Chapter XXIV: Orléans

It was another two days before Bradamante fully recovered her reserves, which gave us another two days to plan out our assault on Orléans and come up with some contingencies in case we faced more resistance than we were expecting. We still knew frighteningly little about what we would find there, if we would find anything at all, and I hated exactly how blind we would be going in.

There wasn't much of anything for it, though. We had a map, which was obviously useful, but it didn't have a radar or motion tracker or whatever that tied Chaldea's sensor readings to us in real time. Da Vinci, Romani had told me, had it on her to do list, but the time differential between us and Chaldea and the fact that she was still dashing around like a madwoman as she tried to fix everything that was still broken and keep running everything that wasn't meant that it kept getting shunted down the list.

It would have been a useful feature to have, but even with it, what we could have picked up was limited. I hadn't forgotten that the sensor readings got less reliable the further away from Chaldea's primary reference points — that is, the twins and me — they tried to scan.

Still, even just a general idea of enemy movements would have been invaluable.

So, with that in mind, we had three main plans, or more like one main plan and two major contingencies. Plan A was simple: we went in, we attacked Jeanne Alter, killed her and Fafnir, and then we searched for the Holy Grail. If there were other Servants and wyverns there, well, we'd have to handle them, too, but between our current list of Servants, I was fairly confident that it wouldn't be too hard to handle. I just had to hope they didn't have anyone strong enough or with a conceptual advantage against Siegfried, seeing as he was our heaviest hitter, but the only one off the top of my head was Sigurd, and if he was here and on Jeanne Alter's side, we had a whole host of other problems on our hands.

I doubted it, though. If Jeanne Alter had someone that powerful on her side, the only places to put him would be guarding the Grail and the frontlines. The former was possible, but the latter more likely, and since we hadn't heard anything about him from anyone anywhere, I was willing to bet he wasn't here.

"Can we be sure of that?" Ritsuka had asked.

"There's a lot we can't be sure of," I had admitted. "But between the two of them, if I had Sigurd and Dracul at the same time, I would've kept Dracul back to defend the Grail and sent Sigurd out to crush the enemy. Whatever else she is, if Jeanne Alter is any part the real Jeanne d'Arc, she shouldn't be stupid."

Jeanne hadn't protested but for a worried crease of her brow.

Plan B was about as simple. If Jeanne Alter happened to not be home when we got to Orléans, we would methodically eliminate every possible hiding place for the Grail, preferably using my bugs to find it instead of sending in a person or a Servant and possibly tripping an alarm or something. If we could get the Grail, this whole thing would essentially be over and done with.

Hopefully, it would be that easy, but I had a niggling suspicion that it wouldn't be.

"History is robust," Emiya had told us, like a teacher imparting a lesson. "The fact that it requires something on the level of a Holy Grail to disrupt it should tell you that without the Grail, things will correct themselves on their own."

"Removing the Grail won't necessarily remove the Servants it summoned or undo the wishes made on it," I had pointed out. "Besides, it's entirely possible that Jeanne Alter never lets the Grail out of her sight, or that she leaves it heavily guarded. There was never going to be a chance of doing this without a fight."

Emiya hadn't disagreed.

"You sure are knowledgeable about this stuff," Rika had said.

Emiya's sardonic smirk had said everything and nothing at the same time. "When you've accumulated the level of experience I have, these are things you tend to pick up."

Plan C, if Jeanne Alter was gone and took the Grail with her, or even if securing the Grail wasn't enough to fix things, because we still weren't sure if it would be, then we were going to set up an ambush as best as we could and wait for her to return to base. I had spools of tightly woven spider silk rope I'd been weaving together over the past week for triplines and the like, although I had my doubts about their efficacy against Servants that were so blatantly superhuman.

"It's likely we won't be able to properly ambush her in any case," Jeanne had said.

"Servants can detect the presence of other nearby Servants," Siegfried agreed. "I'm sorry, Master, but she will almost certainly know we're there before we could possibly spring a trap."

"I'm not entirely sure it'll matter, one way or the other," I said. "She has Fafnir, and the one time she brought it to a fight, you guys ran away instead of fighting it directly. Her habit so far has been to throw her weight around whenever she does something instead of approaching things from a tactical or strategic standpoint. A hammer instead of a scalpel."

Ritsuka made a noise of understanding. "Like La Charité and Lyon and Périgueux. She's been relying on overwhelming force instead of cleverness."

I nodded. "If she thinks she's untouchable, then she might not care about being ambushed and just spring it. There's a thin line between confidence and arrogance, and she might just do us the favor of tap dancing across it."

Plan D… If it turned out she wasn't basing herself out of Orléans, we were going to have to start looking at other likely places. I doubted we'd have to, though. Romani had detected a "massive hotspot" to the north. The distance and general direction corresponded well with Orléans, and if I was a betting woman, I would say that Jeanne Alter was consolidating her forces, gathering them all in one place.

The only reasons to do that were to turtle up and hunker down to defend yourself or muster your forces for an all-out offensive. It could be either, but with her having lost so many of her Servants — four to us and at least one to Bradamante — I was fairly confident it was the former.

"Could Jeanne Alter — ah, the Dragon Witch — have set up her base of operations in Paris instead?" was Mash's question.

"That's also possible," I had conceded. "But it doesn't have the same meaning to her as Orléans. If it was just about tearing down France, taking and occupying Paris is probably more symbolic, but she's already proven it's just as much about a grudge she's holding onto as anything else."

"Orléans was the sight of my first major victory," Jeanne had chimed in. "Paris… If what happened to La Charité was any indication, the Dragon Witch would have burned it to the ground, as payback for my failure to liberate the city from the English during my life." She grabbed at her thigh. "Or for the wound I suffered in the attempt."

"Orléans is closer, anyway," I had added. "There's no reason to skip past it and go straight to Paris, so we'll have to check on it either way."

No one had disagreed.

So, with our course of action set, we spent one last night in Thiers. Through whatever sorcerous means let him recreate objects so faithfully, Emiya did us the incredible kindness of replicating a pair of inflatable mattresses. Jeanne and I shared one while the twins and Mash huddled up together on the other.

If anyone asked, I would of course deny it, but seeing them curled around each other was cute. Lisa might have called it "diabetes inducing" or something like that.

With Arash on the roof keeping watch and the rest of the Servants standing guard, I laid down next to Jeanne with a sigh and let myself relax into the relative comfort of the mattress. I was asleep almost instantly.

Morning came all too soon, and the five of us dragged ourselves out of bed to get ready for the coming day. There was a fire in the air that hadn't been there before, a sense of purpose and direction that had largely been lacking the rest of our time in this Singularity as we flailed about trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.

Somehow, Emiya made our bland breakfast more appetizing. It wasn't anything gourmet and it paled compared to some of his finer fare, but somehow, he managed to make even rehydrated rations taste like something more than cardboard.

"Marry me, Emiya," Rika said through a mouthful of food. "I can't go another day without one of your home cooked meals."

Emiya smirked and said nothing.

When everyone who needed to eat had been fed and watered, I set the group about packing up our supplies, and when that was done, we gathered together outside the front of the church.

"There's a rule that we've been following ever since we got here," I explained to them. "Director Animusphere was of the opinion that Masters of Chaldea should be self-sufficient enough to handle any physical exertion that might be required of them in the course of their duties. She considered it a waste of resources and Chaldea's energy to have our Servants carry us everywhere we went."

Rika let out a disgusted groan. I pretended I hadn't heard.

"I don't disagree with the spirit of that rule," I went on, "and when and where it's feasible to get somewhere by walking, we're going to do that. But if there's one thing the last month has shown, it's that walking the whole way across the French countryside isn't feasible. To that end, we're going to speed things up a little so we can get to Orléans as quickly as we can."

I gestured to each of the Servants in turn.

"Arash is going to be on overwatch," I told them. "His job is to make sure we're not running into any ambushes and keep an eye out for enemy Servants. Jeanne, Mash, you're going to be carrying our supplies. For one reason or another" — mostly the fact that they were shorter than everyone except Rika — "it's better for you two to hold onto everything we need to take with us."

"Understood," Mash replied.

"You can count on me, Master," said Arash. "Nothing will even get close."

"Siegfried, you'll be carrying me," I continued. "Emiya, I'm entrusting Rika to you. Georgios, Ritsuka is with you. As for Mozart…"

I trailed off.

The man himself smiled and shrugged. "No need to explain. I understand perfectly. After all, I'm not a Servant born to particular physicality." He waved his hands dramatically. "It's simply not a part of my disposition."

At least I didn't have to explain. If I was being honest, Mozart was the one I had the least idea what to do with. He obviously possessed a Noble Phantasm and it obviously did something, he wouldn't be a Servant if that wasn't true, but I wasn't entirely sure what sort of role he could possibly play. It wasn't that there was no use for his skills or Noble Phantasm, it was just that he obviously wasn't a fighter and the only enemy I was really worried about facing was Fafnir.

I would probably think of something by the time we actually set about to fight Jeanne Alter. Ambushing her once Fafnir was dead and hitting her with a Noble Phantasm that drained and weakened her might be disorienting enough to make the final battle a cakewalk.

A tactic to tuck into my back pocket.

"We'll be keeping pace with the slowest of us," I said, leaving Mozart's words unanswered. "Getting us all there in one piece at the same time is more important than getting there as quickly as possible. Ideally, this should still take us less than three hours and we'll arrive outside the city right around noon. Any questions?"

Rika's hand shot up. "Please tell me we're going to have bathroom breaks, Senpai!"

Ritsuka let out a heavy sigh.

"If anyone needs to stop for any reason, we will." Come to think of it, being carried for three hours wasn't going to be incredibly comfortable, was it? It might slow us down, but it would probably be a good idea to set down and stretch our legs every now and again. "In fact, we'll take five to ten minute breaks every half an hour or so to keep us Masters from cramping up before we get there."

In spite of my first instinct to just keep going until we got there. But three hours being carried in someone's arms, unprotected from the winds as we raced up the road at sixty miles an hour, that sounded a lot more uncomfortable when I gave it enough thought. For future Singularities, I was going to have to see if Da Vinci could magic up a few sets of goggles for us to wear whenever we had to travel like this. And maybe some gloves and old-fashioned leather aviator helmets, like the kind biplane pilots wore, so we could keep our (mostly mine and Rika's) hair from getting blown all over.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I swept my gaze over the gathered group. "Any other questions?"

Nobody spoke up, this time. Good. That meant we'd covered enough last night that we didn't need to go into more detail now.

"We'll go by foot up the north road until we reach the hill," I announced. "Once we've passed the city limits, we'll mount up for the trip to Orléans. Make sure all your straps are secure and your share of the supplies is squared away. Whether everything goes perfectly or not, we won't be coming back to Thiers. Don't leave anything you'll miss."

Emiya chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. "Geez. You're really going to make me jealous there, Taylor."

"O-of who?" Rika squawked.

"Her," said Emiya, blasé. "It's not everyone who can say the famous hero Siegfried carried them across the French countryside."

By the looks he got, especially from Arash, nobody believed him for a second, and I couldn't help remembering his comment before we first Rayshifted here, about how I was probably a more compatible Master for him. I didn't call him out on it, for Rika's sake if nothing else.

Now wasn't the time for major interpersonal drama, anyway.

"Let's get going," I said instead. "We need to be there before sundown."

Our group left the church — and Bradamante — behind, and in a disordered column, we snaked our way through Thiers and up the road that went up the hill through the northern section of the city. Some of the citizens who had gotten used to seeing us in town, Siegfried and me in particular, greeted us kindly as we passed them by, but we didn't stay and chat. Rika responded to the one or two she recognized with cheerful replies, but even I could tell they were relatively subdued for her.

Once we reached the edge of town and the last building disappeared in the foliage behind us, it was time to start sprinting the rest of the way. I turned to the group and said, "Pair up."

There was a moment of dead silence, like no one realized what I meant, and then the twins awkwardly moved towards the Servant I'd assigned to carry them, like they weren't quite sure what they were supposed to be doing. Ritsuka made to climb astride Georgios' back.

"Bridal style, you two," I added as I tied my hair back at the nape of my neck. "The last thing you want to do is lose your grip and fall while Georgios and Emiya are running as fast as a speeding car."

Ritsuka blanched and Rika flinched, and as they figured things out with their rides, I turned to Siegfried and tucked my glasses safely away in my pocket.

Siegfried knelt down, and with a little fumbling, I climbed into his arms like I had just a few days before. When he stood, my stomach flopped in my gut as my feet left the ground. That was so much less comfortable when I actually had time to think about it instead of rushing into battle.

Already, it was obvious that this wasn't going to be a comfy ride through the countryside.

"Is everyone ready?" I called over in the direction of the others.

Vague assents answered me. Neither of the twins sounded particularly thrilled with this, but in lieu of better options, this was what we had.

God, I'd never wanted a car more in my life. Or better yet, one of Dragon's aircraft.

I patted Siegfried on the shoulder. "Go!"

We took off. Like sprinters at the sound of the gunshot, our group went from zero to sixty almost instantly, and behind Siegfried and me, I heard Rika's startled shriek and Ritsuka's yelp, and I had to swallow one of my own against the wind that suddenly buffeted me from the front. It whipped my hair about and bit like ice against the nape of my neck and my exposed cheek, and I had to close my eyes to keep them from watering.

It was even more disorienting that way. Bugs passed in and out of my range and control constantly. I barely had time to get a grasp on what was entering before it left, and the galaxy of lights under my eyelids shifted so rapidly and so constantly that it was almost enough to make me nauseous.

Three hours of this. Forget a car or a Dragoncraft. Right then, I would have gladly taken Atlas.

About ten minutes in, the surprise eventually gave way to monotony. My cheek had long since gone numb, and Rika's shriek had turned first to whoops of excitement and then to utter silence. The only thing to listen to was the howl of the passing wind, and even that was more a nuisance, a persistent itch I couldn't scratch, instead of something to distract myself with.

The steep hill in whose valley Thiers was built swiftly gave way to farmland, then to thin patches of forest, and again to more farmland. The further away we got, the smoother the land around us became, until the almost mountainous highlands of Thiers turned into gently rolling hills with shallow slopes and inclines that reminded me more of the American Northeast than not.

By the time our communicators beeped to let us know it had been a full thirty minutes, it wasn't soon enough by anyone's reckoning, and we had barely slowed to a stop before Rika all but leapt from Emiya's arms, crying, "Land!"

Ritsuka was a lot more careful about setting his feet back on the ground, but even he was obviously relieved to get a reprieve from the trip.

Gingerly, I climbed out of Siegfried's arms as he knelt down for me. If anyone noticed the slight unsteadiness of my legs, no one mentioned it. Probably because neither of the twins was particularly surefooted, either.

My glasses nearly fell from my fingers as I fished them out and put them back on. My hands were still somewhat numb from the wind chill.

"Do you need some assistance, Master?" Emiya asked, smirking.

Without looking, Rika flipped the bird at him, but all it succeeded in doing was to make him chuckle.

"Senpai," she began lowly, turning towards me, "I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with the Director. We absolutely shouldn't rely on our Servants for travel."

"Seconded," her brother mumbled.

I pressed my lips together tightly, but even though I agreed with her about how uncomfortable it was, saying so out loud probably wasn't the best idea. Besides, there simply wasn't anything to be done about it. We couldn't afford to take a week to get to Orléans, this time.

"Fifteen minutes," I said instead. "Eat a snack, take a drink, empty your bladder. If there's anything you need to do, now's the time to do it."

The twins acknowledged me with unenthusiastic grunts, and Rika fiddled with her hair, trying to comb down the flyaway tangle it had become with her fingers. I didn't see the point, since it was just going to get messed up again pretty soon.

"Stupid hair," she grumbled, "stupid wind, stupid me for having stupidly long hair…"

Emiya approached her with a shake of his head and extended a hand as though in offering. He mumbled something under his breath, and before our eyes, an aviator's helmet took shape in his palm, old and worn and positively ancient-looking.

Immediately, he had my full attention.

"Whoa," said Rika.

"You might only be trading one problem for another," said Emiya, "but this should help you at least keep your hair under control."

Rika took it gingerly, examined it from every angle for a minute or two, and then she slipped it on with comfortable ease. It was a perfect fit.

"This is amazing!" Rika grinned as she buckled the straps. "I feel like an old-fashioned dogfighter! Or, or, or like Amelia Earhart!"

"That's not a sword," I said cautiously, "or a bladed weapon."

And the mattresses last night hadn't been, either, come to think of it. I'd just been too tired to give it any more thought than to be grateful we finally had something comfortable to sleep on.

Emiya blinked at me, bewildered, and then understanding crossed his face and he nodded. "Ah," he said. "Yeah. It's not a replication, either."

He held out his hand, and a moment later, there was another aviator helmet there. He tossed it to me and I caught it, and it felt as real and faithful as it looked. Old, worn leather, steel buckles, a padded lining, complete with machine stitching. When I tried it on, it fit snugly but comfortably over my head.

"Strictly speaking, I'm not limited only to swords and bladed weapons," Emiya explained. "However, the cost for anything that doesn't fit that category goes up, and anything more mechanically complicated than a fishing rod is too far beyond me."

"So you couldn't make, say, a gun."

He shrugged. "I could probably project the individual parts, but the mechanisms are fiddly enough that I can't do the whole thing, and if I wanted to make sure everything worked right, I'd have to have the real deal right in front of me. At that point, what's the point of me making another one?"

I thumbed the helmet. "And this?"

He smirked.

"I'm particularly proud of that clever little trick. Armor is one of the hardest things for me to make, so instead of trying to replicate it wholesale, I cut some corners by substituting leather patterned after sword grips and steel from guards and pommels. The consistency is a little different, but the overall material is functionally the same."

Arash let out a whistle. "That's a nifty way of working around your limitations."

It really was, and once more, it reminded me of how I'd been as Skitter. Damn, Emiya really would have fit me well, wouldn't he?

Emiya shrugged. "I was never all that strong while I was alive, so thinking my way out of a fight was often the only way I managed to walk away with my head still attached to my shoulders."

"Know your opponent and know yourself and you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles," Mash recited.

Emiya looked at her, surprised. "You know Sun Tzu?"

"Ah." Her cheeks flushed a little. "I, um, I read a lot, growing up."

"That's not generally on the curriculum at most high schools," said Emiya wryly. "Military prep schools, maybe, but not regular high schools."

Mash shrank in on herself a little. "I was…homeschooled."

One of these days, I was going to get a better story of who, what, and how Mash had been "made" from… Definitely from Marie. The version I had was really far too sparse and sanitized for my liking.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Mash," Jeanne said kindly. "After all, I, too, was homeschooled. I never even learned to read properly while I was alive."

Mash blinked, and then understanding dawned across her face. "Ah, that's right, public education with a core curriculum only became the standard for children in most modern countries sometime in the nineteenth century. Before then, most people were tradesmen and learned basic skills from their family."

I let them talk for another few minutes and waited for Ritsuka and Rika to have their fill when the two of them reached for a bottle of water, and then I ordered the break to an end and told everyone to saddle up again. My glasses came off and went back into my pocket, but I still saw clearly enough to recognize Emiya projecting another helmet for Ritsuka to wear.

Once everyone was ready, we took off again. The rushing wind was marginally less of a pain with the helmet to protect my ears and keep my hair mostly contained, but the helmet did little for my exposed cheeks and hands and nothing at all for the discomfort of hanging from someone's arms for thirty minutes straight.

We stopped for a break another three times and passed at least four towns that we had to steer away from to avoid awkward questions, but on the last break, since we were making good time and weren't that far away from Orléans, the group made the decision to just push on through to the end. We were going to just make the extra seven miles in one go instead of stopping, and then we'd walk the final three. The twins weren't excited about that, and neither was I, if I was being entirely honest, but it gave us enough distance to make a stealthier approach than just rushing in would have.

Someone else, it turned out, had different plans.

It happened too fast for me to track. The disturbance passed my bugs at lightning speed, so quick that there wasn't any time at all for me to react.

Master! Arash shouted, but there wasn't any time for him to say anything else, either.

Emiya moved before I figured out what was happening, a blur of red and black moving so quickly that he stole the breath for Rika's scream, and then he was in front of us at the head of the pack. A flower of pink light with seven petals bloomed.

"RHO AIAS!"

And thunder struck it with the force of a hurricane.