(Chaldea)
"Right, so the problem as I was taught it was that some of the Successors' generals and even rulers fell into bad habits like rolling up phalanxes without understanding the doctrine of use pioneered by Phillip."
"Wasn't that related to the whole making longer and longer pikes?" one of the homunculi who happened to recall that fact asked.
"Using longer pikes doesn't mean your whole approach to battle consists of pushing pike blocks at the enemy. In fact, ironically longer pikes are primarily of value because you're pushing them against pikes specifically, even though the adaptation itself isn't as necessary as you might imagine from just comparing lengths. Under Our Lady's order of battle, the 'phalanx' as you think of it were the line troops, and the elites were always on the flanks, because that's where the opportunity comes from."
"Ah, so like the Companion Cavalry."
"Well she always referred to the mounted units as anti-router, I'm referring more to falx-wielders, though to be honest there was a preference for the simpler solution of bringing Rhodians around the flank and just slinging lead bullets into people's sides."
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(Washington)
"No, I think it will do just fine," Marie was insisting. "And it isn't like I could just lend you one of my spares, we're not even the same sizes."
"The issue wasn't the fit," d'Eon objected. "Won't I just stand out more like this?"
"That's fine as long as they don't realize you're the same swordsman who was hanging around Washington," Gudao sighed, though he agreed the Queen's gift was hilariously ornate for anyone to travel in.
"The bigger problem," Gudako shifted the topic away from d'Eon since it was obvious Marie would get her way eventually. "Is who will rotate back to Chaldea. Since you've already been running down your magical energy supply, it's not possible for you to simply come along with us, let alone go off somewhere else in America by yourself, without getting a source."
"... I can see where this is going," Nobunaga shrugged. "I'm the seventh one out, aren't I? It can't be helped, I'll just have to return to Chaldea for now."
"Thanks for volunteering," Gudako knew the Archer had been hoping to see some of the 'modern to her' warfare of the day - though of course the Chaldeans didn't have any reason to be sightseeing any active battlefields.
"A good strategist knows to avoid overrunning her logistical capacity," the famous warlord shrugged it off. "Well, if you happen to need an Archer who can devastate an army with firepower, call me back."
"Oh and put the saber back into your Inventory. At least for now," Marie was telling her knight off to the side. "It will definitely draw eyes the wrong way, especially since the Celts really notice these weapons."
"Uh, I can't really store my sword Eighteen like that though," Elizabeth realized at that rather awkward juncture. "It's too large to fit but I can at least just stick it on my back?"
"Can you throw something over it?" Gudako suggested. "Like a cloak. Actually that would be great..."
"Something to cut the wind would definitely help," the rookie Saber agreed. Thinking quickly, Gudao pulled out of his horse's pack a large blanket.
"Thanks !" Accepting it easily, Elizabeth draped it about her shoulders dramatically. "It smells really nice too for some reason."
"... heh." Regardless of her amusement at the not-entirely-random comment, Gudako helped Elizabeth arrange the makeshift garment to avoid snagging the long hilt of her sword which still stuck up behind her head due to the weapon's overall length. "Wait, it just floats there?"
It certainly did. In fact her shield was also able to float in place on top of the sword, and the two items were apparently unable to clash against one another or her cloak.
"Ahem." Artoria brought up the next main step in their expedition. "Even with the horses, it will take a few days for us to travel all the way up north to the new border with the Queendom's territories."
"Hopefully time well spent; it's our best bet to get a grip on what Medb's actual involvement with this war has been but you never know what might happen in the meantime," Jeanne pointed out. "Oh, and while it's unlikely we'll actually run into her there, we should still be prepared for some sort of confrontation."
"Assuming she and the Braves can move as quickly as we can, that still leaves several days to poke around, accounting for how long a message might be able to reach her, even if we somehow were identified early on," Sasaku added. "Unfortunately, while we might be able to match her bodyguard unit blow for blow, there's no way we could handle an army of Celts piling in on us."
"Or the other way around, getting stuck into conventional forces and having enemy Servants suddenly appear behind us," Nobunaga cautioned them.
"Yes. Well I think since we are all agreed on destination, it's time to do some 'shopping' for supplies before we head out," Gudao suggested.
"Since Helena suggested we go there in the first place, shouldn't she be able to offer us, the heroic adventuring group, some of these mission-critical items?" Elizabeth pointed out.
"Good point," Gudako agreed with her. "They are probably rationing everything around here, so it wouldn't be as simple as going to the market."
"A cart, you say," the quartermaster frowned upon hearing the request.
"Oh, they'll just need the cart, not any draft horses," Helena clarified for the group.
"Hmm, in that case, go ahead and pick one, just let me know which one afterwards," the soldier replied, pointing back out to the courtyard they had passed though on the way in with a lot less stress in his face.
"The carts are plenty durable, but the horses can only work so much," Helena explained the logistics situation as the Chaldeans looked at the collection waiting to be taken back out on duty. "And they also are eating through feed at a higher rate from all the work, too."
"One moment," Luckily Artoria remembered one detail before they embarrassed themselves. "I don't have the equipment to actually get my horses to pull the cart."
"Ah, well I'm sure that's not a big problem."
"I wouldn't have thought your horses were so different," Marie commented after d'Eon helped her onto the cart - obviously this wasn't exactly necessary since even though it was a bit high to simply step up to, a Servant could jump at least a couple times their own height.
"Well it's hard to distribute the forces properly when they're not well-matched," Artoria explained from her position at the front of the cart, looking over the connection points of their jury-rigged solution. "Think about it: one's a mare and the other's a stallion. Normally just hitching two slightly different animals has to be done with some thought."
"Sturdy as this cart it, it will definitely not reach its standard rated lifetime if we go at speed," Jeanne pointed out. "Though perhaps that won't matter if, like Helena suggested, there are a number of similar carts abandoned along the march up north due to horse losses."
"The bigger drawback isn't so much speed as that we'll have to stick to relatively good roads, which of course are the ones that anyone would think to monitor in wartime," Sasaku noted. "Then again, anyone seeing us would either assume such a small group was no threat, or if they were aware of Servants, would immediately run away."
"Our best intelligence suggests that Medb and her best forces embarked on ships after their campaign in the north," d'Eon reminded the Chaldeans. "At first the Senate hoped she would simply return to England, but since they have a beachhead established east of Washington, it's unlikely they will simply sit on it for too long."
"I suppose that by having friends show up in the north, the Dictator hopes that the threat of losing the territories she has just defended will force Medb's hand," Jeanne thought aloud. "What do you think?"
"That's my best guess too," the Saber replied. "Though based off what Helena said..."
"While I did essentially summon him, it isn't as though I can command him. But if you're worried about the Senate's politics, I can assure you that the Dictator, ironic as it may sound, is very much a democratic figure. And I mean as in direct democracy, not just whatever the elected representatives get themselves together to vote on."
"Yes, that bit surprised me," Marie nodded. "But it tracks with the way he seemed to have various disagreements with the Senate. I suppose technically they did give him emergency powers anyway, but it suggests that most of the Americans would agree with the measures he's taken. Though the populace can always be ... variable."
d'Eon frowned at that, but said nothing.
"Ok, let's try and make good distance before it gets dark," Sasaku half-hopped, half-flew up onto the cart followed by Elizabeth jumping on with a clattering of her armor pieces. The Masters were actually riding the horses, as it was obviously a much smoother ride than the cart might be, especially at speed.
(Waystation)
As night fell, the party cleared space on the cart for the Masters to sleep comfortably, and began preparing dinner while the two homunculi started napping.
"Do you know anything else about the Braves?" Elizabeth asked d'Eon since they were not involved in the cooking. "We'll definitely end up fighting them at some point, after all."
"Presumably she either recruited Rogue Servants or has a way to summon them," the other Saber replied. "If I remember from your telling of the battle against Boudica, the site where Camelot would be built, or rather given the current date where it was built, has an important leyline node and might be especially conducive for summoning rituals."
"Yes, though Boudica needed her druids to handle a lot of that, and Medb doesn't seem to be any more of a summoner than she was. I suppose there are plenty of British, though in this Singularity they would call themselves Celtic I suppose, magi around who could do the same thing," Jeanne explained.
"By the way," Marie interrupted them at this point, returning from an impromptu chat with the small group of now-dazzled soldiers manning the waystation that they were camping next to. "The latest reports from the north show - nothing ! By the way, if we need to send word to Washington, there are regular dispatches of riders who relay messages back down, all the way from the frontlines."
"Useful, but it might be prudent to avoid sending anything about our situation back," d'Eon cautioned. "There might well be spies in Washington who will tip off Medb. I definitely can't imagine her not having some such arrangements even if it was literally peacetime, capital and all that."
"Speaking of sending word back, I suppose now is a good time to set up a connection to Scathach for her to relay back to Chaldea." Taking off her transformation, Sasaku went off to the side and started assembling a magic circle of her usual green script.
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(Chaldea)
"It's interesting, yes." Nobunaga agreed with Agesipolis. "Sure the French are in a stronger position than historically, but only on the defensive. So why would the Celts, who are stronger than the British would be, having issues at this particular point in the war? Anaz, anything stick out to you?"
Chaldea's long-serving historian shrugged. "I would have first thought that like the team suggested, it was the presence of d'Eon. However, he had been in Washington for some time and the Celts should have had a response to him. From the very start, it seems their landing was more contested than it should have been, so perhaps that made them wary?"
"From what we have been told, it seems like this Singularity first had Medb appear, then Marie, and later on Helena and d'Eon. More importantly though, shouldn't Napoleon be alive in the time period? We've confirmed it's 1812 after all," Georgios asked.
"It's possible the man is alive but didn't rise to prominence. After all, apparently the royalists were still sufficiently ingrained in the Singularity's French Republic that they could be simply voted in, in sufficient numbers, and then restart the monarchy. I also think that it was less of Marie trying to gain power as much as it was the royalists using her as a figurehead to gain and then cement their current positions."
"It seems unlikely the main cause would be Napoleon though," Martha followed on with Georgios' line of thought. "Even though we aren't that precise with the scans, it wouldn't be so far off that we identified the critical factor as being on the wrong side of the ocean."
"... it couldn't be that the Grail is actually within Washington, could it?" da Vinci asked suddenly. "But no, Scathach and the Rulers were right there with Helena and this Dictator she summoned and they would have known if something like that was around. And they're drawing heavily on the local leylines for their magical energy."
"Unfortunately for their case, another pretty big historical point of deviation is that Washington has very much not been damaged, let alone occupied. Though that seems to be more due to circumstance than someone exploding onto the scene with the power of a Holy Grail," Shirou thought aloud.
"But Helena knew about Chaldea's coming from d'Eon. And since they couldn't take on Medb directly... well with a Grail they probably could but that might weaken them too much?" Shiki suggested.
"No, if we're looking at Washington they simply haven't had any chance to really fight; remember Medb has never moved near the city at any point," Okita shook her head. "Of course, there are any number of reasons why the Dictator might chose to ask our field group to go up north."
"How far west of Washington does the Singularity extend?" Gil asked after considering the map. "If for example the initial estimate was off by enough, could it actually be on the other side instead, namely in Europe? It presumably extends all the way to Austria, so I'd guess there."
"You mean like: if you travelled on foot westward enough from Washington you'd actually arrive in Austria? Only if they were properly connected," da Vinci turned on a globe hologram to demonstrate. "Like if the Singularity were forced onto this surface."
"I disagree, it would most likely like when reaching the edges of each portion of the Christmas Event," Euryale recalled. "It required the use of that special 'sleigh' to actually cross to another section."
"Given that, isn't it odd in the first place that the whole ocean in between is apparently part of the Singularity?" Blackbeard indicated the large water-covered area on their map. "What about: if the Singularity is generated from the Grail outwards, that would suggest the middle of it - the ocean - is where we should look."
"There's no reason to suspect that any part of the Singularity is more 'local' to the Grail than any other part of it," Shirou corrected him. "Though it is true that the lower level a Detection Event is, the smaller it seems to be physically, the strength of each Event is related to how strong it is conceptually. They grow in 'realness' rather than size, so to speak."
"I suppose that implies smaller, simpler Events cannot grow to arbitrary 'realness' because of the boundary issues? Not just in the map coordinate sense, but also above and below," da Vinci suggested.
"Wait, Merlin's hacked-together Event had a lot of boundaries relative to the interior... ah, so that might have been his way of ensuring the Event wouldn't grow out of control, perhaps?" Gil blinked. "Well it seems he can get a lot done while trapped in Avalon."
"Anyway, since I ended up having to return early, at least I can console myself with joining some of those gun trials, after all." Nobunaga concluded the meeting, or perhaps she was just bored by that point.
"Um, sorry, but those side projects are on hold since we're dealing with a major Singularity, Archer." da Vinci had to share the bad news.
"How unfortunate. Oh well, I guess it can't be helped."
"I can introduce you to Chaldea's best gunsmith though."
"Oh cool, I didn't know there was one on-site !"
"Yes, well perhaps it's time to had a good heart-to-heart about weaponry with ... Shirou there."
"Ah." The mentioned Alter-Ego blinked in surprise. "Wait, I thought you meant Hagane."
"Hagane's our Armorer. Yes, he can smith guns, but you're definitely his better," da Vinci chuckled. "I mean, you taught him after all."
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Notes:
Phillip II, who innovated on the hoplite phalanx with sarissa (pikes) unified most of the Greeks (except of course the Spartans, heh).
Recall that when magical energy signatures are brought up, the (usual for here) sense which they are associated to is actually smell. Of course while signatures aren't like an "aura" you "see", it isn't a literal smell either, or having anything physically to do with the nose, signatures are sensed via one's magical circuits like how radio waves are picked up by an antenna.
This is when you see odd pairings of "sense" and "descriptor", if you check back, Sasaku's signature "smells" like "a high-pitched bell" (a sound description).
Of course, Chloe's famous Skill (the Kiss Demon one) means she tends to associate magical energy signatures with taste. Still that would be paired with a non-taste "descriptor".