Chapter XLII: Familiar Unknown
The second time around, I liked to think I was better prepared for the speed of the chariots than the first time.
But "better prepared" was not the same thing as "completely prepared," as my white-knuckled grip on the rail of the carriage of Aífe's chariot proved. Knowing what to expect had not made it easier to deal with the fact that we were traveling at what had to be well over a hundred miles an hour, making turns that should not be physically possible at those speeds, and I had nothing to tether me down except my fragile, human hands and nothing to protect me except the weight of Arash's promise to pick me up and leap off if it looked like we were about to crash.
That was why we had switched up the arrangements for this stretch of the journey, after all. If we were attacked by an enemy Servant while in transit, then Mash and Boudica could grab the twins while Arash grabbed me, leaving Emiya — our most versatile Servant — and Aífe — probably our strongest Servant — free to engage the enemy.
Of course, that didn't help much when the sheer speed we were traveling at had bugs moving in and out of my range so fast that I felt even more unmoored than I had while being carried helplessly in Siegfried's arms during the home stretch of the Orléans Singularity.
At least I had thought to recall my ravens and tuck them safely away back in the confines of my bag. There was no way they would have kept up with us otherwise.
Somewhere along the way, a strong hand — Arash's — found its way to the small of my back and gave me a way to ground myself. It helped more than I expected it to.
I wasn't sure how long we traveled or even really quite how far. We'd left the coastline and the estuary behind early on for the scenic French countryside, but we were moving too fast to enjoy the majesty of the world around us. Mostly, we felt the changes in elevation as gentle swings of a pendulum, and everything else passed us by as a vague green smear.
Rika and Ritsuka were probably a little disappointed that they didn't get to see it all, but I appreciated the haste we were making on our trip. Natural splendor or not, we couldn't afford to miss Emperor Nero, so taking the long way was thankfully unnecessary.
Eventually, the gentle slopes and plains got rougher, choppier, and steeper. Both Aífe's horses and Boudica's took it in stride with ease, and at no point did the chariot buck so hard that I had any reason to fear being thrown off, but the change in terrain was obvious all the same. I still couldn't make out the details of the world around us too well, but even through the blur, the rolling hills were plain to see.
Later on, I thought to compare the experience to a rollercoaster, only without all of the obvious safety features that made the ride thrilling instead of terrifying, but in the moment, it was hard to think of anything at all as the disorientation sent my head swimming.
But it had to end at some point, and some indeterminable time later, the chariot began to slow as the stomp of the horses' galloping hooves petered off into a casual trot, and as the world resolved around us again, finally into a stop. Ahead of our group, the twins and Mash were already dismounting, and once the three of them had made it safely back onto solid ground, Boudica hopped down as well. Her chariot disappeared, evaporating into motes of golden light.
I took an extra couple of seconds to reorient myself, closing my eyes as I sank into the local bugs and reestablished a swarm, dispersed and disjointed though it was. Immersed in their senses and in the expanded proprioception their very presence gave me, I felt out the place we had stopped at, mapping out a sloped valley of thick forest with the road that cut across it from east to west and the narrow river that cut a path down from north to south. Below us, at the base of the valley, a swath had been cleared and a camp set up, and soldiers in full kit milled about, ready to spring into action at any moment.
Master? Arash asked silently.
I'm fine, I replied, and I straightened, letting go of my iron grip on the railing of the carriage. Arash's hand left the small of my back, but he hovered there for a moment longer, like he was waiting for me to fall on my face.
He only backed away when I turned around and climbed down out of the chariot.
"If this was supposed to be a race, I think you lost," Emiya remarked.
Aífe snorted. "Don't be absurd. Boudica is the one who knew where the camp had moved to, so it's only natural she took the lead."
"Moved?" I asked, hoping to cut off any more of Emiya's sarcasm.
"Originally, we camped at Massilia along the southern coast," Boudica answered for her. "However, Aífe, Connla, and Lancelot helped to push back the United Empire's foothold in Gaul, so we could push further into it as well."
And if they hadn't, then we would have landed far behind enemy lines when we first arrived here with no idea who was friend or foe. If the United Empire was smart, they could even have convinced us that they were on the right side of the issue, maybe even claimed that the Nero in Rome was an imposter and Romulus was trying to restore the rightful Roman Empire.
We wouldn't have had any idea we were being played until we found the knife in our back.
"I'm guessing you moved here for a reason?" Ritsuka asked.
"Probably not for the scenery," his sister added. "I'm all for a swanky, hillside retreat, but you kinda need a swanky retreat to go along with your hillside for that."
Boudica laughed, an easy smile on her lips. "Nothing so fancy as that, I'm afraid." She gestured with one arm. "Come on. I'll explain more as we walk to the camp."
She turned towards the path that had been cut through the foliage, and our group fell into step behind her. Now that it was no longer needed, Aífe dropped down out of her chariot, as well, and it vanished much the same as Boudica's had, taking those two incredible horses with it.
"Like I said," Boudica went on, "originally, we were camped at Massilia, and we moved further inland as we took back territory from the United Empire. The plan was actually to be even further north of here, but the United Empire is trying very hard to keep it, and they've been very stubborn about being pushed out. A little ways to the east of here is a settlement, a booming town that changed hands without too much issue at first. Then we came far enough to win it back, and the United Empire didn't intend on letting us have it if they had to lose it."
"They burned it down?" I asked sharply.
"No, but not for lack of effort," she answered grimly. "The rearguard slaughtered as many people as they could as they retreated, and caring for the wounded kept us too busy to chase them, no matter how sorely tempted I was to chase them anyway."
My lips thinned. Standard scorched earth tactics, then. Deny the enemy resources, make them focus on anything else other than engaging you. It wasn't pleasant and there was plenty wrong with it, especially from the moral perspective, but even agreements like the Geneva Conventions hadn't stopped militaries from around the world from using it to slow down their enemies and disrupt supply lines.
Unfortunately, it was also a very old tactic. Most nations just weren't desperate or spiteful enough to slaughter their own citizenry so callously, even when those people were conquered by a foreign power.
"Which town?" Ritsuka asked solemnly.
"Lugdunum," said Boudica. "Um, I think the modern name for it — I mean the name you would probably know it by — is —"
"Lyon," Arash finished softly.
I felt my eyebrows rise towards my hairline, and Ritsuka stumbled as Rika tripped and fell into him. Her voice was an octave higher when she turned towards Boudica.
"What?"
"Oh," said Mash.
The pieces started to come together in my head, and I couldn't stop myself from following the line of thought as it laid itself out for me. We were currently to the west of Lugdunum, which would one day be the city known as Lyon, France, we were in the mountains, or at least terrain sufficiently mountainous enough that it wasn't really small enough to be a hill, there was a road carved into the hillside that went from east to west, and a small river cut down through the valley towards the east side.
"This is Thiers," I realized.
Except there was no Thiers, not yet. The city hadn't been built yet, hadn't even become a minor settlement up in the mountains. No one lived here, and the only residents were soldiers camped out at the bottom, standing guard over the road to Lyon.
"No way!" Rika looked around wildly, as though the entire city was hiding just behind the nearest copse of trees. "Seriously? But there's nothing here!"
"There won't be," said Mash. "Not for another thousand years."
Suddenly, she stiffened. "There's another Servant approaching!"
Emiya and Arash both tensed, prepared to fight, but Boudica waved them both down. "That's just Spartacus," she told us. "You remember I told you he was here, too, right?"
"Didn't you say he was a Berserker?" Emiya asked, because her reassurance didn't seem to reassure him very much.
"Yes," she agreed, "but he can still tell friend from foe."
Emiya eyed her dubiously. "You sound awfully confident about that."
"Because I've fought alongside him almost from the moment I was summoned," was her answer, matter-of-fact. "You can trust that he won't attack without reason. He probably sensed us and is coming to investigate."
"Although whether you can communicate with him is another matter entirely," Aífe added dryly.
I found him now, too, a large, bulky man running up the path that had been hewn out of the forest in front of us. He was not, however, moving anywhere near the speed that Siegfried and the others had run at on our way to Orléans at the tail end of the last Singularity, even though he was much faster than an ordinary human, so I wasn't sure if you could call this kind of pace sedate or not.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
When you had a high enough Mover rating, I guess even Olympic record-shattering speeds could classify as a "light jog."
"You've said that sort of thing before," Ritsuka said. "I mean, I guess the name kind of implies that they're…well, insane, but you can still talk to crazy people, can't you?"
"Berserkers have a class skill called 'Madness Enhancement,'" I informed him as I tracked our newest 'ally.' "Depending on how high it is, they might not be able to even think coherently, let alone talk."
"At Rank B, for reference," said Emiya, "they won't do anything but grunt and roar at you, and as a Master, getting them to obey without using a Command Spell is impossible."
"Well, I can't say I know what rank his Madness Enhancement is at," Boudica admitted, "but Spartacus can definitely do more than just grunt and roar. As for getting him to obey your orders…"
"He's famous for rebellion," Arash said with a wry shake of his head. "I think it would be hard to get him to obey even if he wasn't a Berserker."
The trees ahead of us rustled as something rushed through them, and Mash gasped. "He's —"
My bugs felt the whoosh of the displaced air as Spartacus leapt up above the trees, and he cleared the last few dozen yards between us at speed…laughing?
A beast of a man landed in front of us roughly, wearing a broad grin —
"He's naked!" Rika gasped.
— and not much else.
"I-I think that's actually a loincloth!" Ritsuka corrected her.
"He's almost naked!" Rika said. "A-and he's…actually really muscly, whoa."
There was no way he was dressed like this in life, I wanted to say. This…this wasn't some ancient Roman loincloth and it wasn't some kind of strange magical armor like Bradamante's, this was just bondage gear. Every bit of it, from the mask that covered his entire face with the exception of his eyes and mouth to the straps that criss-crossed over his chest to the metal thong that protected his crotch. The only thing resembling actual armor on his person was the fauld that was attached to his codpiece and the bracers that covered his forearms.
He was also built like a fucking truck.
"Spartacus," Boudica greeted him with a smile like an old friend.
Spartacus eyed us all up, gaze flitting from one person to another, pausing only long enough for a once-over, and the grin never left his face. "More champions!" he crowed delightedly. "More champions invited to this battlefield! You should be pleased, for our oppressors are legion, and they commit unspeakable atrocities as they approach!"
He threw his arms out. "Come! This is the time of our rebellion! We shall do battle shoulder to shoulder and die gloriously!"
The twins gaped at him, mouths working but no sound coming out. Even I couldn't stop myself from staring as I tried to parse…whatever that just was.
I think I was beginning to understand Aífe's earlier comment about communicating with this guy.
"Wow," said Boudica appreciatively. "That's impressive. I've never known Spartacus to take a liking to someone so quickly. Not without pouncing on them immediately," she added.
That was him taking a liking to us?
"I-if it's all the same to him, I think I can do without the dying gloriously part," Ritsuka said.
"I'm too young to die," said Rika weakly, like she was still recovering from the shock.
Still, the grin never left Spartacus' face. I honestly didn't have the faintest clue what must have been going on in his head.
"Don't take it too literally," said Boudica. "That's his way of saying, 'Welcome to the team!' He's not actually asking you to die with him side by side."
But he was still able to communicate, even if it was in a twisted and backwards sort of way, so his Madness Enhancement must have been pretty low. If rank B was where you had no coherence at all, like I had been near the end of Gold Morning, then rank C should be just below that, where you might have just enough coherence to say a few words at a time. Being able to talk in complete sentences, his Madness Enhancement was probably rank D or rank E.
I squinted at him with my Master's Clairvoyance, and it turned out, was in for quite a shock.
"How is he not a gibbering wreck?" I blurted out. "EX? Madness Enhancement EX?"
I didn't even know it was possible to have the skill that high.
Rika's hand shot into the air.
"Most skills go from rank E to rank A, Senpai," Mash explained, predicting her question. "When there are special circumstances that make the skill better or when the skill is just that high, 'pluses' might be added to it. The only time a skill is ranked EX is…"
"When it goes off the scale," Emiya finished for her. "In the case of Spartacus, well, it might be best to think of it as him going so insane that he's wrapped back around again into a kind of insane sanity. So he's able to talk, even if what he says doesn't make sense."
"Thank you, Emiya," Rika said sarcastically. "That was very helpful."
Very deliberately, I didn't look at Aífe, who also had an EX ranked skill. Bloodstained Queen. It had opened up to me after her "test" with Emiya, and if it was half as effective as my Clairvoyance implied, then she really had only been playing with him.
He'd had the right of it, back in the courtyard. If she really wanted to kill him, he would have been dead.
"Spartacus is in the same kind of position as I am," Boudica told us. "It's not that either of us is an ally of Emperor Nero or Rome itself, but we simply can't stand by while the United Empire attempts to rip the whole thing apart, not when they don't seem to care whose lives they ruin along the way."
"The cages are empty," Spartacus said solemnly, even though the smile never left his mouth. "The walls of the coliseum have fallen. My sword is still sharp. Now, the world itself becomes my coliseum."
That…was… I…think I might have understood what he was trying to say. Maybe. Probably not.
"There, you see?" Boudica said, as though that explained everything. "He thinks the same way. That's why we're both out here, fighting for Rome."
"I…guess?" Ritsuka hedged uncertainly.
"Does he come with subtitles?" Rika muttered.
"You who has sprouted from the fields of rebellion," said Spartacus, "tell me your names. Let us revolt together against the tyranny of the oppressors' cruel invasion and cry our freedom to the empty heavens."
"Oh, I forgot to introduce everyone!" Boudica gasped. "I'm so sorry, it slipped my mind!" She turned to us apologetically. "Um, one at a time, please?"
The twins shared a look and seemed to have a silent debate about which one of them should go first. I held back a sigh.
"Taylor Hebert," I said shortly. "Master of Chaldea. Team leader."
Which was the same as saying "the most valuable target in the group," but the twins deferred to me enough that anyone paying any attention at all would know I was the leader in short order. There was no point in hiding it.
"U-um, I'm Mash Kyrielight," Mash said next, bowing slightly. Considering how sheltered she was and the largely Western cultures represented in Chaldea, I had to wonder where she'd picked up such a distinctly Japanese mannerism. "Shielder class Demi-Servant." She gestured to the little gremlin that had balanced perfectly on her shoulder even when she bowed. "This is Fou."
"Fou, fou!" it crowed.
"He's sort of like a mascot? I mean, he doesn't have any official position, but he's been at Chaldea for as long as I can remember."
"I'm, ah, Ritsuka," Ritsuka said awkwardly. "I don't know if I technically have any other position than one of Chaldea's Masters?"
"Same," said Rika, jerking her thumb at her brother, "only I'm his cute, innocent —" Ritsuka snorted — "little twin sister, Rika."
Emiya huffed, smirking. "Are we all sharing our true names, then? Fine. The name's Emiya, big guy."
"And I'm Arash Kamangir," said Arash with a friendly smile. "No need for us to stand on ceremony, right?"
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" said Spartacus. "There are no Masters and Servants, for we all stand as equals! Together, we shall strike fear into the heart of tyranny!"
That…sounded positive? He wasn't screaming or attacking anyone and things hadn't devolved into a fight, so I had to assume that meant he accepted us.
"I'm glad we can all get along so well," said Boudica, smiling.
Is that what's happening here? I wanted to ask.
"With that said, Spartacus." She turned to face him. "We were on our way back to camp. Could you head back and let the troops know we'll be there shortly? And that I'm bringing new allies with me. The last thing we need is for anyone to get too hasty and do something that can't be undone."
"Hahaha!" Spartacus laughed boisterously. "The seeds of our rebellion have borne fruit! The tyrannous oppressors shall shake so soundly that it will reach the very furthest depths of the underworld! Our allies shall carry their names to the afterlife!"
"Thank you, I really do appreciate it," said Boudica, and without another word, Spartacus bounded off, back in the direction of the camp.
"She understood that?" Ritsuka mumbled.
"Maybe she has some sort of skill that lets her comprehend what he's saying?" Mash suggested quietly. "A kind of…Madness Comprehension or something like that."
"She doesn't," Rika confirmed, just as quiet. "I checked with my super special Master Vision."
And to punctuate herself, she waggled her hands and wiggled her fingers.
Jazz hands. Of course. Because this was Rika.
Boudica, having heard them, let out a soft, self-deprecating laugh as she turned to them with a smile. "It's really not anything that incredible. Once you've spent as much time with him as I have, fighting enemy Servants side by side, you just sort of learn to pick out the meaning behind what he's saying instead of the words themselves."
I honed in on the particular wording of that.
"Servants?" I demanded. "As in more than one?"
"Well, we don't actually fight all of them," she admitted. "Julius Caesar himself seems to prefer not to engage on the frontlines, even though he's…actually fairly impressive when he does."
Was that unusual? Julius Caesar was a Roman general. He was a leader of armies, a head of state, not a common foot soldier or a minor officer. It seemed stranger to me the idea that he would fight on the frontlines instead of commanding his soldiers from behind one of the Roman Empire's famous military formations.
Then again, his soldiers weren't Servants, were they? Unless he had another Servant fighting under his command, then the only one at his disposal who could fight Boudica and Spartacus would be Caesar himself.
"But you've fought more than just him?" I pressed.
"A few," she said as she started walking again. Our group fell into step with her. "I can't say I recognized any of them, though, and only Caesar and Caligula freely gave their names. I'm sorry, but I just can't tell you much about them."
That would have been too convenient, wouldn't it? I guess it was just like Aífe said earlier: even if certain Noble Phantasms could be recognized on sight because they were simply that famous, most Heroic Spirits wouldn't know who was who by appearances alone unless they'd known each other in life.
"Were they Roman?"
"Yes," she said, and then she backtracked, "or at least they looked it. If they weren't Roman themselves, then they were definitely using Roman armor and Roman weapons."
"More Emperors?" asked Ritsuka.
"It's possible, but I'm not sure it's likely," said Arash. "Frankly, I'm doubting there are too many of these 'emperors' at all. There probably isn't enough space for all of their egos."
"A good point, but not one you should rely on," Aífe cut in. "If it would take extraordinary circumstances for such egotistical individuals to overlook their own sense of self-importance, then wouldn't these be just such extraordinary circumstances to begin with?"
"I'd call the end of the world pretty extraordinary," Rika muttered.
"That's true," Mash agreed thoughtfully, having apparently not heard Rika. "Then, if they're not Roman emperors, maybe they're just Roman Servants?"
"Hm, I hadn't thought of that," said Emiya. "Well. The famous emperors just tend to overshadow everyone else, don't they? That doesn't mean that those emperors are the only ones who ever achieved glory."
"Roman soldiers, you mean?" Arash clarified. "You know, that makes some sense, doesn't it? I guess I'm kind of proof positive that it's possible, aren't I? After all, I was just a soldier, too."
"In Rome," Aífe said dryly, "the only difference between one and the other is ambition."
My lips pursed — but this was one of those situations where the Romans' propensity for keeping records actually worked against us, because even if we crossed "Roman Emperors" off the list, that didn't narrow our possible candidates down at all. There were plenty of soldiers and unit commanders and generals of all kinds who had won glory or infamy over the course of the Roman Empire's history, and none of them would be someone whose likeness was so well-known that we'd recognize them on sight.
That was assuming they were even Roman at all, and not foreign Servants who had been handed Roman armor so they could fit into the United Empire's military units. It certainly sounded like the sort of thing I'd do, if I was in their position.
"It looks like we won't know anything for sure until we have to engage them ourselves," I said. "For now, the only thing we can safely assume is that our assumptions are probably wrong."
"Well, that's just great," Rika groused. "We're flying blind and no one gave us a parachute."
"Your confidence in me is truly inspiring," Emiya drawled. "Truly, Master. I'm absolutely touched by your faith."
She flipped him the bird.
"Well, I can understand her worry," Arash said. "It's hard to prepare for enemies when you don't know what you're preparing for."
"The victorious warrior wins first and then goes to war," Mash recited.
Emiya grunted. "Sun Tzu again?"
Mash ducked her head, the tips of her ears turned red from embarrassment. She didn't answer.
"No, it's not that I don't understand, either." He shook his head. "But in a normal Grail War, this is how things would be. You, your Servant, and six enemy Masters commanding six enemy Servants whose classes, skills, Noble Phantasms, and true names are completely unknown. Knowing who you're fighting for longer than the instant it takes for them to call their Noble Phantasm's true name is a rarity."
He went on, "In a sense, Chaldea has been spoiled. For both the Fuyuki and Orléans Singularities, you knew who your ultimate enemy was fairly quickly, so you knew who you had to beat to fix everything. Here… Well, we might not know who has the Grail until we face Romulus himself, and if we get it wrong, we'll be deep behind enemy lines having killed their great, celebrated leader."
"Thank you, Emiya," Rika gritted out, "that's exactly what I wanted to be thinking about."
"That's why we have to talk to Emperor Nero," I reminded them both. "If Nero or any of the imperial generals knows more about who and what we're facing, then we won't have to take risks like fighting Romulus without knowing if he even has the Grail."
"As I said before, Emperor Nero is on the way here," said Boudica. "I'm sorry, though. I'm afraid even the Praetorian Guard's best horses are only normal, mortal horses, so it will take almost a week for them to arrive. In the meantime —"
"We're here," I concluded for her.
And as we rounded the next curve in the path, up ahead, it opened out into a clearing. The low hum of men's voices drifted over to our group, indistinct. I'd already tagged each and every one of them with a bug the instant we were in range, all four-hundred-sixty-seven of them, milling about as they kept the camp in as good a condition as could be expected.
Boudica turned to us with a smile. "Welcome to the Gaul Expeditionary Force, everyone. It's not much, but I'll do my best to make it feel as close to home as I can."