Sawtooth44: I never say Marble Phantasm and Reality Marble are identical. I say " To simplify, a Marble Phantasm is like a Reality Marble except that it does not violate the order of nature, so it is not eroded by Gaia." There are many other different and since the Marble Phantasm does not use the "shortcuts" of the Reality Marble (the violations of the natural order that cause its erosion by Gaia) it can only be created by entities much more powerful than mortals or Death Apostles... like True Ancestors or gods, which explains why they're a hundred times rarer than the Reality Marbles.
Blood and Snow
Chaos reigned over the port of Koeglin. As snowflakes danced in the setting sun, the snow piled up in the streets melted under streams of blood, amidst the corpses and smoke rising from burning houses. Wild cries, the clash of arms, and orders of officers seeking to reorganize the failed militia were heard. Goblins had appeared, killing, slaughtering the non-combatants, throwing themselves en masse at the guards present. With the effect of surprise, they had killed more than one.
Tristane Gaerwyth was an ordinary militiaman. A few months ago, he was still working on the harbor as a worker in a shipyard. His ambitions were limited to hoping to be noticed by a master carpenter and become journeyman carpenter... and thus have a better salary. Instead, he found himself dressed in bad cloth armor, a Chapel-de-fer on his head with a short sword of steel and a wooden shield marked with the city's arms to stand guard at the end of a wharf.
Damn goblins...
And still, Tristane felt lucky. He returned from a turn on the wooden wall that surrounded the city. At least on the docks, all we had to worry about was the cold and not another attack from those horrible little green monsters. At least that's what he thought.
And then, they had swept... without warning from the ramparts, they had spread into the streets of the harbor, attacking the inhabitants and the guards.
Tristane swallowed, raising his shield high. His two comrades, at his side, imitated his posture. One of them had a war axe, and the other had the same rudimentary sword as Tristane, mass-produced by the Koeglin ironworks to equip the militiamen.
The Goblins arrived, a dozen of them... dirty, dressed in filthy rags. The first of them held a rusty sword and a circular shield. Its "armor" was made of the bones of a creature's ribcage. He wore a leather cap from which came long pointed ears that recalled the elven origin of these ugly creatures. It is hard to believe that goblins were counted among the faeries when seen closely. The little monster began to giggle, discovering a mouth filled with chipped and yellowed fangs. His sharp and scratched voice sounded sinister:
- Ai! Pushdul! Hoshum bagronk!
What he had just said must have been very witty because these companions laughed in turn, folding their immense orange eyes.
- Gork!
The goblin who had just spoken held coarse scimitar, a circular shield made of loose boards and covered with a clumsy red paint drawing. Without armor, he was just wearing a leather loincloth, and strips of fabric around his hands and feet. His shoulders were covered by a mitted wolf quasi-nudity that allowed his clan tattoos to be discerned.
- Hïa! Hïa!
A third mockingly approved. He was wearing armor made of pieces of iron badly forged and pitted by corrosion: a plastron, a helmet with visor. He used a cyrodilic steel shield and an axe of the same metal, which also had to come from looting.
Tall as 12-year-old children, scary thin, they weren't very impressive. Nevertheless, those who underestimated goblins bitterly regretted it. Admittedly, a goblin alone was not a threat to an adult man even if rudimentary armed... but where one of these little monsters was seen, there were ten, a hundred or even a thousand nearby. Nor should we delude ourselves about their apparent fragility. In fact, these little horrors were surprisingly strong for their size, more than a grown man.
- Ya harri hoï!
On this statement, the goblins rushed forward. Though cowards, like all bullies, they found their courage in numbers... and so they had great courage when they were four against one.
Immediately, Tristane's universe became a whirlwind of scarlet violence. It was necessary to strike, counter, taking care not to break the line with his two companions. Better organized, the humans broke the first assault. The goblins retreated, leaving four of their own on the ground... one of them still lived and whimpered pitifully. As he sought to crawl to his allies, one of the guards finished him. This earned a concert of furious cries from the surviving goblins that reorganized themselves a few tens of meters away. Tristane turned to his neighbor:
- Why did you do that? They're even angrier now!
- "Hosh" means entrails and "bagronk" torture chamber... given what they are preparing to hang us by the guts, or something like that, I have no intention of showing pity.
- I see...
The three guards tightened their ranks. None of them were career soldiers, but this was their town and... they had nothing to hope for but a quick death in case of defeat, and only if they were lucky. It was not good to corner ordinary peoples; they could fight better than professionals.
The second assault was even more violent. Tristane smashed the skull of a first goblin; counter the attack of a second then counter-attack plunging his short blade right into his chest as he raised his club to strike. Alas, the militiaman had made a rookie mistake, sinking his sword too deeply. While he was trying to get the blade out, a monster with an axe struck him above the elbow. In horror, the young man saw his severed arm fall to the ground. By reflex, he gave a shield blow to his opponent, repelling him and knocking him down. The militiaman to his left finished him by hitting him in the head before he got up again. It was only at this moment that Tristane was overcome by pain, bringing him to his knees.
- Talos... Khynn... Phynnaster... oh gods, give me strength!
The invocation to the Bretons gods (2) was to take effect because the surviving goblins lost themselves in terror:
- Sakai! Squail!
His arm... as his companion stopped the bleeding by making a tourniquet with a strip of cloth torn from his coat-of-arm, Tristane stared at the corpse of the third guardsman... In fact, he must have considered himself lucky. He survived, not all of them did, and in addition... he looked at the tangled bodies of a dozen goblins. Yes, they had slaughtered their enemies.
It was at that moment that Tristane became aware of the noise behind him. Helped by his comrade, he straightened himself by wincing with pain. A ship had just docked. It was a trade carrack carrying the colors of the Duchy of Phrygios to its mainmast.
Men landed. Soldiers dressed in cloth armors or quilted gambesons. They wore the coat-of-arm of the duchy of Verandia. In the front, a very young woman, a teenager whose beauty made him forgets for a moment the pain of his severed arm.
She went bare-headed and her hair neatly knotted into a rolled-up mat in the back of her skull shimmering in the setting sun as if gold powder were covering them. Her delicate face was very pale, with a small mouth, a narrow chin. But what struck him above all were his eyes as bright as jewels. They roamed the scene, the goblins' corpses, the guard killed... and himself, stopping on his wound.
- Who... who are you? Return to your ship... the goblins have invaded the port.
The teenager nodded seriously, her breath condensing in a mist as she replied:
- How did they cross the walls?
- I... don't know. We didn't get any alarms... but you can't stay here, damsel.
The teenage girl threw a piece of her blue cape fully lined with white fur on her shoulder. Underneath, she was wearing the strangest armor that Tristane Gaerwyth has ever seen. Her plastron was made of embedded silver metal plates with a vegetal-inspired blue decorative pattern. She had gauntlets and a weird metal plate skirt. Below, the young beauty was dressed in a royal blue dress, wearing gold, on a white petticoat. She wore the set with the natural and elegance born of a long habit.
Opening a bag on her belt, she took out a small bottle of coarse glass filled with a pink liquid:
- This is a major care potion. It will relieve the pain and stop the bleeding. Merlin, treat this soldier.
Confused, Tristane Gaerwyth turned to the magician. He was known in the city, staying here since the beginning of the siege. Without his help, Koeglin's defenders would certainly not have lasted as long. Extravagant, often unbearable because of his bad jokes; he did not accept the orders of anyone, not even of Baron Mordane, yet the lord of the place. However, the magician bowed immediately to the adolescent girl:
- Right away, Your Majesty.
Surprised, the two guards of the Alcaire Kingdom... as well as the soldiers of Verandia turned to the young woman in armor. In spite of the firmness of her posture and the control she had of the slightest muscle of her face, her eyes narrowed somewhat, while she answered with a hint of a bad mood:
- Merlin, stop it!
She turned to Tristane:
- I am Artoria Pendragon, knight of Menevia belonging to the Order of the Rose. I am the head of the relief army sent by the Duchy of Verandia. Don't listen to what that old fool says, I'm not king... not anymore, anyway.
As Merlin laughed discreetly, using his magic to regenerate Tristane's arm... Tristane enlarges his eyes, paralyzed with surprise, unable to speak. This did not prevent him from hearing the reply of the "old" fool:
- Oh... I'm just getting ahead of myself, Your Majesty. Rex quodam, rex que futuram... the king has reigned, the king will reign... you cannot fight your own legend, King Arthur.
Exasperated, Artoria sighed... She knew there was no point in protesting. In fact, the more she protested, the more he teased her. After all, she knew him since childhood. It was not as if she were discovering today how much he loved to annoy her.
Fighters are not equal in battle.
When a warlord sends militiamen or levies to fight, he is already happy that one of them kills an opponent and survives the fight.
When the levies put on their armor for the first time, they are completely exhausted after only half an hour wearing it. And even a veteran can only fight for ten minutes in a row! (3)
From then on, a fighter capable of killing five opponents in a battle is undoubtedly the champion of his company. A man who kills ten is cited as an example in the entire army... and a man who kills twenty is acclaimed, ennoble, chosen as a bodyguard by a great lord.
So what about those who -like Cú Chulainn- can kill 20,000 enemies alone?! (4)
They are heroes... and, etymologically, heroes are demigods.
Saber rushed forward.
In her chest, her Dragon Core pulsated, flooding her with a flood of mana that strengthened her bones and amplified her strength. She jumped into the middle of a group of goblins, her cape swirling around her, holding in her hands... nothing... or at least nothing they can see...
The humanoids sneered and attacked her all at the same time, thinking they were dealing with easy prey.
What followed was too fast for us to follow the confrontation... no, the massacre... the goblins literally fell back into pieces. Not one of the front-line fighters survived. The others stopped ... like chicks paralyzed by the deadly grace of the snake that had just crept into their nest.
Artoria had seen the bodies of the unarmed inhabitants lying in the streets, the looted houses, the isolated guards cut to pieces. Coming from a hard period, she knew how to be tough. Her invisible sword gave glimpses of a ghostly blue glow as she was running forward; the wind was blowing around Excalibur.
Dozens of goblins perished immediately and panic spread among the other assailants. However, not all enemies could feel fear. The quadruped monster that slid silently behind Artoria was not one of those who gave up. Covered with green scales, it was a large lizard of a kind quite close to the dog. At least if we forgot its crocodile jaw and its four red eyes... a durzog. These monsters were trained like war dogs by goblins.
The durzog jumped. It had perfectly judged its jump and would have landed on Saber's shoulders to put its fangs in her throat. Except it rolled on the ground with a pitiful squeak... cut in the air by a flock of arrows made of translucent prana.
Saber looked at the body and then turned her eyes to the thatched roof of a poor house, hundreds of meters away. A silhouette in black leather, dressed in a scarlet hooded coat, lowered a black bow. She raised her sword to Shiro's address and resumed her bloody course among the goblins.
As usual, Merlin did not resort to magic. He held in his hand a sword resembling a sister in Excalibur and handled it with the art of a master. At times, he pushed it into the ground, giving rise to a wave of golden light that burned all the opponents before him.
He was alone on the street, facing hundreds of goblins...
But they fled before him, filled with terror.
He whispered a few words and reached out.
Immediately, roots came out of the ground and immobilized the little monsters...
- Stay there, isn't it fun to play together?
As the goblins replied with terrified chirps, he sighed...
- Nobody seems to like my company... except the F/GO players.
We heard a sound of broken glass...
- Oops... I just smashed the Fourth Wall.
- Gandr!
A rain of energy projectiles, black as ink but haloed with red, drifted in the middle of a street. These materialized curses had the destructive power of a revolver bullet. In the narrow street between two rows of huts with thatched roofs, the effect was devastating. Each shot killed or wounded a goblin.
A midget with green skin stepped forward. Considerably more muscular than his fellow soldiers, he wore steel armor to his size, but no weapon... if we excluded the cestus from his gauntlets. The "Knocker" threw hitself at Rin Tohsaka. By reflex, she dodged the first attack before whispering:
- Est ist großes, est ist kleines!
Bright lines appeared on her legs. She leaped to the side and immediately rushed forward. Her opponent attacked her with his bare hands? She was going to give him this pleasure. Thanks to Reinforcement, she was now stronger and more agile than him. The palm of her hand struck him in his chin. Then she knelt down in his stomach... and whirled over herself in a pounding kick that catapulted the enemy into a cluster of goblins that arrived as reinforcements.
- Watch out!
A kite shield interposed to stop a coarse arrow feathered with raven feathers. There, the bowman goblin suddenly held his chest and collapsed... stiff dead!
The mirror-shield of Gonderic of Bel-Amant returned the enemies' intention of killing against them, returning to them the damage they wanted to deal. The armor was given to him by a fairy knight.
Passing in front of Rin, a colossus in armor of black plates rushed towards the green skins. He wielded a great ebonite sword, and flames ran over it. Estienne de Vignonne was not regarded without reason as the most powerful man of war in all of Verandia. With a logger shout, he smashed shields and armor. Around him, the goblins caught fire.
An enemy elite sought to stop him. In armor of steel, he carried to one arm a large shield and a silver club in the other hand. Heavily framed for his species, it was a "Berserker".
Estienne laughed at this challenge... He loved to fight and the term "Berserker" probably suited him better than the goblin in front of him.
The clash between the two fighters resounded all over the street. The soldiers of Verandia cheered Estienne Vignonne while the goblins supported their champion... only, the Berserker tore himself from the ground before hitting a wall and sliding to the ground unable to stand up.
- Come on, you bitches, I'll take you all at once!
The Free Archers and militiamen of Verandia, some two hundred survivors, met with very little opposition. It must be said that they only had to clean the resistance nests left behind by their vanguard. Only six people... but together they were worth an army.
Kneeling in the trampled snow, Merlin nodded before dusting himself. He turned to Artoria, who was standing patiently behind him, with both hands crossed on Excalibur's invisible knob planted in front of her.
- Your Majesty, the signs on the ground are blurred, goblins have trampled the docks in small groups in all directions. However, most of them came from the east.
Saber sighed without seeking to take back Merlin who continued to call her "Your Majesty... if only he had been so respectful back in Camelot!
The cleaning of the harbor was completed where it had begun, on the pier from where they had landed. Shiro jumped to the ground near Artoria who stared at him. The blacksmith with amber eyes nodded:
- Our men have just taken back the lighthouse, the port is ours.
He did not indicate that his arrows had contributed significantly to the failure of the goblins that had dug in at the west end of the harbor. Shiro never bragged about what he was doing. In his heart... since the fire of Fuyuki, he tortured himself to have survived while the others had perished, devoting himself to saving perfect strangers in compensation for the "crime" of being alive.
Rin, Gonderic and Estienne also returned to them. Given the satisfied air of Baron de Vignonne, the fighting was also to be completed in this part of the city.
The twin-tailed Magus then presented a grated man wearing leather armor that accompanied them:
- Saber, let me introduce Master Gaston Fontenot, master of the port of Koeglin. Master Fontenot, allow me to introduce you to the commander of the reinforcement army, Knight Artoria Pendragon.
Saber greeted with a royal nod:
- My Goodman Fontenot.
Gaston Fontenot looked at her strangely, disturbed by her youth, her gender, her beauty and above all... he looked at the Baron de Vignonne. The man was famous throughout High-Rock as the best war man in the duchy of Verandia... and he had the rank of baron. As for Gonderic de Bel-Amant, his father was the new duke... Why was a simple knight commanding the reinforcement army? However, he preferred not to express his doubts. First, he owed his life to the arrival of the soldiers of Verandia. Then... afterwards, he felt strangely impressed by this teenage girl who had to be younger than his own daughter.
- Lady Pendragon, in my own name and that of all the inhabitants of the city, allow me to express my thanks for your timely arrival.
Saber replied with a vague gesture of the hand:
- Think neither of it; it is my duty as a knight to help you. More importantly, now that the docks are secure, we need to organize the unloading of the supplies we bring.
- I'll take care of it, Lady Pendragon. For distribution, you have to go to Baron Mordane. He lives in a mansion downtown.
- Good. However, we must first find out how goblins entered the city. According to the guards, the walls were not crossed.
Shiro intervened:
- I confirm. During the battle, I could see that the ramparts were attacked, but the defenders repelled the assault.
An arm on her stomach, with her fist in front of her lips, Rin suddenly seemed absorbed by deep reflections. Artoria looked at her with interest:
- Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
- A diversion?
Estienne de Vignonne approved:
- I see... rather well thought out. They attacked the ramparts to attract the defenders and during this time they appeared on the port... but how? A tunnel?
Merlin listened and repeated what he had just said to Artoria before they arrived:
- In any case, they came from the east of the port.
He designated this direction and the master of the port shook:
- The smugglers' cave...
As the other participants of the impromptu conference turned to him with interrogatives stares, Gaston Fontenot explained:
- At the time of Baron Mordane's father, smugglers were rampant in the city. They had dug a tunnel linking natural caves in the cliffs east of Koeglin outside the octroi barrier (5). The tunnel has been undiged but the caves still exist. The entrance is under a large warehouse to the east of the port. The goblins have probably reopened this passage.
The last goblins were entrenched into the smugglers' former warehouse. They had erected a barricade of barrels and crates. As soon as Artoria and her companions approached, a rain of arrows welcomed them... Clearly, goblins still had confidence in their ability to win the battle.
It was not usual in these creatures. At best, we could call them unstable... at worst cowards. But wasn't the whole situation abnormal? Goblins were always at war with each other. Every tribe hating their neighbors and trying to grab their totems! An alliance of several hundred clans, we had not seen this since the conquest of Hammerfell by the Redguards (driven by a cataclysm of the Ra'Gada archipelago)... in the ninth century of the First Era, millennia earlier. And at the time, it took an avatar of the god Malooc (6) to unite them.
Besides, goblins were considered stupid. Digging a tunnel and using a diversion to drive away the defenders, it seemed too sophisticated for these creatures more accustomed to attacking head-on screaming.
As Verandia's soldiers advanced protected by their shields, several goblins threw glass vials at the attackers. There was an explosion of flame as they broke in contact.
Rin began to swear as the burned soldiers retreated into panic:
- Intense fire oil! It is a rare and expensive alchemy potion... each flask is worth a hundred septims. How can they have such expensive equipment?!
Yet another absurdity! Artoria shook her head. For now, it was not the most important. She strengthens her hands on the handle of her invisible sword. All around her, the wind began to blow in a storm, lowering the atmospheric pressure. An instant later, she disappeared... leaving behind only an after-image... two others appeared slashing goblins on the barricade... then it shattered as she resumed substance near the breach she had just opened.
For an ordinary human, she had appeared to exist in four copies... it was an optical illusion caused by the Wind King's Slash, one of her favorite fighting techniques.
Mordane Hawkstone, Earl of Koeglin was a young man just over twenty years old. Blond with emerald eyes, it looked a little older (and masculine) version of Artoria. His office, much more than his physical appearance, gave a good idea of who he was.
The sheltered walls left no space other than the fireplace and the location of a picture depicting the harbor. Everywhere else books and curiosities of very different origins lined up. The work table was covered by a compulsively annotated city plan. He was kept open by his sword and other books devoted to strategy. Among them, Rin recognized Zurin Arctus's "Art of War Magic". A pile of reports on parchment awaited his signature.
A dummy in an angle supported beautiful plate armor. And, in view of the numerous scratches that were waiting to be repaired, the baron had to participate actively in the defense of the ramparts.
Mordane Hawkstone was a warrior, tactician, gifted organizer, and scholar. The resistance to the goblin horde in the past four months was largely explained by the presence of this charismatic leader in Koeglin.
For now, he listened to Artoria, with his chin on his crossed hands and his elbows on his table:
- ... we then liquidated the goblins still present in the caves. There, we discovered that the tunnel had collapsed.
- Not surprisingly, Mordane said, goblin miners are unable to do a neat job. Maybe they even neglected to support the passage.
Artoria nodded:
- That is also my conclusion, My Lord.
Mordane turned to a statuette depicting Talos in chainmail, wearing a winged helmet. With a sword in his hand, he struck down a snake and trampled it under his feet.
- Praised be the gods, without the collapse of the tunnel and your arrival Koeglin would have fallen. However, despite your help, Lady Pendragon, I am even more worried than yesterday. I share your analysis of the organization and equipment of goblins. Only you neglected a point... digging this tunnel must have taken days and required knowledge of the local history that most of Koeglin inhabitants did not have.
Next to Artoria, Tohsaka nodded:
- Organization and intelligence, this is similar to what we have discovered...
As Mordane glanced at her, the young Magus seemed surprised:
- Oh, I spoke out loud?! Shiro, show him what you found.
The archer dressed in red placed charred vellum on the table. Like all Bretons, Mordane had a particularly developed magical sense and he identified a prana residue in the paper:
- A spell scroll?
- Yes, my lord, we found it on the goblin leader who was leading the assault on the port.
- I will have my wife analyze it.
- Needless to say, my lord, I know a spell called Structural Analysis. It is a Recall's scroll
The baron of Koeglin frowned. He had never heard of this spell:
- Recall?
It was Rin Tohsaka who resumed the conversation from this point:
- It is a form of teleportation invented by the Magi of the house telvanni in Morrowind, magic typical of the Dark Elves. It requires the use of two spells. The first, Mark, affixes a pentacle of reception on the floor. It is enough for the mage to pronounce the spell of Recall to be sent back to the last Mark he traced.
Mordane Hawkstone thought fast and well:
- Have you found the Mark that matches this scroll?
Rin approved of a chin movement:
- The scroll is synchronized to a pentacle in the largest cave in the smugglers' lair.
- Only a resident of Koeglin may have informed the goblins about the existence of the undiged tunnel and only a mage living within these walls may have traced this Mark. There's a traitor here! A Dark Elf...
Rin cut off the lord of Koeglin, regardless of his rank:
- Not necessarily, baron, I am Breton and I know this spell.
Pulling on her collar, she grabs a medallion decorated with a complex pentacle:
- I created this amulet by experimenting on telvanni magic, it allows me to use a Recall spell that would take me back to my house in Torrent... if I still had a house in Torrent.
Tohsaka face clouds over. After Archer left the city to participate in the defense of Wayrest, the orcs had renewed their assaults and finally took Torrent. Once again, she had lost her laboratory, her gems... and all her possessions! For a woman as stingy as Rin, it was a real personal injury!
Fortunately, Sakura had fled to Wayrest with Archer and Archer had promised to look after her little sister.
Mordane shook his head:
- But there is a dunmer mage in town!
The baron began to search a pile of scrolls:
- Ah, there you are! The mercenaries of the Iron Ring Company, I recruited them to reinforce the garrison of Koeglin three months ago. There's a Dark Elf mage among them, his name is Erebel R'en.
- Erebel R'en? I remember seeing a wanted poster out for him. He has a bounty on his head for many crimes: grave violations, necromancy (7), and heresy... that kind of thing.
As Baron Mordane turned to Shiro who had just spoken, the redhead Magus scratched his neck with an embarrassed look:
- I was born in Morrowind, my father was head of the imperial garrison at Fort Moth, near Balmora. I often looked at wanted criminals' posters so I could recognize them. I could not let them continue to plague.
- Okay! That confirms my suspicions.
Mordane shook a bell and a servant entered. While he was giving him his instructions, Rin expressed her bad mood. With her arms crossed, her forehead wrinkled with anger, she turned to Artoria:
- Saber, I really wonder what we are doing here!
The King of the Knights and Shiro shivered and glanced at the baron of Koeglin. Mordane Hawkstone had just stiffened himself, forgetting the instructions he gave to turn to the Magus with a shocked expression. Rin had the gift - not really blessed by the gods - of saying what she should not at the worst possible moment.
Without paying attention to the mixture of surprise and discomfort of her friends, Tohsaka lifted a finger as she used to when she was teaching a lecture:
- Hundreds of men have already been sacrificed for a small town of no importance.
Shiro was the first to react:
- There are still hundreds of non-combatants in the city.
She replied with a scornful sniff, turning her head aside:
- They could evacuate, and we are not going to take by hand people who prefer their small house to the safety of their families. I gave up everything to save my sister.
Finally, Mordane had enough:
- You are not saving my city; you are saving the port's warehouses!
Rin seemed a moment surprised by the Baron's repartee. Taken in her thoughts, she had completely forgotten his presence. She winked at his visible anger:
- I don't understand... warehouses?
Artoria bowed to Baron Mordane:
- I beg your pardon for my friend's behavior. Sometimes she speaks too loudly, is stingy, manipulative or bossy.
Rin opened her mouth but remained like a fish out of the water... shocked in turn by Saber's response. However, the Magus blushed and looked down... realizing that she had literally said that Baron's city did not deserve to be rescued. In fact, she had just denigrated the entire young baron's work in defense of Koeglin, as had all his predecessors done to build and embellish it.
Mordane Hawkstone sighed, his anger vanishing...
- At least she's saying out loud what the other think... I knew you weren't coming to save my people. Since the beginning of the siege, the only "help" I received was a cargo of wood to build the palisade. And I paid it right down to the bottom.
As Rin remained confused and blushing, it was Shiro who put an end to this moment of embarrassment:
- Why do you say that the Relief Army only wants to save the warehouses?
Artoria replied in place of the baron:
- Docks, dockers, and unloading hoists in fact. Koeglin is necessary for the supply of the army. In wartime, 60% of the state budget is invested in the supply of fresh steeds for knights, food for combatants, replacement of armor, arrows, spears, shields, and fortifications damaged by the enemy. Also, a wise warlord uses to live on the enemy. It is said that one measure of wheat taken from the silos of the enemy is worth twenty of its own carried from the rear.
- Twenty?
Shiro seemed surprised. Certainly, he understood that the food taken from the enemy could weaken the latter as much as it fed his camp. However, the proportion seemed to him exaggerated. Only, Artoria strongly approved:
- Twenty times now! To get food to the front line, you need carts, crews, and an escort who in turn consume some of the food they're supposed to carry. These men, these wagons and the horses that pull them are diverted from more useful tasks. This, in turn, slows down the work of the fields. That is why, in times of war, it is not uncommon for the peasants to know the shortage. All this can be saved by going by sea. A carrack can transport the equivalent of a caravan of a hundred mules and all this in a tenth of the time taken by road. And here we are only talking about food. In a single year of war, a country can spend ten years of the revenue! I mentioned the manufacture and repair of halberds, spears, projectiles of bows and crossbows, but it is necessary to add the mangonels, the trebuchets and the stones that they send. For an army of ten thousand men, the repair and maintenance of military equipment cost a thousand iron ingots.
Shiro frowned. He was a blacksmith after all:
- A thousand iron ingots? Per week?
Saber shook her head:
- Every day!
As he was swallowing, she continued:
- This requires the employment of thousands of miners and foundry workers. What they produce, we must lead it to the men who will use it. So you have to maintain the roads, repair the bridges. For a man who fights, it takes ten workings to arm and feeds him.
Mordane, who had finished giving his instructions to his servant, joined the conversation:
- And this is for war in summer. Shiro Emiya, do you know why we say that we should not make war in winter?
The reincarnated Japanese knew war only through the films and books of his world of origin... where war was made in all seasons. He never really understood why we were saying that.
- Um... because it's cold?
Baron Mordane Hawkstone stared at the young man and then began to laugh. Next to him, Artoria sigh before shaking her head with fatalism:
- Idiot... Do you really think generals care about the comfort of their men? Armor is much more unpleasant to wear in the summer. They keep it warm... When the sun strikes upon the armor, one boils in its sweat, one dehydrates, and I have often seen fit knights faint in the middle of the battle because of a sunstroke. Yet not a war leader has ever proposed to ban war in the summer.
The Lord of Koeglin, having recovered from his laughter crisis, gave the correct answer:
- Horses graze at the bivouac. But domestic horses do not know how to scrape snow to find grass. In winter, therefore, it is necessary to buy and transport fodder for the horsemen's steeds, but also for all the horses of the quartermaster that pull the carts of supplies. This therefore requires more stewardship carts... so more horses in turn consume more feed, an irresoluble problem. And here lies the superiority of the orcs... They eat the horses, they don't ride them! So they can make war in winter!
Shiro may have been slow, but he wasn't stupid:
- That is why the Relief Army needs the port of Koeglin, because the transport carrack allow us to use fewer supply carts.
- So here you are, Artoria and Mordane concluded at the same time. As for Rin, she simply looked to the ceiling.
(1) Talos is not a Breton god, but he is very popular in the kingdom of Alcaire. According to legend, Talos learned the art of the sword from the masters of the city of Alcaire while he was still only the mortal Hjalti Early-Beard, long before being consecrated emperor of Tamriel under the name of Tiber Septim.
(2) It must be said that if the "light" armor which equips raised and militiamen already weigh twenty kilos, the complete equipment of a professional soldier (complete chainmail with coat-of-arm, plastron, and helmet, shield, wide sword) can reach 35 kilos! During re-enactments, it took ten minutes of simulated confrontation for a man to find himself out of breath. This is why the antique (and certainly medieval) armies had a system to replace the exhausted and wounded soldiers of the first ranks with those of the last ranks. A kind of waterwheel that allowed the fighters to take turns resting.
(3) I don't just read Fate's Wiki pages to tell the past exploits of heroes. I did some research on Cú (in particular, I read the Táin Bó Cúailnge). I came across a passionate person who wrote a page on the Internet. The battle of the plain of Murthemme took place in a place still perfectly-identified and the legend says that Cú covered it with three thicknesses of corpses. The enthusiast in question measured the terrain, estimated how many bodies formed a layer and multiplied by three... the result? 20,000 dead! Even if we consider this figure as a maximum, the result remains impressive all the more since the army of the four kingdoms of Ireland reunited by Queen Mebd faced a "army" of a single Ulate: Cú Chulainn.
(4) Octroi is a kind of custom paid at the entrance of the cities. The barriers are walls surrounding the cities, pierced by some doors guarded by guards. Unlike real walls designed to stop invaders, barriers are only used to force travelers to pass through the doors where they are searched and interrogated. Most of the time, they are simple walls without a walkway or battlements.
(5) The goblin god Molooc is better known by the name under which the orcs worship him: Malacath.
(6) Clarification: necromancy is not illegal in the Empire except in the province of Morrowind, because it is prohibited by the cult of the Tribunal Temple (the local religion). It should be noted that the Guild of the Magi of Tamriel forbids the practice of necromancy, but this is an administrative ban... at worst, we risk exclusion.