and physically. He wanted nothing more than to lie there on the ground and sleep, but one look at Armstrong and Hughes consulting their maps and picking routes made him realize he didn’t have a choice. Roy stood. “How can you even think about tomorrow? I just want to sleep … ” he grumbled. He turned to shout to Natts and Cayt, still leaping for joy on the far side. “Jump around too much, and you’ll fall! We’re going down the mountain by a different route. We’ll be at the bottom by tomorrow or the next day, or the morning of the third day at the latest … so send someone to meet us there! If we aren’t there by the fourth day, contact Central. You got that?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Leave it to us!”

The two sergeants waved exuberantly, and Roy looked up at the mountain, wondering if the communications officer would be able to handle such a simple request and dreading the answer. Then, with heavy feet, he began to walk.

THE SUN HAD ALREADY BEGUN TO SET by the time they neared the summit.

Roy searched the woods in the rapidly fading light for a place where they could camp. He sighed deeply, wondering how a day off could change so quickly into a day of life-threatening adventure, complete with rock climbing and an impromptu bungee jump. He was miserable.

“So where is this view of yours?” he asked, glaring at Hughes. “It’s nowhere, that’s where!”

Hughes only laughed. “Calm down there, soldier. We’ll be walking this mountain all day tomorrow. We’ll find it. You should be thinking about getting some rest now that we’re finally free of your subordinates, eh? I think it’s time for a campfire and some stories.”

“How am I supposed to get any rest out here in the middle of nowhere?!” Roy said, his voice a growl through clenched teeth. Suddenly, he saw a red light glimmering through the woods ahead. He squinted his eyes in the gloom, peering through the trees. Now he could see more lights, even the outline of a roof through the trees.

“ … It’s a town.”

Hughes and Armstrong looked up.

“A town? Out here? There’s nothing on the map.”

“I see soft beds and warm food in our future, gentlemen!” Hughes said with a grin. “See? I was right to keep pushing on.”

“Don’t act like you’re my savior just because we happened to run into a village,” Roy said, as dourly as he could manage.But in truth, the mere thought of sleeping under a roof already started to brighten his spirits.

Thanking their fortune, the three began to walk briskly toward the lights.

Closer to the village, the woods looked well maintained. Leaves had been raked into piles for mulch, and branches trimmed here and there to let light through. The closer they got, the more lights they could see beyond the trees, until they could make out at least fifteen structures ahead.

They stepped out of the woods. The village, they could now see, was surrounded on the other side by fields and pasture. They had livestock too, judging by the clucking they could hear in the distance. The road was unpaved, and weeds and flowers grew up between ruts. The delicious smells of dinner cooking and children laughing drifted from the houses alongside the road. A tiny mountain village like any other, except this one wasn’t on the map.

They had made it past two houses before someone opened a window and looked out.

“Hey, visitors!” someone shouted. It was a young girl’s voice.

Soon, children were looking out of windows and doors throughout the village. Hughes waved a hand in greeting and the children waved back.

“Evening!”

Hughes and Armstrong smiled. “Evening to you, too.”

“Look at all the kids,” Hughes said. “That’s a warm welcome if I’ve ever seen one.”

Within moments, a small crowd of smiling children had gathered by the side of the road, filling the night air with the sounds of talking and laughter. The three stopped, surrounded by children, and waited for the parents to take interest and follow them out. But no adults appeared.

Roy frowned, turning to a girl with long hair who was standing close by. “Excuse me, could one of you call your parents?”

“Our parents aren’t here,” answered a boy from behind him. The boy was young and had a stern look about him. He stood taller than the other children and might well have been the oldest. Roy guessed his age at around fifteen or sixteen. “They’ve all gone down to the foot of the mountain to work. If you need something, you can talk to me.”

Roy and the others turned, and the circle of children parted to let the boy through toward them.

“How did you get up here?” the boy asked, his piercing blue eyes assessing them from beneath brown locks of hair. A mistrust of strangers was written on his face. Roy swallowed, and as always, Hughes rose to the occasion.

“We’re just passing through is all,” he explained. “Came over a rope bridge, but wouldn’t you know, it broke, so we were making our way down the mountain when we came across your village.”

“You broke the rope bridge?” the boy asked, one eyebrow raised high.

“Sorry, we’ll make sure someone comes up to fix it once we’re down the mountain.”

It wasn’t an empty promise. They could call Central as soon as they reached the bottom and requisition men and materials. But Hughes had already decided not to explain himself. For the time being, it was best not to let on that they were military. The children seemed suspicious enough as it was.

“My name is Maes Hughes. This here is Roy Mustang and Alex Louis Armstrong.” Hughes put on his friendliest smile and extended a hand. “Tell you the truth, we’re bushed from climbing all day, and we’re hoping to find a place to stay. There wouldn’t happen to be a restaurant or a lodge around here, would there? If not, we’re happy to sleep under the eaves … ”

The boy didn’t accept Hughes’s hand, instead turning to point outside the village. “Leave,” he said coldly.

But the smaller children around him started clapping their hands with enthusiasm.

“We haven’t had visitors in such a long time!” one shouted, obviously thrilled.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” the boy said to his charges. “You don’t talk to strangers like that. There are bad men out there.”

“There you go again, Tild,” cut in the girl who had first spoken to Roy. She had a look of utter exasperation on her face.

“Rose … ” Tild matched her look of exasperation.

“If they were bad men, they wouldn’t just come walking in here like this. Why do you always assume the worst?”

Rose seemed to be about the same age as Tild, and from the look on Tild’s face, Rose clearly played the role of older sister in the village to Tild’s big brother. Tild might be the de facto leader, but the children looked up to Rose, so she shared some of the boy’s authority.

“Hughes, Mustang, and … Armstrong, was it? My name is Rose. This here is Tild. I apologize on his behalf,” she added with a smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” Roy told her. “I was hoping you hadn’t had a string of less than respectable visitors here.” He couldn’t imagine why anyone would climb all the way up to this village near the summit to do mischief. However, that would explain Tild’s lukewarm reception. It would also mean more work for the base. If they couldn’t even keep nearby villagers safe, how could they expect public support when something serious happened? Roy glanced over at Hughes and Armstrong, who mirrored his look of concern.

“Not a one. We hardly get any people here at all,” Rose explained. “Tild’s just overreacting because our parents are away.”

“Someone has to take responsibility for this lot,” Tild scowled. One of the smaller boys yanked on his hand.

“Hey, Tild. Let’s let them stay.” The boy’s expression made it clear that he was looking forward to having some new people to talk and play with. “Rose has plenty of room, and there’s a place to eat.”

“That’s right, let him stay.”

Some of the children grabbed on to Armstrong’s massive arms, while others grappled Hughes around the waist in their enthusiasm. None of the children approached Roy with his weary scowl.

Tild’s face remained firm. “What if they’re robbers? What if they’ve run out of money and are here to take ours?”

“Well, we’re not,” Hughes said helpfully.

“We’ll pay for our food,” Armstrong offered.

Perturbed by Tild’s suspicion, the three went for their wallets. At the same time, all three of them stopped, slightly bent over, hands on their empty back pockets.

“Did you all hurt your backs or something?”

Roy frowned. “My wallet’s gone.”

They all realized simultaneously that their wallets had dropped when the bridge over the ravine had come down. No doubt, their wallets had fallen into the river and washed miles away by now. They groaned. Three grown men without a penny between them. The children fell silent as Tild laughed victoriously.

“See? No money, and a nice story. Pretty suspicious, if you ask me. We don’t need you here! And why should we help people who can’t pay for their food?”

That would have been it had Rose not spoken up. “So you’d let them stay if they could pay? How about we have them do something in exchange for money? That would meet your conditions, wouldn’t it, Tild?”

“Forget it, Rose. I don’t like the look of … ”

“Tild!” Rose interjected, hands at her waist. “Why must you always be like this? You want all these children to grow up unable to trust a single person they meet?”

Her words hit a soft spot. Tild fell silent.

Rose turned to Roy and the others. “Actually, we did have a lot of rain and wind up here the other day. Some of the roofs need fixing, and our windmill could use some work, too. We don’t know when our parents will be back, and we can’t have the windmill stopped for so long. Maybe you could help us? In return, we’ll give you food and a place to stay. You can do the work tomorrow—let’s say a day’s work for a night’s stay.”

“Well, it’s a generous offer … ” Roy said, thinking aloud. He had told the two young sergeants they would be back by morning of the third day, so they had the time. Nor was he adverse to lending a hand, though in all honesty, he had been hoping they would be able to descend the mountain a day early so he could go really enjoy himself somewhere civilized before the men came from the base to pick them up. He felt in need of a vacation now more than ever.

Hughes seemed less conflicted. “Great!” he said enthusiastically, “Then we’re all yours tomorrow. I’m ready to work already! I can fix things, and I’m pretty good at paperwork too, if you’ve got any forms lying around! Oh, and if any of you scamps needs fatherly advice on your love life, why, I’m your man!”

A boy interrupted Hughes’s stirring self publicity speech by grabbing his hand. “Come to my house!” the boy said. “We keep all the records on the fields and taxes, but the storm’s blown them all over the place. You can help get them back in order!”

“I’m there! Cleaning up messes is my forte.”

“How can I help … ” Armstrong began to speak when his own hand was claimed. A flock of children jumped onto him at once.

“Our roof is leaking!”

“We need to harvest our crop early this year!”

“My desk is broken!”

Armstrong’s size got him noticed. One look at his massive frame, and it seemed like half the village was eager to employ him. Within moments, a dozen children hung from his muscled arms.

“I’ll do as much as I can, but one job at a time, please.” Armstrong grinned, walking around in swift circles despite a classroom’s worth of children clinging to him.

Rose caught his eye and pointed toward the windmill in the center of town. “What we really need help with is the windmill, actually.”

“Sure thing,” Armstrong replied. He had proven to be even more popular than the cheerful Hughes, which left Roy standing all by himself.

Tild stared at the exhausted colonel for a moment, before turning his head and spitting. “So, what can you do? You don’t look like you’re much good for anything.”

Roy had just been wondering if he might get out of this without having to do anything, but the boy’s comment irked him. “Hey, I can work, too.”

“Yeah? What are your strengths? What do you do normally?”

“ … I analyze situations, make decisions, and give orders. And I do a little teaching as well.” Roy said, struggling to explain what he did without admitting he was in the military.

“Teaching? You mean you’re a teacher? What do you teach?”

Tild fired question after question at him until Roy ran out of good excuses. He wasn’t lying; he did teach. He taught the soldiers at the base down below the mountain. Of course, that hadn’t been going well at all. Nor was his work progress exactly stellar back at his regular post at Eastern Command. Roy fell silent, trying to think of something good to say about himself when the girl Rose came to his rescue.

“Maybe you can help at my house, Mr. Mustang. With three guests, there will be plenty of cooking and cleaning to do.”

“Can you cook?” Tild asked flatly.

Roy nodded. “I think so.”

“And clean?”

“If I gave it a shot, sure.”

“Laundry?”

“Maybe … probably, yeah.”

Tild turned to Rose. “Useless.”

Roy was too angry and frustrated to reply, but Rose gave a gentle laugh. “It’s not all that bad. If there’s anything he doesn’t understand, I can teach him.” She turned back to Roy. “For the time being, you can wash dishes and wipe the tables. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle that. So it’s decided, then?”

Rose and the other children looked up at Tild. Not even he could deny all those expectant faces.

“Fine. Have it your way.”

An exuberant cheer went up from the children then, and the three were, at long last, welcomed into the village.

AFTER SEEING THE CHILDREN back to their homes, Rose led Roy, Hughes, and Armstrong to her house.

Rose’s house stood in the middle of the village. It looked larger than most of the houses around it, with walls painted a pleasant cream color. When they walked through the front door, the first thing they saw was a dining hall of sorts, complete with kitchen, counter, tables, and chairs.

“I’m sorry we don’t have a proper inn in town,” Rose said apologetically. “The first floor here, we keep like this so people can stop by for snacks and tea, but we so rarely have guests for any length of time. I’m afraid there’s only one room. Our parents may not be here, but we’ll do whatever we can to make your stay pleasant. If you need anything, just let me know.”

Rose continued explaining the facilities as she led them upstairs and opened the door to a large room. In the room were three beds lined up against the wall—the village’s only lodgings. Rose began struggling to fix one of the heavy mattresses.

Armstrong lent a hand. “Your parents must be quite busy to leave all of you alone here like this.”

“They are,” Rose nodded. “Many of our parents are … ‘technicians,’ I suppose you’d call them. They’re good with machines and construction. They travel around to far-off towns to help repair damage from the war, so there’s always work to be had—too much work. In some families, both of the parents work, and in families where only one parent is skilled, the other follows along to help on the road. Sometimes, they’re gone for as long as two months.”

“Is that so … ” Armstrong muttered, wondering how the children managed by themselves for so long.

As Rose said, construction workers and technicians were in short supply and high demand. It was also a time of economic instability, and no matter how much money you had laid away it was no guarantee with market prices for goods fluctuating so rapidly. Stories of parents leaving their children behind to find work weren’t uncommon.

Of course, it was the military’s job to restore peace and stability so that people didn’t have to go to such lengths to enjoy financial security and live with their families. Stories like this reminded him of how much work was yet to be done.

Rose broke the gloomy silence with a laugh. “Sure, we’re lonely, but we’re proud that our parents’ work helps rebuild the world outside. While they’re gone, we look after the fields and the livestock, too. It’s more fun than it sounds.”

The bed fixed, Rose opened the windows to let in fresh air. She pointed toward the fields across the road below her house. In the dimming dusk, beams of light stabbed out from the windows of the houses that lined the road and illuminated the field. Rose and Roy looked out on fruits and vegetables growing in neatly ordered rows. Even though the lodgings for the night had been unused for some time, they had been kept well cleaned. The children seemed to handle themselves remarkably well in their parents’ absence.

“We used to all live farther down the mountain,” Rose explained, “but our parents were worried for our safety—there are lots more bandits and the like closer to the road. That’s why they made this village here.”

“Ah, so the village is new. That’s why it wasn’t on the map.”

“That’s right. Unfortunately, that also means some of our relatives and old friends from other towns and villages have stopped visiting us. When our parents aren’t here, Tild—he’s the oldest—and I are sort of like substitute parents for the other children.”

Rose fell silent. The three looked up at her.

“I hope what Tild was saying didn’t give you the wrong impression about us. Whenever our parents aren’t here, he gets so … so harsh. I think he feels like he has to act like an adult, even though he’s only fifteen … ” The uncertainty in her voice made clear the importance she placed on being a good host.

Roy ventured a light smile. “It only makes sense for the eldest to take a stand and size up any potential threats. He’s got little children to take care of. I was impressed by how he carried himself, to be honest.”

“Really?” Rose gave a sigh of relief, then she put a hand on the door. “I’ll call when dinner is ready. You’ve got lots of work to do tomorrow, so you have to be sure to eat well. Oh, and I’ll bring tea up in a bit.”

Roy was beginning to understand the social dynamic at work here. Both Tild and Rose had assigned themselves as protectors of the children, but while Tild protected them with strength, Rose protected them with kindness and caring—the same kindness she now directed toward her guests.

Rose walked out. When the door shut behind her, Roy sat down on one of the beds. “So their parents are technicians, huh? Makes sense that they wouldn’t be at home, times being what they are.”

“With every industry fighting to get back on its feet since the war, technicians are a hot item. Seeing the situation here just makes me think about how much more the military could be doing—should be doing.” Hughes slapped a hand down on his knee. “Anyway, we’re here for the night. That gives us a whole day to do what we can for these kids as adults, and as soldiers—though I still think it’s a good idea we keep mum about who we really are.”

“Agreed. It would only make the situation awkward if one of the kids contacted their parents and told them that the military had arrived.”

“So now I get to work for my vacation,” Roy muttered, wondering how plans for a light hike, fresh air, and an inspiring view could turn to dust so quickly. And that was after a death-defying mountain climb when he was already tired to begin with. Roy grumbled at his own misfortune.

“There, there,” Hughes said, comforting him. “Think positively: at least we have beds and food on the way!”

“There’s such a thing as thinking too positive!” Roy said with a scowl, but in truth, he had already surrendered to his fate. The way the children had grabbed onto their hands so tightly screamed please stay with us. “Fine, We’ll work for the day tomorrow. I’ll count myself lucky just for the good night’s sleep after that climb today. I’m exhausted.”

By the time Roy’s spirits had picked up again, the door opened, and Rose came in with tea on a platter. “About tomorrow … The other children will be here at eight to pick up Mr. Hughes and Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Mustang … ”

“Please, call me Roy. I’m working for you, after all.” Roy took a cup from the platter and flashed a winning smile. Rose smiled back.

“Thank you then, Roy. As I was saying, you have to get up a little earlier tomorrow. I hope that’s all right.”

“A little early is no problem. I’ll see you in the morning then?”

“Great! I’ll come up to get you at five.”

Rose closed the door. Leaving Roy to stare at the steam rising from his cup. “Five o’ clock … ” he intoned in a daze.

Next to him, Hughes and Armstrong struggled to hold back peals of laughter.

FIVE O’CLOCK THE NEXT MORNING. Roy opened his eyes beneath warm blankets.

Dawn was approaching. Already, the dim light grew brighter outside the window. Roy cast a sidelong glance at Hughes and Armstrong, still sleeping, and gave a big yawn.

“So sleepy … ”

He had planned on going to bed right after dinner the night before, but what he hadn’t planned on was playing host to practically every kid in the village. While they were eating, kid after kid had come to Rose’s door, wanting to meet the visitors. They wanted Roy to tell them stories while he ate, and Hughes and Armstrong found themselves enlisted into giving piggyback rides.

So, while Roy told his bright-eyed audience a yarn about his trip to a faraway town, Hughes made hats and coats out of paper and entertained the children with his usual wit. Next to them, Armstrong had cleared a space of tables and spun in a circle, the children hanging from each arm whooping with laughter as the centrifugal force sent their legs flying up in the air.

When at last they got to bed, Hughes decided to relate a tale of his beloved daughter that lasted a good hour, and unlike Armstrong, who began snoring immediately upon hitting the pillow, Roy learned in excruciating detail all about how to make baby food and the joy of hearing one’s child speak her first word. Even after, when the story was done, the wind rattled at the window, and Hughes and Armstrong both snored so loudly that Roy could catch only a few hours of sleep.

He dressed with bleary eyes and went downstairs to find Rose opening windows. A pot of water was already boiling in the kitchen.

“Good morning, Rose.”

“Good morning, Roy! Looking forward to your day on the job?”

Rose was not an innkeeper by trade. Today, she would have to feed three adults in addition to her usual chores tending to the fields and livestock. Roy put on the apron Rose handed him without complaint. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“Cleaning, peeling vegetables, and washing the dishes. Afterward, I might have to go fetch some eggs from the coop … I’m sorry none of it’s very interesting, but we have a lot to do.”

None of it did seem very interesting—nor very easy—for Roy. He began to grow worried. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t break any plates, he told himself, lifting up a chair to get at the floor beneath with his broom.

“Oh, Roy? Be sure to sweep along the floor boards, not against them.”

“Y-yeah, right, oops,” Roy mumbled sheepishly.

“Oh, and when you’re wringing out a towel like that, it’s better if you hold your hands facing each other rather than the same way.”

“Right, must’ve forgotten … ”

Rose gave him helpful advice while she made breakfast. When Roy had finished cleaning up inside, she sent him outside to rake up leaves.

The cold morning air wrapped itself around him. The sun wasn’t yet high enough to warm this mountainside village.

“I’ve completely forgotten how to clean,” Roy mumbled to himself. He had never been good at housework, but he had done his fair share in the past. However, a few busy years at Eastern Command, and he’d forgotten even the basics. “Maybe I just haven’t woken up yet,” Roy said. “I sure am sleepy … ”

A part of Roy had hoped he would be able to take it easy that morning. It was so early that the children were most likely not even up yet. Contrary to his expectations, though, many of the windows in town were already open, and he could hear the sounds of forks on plates and spoons on bowls.

As Roy stood, rubbing his eyes, a young boy ran past. “Morning, Roy!”

“Ah, good morning.”

“We’ve got some vegetables to pick today, so no time to make lunch. We’ll be dropping by Rose’s for lunch today, okay? See you then!”

“R-Right,” Roy stammered, lifting his hand to wave back, but the boy was already gone. “ … Have fun.”

He turned to see another run by. “Morning, Roy! See you at lunch!”

“See you … ”

“Morning, Roy! Having fun yet?”

One after the other, kids came running out of their houses with baskets and shovels, heading for the fields to the south of town. The sun had only just begun to rise, and already the village was bustling with activity.

A lack of parents seemed to affect the village’s daily life far less than Roy had expected.

“Kids sure are amazing … ” Roy said, stifling a yawn. And then there’s me, he thought, when a voice from behind interrupted him.

“Ah, so you can sweep.”

Tild stood in front of Rose’s house, his eyes filled with the same wary look they’d held when the two first met the night before.

“Good morning,” Roy said with as much cheer as he could muster. “Glad to see you approve of the job I’m doing.” He gave the ground an extra hard sweep with his brush.

Tild snorted. “I approve of things like fixing the windmill and organizing our papers, things that we need adults’ help with. As far as someone who can only sweep … But that’s not what I came to talk to you about.” Tild stared at Roy, a ring of mistrust in his voice.

“What?”

“Tell me why you came here.”

“Huh? I said we were just passing through on a hike … ”

Tild frowned. “It’s suspicious. You’re suspicious. I don’t want mysterious strangers like you in our village.”

“Why are we guilty until proven innocent? You sure are a mistrustful kid.”

“Always best to err on the side of caution. Anyway, don’t even think about trying to pull one over on us just because we’re children.” With that, Tild left. Roy understood Tild was only playing the part of village protector. He admired seeing so much fearlessness in a boy of fifteen. Still, even more than being suspected as a criminal, being called useless twice in two days really got Roy riled up. Roy finished his sweeping in silence.

By the time he went back inside, Rose was making breakfast. “Welcome back. I’m almost done here, if you’d like to eat. When you’re not working, you’re my guest here, after all.”

“I’ll eat later,” Roy said, eager to make himself useful. “What should I do next?”

“Well, here’s a bucket of carrots. Could you go around back and peel these? Here’s a knife. Put the peels in this bucket if you would, please.” Rose gave him the pile of carrots, the knife, and the bucket, plopped him down in the backyard, and immediately went back into the kitchen to finish up breakfast.

Roy was left holding the knife in one hand, trying to remember how in the world to peel a carrot.

TWO HOURS HAD PASSED since the sun rose, when Hughes and Armstrong woke from their restful night, blissfully unaware of Roy’s suffering.

After a leisurely breakfast, the first boy came with work, and the two left for their day’s chores. Rose sent them off with a smile. “Have fun!” Next to her stood Roy, waving a hand meekly, his fingers wrapped in bandages.

The boy who led Armstrong to the windmill was called Zaj. He had been fond of the big man ever since getting a piggyback ride the night before, and they crossed the fields arm in arm like the best of friends.

“I wish I were as tall as you, Mr. Armstrong. How did you get so big?” the boy asked, looking up at the massively muscled soldier.

“How old are you now, Zaj?”

“Seven. I’m the same age as Luido, but he’s bigger than me. It’s no fair.” The boy frowned and put a hand on his head as if measuring himself against his friend. “I hope to get as big as you someday, Mr. Armstrong.”

“I’m sure you will. You know, I was quite the runt when I was a kid.”

“Really? Boy, if I were as big as you are, I could fix the windmill all by myself.” Smiling, Zaj pointed at a structure ahead of them. The windmill had large, rotating blades made of wood and thick canvas. The night before, when they had seen it standing in the middle of a field from a great distance, it had seemed small and humble, but from this close, it towered over him.

“Cool, huh? My dad built this. It brings water up from beneath the ground. But the rainstorm the other day damaged the blades, and they aren’t spinning as well as they used to. We were worrying what we’d do if we had to wait until our parents got back.”

The windmill itself was built of stone, and a small door had been cut at its base. Armstrong hunched down to peer inside. “Amazing!”

Even to an amateur’s eyes, the windmill was impressively built. At its top it must have stood thirty feet high. A small staircase wound up along the inside, giving access to the windmill mechanism. Inside, rings of iron reinforced the structure. The outer wall was made of carefully stacked bricks. Several ropes hung straight down from the main axle, disappearing into a large hole in the floor. With every turn of the wheel, one of the ropes would lift, carrying a bucket of water up from some underground reservoir.

“Where does the water go?”

“Over here.”

Armstrong stepped back outside, and Zaj pointed to the side of the windmill tower. A hole had been cut in the side, out of which ran a small channel filled with water.

“The buckets of water catch on the edge of the channel here and spill water into it. The channel runs all the way down to the fields.”

Armstrong looked down the simple aqueduct until it disappeared into the rich green of the village fields. Normally, water was a real problem in higher elevations where rivers didn’t run, but instead of finding a place closer to water, Zaj’s father and the other villagers had built this carefully planned windmill out of iron and stone to bring the water to them. Not only did it bring the water to them, but it saved them hours and hours of labor by delivering it precisely to where it was needed most: the fields.

Armstrong was deeply impressed. It took no small amount of technical skill to craft a windmill this large, and Zaj’s father must have taken great care in designing it to make it so easy to use.

“This is a fine piece of work here,” he commented. “Your father must be quite skilled.”

Zaj grinned and looked embarrassed. He scratched his head. “My dad was an engineer for a steelworks. He was always making bridges and that sort of thing. I’m studying to become an engineer just like him. See, I made that.”

Zaj pointed a short distance down the aqueduct to where a tiny toy bridge stood over a thin stream of water—the overflow from the channel.

“I see!” Armstrong said, walking over. He noticed that he had built not only a small bridge but a miniature watermill to go with it. Either would fit in the palm of his hand, but despite their size, both were sturdily built from tiny chiseled stones and strips of iron. Each looked every bit as impressive as the larger versions behind him, considering that they had been built by a boy of seven. Clearly, Zaj took great pride in his father’s work.

“You’ve got a bright future ahead of you if you can make things like this, Zaj.”

“Really? You think so? Once I’m big enough to fix the real thing, I hope I can work with my dad and the others.”

“That’s right,” Armstrong said, smiling gently at the grinning boy. “But stay out of the real windmill until you’re bigger. It’s too dangerous. Wait here while I check on those blades.”

“Right!”

Armstrong patted the boy on the head and went back inside the windmill. He climbed the staircase carefully, as it lacked any railings. When he reached the break lever for the windmill mechanism, he gave it a yank, and the giant blades slowly ground to a halt. From there, he needed only to push up a hinged panel in the ceiling to gain access to the roof, where he could check each blade for damage and look down at the central axis.

Armstrong busily scraped a wattle of leaves off one of the blades with his hands as a gentle breeze began to blow. From his vantage point on the top of the windmill, he could see the entire village. There was Roy, wiping windows at Rose’s house, and the local children on their way back from the fields, playing by the roadside. And there was Hughes, running along with them.

He thought how odd it was, seeing his two companions and himself out of uniform. Back on base, they walked briskly through the halls, barking orders, doing paperwork. Yet one night in the village, and already they were on its clock. Time moved slower here, and Armstrong found he rather enjoyed the change.

Armstrong’s solid sense of justice made him the perfect fit for the military, but he disliked people brandishing their authority and abhorred harming others for no reason other than to follow orders. The importance of duty paled in comparison with the village’s slower, easier pace and the opportunity to help he found there.

He looked across the village, spotting boys working in the fields and girls feeding the livestock. Near the front of the windmill, Zaj played with his toy bridge. It occurred to Armstrong that Zaj didn’t just want to become an engineer out of pride for his father’s work; he wanted to pursue the profession out of a desire to be with his parents more.

The children in this village were mature beyond their years, but their loneliness seemed apparent from the attention he and the others had received the night before. Armstrong carefully continued his inspection of the windmill blades.

He knew he would leave the next day, but he resolved to spend as much time as he could with the children until then.

HUGHES HAD FINISHED with a brief tutoring assignment and was on his way to Luido’s house. Luido had asked him the day before to help sort scattered documents. He knew just where Luido’s house was, but when he got there, he found he had arrived too early. He decided to spend some time walking around looking at the other nearby houses. When they had arrived the night before, it had been too dark to see the town clearly. Under the bright sun, he noticed that each house had a unique design from the others.

“Quite the craftsmanship,” Hughes said, standing in front of one particularly colorful house. A wooden swing rocked on the front porch, and a slide made out of metal extended from the second floor. He had only ever seen a slide in someone’s garden, never one leaving from the house itself. It was an interesting idea.

He saw individual touches on other houses: one had a fireman’s pole, another was designed so that the whole house looked like some kind of animal.

“It’s like a big amusement park,” Hughes said to himself, when a thought occurred to him. “Why, I should make a swing for Elicia!” He smiled, imagining his daughter playing on a swing of her very own.

Thus he went around looking at the houses, filing away ideas for other things he might make until he had come clear to the edge of the village.

Suddenly, a figure appeared in the woods ahead. It was Tild. He emerged from an overgrown thicket and wiped dirt off his white shirt and arms. He walked toward a small pump at the edge of the wood. Grass grew up around its base, making it look half abandoned. Without so much as a glance in Hughes’s direction, he began to draw water from the pump.

“Hello there, Tild!” Hughes called out.

The boy turned, his face tense for a moment. He could hear the growl in the boy’s throat even from this distance. “Aren’t you going to Luido’s house? It’s the other way,” Tild said coldly, but Hughes’s enthusiasm was not so easily diminished.

“Oh, I know that. I had a little time, so I was just checking out the village.”

“ ‘Checking out’?” Tild asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Hughes laughed and waved a hand. “Don’t make those faces. I was just impressed at all of the different houses you have up here. You don’t see this kind of creative design much in the towns below.” He glanced at the window of a nearby house. Various animal shapes had been carved into the wooden frame. “I heard from Rose that your parents built all these? I caught a glimpse of your place back there. Those window frames are really impressive. And the iron struts on the roof, they kind of made it look like a sailing ship. It’s pretty cool.”

“Zaj’s dad made those. The window frames were Rose’s father. My dad designed the house, though. It was supposed to look like a boat.”

“Neat, a ‘boat’-house.”

Tild couldn’t help but blush. It was the first time Hughes had seen anything approaching happiness on the boy’s face. Though the corners of his eyes and the cut of his jaw made him look old beyond his years, when he smiled, the boy in him shone through.

“I’ve got a daughter, you know. Seeing all these houses has got me to thinking I should make something for her. Say, you think any of these other houses might have any good ideas? Oh, hey, would you like to see her picture? I’ll show it to you, as long as you promise not to fall hopelessly in love!”

Hughes took the photograph out of his shirt pocket and grinned, but Tild just shook his head. “No, thanks.” Head still turned, he pointed back toward the village. “If you want ideas for toys, check out the house over there.”

The house he was pointing at had a little red roof and a porch swing. Several animals carved of wood frolicked on the front lawn. It was just the kind of thing to excite a little girl. Maybe I’ve softened him up a little, Hughes thought. Sure took long enough. To Tild he said, “Looks great, thanks!”

“Don’t mention it.”

Even in kindness, Tild’s voice held little warmth. Hughes grinned, but Tild noticed and answered him with a scowl. “What are you looking at?”

“I was just thinking that maybe you’re not such a stick in the mud after all.”

“Leave me alone!” Tild said, raising a hand, but just then they heard a boy’s voice calling from back in the village.

“Mr. Hughes! Where are you?”

Hughes glanced down at his wristwatch. It was time for him to start his next job.

“Stop wasting time with me. You’ve got work to do!” Tild said gruffly.

“Right!” Hughes replied with a wry smile at the still blushing boy. He turned and ran back into the village. Before long, he spotted Luido waving his hand from the window of a brick house.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Say, you’ve got a nice place too, Luido.”

Indeed, the craftsmanship in this house’s construction put to shame everything he had seen in town. It was a small house, but tall, with five stories. Geometrical patterns adorned the railings that ran up the stairs. A wooden horse rocked on the front door patio.

“I just told my dad what kind of house I wanted, he designed it, and everybody in town helped build it. There’s lots of stuff inside. Come on in!”

True enough, the inside of the house didn’t disappoint. Hughes saw handmade furniture and toys. There was a desk made of curved boards, without a straight edge on it. A model train made of delicately welded plates ran along the floor, and a child’s car with large metal wheels sat parked against a wall. The night sky, complete with constellations, had been painted on the ceiling. Everything looked as though it had jumped out of some children’s book.

Hughes ran his hand over what looked like a handmade camera and looked up at the bookshelves that had been built along one wall. The shelves were stuffed with picture books.

“Let me guess. You like stories, Luido?”

“I love them!”

“I had a feeling.”

Hughes had seen enough houses in town to begin to understand what was going on. He would rather spend time with his daughter than give her things, but that wasn’t an option the parents here had. So they used their considerable skills to pour their love and affection into houses and toys. Luido’s house came straight out of a fairy tale. The walls of the house where he had tutored a girl had been covered with carvings of her favorite animals. The houses in this village had been designed to put smiles on children’s faces even when their parents were away.

As a parent, Hughes understood how they felt all too well.

Luido walked down a hallway, passing by storybook scenes painted on the walls, and led Hughes to a room at the back of the house.

“This is what I wanted your help with,” Luido said. He picked up one of the many papers that lay scattered about the room and handed it to Hughes. “One of the windows broke in the storm, and all these papers got blown about. I don’t understand what they say, so I wasn’t able to put them in any kind of order.”

Bookshelves on each wall reached to the ceiling, stuffed with stacks of documents. Haphazardly piles of papers were scattered across the desk and even on the floor.

Hughes looked at the paper in his hand, then pulled a few random papers off the shelves and read them, too. Some listed field acreage and owner names. Others recorded taxes paid, and still others even documented complete family records for the village.

“Your house keeps all the records for the town?”

“Mom did most of it, but she left to help dad at work. I was supposed to keep watch over these while they were gone … now I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry,” Hughes said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Leave your documents to me. I’ll even teach you how to mark them so they are easier to sort in the future. That way, you’ll be able to do it yourself. Want to try?”

Luido’s face suddenly brightened. “Yes! Yes please!”

Luido rushed to find paper and a pen, and when Hughes began explaining his system, the boy listened intently. The look on his face as he listened and the way he gripped his pen reminded Hughes of his daughter as she drew pictures or listened with rapt attention as he told a story.

“Right, first you want to draw a straight line at the top … ” As he patiently explained his system to Luido, he found himself thinking of his daughter waiting for him back home. He wanted to rush home and build her a swing, so that she might be happy on days when his work kept him from being with her. Hughes smiled inside thinking of the look she would have on her face when he came home, swing set in tow.

WHILE HUGHES AND ARMSTRONG had been enjoying the slower pace of village life, Roy found himself engaged in solo battle with a mountain of vegetables.

Rose was baking cookies in the kitchen, leaving Roy alone in the back garden. He sat there in the warm sunlight, knife in hand, listening to the sound of himself peeling carrots. His arm had begun to ache from the repetitive motion. He felt like his back would be forever frozen in a permanent hunch. When he stood up to stretch, his spine made disturbing popping noises.

“This is brutal,” he muttered, walking around to the front of the house to look out over the fields across the road. Time had passed rapidly while he had been running around trying to help, and now the sky above his head had turned a rosy red color.

The sound of laughter caught his ear, and he glanced down the road to see Armstrong helping children pile freshly picked vegetables into baskets. He would pick up a basket, often with a kid or two attached, and carry them across the fields back to the road. Now and then, he would stop to mend a broken fence or otherwise help wherever the children asked for it.

In a small clearing next to one of the fields, Roy spotted Hughes sitting with an open book, reading to some children. Other children gathered nearby, and though they weren’t listening to the story, they seemed to enjoy just being around him, jumping rope, and playing catch.

It was enough to bring a smile to Roy’s lips, and it made his dreary work in the army seem like a distant dream. But this was reality, as the cuts on his hands from chopping carrots proved.

Roy slowly walked around to the back garden, his shoulders rising and falling with a long sigh.

I washed dishes, I swept, I peeled.

None of these were things he did regularly. He had done all of them in survival training long ago, but when it came to actually putting them into practice, he was hopeless. A pile of thick peels lay at his feet, and the basket next to him brimmed with vegetables, all of which had ended up much smaller than when he began. In another basket by his feet waited the rather large mountain of vegetables he had yet to attack.

“Useless,” he muttered, remembering what Tild had said the night before. Roy had been doing military work so long, he figured he could do anything when put to it. He had forgotten just how hard housework could be. Here he sat, despondent, unable to perform the simplest of tasks.

Rose remained kind and considerate throughout the day. Whenever she came to see how he was doing and offer advice, he felt even worse, like he was holding her back from her own chores.

It’s too bad they don’t need any emergency training here, or anyone to show them how to use their weapons.

“What they need—what I need—is peeler training.”

From far off came the sounds of children playing, mingled with Hughes and Armstrong’s laughter. Roy sat alone, staring at his vegetables until Rose called out to him. “Something on that carrot?” She came out the back door and handed him a freshly baked cookie. “Taste this for me, would you? You don’t look so well. Are you okay?”

“No, just astonished at my own ineptitude,” he said grimly, taking a bite of the cookie. “No matter how many times I ask the same questions I still keep making the same mistakes … Can’t say I’ve been much of a help.”

“Of course you’ve been a help. I couldn’t have gotten half the things done that I did this morning without you. And you cut firewood—I’ve never been any good at that.”

“Maybe I did that one thing well, but everything else has been a disaster. Sorry.”

Rose shook her head. “Not at all. How about the eggs?”

“Eggs?”

“You didn’t break a single one of those eggs you brought me.”

Dimly, Roy recalled visiting the chicken coop after lunch. True, he hadn’t broken a single egg, but only because the chickens had been miraculously calm and cooperative.

“Those chickens get all excited whenever I go in there. They break eggs right and left. Sometimes they chase after me. That’s why I sent you in.”

“Heh, is that so?” Roy asked, his mood feeling lighter already. To be sure, collecting eggs was no great feat, but it felt good to have done at least something right that day, and he told Rose as much.

She smiled and picked up one of the carrots he had peeled. “I expect every kid in town will be here for dinner tonight. Let’s get cooking!”

“I’ll be the waiter. I can do that at least.”

“I sure hope you can! Let’s do our best.”

Our best, she said. She means we’re a team, Roy thought. The sentiment meant everything to him.

AS ROSE HAD PREDICTED, by nightfall, the first floor dining hall was filled with children. Many of them had come to say goodbye to their visitors. After spending all day helping the children, Armstrong and Hughes had become quite popular, and everyone wanted to sit by them, talking and joking with them while they ate.

They even chatted with Roy, who busily waited tables. He tried to keep up with the conversations as he weaved his way around chairs, trays of dishes balanced precariously in his hands.

“Soup over here, please!”

“I want one of those tomato salads!”

“Hold on a second. Right, so that’s soup, tomato salad, soup … ” Roy repeated the orders to himself as he rushed between the tables to the kitchen. Once the bowls had been delivered, he picked up a tray of empties, brought them back to the sink, and began washing dishes until Rose called out to him.

“Aren’t you tired, Roy? You can go out and eat if you want—it’s all right.”

“No, I’ll work a bit more. I said I’d be the waiter, and I mean to do it,” Roy declared as he gave the cup he was holding a final wipe. He felt he owed it to Rose. She had helped him tirelessly, teaching him how to peel vegetables, and never once complained, even when he broke one of her dishes. Of course, he risked breaking more dishes if he kept washing, but even so he couldn’t sit down.

“Only if you’re sure. Here, can you bring this to Hughes?”

“Got it.”

Tray balanced carefully in his hand, Roy walked over to the table where Hughes was sitting. Hughes looked up with a grin and grabbed Roy by the apron. “You look good in that.”

It was a simple chef’s apron made of light brown cloth, thankfully not some frilly lacy thing. Roy set the dish down on the table and squatted until his eyes were on a level with Hughes.

“If you so much as whisper about this to anyone at Eastern Command … You know what I’m saying, right?”

Roy’s subordinates at Eastern Command loved nothing more than to pick on their superior officer, and Hughes had always been their go-to man for embarrassing moments and painful memories. If word about this got out, he would never hear the end of it. The upper crust of Eastern Command, the feared and respected flame alchemist Roy Mustang, wearing an apron and waiting tables.

“At ease, soldier. Your secret is safe with me,” Hughes whispered back with a smile. He turned to his food.

“How is it?” Roy asked. Truth be told, he was more nervous about the food than about how he looked in an apron.

“Not bad. Wait, you didn’t help cook this, did you?” Hughes’s eyes widened. “I’m impressed!”

“I was in there with my knife, chopping away all day,” Roy said with a self-satisfied chuckle. “See those greens on the side there? I cut those. I cut ’em good.”

Hughes looked at the ragged sprig of parsley clinging for dear life to the edge of his plate. He sank toward the table, shaking his head, while Roy stood grinning. Next to them, Luido, Zaj, and several other boys and girls were clinging to Armstrong’s arms and legs.

“Spin us around like you did yesterday!”

“I’ll do better than that!” Armstrong shouted. Standing up he ripped off his shirt and tossed it to the floor.

“Woooh!”

Armstrong roared with laughter. His peers in the military knew his ripping-off-the-shirt shtick well, but for the kids, it was a show like none other. The crowd clapped and cheered.

“Armstrong! Armstrong! Spin us around!”

“Me too!”

“Don’t tire him out, now,” Rose cautioned the children softly as she set a tray of desserts on the table. “Thanks for playing with all the children like this, Mr. Armstrong.”

“Not at all. I’m the one who should be thanking you. I’ve never seen such a friendly bunch of kids. You’re like one big, happy family.”

“That’s what I like about our town. Everybody helps each other out—like we really are all brothers and sisters. You know, when the grown-ups are here, they’re the same way, playing with all of us, whether we’re actually their children or not.”

“Well, sounds like we’ve got a reputation to live up to, then,” Armstrong said. “Care for a spin, Miss Rose?”

“Oh, but I’m bigger than the other children … and heavier,” Rose said, though the tug-of-war between eagerness and responsibility stood out clearly on her face.

Armstrong winked. “It’s perfectly safe. I’ve got faith in my muscles.” He tensed a bicep, and the muscles rippled along his arm. Rose’s eyes went wide, and she giggled.

“All right!”

Rose jumped and Armstrong plucked her lightly out of the air. “Here goes!”

Across the table, Hughes was lifting the smaller children high above his head. Rose’s house was filled with even more laughter and merriment than the night before.

While the children and Rose laughed and had fun, Roy picked up a candle and a light bulb and walked outside to check on the front porch lamp. It had been flickering earlier and was probably due for a change.

For all the merriment inside, Roy looked at the children and saw sadness lingering at the corners of their eyes. With only this one last night left with their guests, they had clearly decided to make the most out of the evening. It fell to them to give the kids what they wanted, and Hughes and Armstrong were more than up to the task. Once I’m done with the dishes, maybe I’ll join them, Roy thought. He reached out for the lamp on the unlit porch, when he heard voices drifting toward him from the darkness of the road.

“Hey, Tild! I just got a ride from Mr. Armstrong!”

“Huh, no kidding.”

It sounded like Tild and Zaj. Zaj’s voice sang with exuberance, but the older boy sounded as grumpy as ever.

“We’ve never had fun guests like these! I wish Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Hughes would stay longer! Why don’t we ask them?”

Light from the other houses showed the village in vague, amorphous shadows, yet Roy could see Tild and Zaj nowhere. Still, he could tell from the tone of Zaj’s voice how much he had grown fond of their visitors. Tild’s voice, by contrast, remained cold.

“We can’t let them. They can’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“The grown-ups who come to our village don’t come here to live, Zaj. They’re just passing through.”

“I know, but … ”

“Let it go.”

“But … but it’s so lonely here! You’re always shut up in your house, and you never play with us … I went there and knocked today, and you didn’t even answer the door!”

“I told you not to come to my house during the day. I have to focus on my work. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Roy felt the shift in the boy’s tone, and fearing that saying something would only earn him another menacing glare, he focused on fixing the lamp. The light flickered on, revealing the arguing boys a little way down the road.

Tild’s shirt and arms were caked with mud from the fields. When the light flickered on, Tild noticed they had company and turned his back, the anger plain on his face. Zaj merely stood there on the verge of tears. He hadn’t seen Roy.

“I don’t like you anymore, Tild. Mr. Armstrong and them are much nicer! I hate you!” Zaj’s words, so simple and so clear, cut like a knife. Large tears running down his cheeks, the younger boy ran past Roy into Rose’s house.

Tild stood alone in the glow of the front porch lamp. A single tear ran down his cheek. “I told you I didn’t want you here,” he said, glaring at Roy. “Grown-ups come visit us, but they always have to leave. They’re nice enough when they’re here, but they don’t care enough to stay.” Tild’s voice rose from a hush to a shout. “It’s not fair! I have to work all day! I have to give up everything for them … and they hate me! You just come in here, and because you’re adults, they instantly trust you! I can’t do this anymore!”

“Tild,” Roy called out.

The boy’s face twisted in pain. He whirled away. “You can stay here and watch the children. I’m through with it!”

Tild began to run and soon vanished in the night.

Rose stepped out onto the front porch. “Where’s Tild, Roy? Zaj was crying.”

“They were fighting about something … Do Tild and the other children not get along?” Since their welcome to the village, Roy had assumed Tild was the leader of the children. He imagined him as a surrogate parent, in a way, but there was clearly a rift between him and Zaj. Come to think of it, Tild hadn’t showed his face last night or tonight at Rose’s house when they played with the children. He had chalked it up to the boy’s distrust of the guests, but maybe Tild just didn’t care to spend time with the other children.

Rose looked out at the empty street, a frown on her face. “Ever since we moved the village, Tild stays inside most of the time. He gave up studying ship design and just works on repair jobs he gets from down the mountain. He doesn’t play with the other children, and the way he talks … Well, it’s not hard to see why lots of the kids avoid him.” Rose sighed. “I’m sorry you had to see this on your last night. Don’t worry about Tild. Let’s go back inside. The other kids want to play with you too, Roy.”

“I’ve got all I can handle just waiting tables,” Roy said gently. Rose was much more worried than she let on. He followed her back inside, taking one glance back over his shoulder in the direction Tild had run. He could see nothing but the road stretching into darkness.

BY THE TIME THE THREE SOLDIERS had seen the children home and returned to their rooms, the night had grown late. They quickly reviewed their next day’s route to the bottom and went straight to bed.

“All in all, I had a great time,” Hughes said, hugging his pillow. He rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. “I enjoyed playing with the kids, and I even learned how to make a swing set.”

“I could get used to doing this every once in a while,” Armstrong agreed. “And I just might. They were practically begging for us to come back, after all.”

As Hughes and Armstrong smiled, whispering about how much they had enjoyed their unexpected side trip, Roy lay with his chin on his pillow, frowning.

“What’s wrong, Roy?”

“Nah, I’m just thinking about Tild.”

When the boy had left that night, he seemed ready to wash his hands of the village and all the children living there. He had even suggested in an offhand way that Roy and the others should take care of the children, but Roy felt pretty sure that didn’t mean the boy trusted them. Though he might not suspect them of being burglars, like he did when they first arrived, his attitude had changed little, even after they spent the whole day helping out. Perhaps one day wasn’t long enough for his demeanor to soften, but Roy still couldn’t see why everything the boy said seemed sharp-edged.

“I think Tild picked me out as his favorite person to hate, but even still, what’s with that kid’s attitude?”

Hughes rolled over so he was facing Roy. “He’s mad, is all.”

“Mad? At what?”

“Well … ” Hughes told them about his meeting with Tild by the woods earlier that day. “He almost warmed up to me when I complimented him, but when I pointed that fact out to him, he went back to his old, sour self. He’s got issues with adults, that much is certain. Haven’t a clue what they might be, though.”

“I figured it was something like that.”

Roy knew he was no judge of the children’s soul, but he sat there thinking for a while, wondering how he could possibly understand this boy with whom he had barely been able to communicate. “Not that I’m a stranger to being disliked,” Roy mumbled. He sat up in bed and reached for the lamp.

Tomorrow they would go down the mountain. They would probably never see Tild again, and that would suit the boy just fine. Perhaps the kindest thing to do would be to leave him alone. The only thing remaining for Roy now was to get some sleep.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning at nine, so nobody sleep in,” Roy said, blowing out the lamp and lying down with a sigh. “I’m bushed. I tell you, housework is hard.”

The moment Roy’s head hit the pillow, Hughes began to regale him with a tale of his daughter. “Speaking of housework, my Elicia … ”

Knowing the long, convoluted tale that was about to begin, Roy held up his hand for silence. “No stories, please.”

Hughes pushed his hand down. “No, no, listen! See when I get up in the morning … ”

“I don’t care. I’m going to sleep. You sleep, too.” Roy pulled his comforter up over his head.

“No really, she’s so sweet. She brings up a plate in her little hands … ”

Armstrong rolled over to face the wall. “I’ll be catching some sleep, too. Goodnight.”

“Then consider the story a lullaby. See, my daughter … ”

“Sleep!”

Hughes knocked aside the pillow thrown at his head and took cover under his own blankets. He kept talking, occasionally chuckling at his own story, while outside the wind howled in the forest.

WHEN THEY WENT downstairs the next day, the first floor was filled with kids who’d come to send them off. Roy, Hughes, and Armstrong went around, patting the children on the head, saying their farewells. Tild was nowhere to be seen, either inside the house or in the fields.

Roy didn’t like to leave on bad terms, but he had decided not to worry about the boy anymore. Whatever his problems were, as visitors, Roy, Hughes, and Armstrong had no right to interfere. If they stayed longer in the village, he would only grow to hate them more, and Roy had places to go, regardless.

Still, one thing bugged Roy. He could take the cold shoulder, but being called “useless” cut too deep. Roy told Hughes and Armstrong to wait a while, and he walked off toward the livestock hut. During his work the day before, the one thing he’d done well had been collecting eggs from the coop. He had time for one last trip, a last-ditch effort to clear his name and show his gratitude to Rose for all her patience.

The hens didn’t stir when Roy walked in and gave no resistance when he took the eggs. “Good girls, there. And no pecking at Rose, you hear?” Satisfied, Roy left the coop.

With the still-warm eggs in his hands, Roy looked up at the cloudless sky.

Down at the base, his training duties awaited his return. The men would come to him, all nervous, asking him to teach them how to do everything. Yet for some reason, the thought of answering their questions didn’t make him irritable anymore. He had been mad—furious, even—at his subordinates for coming to him with questions about the most basic things, but now it occurred to him that these tasks he considered simple weren’t easy for them at all.

Roy chuckled to himself. “Maybe I learned something.”

He had assumed the men came to him for directions because they were afraid of failing and being yelled at. But now he realized they simply didn’t want to be a burden. Just like when he had asked Rose where to put the plates or how to scrub a pot.

And Rose had never been mad, had never sighed. He remembered when she offered to take him under her wing, saying “if there’s anything you don’t understand, I’ll teach you.” And she had, many times.

Roy closed his eyes, smiling as a cool breeze blew against his face. Maybe I’ll be a better teacher now back at the base.

Roy began walking back toward Rose’s house and the others, when something caught his eye. Something small and metallic in the woods reflected the light of the sun. He stepped into the undergrowth and caught the morning sun rising over the mountains ahead of him. Roy held up his hand against the bright glare when he saw a large boulder sitting deeper in the woods. The metallic object lay at its foot.

Roy walked through the trees, the only sound being the low moan of the wind. He quickly found the piece of metal and picked it up. It was caked with mud. He scratched at it with his finger, his eyes going wide. “What’s this doing here?”

It was a shell casing.

Roy found it hard to believe that any of the children left alone in this village were allowed to use a rifle. Wasn’t Hughes saying last night that he had run into Tild in this part of the woods yesterday? Roy rubbed his chin.

In fact, something had bothered him when he heard Hughes’s story the night before. Even though Zaj had been mad at Tild for “staying inside all day and not answering his door,” Hughes had run into the boy outside, in the middle of the day. The two stories didn’t add up. Roy had chalked it up to bad timing. Even if the boy did work at home, he would certainly go outside sometime. But now that he had found a shell casing in the woods where Tild had been seen the day before, he started to wonder.

Roy put down his eggs and recalled the argument Tild and Zaj had the night before out in front of Rose’s house. One of his hands strayed to his shirt front. Tild’s shirt had been muddy there. His arms had been muddy too, from the wrists to the elbows. Roy tried to think of a position that would muddy only one’s forearms when it came to him.

Roy looked up at the boulder. It stood a little taller than he did, but it had plenty of handholds. He quickly climbed up. The top of the boulder was flat—just wide enough for a man to lie down—and it was covered in dry leaves and grass. Roy knelt down and looked out through the woods, away from the village. From here he had a clear view of the main path leading down the mountainside. Marks in the leaves suggested that someone had been lying here, and when Roy mimicked that position, he got dirt on his shirt and both his arms.

It was easy to picture Tild lying here, a rifle cradled in his arms. So he had lied, saying he was in his house doing repair work, when he was out here with a gun. From atop this boulder, Tild could sit on lookout and occasionally fire warning shots to make sure strangers didn’t approach the village if he didn’t like how they looked. Rose had said they received few visitors because their village had just relocated, but no doubt Tild’s guard duty helped further reduce that number.

Why would he go to such lengths to keep outsiders away? What made him so suspicious?

The wind blew through Roy’s hair as he sat contemplating this. The gentle blowing of the wind made a low murmur that moved through the woods. Roy turned. The sound was surprisingly like the one they had heard the other day by the rope bridge.

“What’s that?”

He had been hearing the wind since they arrived in the village, but he had merely chalked it up to strong winds this high up the mountain. Now, as he listened more closely, it sounded like the specific sort of sound of wind blowing through a deep ravine or valley—a low howling, like a beast, here in this wood. Roy walked a distance through the trees, pushing aside the underbrush until he came to a small, rock-filled gully. He heard the sound again, closer this time. Roy pricked up his ears, trying to determine the source. Eventually, he found a gap between two boulders wide enough for a person to pass through.

The wind shooting through the gap was the source of the howl. On closer inspection, Roy found that the placement of rocks seemed unnatural, compared to the landscape around them. In fact, he grew ever more certain that this was man-made. From the sound of the wind, the space on the other side of this gap must have been rather large. He put his hand on the edge of the rock, about to go in, and something black and sticky stuck to his fingers. Roy held his hand up to his face and smelled oil.

Roy forced his way through, heedless of the oil staining his clothes.

It was pitch black inside. Roy stumbled and kicked some-thing with his foot. It made a metallic rattling that echoed through the space inside. From the sound, Roy guessed he was in a very large cavern. Roy reached down and found that the object he had kicked was a lamp. He picked it up.

After smelling the air carefully for gas, Roy pulled a single glove from his pocket and put in on his hand. The glove had an alchemical circle drawn on it.

Even before he made a gesture with his hands, touching his finger to the circle and creating a lick of flame to light the lamp, Roy had an idea of what he would see.

There in the large cavern several steel frames had been strewn about. He saw two hoops, like wheels, and rods with gears on them, lying between sheets of curved metal. At a glance, it seemed like so much junk, but to a military man like Roy, it was ominous. Though it seemed a lot of parts were still missing, he knew what one could make if you put all the parts lying there together.

A few thoughts struck Roy in rapid succession. They all had to do with Hughes and Armstrong’s aborted mission to find the hidden weapons stash.

The village they had gone to had turned out to be abandoned.

And here they were, in a brand-new village.

A village filled with skilled engineers and craftsmen.

And the boy, Tild, so afraid of outsiders—was protecting something.

“Looks like I’ve found those weapons. Or should I say, weapon.” Roy whistled quietly. The parts filling the cavern, when put together, would form a cannon bigger than a rail-way car.

TILD CAST A DISPARAGING LOOK at the man standing in front of his door. He didn’t even try to drive him off.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

Roy stepped inside Tild’s house. His clothes were filthy with stains from the old oil that coated the walls of the cannon’s hiding place. The oil had sunk into the rock, turning black and giving off a peculiar scent. Tild noticed the stains but said nothing.

“That’s why you were so suspicious of us. No, not just us. You didn’t want any visitors to your little village, did you?”

Tild had been driving people off since the village moved, Roy figured. It all made sense. When they had arrived in the village, Tild had showed up later than the other children, and when they told him how they had got there, by the rope bridge, he had frowned. He had been watching only the main path up to the village.

“Well?” Tild said, his eyes moving to look at Roy. “So now you know everything. What will you do? Are you going to tell the military? Or maybe sell the information to someone else?” Tild spoke carelessly, as though he didn’t really care what happened in the end. “Do whatever you like.”

He had said these same words to Rose and the other children when they decided to let Roy and the others stay.

“It doesn’t matter how hard I try, it all comes to nothing in the end.”

Roy could hear the fatigue of long months spent holding a dark secret in the boy’s voice.

“None of the other kids know?”

Tild snorted and smiled a bored sort of smile. “Of course not. I’m not about to tell them their parents make weapons that kill people. They all think our parents are out there helping rebuild the country.”

Factories competed fiercely for military arms contracts. Roy knew the factories aggressively courted people with skill, hoping to get an edge over their rivals. Construction, shipbuilding, and even munitions manufacture all required metal. That made anyone who knew how to work with metal valuable. And someone who might potentially improve the technology available to a munitions factory would be prized highly indeed.

It made sense that the parents of the children who lived in this town would be top on many factories’ wanted lists. They might have started out in more innocent careers, but offers too good to turn down would have come sooner or later. They probably didn’t have the heart to tell their children they weren’t building houses and fishing boats anymore. Only Tild, the eldest, knew the truth.

“As if the military really cares what happens to us,” Tild said, spitting out the words with a sudden anger. “They gather up all these technicians and say it’s for the good of the country, but they don’t care about us. They just want to win their stupid wars and boast about their accomplishments. And they keep all the good equipment to themselves, because they have all the money. Our parents have trouble just holding on to their jobs. And now, because they’re working on weapons, even our homes are military targets … it’s ridiculous.”

The military had never ordered a factory to hire technicians, but that was hardly a defense, and Roy knew it. It was common practice to go to already overworked factories, the ones with the best technology, and to give them orders for weapons. It worked a bit like Roy’s subordinates at Eastern Command coming to him for his opinions on proposals the day he had to leave. If you go to somebody who already has too much on his plate and ask him to do more, either he refuses you, as Roy had, or he goes looking for more hands. No factory that valued its business would choose the former.

Even when they had no outstanding orders, the factories worked around the clock developing new weapons to pitch to the army. The cannon he’d found in the cave was likely one of those. Yet if you make weapons, there will always be people who try to take them. Tild’s village had been relocated for that very reason, to avoid unfriendly eyes.

“No matter how many times we move, word always gets around. Men from other factories come snooping, some even with guns. So I have to spend all my time protecting this place, and the other kids hate me for it. Everyone hates me, and I hate them.”

Roy heard not only anger toward the military in the boy’s words, but anger toward the parents who had put him and the other kids in this situation.

“Even your own parents?”

“Especially them.”

Tild turned away, gritting his teeth. “My dad used to dream of building a big ship and sailing around the world. But now he’s using all his know-how to give the people with guns more guns, more ways to kill people! Once, when I visited the factory, I saw the head man and my father shaking hands with a military inspector. Shaking hands! How could he even look him in the face after everything the military has done to us? He didn’t just sell his skill; he sold his soul, too.”

Roy was silent.

“I’m through with it. The parents asked me to watch the town, and that’s what I did, but no more. Not to protect something like that—a weapon that will just ruin more lives.”

To Tild, the cannon was like a cross he had to bear, and he looked ready to throw it aside. But Roy knew the power of a weapon like that, the product of so many great minds working together. It could strike a target several miles away, even knock down aerial targets. You couldn’t keep something like that hidden for long. People would come after it sooner or later—people who would want the weapon for themselves or to sell it to the highest bidder without regard for whom that might be.

Keeping this secret exhausted Tild. It drained him of the energy to pursue his own shipwright studies and kept his attention from Zaj and the other kids who so clearly resented his distance.

Roy looked at the boy for a while before quietly asking, “Why do you think your parents hid that weapon—your parents who sold even their souls?”

“How should I know?” Tild turned away.

Roy grabbed him by the shoulder. “No, think about it. I agree with you—weapons are terrible things. If that cannon were completed, it would be incredibly powerful. That’s why they’ve tried to hide it, don’t you think?”

Tild didn’t reply.

“Some weapons can be used to protect, to defend, but that weapon can be used only to destroy. If word got out about it, it would only speed up the pace of arms development, and in the end, a lot of people would die. That’s why your parents have kept it hidden from the world. That’s why it’s here and not in the hands of some arms dealer. Can you still say they sold their souls? You still believe in your parents, somewhere in your heart, don’t you? That’s why you watched over the weapon for so long.”

He had been on the verge of leaving town without a word, but now that Roy knew what was going on, he felt he needed to set the boy straight about his parents. He wasn’t trying to ease the boy’s anger. He just wanted to give meaning to what Tild had been doing for so long.

Tild thrust Roy’s arm aside and slammed his fist into the wall. “What do you know?! You don’t know how it feels to have everyone hate you, to do what you’re told all the time! Every time Zaj or one of the others says something, it hurts. It really hurts. But I’m the oldest, so they push everything on me … that’s why I hate grown-ups!”

Tild reached out, grabbing the handle to a drawer in a nearby cabinet. “This is what you came here for, isn’t it? Here! Take it!”

Tild yanked the drawer completely out and turned it upside down. Pens, scissors, and a box of paperclips fell out onto the floor. Tild kicked at them with his foot, uncovering a single piece of paper. He picked it up and thrust it at Roy.

The paper detailed the design for the completed cannon.

“Why even try to protect something like this? What’s the point?” Tild shouted. A heavy pounding came from the door.

“Tild! Tild! You there?! Open up!”

“Roy! Are you in there? We got a problem!”

Rose and Hughes were shouting outside. Roy hurriedly stuffed the designs into his pocket and opened the door. “What’s going on?”

Rose craned her neck to look over Roy’s shoulder at Tild standing at the back of the room. She frowned for a moment, then the tension returned to her face. “Some men have come to the village—scary men! Zaj ran into them by the field on the edge of town, and they attacked him and yelled at him. They demanded that he show them what we had hidden here. What’s he talking about?!”

“Uh-oh!”

Roy grimaced. While Tild had been away from his post, men had come to the village, and he knew what they were after.

He looked down the steps to see Armstrong carrying Zaj in his arms. The boy was crying. An ugly red welt rose on his cheek. Whomever these men were, they didn’t think twice about harming children, and they were definitely here for the weapons.

“Everyone’s so frightened! What should we do, Tild?” Rose was shaking, still in shock from seeing Zaj getting punched.

But Tild stood with his back to the door and said nothing, a look of weary pain on his face.

“Roy,” Hughes whispered. “I only saw them from a distance, but I’m sure one of the men is from that factory that tipped us off.”

“You think they came here to get evidence to take to the military for themselves?”

If it became known that their competitor concealed weapons from the army, their competitor’s contract would be nullified on the spot, opening the door for them.

Armstrong looked deflated. “I didn’t want to leave those ruffians out there to their own means, but myself and the lieutenant colonel here had our hands full just getting Rose and the other kids to safety. And we were concerned about being found out.”

Though they had only been helping out the children, these children’s parents worked at factories with military contracts. It wouldn’t do for high-ranking members of the military to be seen having any connection beyond pure business with people at the factory.

Roy nodded. “Understood. Leave this to me. You and Hughes can watch the children.” He turned and grabbed Tild by the arm. “Let’s go!”

“What are you talking about? I told you, I’m through with … ”

“Just come on!”

Dragging the unwilling Tild behind him, Roy made for the entrance to the village. There he found them, three shady individuals standing in the clearing before the livestock pens.

“Them again,” Tild muttered from behind Roy. Apparently, Tild had run into this crowd before. When they saw the boy, they laughed uproariously.

“Hey, it’s you. Thought you were gone when nobody shot at us.”

“Who’s that? You hire a bodyguard?”

The man looked suspiciously at Roy.

“He’s not my … ” Tild began, but Roy cut him off.

“That’s right. They hired me to keep trouble like you out of town.”

“We did not!” Tild shouted. The three men were laughing out loud.

“You talk big for someone without any weapons,” one of the men said, raising the rifle in his hands and taking casual aim at Roy. “Sorry to tell you this, but we’re hired guns ourselves. I’m a pretty good shot, you know.” The man’s steady grip on the weapon suggested he knew what he was doing with it. “Out of the way. We came here to talk to the boy, not you.”

Tild stepped forward, pushing Roy back in the direction of the village. “They don’t care that you’re not armed! They’ll beat a scrawny guy like you down in a minute. We should just give them the plans … ”

What could a guy who could barely wash dishes do against this lot? He reached for Roy’s chest pocket. But Roy caught his hand before he pulled out the plans.

“I feel sorry for them.”

“Huh?!”

Tild wasn’t the only one who raised an eyebrow at Roy’s swaggering confidence.

One of the men’s jaws twitched. “You talk big, stranger!”

“We’ll just take him and the boy out.”

“I like the sound of that!”

The two men without guns raised their fists and moved in.

Roy grabbed the arm of the man going for his chest. With a quick flick of his hands, he twisted the man’s wrist upward, forcing him off his feet and onto the ground.

Next to him, Tild dodged a blow from the other man, ducking to the side, but the third man was waiting for him. “Give it up! Without your gun, you’re just another scrawny brat!”

Tild jerked his head back, seeing a meaty fist swinging toward his cheek. It was too late. He closed his eyes. But the man’s fist never connected.

“Huh?”

Tild opened his eyes to see Roy gripping the man’s fist between his fingers. He had stopped the blow in midair!

“Tild,” Roy called out, straining from the effort of holding the larger man back. “Maybe you can fight these guys off, but what about the other kids? Leave them to fend for themselves, and you’re practically letting guys like this walk into town.”

Tild looked down, remembering the red welt on Zaj’s cheek.

“You still want to quit?” Roy asked.

“Quit? Quit what?”

“Quit protecting this village!”

Roy suddenly yanked the man’s fist toward him, catching him in the stomach with his knee as he stumbled forward. The man fell moaning to the ground. Above him, Roy stood up, acting like a shield in front of Tild, facing the man with the rifle.

“Run away now, and you’re running from all you’ve done to this day,” he said to the boy over his shoulder. “Even when they hated you for it, even when they didn’t understand, you still stayed on, watching over them, right?”

“I’m just saying I don’t care about that stupid weapon anymore!”

“No, you weren’t protecting the weapon, Tild. You were—you are—protecting the children! It’s the most important thing you could possibly do, and with no adults around, you’re the only one that can do it. You should be proud!”

Tild stared as Roy’s fist caught the man on the side of his head.

The words that Tild’s parents had left him with echoed in his mind.

Every time they got ready to leave the village to work, they reminded him again and again to protect the weapon. But on the day that they actually left, they never mentioned the weapon at all. They just said, “Take care of everyone for us.”

And, he had, now that he thought about it. Whenever the kids got lonely or there was a problem, they’d always come to him. He was tired of the secrets, and the children’s scorn hurt him, but now and then he did feel proud to have so many people relying on him.

He’s right. I’m protecting the children.

Tild looked up and saw the man Roy had thrown to the ground stand shakily and begin to run. Tild chased after him.

“Tild! Don’t go too far!”

Tild looked over his shoulder. “They’re running for reinforcements! There’s always a bunch hiding nearby! If I don’t stop them now, the children will be in even more danger!”

Tild ran, his sense of duty pressing him even faster, and Roy followed. He couldn’t run through the fields as quickly as the boy, whose agile feet knew every clump of grass and soggy mud hole in the field. By the time he reached the boulder in the woods, Tild was already positioned on top of it, his rifle raised.

“Just like I thought—they brought friends. More of them than usual.”

Tild crouched, loading his rifle. He pointed downward. Roy could see no fewer than ten rough-looking men coming up the narrow, winding mountain path.

“I fire blanks just to scare them off … but I’m not sure how much longer that will work.”

“You don’t have any real rounds?”

“I do, I just don’t like using them. So far, the warning shots have been enough.”

This time, however, he faced more men than before, and with them so close, they might realize he was firing blanks.

“Maybe I don’t have a choice,” Tild muttered, clutching a box of live ammunition. His internal struggle showed on his face. Half of him didn’t want to use the real bullets at any cost, and the other half grew increasingly determined to protect the village, regardless of the price.

Roy looked up at Tild with a smile, then reached out to put a hand on the boy’s firing arm.

“Want me to help?”

“But there’s so many of them!”

Even with Roy’s impressive display of fighting techniques, he found it hard to shake the boy’s image of him as useless. Even now the boy’s doubtful glare made him wince.

“I may not look like much, kid, but I’ve got what it takes.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Roy reached into his pocket and took out his glove and put it on under Tild’s watchful eyes.

“Check this out,” Roy said with a grin, standing up on the boulder next to the boy.

“Come no farther!” he shouted down to the climbing men. The bandits stopped in their tracks and looked up at him.

Even now in the middle of the day, the light was dim beneath the branches of the forest. The men looked up to the silhouetted form on top of the boulder. A single ray of sunlight seemed to cut through the trees above him, illuminating him so that the bandits had to squint their eyes to see him extending his arms in their direction.

The next instant, a sharp crack echoed through the woods.

“Whoa!” Tild gasped. A small flame had appeared above Roy’s gloved hand. “What’s that?!”

“Alchemy. I’m much better at it than housework.” Roy grinned as he turned and let loose at the bandits. In an instant, the tiny flickering flame at his fingertips expanded, then split in the air, becoming several balls of fire. Each of the burning spheres glowed with a reddish light, shooting through the woods to rain down on the bandits’ heads, or fall to the ground and slither on the ground toward them like snakes. The men screamed, seeing the living flame coming for them.

“You’re not welcome in this village. Remember that!” Roy shouted at the backs of the fleeing men.

A minute later, all of the men were out of sight. Tild was left staring at Roy.

“I had no idea you could … Who are you?”

It had taken a brave stand against terrible odds—and a bit of alchemy—to do it, but finally it seemed the boy’s opinion of him had changed. Tild stared at Roy’s hands in amazement. “And here I thought you were useless … ”

Tild swallowed. Not only had this man straightened out his thinking about his obligations to the village, he had just saved them all, single-handedly.

Roy shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not the sort of guy you’d like anyway.”

Tild raised an eyebrow. Roy handed him a small sheet of paper.

“What’s this?” It was a page from a memo pad. Tild read the words on it.

“Eastern Command?”

“That’s right. I’m with the military, your sworn enemy. I didn’t intend to deceive you, but things just turned out that way … Listen, if you ever need help, you call this number here. We’ll come.”

On the paper was written the telephone number for the officers’ room at Eastern Command, along with Roy’s personal calling code.

“You’re military?” Tild muttered, his eyes wide with amaz-ement. “So wait, were you lying about dropping your money, too?”

“No, that was the truth. I dropped a good 57,000 cens in that stupid ravine.”

Tild chuckled despite himself.

Then he heard the sound of children from the village.

“Tild!”

“Tild! Roy!”

The two turned in the direction of the voice, and saw Rose, Luido, Hughes, and the rest standing at the edge of the forest, peering through the trees toward them.

“Tild, where are you?”

“Are you okay, Roy?”

“They’re fine, they’re fine, I see both of them.”

Hughes smiled at the children. Next to him, Armstrong was holding Zaj in his arms.

Roy waved, when he heard Tild whisper beside him. “Are you going to tell our secret to the military?”

He wasn’t accusing. He was just making sure, wondering if he would have to move the village again. But Roy had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He knew their parents weren’t the types to sell the weapon to anyone shady, and he didn’t want to disturb the peaceful lives of the children living here. “Not a chance. Oh, and this is yours too,” Roy said, pulling another piece of paper out of his pocket and placing it square on the boy’s head. “I don’t need any extra baggage on my trip down the mountain.”

Tild looked up at the plans and took them, smiling.

TILD SAT ALONE on top of the boulder, looking down the mountain path. The sun was high in the sky. Far below him he could see Roy and the two other men heading down the mountain. He watched them as they dwindled into the distance.

He held the plans tightly in his hand.

When he looked up again, the three men had started to disappear over a rise in the path. Tild stood straight in the sunlight that came streaming through the branches above him. They were so far that even if they turned, they wouldn’t be able to see him. He would be lost in the distance, and the light coming down on the boulder. As they passed out of view, Tild raised a hand to his forehead, the fingers straight in a salute.

Tild stood a while after he could no longer see them, then, turning around, he went to jump down and make his way back to the village. Then he noticed for the first time a small figure standing in the shadow of the rock.

“What are you doing out here, Zaj?”

Zaj stood ramrod straight, giving a formal salute. “Just copying you.”

Tild’s face blushed bright red. “H-hey, I wasn’t … I was just shading my eyes from the sun!”

Before the angry Tild could grab him, Zaj bolted for the village, shouting “I know what I saw!” over his shoulder.

“Hey!” Tild laughed and chased the younger boy back across the fields.

He would go back to doing what he always had, watching over the children until their parents came back. He wasn’t certain everything would go well. There would probably be more fights, more harsh words.

But now he knew that was the way it should be. The way it had to be, if he intended to keep the village safe. Tild looked at the cluster of houses standing between those well kept fields, and he felt a bit more pride than he had the day before.

“HUH, so that’s what was going on.”

“I finally understand what Tild was up to. Boy, that kid wasn’t making any sense for a while there.”

Roy explained the situation in the village to Hughes and Armstrong as they walked the gently sloping path down the mountain—a stark contrast to their vertical ascent two days before.

“Sorry, guys … ”

The whole reason Armstrong and Hughes had come out here in the first place was to find that hidden weapon, and Roy knew it. Now, he had single-handedly ensured the failure of their mission. Even though they didn’t seem to be outright angry with him, he felt he owed them an explanation. Still, he had expected a bigger reaction than the one he got.

“You aren’t surprised at all?” Roy asked, a little deflated.

“Nah, I figured it was something like that,” Hughes replied with his usual nonchalant demeanor.

“What? Don’t tell me you knew they had the weapon!” They walked single file down a narrow section of the path. Roy looked back over his shoulder at Hughes.

“Well, of course we knew. Remember, we came here specifically to investigate that weapon, after all,” Hughes said matter-of-factly.

Roy stopped, letting the words sink in. They didn’t. “Huh?”

Hughes shook his head. “See, when we started asking questions around that abandoned village, we got solid leads suggesting that something was up near the summit of the mountain.”

“You planned to come here all along?! Wait, you lied to me!”

“Nobody lied. Didn’t we tell the soldiers from your base we were on a mission?”

If looks could kill, Roy’s would have blasted Hughes clear across the mountainside, with Hughes chuckling all the way. Roy thought back to when he first encountered the two down at the base. When he had asked them how their investigation went, they had never told him it was over; they merely said they had gone to the wrong place.

To cover up their hiking trip, they had told those soldiers they were going on a secret mission. Or at least Roy had assumed it was a cover.

When the rope bridge broke, they had urged Roy onward, warning that the trip might take several days to “account for uncertainties.”

They had intended to investigate this village all along.

It wasn’t a lie. It was worse.

Roy glared needles at Hughes.

Armstrong tried to apologize. “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

“No, forget it.” Roy knew who was really behind this deception, and he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of showing how much it stung.

“That’s right, there’s nothing to apologize for, right, Roy?” Hughes said, grinning mischievously.

“You’ve got plenty to apologize for!” Roy barked. They walked a little farther before Roy turned to the two once again. “Are you going to tell the military?”

Roy had promised Tild they wouldn’t tell anyone, but he hadn’t thought about Hughes and Armstrong or their mission. In reality, it was their jurisdiction.

Hughes waved his hand dismissively. “Wouldn’t dream of it. We don’t have the plans, and the cannon itself is in pieces, anyway. And I wouldn’t want to tear apart those kids’ houses and that windmill just to seize the remaining parts, either.”

“Houses? Oh … ”

It was at that moment that Roy finally realized that the village had another secret.

Many of those distinctively built houses along the street had sheets of metal for their roofs and windowsills. According to Armstrong, the inside of the windmill had been constructed from a part of the cannon barrel itself. The parents had scattered parts of the weapon all around town.

Hughes and Armstrong noticed that the moment they arrived. It proved better than anything that the parents of the town had no plans to sell the weapon. When they saw how much the parents treasured their own children, Hughes and Armstrong called off the investigation and instead focused on enjoying their time in the village.

“You could have said something,” Roy muttered.

Hughes laughed brightly. “But we brought you along to give you a change of pace! It wouldn’t have been fair for us to bring up work.”

“What do you mean, a change of pace! You tricked me into going along with you. And I never saw this ‘scenic view’ you two were blathering about.”

“Well, some rumors don’t pan out, I guess. I was looking forward to it myself.”

“You were looking forward to it? I was looking forward to it! Here, I thought we’d enjoy a nice relaxing hike, and … ” Roy paused to catch his breath before launching into another tirade of complaints when Hughes hushed him.

“Quiet, they’ll hear!” He was looking down across the mountainside. Roy followed his eyes.

They had come very close to the bottom. On the path just ahead of them stood some men in military uniforms.

“Colonel!”

“You made it!”

The soldiers ran up the path, with sergeants Natts and Cayt in the lead.

“Colonel! You won’t believe what we did! While you were away, I completed the entire emergency training! Here’s the report! Did we get it right?”

“I recorded every transmission,” the communications officer boasted next to him. “But I keep losing all of the papers I use to record them! How do I stop that from happening, Colonel?!”

The men clustered around Roy, waving documents and books in their hands, filling the air with their reports and repeated questions. In all, nearly thirty soldiers had come to greet them. Though he certainly couldn’t complain of a lukewarm welcome, only a few had really needed to come, not an entire cavalcade.

Roy, on the verge of shouting, instead took a deep breath. “Try not to leave your posts when you can avoid it,” he gently reprimanded them.

Rose’s words rang in his mind. If you don’t know how to do something, I’ll just teach you.

Roy felt it was egotistical of him to assume something easy for him would be easy for another.

Some people simply didn’t know how to do certain tasks. He just had to teach them—over and over if need be. After experiencing Rose’s kindness as she dealt with his own ineptitude, Roy hoped he understood how his men felt a little better.

“Hey, Hughes,” Roy said, tapping Hughes on the shoulder.

“Huh?”

Regardless of how it had happened, Hughes had succeeded in dragging the weary Roy away from his work at the base, and, in the end, Roy had gained something from it.

Roy smiled. “You know, it wasn’t such a bad vacation after all.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, when he returned to his old, familiar post at Eastern Command, Roy intended to treat his old subordinates with the same kindness he had learned to show the men at his training post.

“You’ve got to be nice to people, when you think about it,” Roy said, smiling to himself.

No longer under the constant fear of being yelled at, the soldiers, under his training, had made incredible strides, and he had taught them things they didn’t know, sometimes doing the lessons over and over until they had it down perfectly.

On the last day of his training, the men had sent Roy off with tears in their eyes, and even Roy was moved. Though his kindness might not have matched Rose’s own, he felt proud that he had made it through the rest of the training without getting irritated once.

“Getting all tense and frustrated when you’re busy doesn’t help a thing. You have to keep your calm, even when there’s a storm around you,” Roy muttered to himself as he walked down the hall at Eastern Command. He felt enlightened. The first enlisted man he ran into was Breda.

“Hey there, Colonel, welcome back!”

“It’s good to be back.”

“And your timing is impeccable. Could you sign these for me?”

Breda passed the stack of thick files into Roy’s arms. There were twenty in all.

“Of course.”

Gently. Roy smiled to himself and headed toward the officers’ room carrying the files in his hands.

Falman and Fuery ran up from behind him before he reached the door. “Colonel, you’re back from training! Sorry about this, but can you look over these reports before the end of the day?”

“Welcome back, Colonel. I’m gonna need you to do this for me too, would you?”

With a great fluttering of papers, roughly fifty sheets of surveys and reports joined the pile in Roy’s arms.

“ … Right.”

Gently. Still smiling, Roy walked into the officers’ room, carrying his twenty files and fifty reports.

He walked into his office, surprising Havoc, who was in the process of adding a few more papers to the mountain already on his desk.

“Oh! Welcome back, Colonel.”

“Good to see you.”

“You couldn’t have picked a better time to come back, sir. I was running out of places to stack these papers. Think you can get to those by tomorrow?” Havoc pointed toward a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner of the room.

“Huh?” Roy tried to put on a gentle smile, when a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. “I can’t do all that!”

It was one thing to not expect the impossible of others, but what if others expected the impossible of you? Roy grabbed Havoc’s arm as the other man tried to leave the room.

“Second Lieutenant Havoc, you’ve got to help me.”

“No way, sir.”

With those three words, Havoc bolted out the door.

When someone couldn’t do something, you had to teach them, to help them. Roy began to remember why he couldn’t stand Eastern Command. Here, even when you couldn’t do something, people just looked the other way, all the while pushing you harder and harder.

Roy sat steaming in silence, when the door opened behind him again. It was Hawkeye.

“Welcome back, Colonel.”

“ … Good to be here,” he mumbled.

“You hid the documents you were supposed to finish in your desk drawer before going on your training, yes? Please finish those by the end of the day. That will be all.”

She hadn’t added anything to the tremendous stack already in Roy’s arms, nor did she point to any new cardboard boxes by the walls. Roy had that at the least to be grateful for.

“I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get through, but I’ll try my hardest.”

“Give it as much attention as you gave this, and it will be done in no time.”

She handed him a photograph.

“What is this?”

“A gift from Lieutenant Colonel Hughes.”

The photo showed Roy sitting with a serious look on his face, holding vegetables in one hand. He was wearing an apron. The photo also clearly showed the bandages on his hands, as well as the pile of vegetables shaven to little stumps in the basket by his feet.

It was photographic evidence of the worst kind.

As if to add insult to injury, just then his subordinates came in through the door bringing him more work.

“Colonel, about this document—Hey! What’s that?!”

“It’s called a photograph. You use a camera with a lens to make an image on … ”

“No, I know that! I wanted to know what you’re doing wearing that apron!” asked Fuery.

“Look at those bandages on his hand. Did you get hurt?” Breda wondered.

“You know, you look pretty good. That’s a photograph to treasure always. I know I will,” Havoc sniggered.

Aside from Hawkeye, every face in the room had blossomed into massive grins. For some time, Roy and his apron became the only subject worthy of conversation. His gleeful subordinates finally departed, leaving Roy alone in the room with an even larger stack of documents.

“It’s good to be kind,” Roy muttered. He wanted to weep. What was the point of being nice to subordinates when nobody was nice to you?

It was the beginning of another frantic day at Eastern Command, exactly the way he had left it.