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The snow has fallen for months now. It’s cold in the mountains, the frost marks the faces of poor children with chapped lips and scarred cheeks. Even so, they like the snow, they play in it for hours at a time; Erwin has watched them from his room through the window that gives to the north – the source of the freezing wind that makes the squares of glass rattle in their frames.
He doesn’t know why he looks at the children, watches them playing, throwing balled up fistfuls of icy slush at each other. They hit their targets more often than not, the chilled necks of other children, or an innocent passer-by who scolds them angrily while shaking their hat to get rid of most of the ice. Erwin follows the movements of the throws, trying to guess how many years the children have been honing their skills for, realising suddenly why the best spear-throwers and sharpshooters come from this place; here children learn early the basics of calculating distances and predicting the next moves of their targets as a part of their juvenile games. It’s easier to watch them with this in mind, turning their joy into strategies and plans, turning himself into the Commander. He analyses their moves until suddenly something sounds in the distance and they all go running into the same direction, away from the square below his window.
Sighing Erwin brushes back his hair that’s fallen out of place and walks to the table where a tray of food stands untouched; stew and thick-crusted bread with a slice of cheese, and a cup of some strange spiced drink, a specialty of the region. It’s gone cold but Erwin eats it anyway, in his mind going over the previous night’s ball at the old fortress where the food was not much finer than the hearty meals he’s enjoyed at the guest house. The noblemen here are nothing more than farmers in lords’ clothing, and Erwin is pleased he chose to travel here unaccompanied, save for Levi; even paying for two rooms has proven a waste of resources, considering how things stand. Of course he knew the nobles further from the capital were less wealthy, but he never could have guessed how dire their situation had grown since he last visited these parts.
With another heavy sigh, Erwin pushes away the tray and tries in vain to ease the tension that’s gathered onto his shoulders during the sled ride, worsened by the cold and the excessive softness of his goose-down pillow. The aches in his body long for warmth, something to thaw out the strain, and he dreams of hot springs and steaming baths as he gathers a selection of clean clothes onto his arms before exiting the room. Even so early in the evening there are lanterns freshly lit on the walls and he peers down into the pub where the Innkeeper is polishing glasses with a felt cloth while talking to a customer, an older man who looks none too pleased to Erwin. He hesitates for a second at the door to Levi’s room before descending the stairs; the creaking sound of the old wood alerts the Innkeeper.
“Commander, good night,” she calls out and gestures toward a chair at the bar. “Have a drink with us.”
“Good night,” he replies even though it is a strange custom to wish someone good night during the early hours of the evening, declining the offer of a drink by gesturing at the clothes he’s carrying. “I was heading out, for the… the heated room in the back, if that’s alright” he tells her; the words make the other customer scoff and turn away from him.
“Oh, the sauna?” the Innkeeper asks to confirm, and Erwin nods. “My boy’s still warming it up, but he should be done soon. Why don’t you have a drink while you wait, Commander?”
Erwin hesitates for a moment before thanking the woman and taking a seat, accepting the drink she offers: its flavour is sweet, stronger than the warm rounded sun-kissed meads of the warmer regions, much sharper and clearer in flavour. It tastes of cool summers in the shades of trees, like wildflowers and pine trees and heather.
“It’s a blend of birch sap and honey that I gather myself in the summer,” the Innkeeper explains when Erwin looks up and thanks her, complimenting the taste. “There’s really not a long time that the flowers bloom up here. A couple of months mostly so it’s the apple trees that give it that sweetness. My bees love the trees and keep them in heavy fruit year after year. We get good harvest before every winter, don’t we?”
The man next to Erwin agrees in a mumble before clearing his throat and spitting his tobacco into an empty glass.
“A good harvest, aye,” he mutters. “Of apples and little else.”
Erwin glances at the man’s sour face before turning back to his drink. “I presume the climate poses additional difficulties in terms of agriculture,” he thinks aloud, earning another scoff from the older man.
“You presume correct,” he says, laying a mocking emphasis on the word that seems to sit badly on his tongue. “No manners in the military, is there? Coming here and trying to rob us blind of the little we’ve got for your noble cause. You should’ve gone a couple of them walls in, where they keep the real gold. We’ve got nothing but the stinking air in the summer and the bleeding ice in the winter and that’s all you’re ever going to find here, boy. You ought to pack up your things and get back to where you came from before you waste any more of your time and put ideas into the heads of the young men here. They’ll do a lot better living off the land, such as it is, than going off with you lot to die outside the walls.”
With one last sour glare at Erwin, the man leaves his seat, retreating to the corner table with his tankard of ale. They look after him in silence for a moment, Erwin and the Innkeeper, before she sighs and shakes her head.
“Consider the drink on the house,” she tells Erwin under her breath, “for having to listen to talk like that.”
Erwin shakes his head. “Please, I’m happy to pay my due,” he insists, giving her a quick smile. “If I accepted a drink every time I heard talk like that, I would have turned into a drunkard years ago.”
The Innkeeper lets out a quiet laugh and leans onto the bar with both her hands. “Well, I’m not above admitting I can better afford your courtesy than my own,” she says. “We don’t get a lot of travellers during these months. It’s the cold that keeps them at bay. Your Captain doesn’t seem too pleased with it either, judging by the glimpse I caught of him this morning.”
Erwin turns to glance back at the door to Levi’s room, remembering how the man buried himself under furs and quilts for the sled ride back from the fortress the previous evening, and how at the ball his hand was busier grasping for his handkerchief than for a glass of wine.
“I apologise if he has been discourteous,” Erwin tells the Innkeeper, though it seems silly to act like Levi’s lack of manners is due to anything but his nature. “I’m afraid he’s feeling a bit under the weather.”
“Oh, no need to apologise,” she counters at once. “The cold he’s caught seems a vicious thing. I recommended the sauna to him myself when last I took up a pot of black currant tea, but he didn’t seem too keen on the idea.”
“I’ve heard of the healing properties of hot springs and the like,” Erwin says. “Is the sauna said to possess similar traits?”
“All the folk here swear by it,” the Innkeeper tells him cheerfully. “Say it can cure anything. I don’t know about that myself, but it’s good for sore limbs and the like. Gets you clean too, like nothing you’ve ever tried down the mountain.”
At this Erwin glances back toward Levi’s room again, imagining the man huddled up in a chair with his cup of tea, a heavy goose-down duvet wrapped around himself so tightly he can barely move; a pleasing bit of fiction, though Erwin isn’t sure why. It’s true he seemed unimpressed with the cold, growing sullen under his hood at the first sight of snow as they followed the winding paths up the slopes of the mountain. Erwin himself found it something of a marvel, relishing the way it turned the days brighter and the evenings better for travel.
“Perhaps I ought to have a word with him,” Erwin muses, smiling again at the Innkeeper. “It sounds as though the sauna would do him good.”
“I hope you have more luck than I,” she replies. “It’ll be no joke if that cold spreads to his chest.”
Erwin agrees with a serious nod, his brows drawing to a frown. “Well, the health of my men must always be a priority,” he thinks aloud, sipping at his drink. “Is there anything one can do to maximize the benefits of the sauna?”
After discussing the matter for as long as it takes the Innkeeper’s son to get the sauna good and warm, Erwin finds himself knocking on Levi’s door; he can feel he’s still wearing the same serious frown when the man answers, sniffling into his handkerchief.
“It appears you’re not feeling well,” Erwin tells him quite unnecessarily when he’s let inside; the room looks cleaner than his did when they arrived.
“I’m fine,” Levi replies at once, stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket as if trying to act like Erwin never saw it. “It’s this weather. I’ll be better once we get out of this snow hell.”
“I don’t think this is something we can afford to take lightly, Levi,” Erwin says, surprised at the severity of his own tone. “Your constitution may not be suited for this weather. Though it seems harmless now, it can lead to something more serious.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Erwin sighs. “So you will,” he says, hearing the note of impatience in his own words. “I, however, will not. You’re my best soldier, Levi. I can’t allow your talents to be lost to a chest cold.”
“So you’re ordering me to go into the dirty sweat box?” Levi snaps, clicking his tongue. “Five minutes as Commander and it’s already gone to your head.”
“I find this order to be perfectly within reasonable limits, the current state of your health considered. And besides,” Erwin protests, smiling and fiddling with the clothes in his lap, “I’m feeling apprehensive about this custom and if I am to make a fool of myself, I want my best man to be equally affected.”
“Sitting there, naked, sweating yourself to death next to some complete stranger,” Levi mutters, yanking the handkerchief out of his sleeve and blowing his nose on it. “Can’t imagine why you’d be apprehensive.”
“So the Innkeeper explained it to you?”
“She did,” Levi says, frowning, “and I told her I’d rather spend a night sleeping out in the snow than spend five minutes breathing in other people’s sweat.”
“Well, breathe it in you must,” Erwin reiterates, a smile betraying the authority in his voice. “And the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be done with it.”
“Mindless,” Levi mutters as he gathers his clothes and a rectangular tin box that rattles when he moves. “Sitting around in other people’s filth…”
They walk out of the guest house, shivering in the icy wind that claws at their clothes and pushes onto skin, leaving it numb and blushed. Erwin opens the door to the sauna – a low timber structure with only a small window giving out a dim, red glow – and steps back when a cloud of steam bursts out into the cold. They step into a little anteroom lined with wooden benches and pegs on the walls. By the door stand several shelves with clean towels piled one on top of the other. Levi reaches for one quickly and folds it open for inspection.
“Is it up to your standards?” Erwin asks him, loosening the bolo tie around his neck and hanging it on a peg before shrugging out of his uniform jacket.
Levi folds the towel back up and puts it down on a bench. “It’ll do,” he says, still sounding as unimpressed as he looked before.
Erwin laughs quietly and continues to undress, turning to the host of buckles that fasten leather straps around his body. Next to him, Levi sits down to pull off his boots, looking them over before placing them underneath the bench. Erwin watches him as he frees his feet from the straps and yanks his socks off, rolling them up in a ball and shoving them into the leg of his boot as if afraid someone’s going to steal them should he leave them out in the open. Erwin doesn’t remember to focus on his own clothes until Levi looks up, threatening to catch him staring. He feels relieved for not being caught out – and then, immediately, guilty for his own relief. He has no reason to keep his eyes from wandering; there’s nothing inappropriate in it, as it stands. He’s seen all his soldiers in various states of undress before. It’s only natural in close quarters, such as they share.
He yanks off his own boots and continues the task of releasing buckles, hanging up the pieces of gear next to his jacket before removing his shirt, shuddering when cool air tightens his skin to goosebumps, stretching the flesh marked a pale red by the leather. The stone tiles feel freezing underneath his feet once he’s finally out of his gear and socks, standing up to step out of his breeches. Meanwhile, Levi’s still wearing half his gear, hasn’t even pulled off his tie, which hangs loose around his neck. Erwin doesn’t feel as if he’s hurried in his own task but wonders now if he simply never noticed it. It certainly isn’t like Levi to dawdle, even in something like this.
Deciding it would be uncomfortable to wait, Erwin pulls off his undergarments and wraps a towel around his waist, feeling a sudden and unexplainable need for modesty. He considers saying something to break the strange silence in the room, to fill the space with something other than the soft chiming of metal buckles and the occasional sniffling sound Levi makes, but no words appear forthcoming and in the end he walks quietly over to the door by the towels, startled by another burst of steam that escapes into the anteroom. He closes the door quickly behind himself, feeling through some instinct that letting the hard-won heat escape would be inexcusable. He peers around himself in the dark; there’s no further light than a lantern on the windowsill, its sooty glass barely suited now to carry out its original task. He spots more pegs on the wall to his left – polished and varnished branches, curved like deer antlers – and he hangs up his towel, feeling more naked alone in this room than in the barracks’ showers, surrounded by half the corps.
The dry heat envelops Erwin as he takes in the room, his feet complaining against the stone slabs of the floor that remains, against all odds, uncomfortably cool. He hears a fire crackling behind the hatch of a metal heater topped with smooth, grey stones, and he wonders who could’ve come up with such a thing, and out of what necessity. He steps away from the source of the heat and finds three benches on the opposing wall, each one higher than the one before, the lowest more a wide stool than anything else. He lays his foot on it, grabbing the highest bench for support when the stool threatens to fall over under his weight.
He takes a seat on the highest bench, watching out for the cross-beams of the ceiling when he straightens his neck, the top of his head nearly brushing against the old timbers. The smell of resin and smoke has embedded itself into the grains of the wood and Erwin breathes it in, finding it pleasant – and a welcome change from the stench of sweat he was expecting but which is, he realises, noticeably absent. A faint aroma of pine and soap cuts through the heat and Erwin smiles. Perhaps Levi won’t have so much to complain about after all.
He walks in a moment later and Erwin keeps his gaze on the heat source out of a sudden and inexplicable need for modesty, still following the blurry shape out of the corner of his eye when it pauses to examine the old soot-worn wood. Finally convinced of the sufficient cleanliness of the place, Levi takes a seat next to him, a good two metres away, and draws his feet up onto the bench. When Erwin braves a glance, he marvels at how small Levi looks, curled up like he is; and how, despite it, he seems the furthers thing from harmless, even unarmed.
Not to let his eyes linger, Erwin turns and picks up a wide-bowled ladle sticking out of a bucket of water at his feet. He remembers the Innkeepers instructions and gathers water onto the ladle, balancing it for a moment before throwing it onto the hot stones above the fire. It disappears with an angry hiss, and seconds later Erwin feels a wave of near violent heat on his skin; he never thought one could get goosebumps from something so hot. Next to him Levi curls up even further and swears quietly under his breath. Erwin doesn’t know what to make of it. The sweltering caress of hot steam leaves behind beads of sweat as it subsides, and the heat feels more humid than before. Despite common sense, it’s not entirely unpleasant.
“I can see how this would be good for sore muscles,” Erwin muses in a mutter, gathering more water onto the ladle and turning to Levi with a frown. “Do you mind if I…?”
“Go ahead,” Levi grunts.
Another splash of water hits the stones, and out of curiosity for what will happen, Erwin lets another follow it barely seconds later. For a flash of a moment, the heat becomes near unbearable. Erwin bends his head and grits his teeth, breathing again only when the wave has passed and the room returns to its earlier level of warmth that now feels comfortable – almost comforting. He leans his back against the smooth old timbers and exhales long and hard, letting the warm air embrace his body and pull out the day’s tensions.
“Does it feel like it might be helpful?” Erwin asks Levi, finding him in the exact same position as before; there’s something relaxed in the slightly drooping lids of his eyes.
“I don’t know about that,” Levi tells him gruffly, “but it’s the first time I’ve felt warm this whole damn trip, so I guess it’s not been for nothing.”
Erwin laughs quietly, picking up the ladle. “Another?”
As wave after wave of heat passes through the room, the silence is scattered by the hissing and rasping of water kissed by fire – and by nothing else. It could be the lingering embarrassment of nudity that’s holding their tongues. It seems like a reasonable explanation to Erwin, and they’re both trying to avoid looking at each other hard enough to make it credible. He can sense it from Levi too, how his gaze stays directed to the door as if he’s fearing armed assassins bursting into the room. Even when his posture starts to slack and the back of his head hits the stained wooden beams behind him, there’s an alertness in his eyes, a distrust Erwin suspects was born in the vicious darkness of the Underground. It’s an impressive sight, if a little heart-breaking. He knows the price of relentless caution well enough himself.
“It feels like chills,” Levi suddenly whispers, eyelids barely parted. “The heat. At times.”
He stays quiet and watches as Levi stares at his arm as if willing the hair on it to stand on end. There’s something vulnerable about him then, a moment of the same innocence Erwin’s witnessed at Levi’s first time seeing snow; an almost child-like suspicion of things never before experienced. Wariness mixed with wonder. Suddenly he is grateful to have been able to give this to someone – as insufficient a compensation as it may be for all the things he takes.
“I heard some of the locals use water to cool off,” he says just to break the silence. “In summer they swim in the lake, and in winter they roll around in the snow.”
“What? Out there?”
“Apparently,” he states, laughing quietly at the captain angrily shaking his head. “I take it you disapprove?”
“Idiots,” Levi mutters. “What’s the point in getting warm if you’re just going to let it go to waste?”
“Perhaps it’s a custom only those with constant access to a place such as this can understand,” he muses, wiping a drop of sweat off the tip of his nose. “Though I see what you mean. You would think up here warmth would be a carefully sheltered resource.”
The quiet returns, and he still can’t quite say why it feels so different here, so charged and expectant. He glances at Levi and thinks he can see the tension in his body, too, in the tightness of his jaw and the stiffness of his scarred and blistered fingers but when he looks again, he can’t be sure it wasn’t all just a trick of the light. His uncertainty makes the heat feel oppressive and he forces himself to his feet, crouching against the low ceiling.
“Perhaps a bit of fresh air wouldn’t hurt,” he can hear himself mumble as he gets down onto the floor and crosses the room.
He clutches his towel on his way out and wraps it around his waist before stepping into the night and closing the door behind himself. He feels the cold and doesn’t, knows it must be cruel and biting but experiences it differently now, like the air is fresher than anything he’s ever drawn into his lungs before – though the steam rising off his body reminds him of the walls, and the freedom found in every breath beyond them. He watches a gust of wind rattling the old lantern by the window, the little flame inside it shuddering but persisting, and flinches when the door opens suddenly behind him.
“Came to see if you were going to throw yourself into it,” Levi tells him, and he laughs.
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
Levi nods his curt approval and turns to watch the heat rising off his arms and shoulders, clicking his tongue but saying nothing. Erwin can guess easily enough what he’s thinking, but says nothing about it either, savouring instead the rare moment when the man’s inner workings have presented to him so unambiguously. Even after all the long months they’ve known each other, he struggles with reading the man – all the more disconcerting for how unusual an experience it is for him. He’s tried to find explanations for it in numerous things, from the captain’s unusual origins and the resulting peculiarity of his character to his taciturnity and penchant for solitude but for whatever reason, the answers have never quite satisfied him. More than once he has found himself fretting over it at night, feeling like having witnessed the worst this world has thrown at them should have unlocked the man to him faster. On other nights he has wondered why he feels it’s so important to know Levi at all, and why he can’t be content letting the man keep his secrets.
“The houses here are well built,” the captain suddenly says, startling him out of his thoughts. “They stay warm but don’t hold the damp.”
“You’re right,” he says. “It’s a special building technique. I remember reading about it.”
“Better than our draughty old barracks,” Levi states, turning to the door. “I’m going back inside. It’s not normal standing out here like this.”
“I’ll join you.”
He climbs back into the warmth while Levi stays by the heater and adds a few logs into the fire that has burned down to embers. When he sits down again, Erwin finds his awakened curiosity makes it harder for him to keep his eyes to himself, hungry for any new information about the man that his body would yield; a scar, long since faded, that tells of a childhood injury, or a mark left by an eager lover in one of the guest houses they stayed at on their journey north. He manages just barely and feels embarrassed by his own nosiness.
“You hold warmth in very high regard,” he says, partly to change the course of his own thoughts and partly to indulge them. “I was wondering if there was a reason for it.”
“You like being cold, do you?” Levi asks him, and he has to admit the question wasn’t his brightest.
“Based on what I’ve observed here,” he starts, “I’m not as averse to it as you.”
A moment of quiet falls. In the dim light of the room, he can see Levi narrowing his eyes, as if calculating something.
“Is it essential knowledge,” he finally asks, “for a Commander to have?”
Erwin takes a moment to weigh his options, to pass back and forth between his rank and the man underneath it. He knows what the right answer is, the responsible one. He feels the weight of the Corps on himself, the call to honour his duty and be the Commander. Have Levi be nothing but his subordinate, just another man under his command – and really, isn’t that in itself enough, a good enough reason to inquire about his person? But when he speaks, for once the lie refuses to form on his tongue.
“No, I wouldn’t say it’s essential,” he admits, trying to ignore his own embarrassment. “I was merely curious.”
If the confessions has upset Levi or moved him in any way, he doesn’t show it. His eyes stay narrowed, staring at the door across the room, and for a long time he doesn’t speak.
“It’s a remnant, I think,” he finally says without moving his gaze, “from my childhood.”
Scenes flash through Erwin’s mind then, of poverty and strife and squalid rooms, cold and bare. He wonders if that is what Levi means. He wonders who he lived with, whether he had parents who looked after him. Whether anyone looked after him at all.
“I see,” he mutters but doesn’t know what else to say.
Inside the heater the fire is breaking the logs apart, making the wood and metal ring, filling the silence until Levi continues.
“There are some memories,” he says, “that bury themselves into your flesh. That’s what the cold is for me. It’s nonsense but… I feel it will live within me if I let it.”
Despite the heat of the room and the beads of sweat it has raised onto his skin, Erwin feels ice pouring into his veins with the words, like his body is trying to imagine it, the sort of cold Levi is talking about; constant and harrowing. It fits into his picture of what the man’s life must have been like before, how hard he must’ve been forced to work for the things he needed then: the food on his table, a roof over his head. In that moment, he wishes more than anything that he were offering Levi something other than this. Anything else but this.
“I won’t pretend to understand exactly what you mean,” he says; a meagre offering, unworthy of being called a consolation, “but nonetheless, I’m grateful that you shared it with me.”
At that, Levi turns to look at him, fixing him with a gaze more indecipherable than the whole of his life’s story, all the way from the Underground to their furthest outpost beyond the walls.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he says and looks at the door again.
The silence crawls back into the room and drives Erwin outside, into the cold that now only reminds him of his embarrassment. Beyond the whistling of the wind in the trees, he can hear the splashing of water; Levi taking advantage of his absence to wash the sweat off his body. He stays longer for it, taking care to give the man time to dress himself before stepping back indoors though the cold burns his feet and braces his hair with snow. He washes up without hurry, doesn’t bother to put on the whole of his gear for the journey up to his room in the guest house.
Outside his window, the children have returned to their games; he watches them for a moment before the light of his candle hides them from view. He hears their shouts and laughter when he sits down at the desk, knowing what he needs to do; to become the Commander again, to write his reports, to pen a few more letters to deliver to grieving parents on their route back home. But his mind wanders, returns to the half-light and the heat, and suddenly it feels like the laughter carrying in from the courtyard is meant only for him.