‘No, sir. I’ve made contact with them, sir,’ the scout reported.
Alder’s one hand grasped a strut to keep him standing as the automotive lurched over some difficult ground. All around him, before and behind, the mighty strength of the Imperial Fourth Army was on the move. There were automotives and pack animals, horses, giant beetles and even desert scorpions, all moving in great columns that probably still stretched most of the way back to Tark. The infantry marched in shifting blocks, while the officers and artificers rode. Sometimes heliopters thundered overhead, sweeping the terrain to watch for ambushes, and a multitude of the light airborne performed the same function, squads of them jumping forwards half a mile and then waiting for the army to catch up.
‘Tell me what’s going on, soldier,’ Alder demanded. The scout saluted him again.
‘It’s an embassy, sir.’
‘You spoke with them?’
‘They hailed me as I passed over, sir, so it seemed reasonable.’
The man had a sergeant’s tabs on his shoulders, and presumably had been picked out from the crowd for some quality or other. Alder now hoped it was his sound judgement.
‘Imperial intelligence says the Kessen won’t meet us in the field,’ Alder said. ‘So what’s going on?’
‘It isn’t the Kessen, sir. There are Ant-kinden amongst them, but they’re mercenaries. It’s the Spider-kinden, sir. Or at least, some Spider-kinden and their retinue.’
Alder’s expression did not change but inside he felt uneasy. The Empire’s stretching borderlands had only touched near the Spiderlands in the last year, and had no established relations. The Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw normally acted as go-betweens in any trade the Consortium conducted with the wealth of the Spiders. It was fabled, that wealth, though probably entirely fabulous. Certainly it was unsubstantiated at least. In fact, as he considered it, Alder realized that he knew almost nothing for certain about the Spider-kinden holdings situated south of the Lowlands. They were rich. They were clever. Their lands extended on beyond imperial maps. That was the imperial reservoir of knowledge on the subject.
‘This could get ugly,’ he murmured.
‘They want to speak with you, sir,’ the scout reported.
‘No doubt. You are dismissed, soldier.’ As the scout’s wings ignited into life and he kicked off from the automotive, Alder was already gesturing to a Fly-kinden messenger.
‘Get me Major Maan,’ he instructed, because he urgently needed to know imperial policy regarding the Spiders, and it was an ill-kept secret that Maan was Rekef Inlander. ‘And get me any Scorpion-kinden we’ve still got with us. I want to talk to them.’
After two hours in further conference he felt no wiser. Major Maan had simply emphasized that all travellers’ reports confirmed that the Spiderlands were very extensive, that they were varied in geography and peoples, and that the chief interest of their rulers seemed to be in conspiring against one another. The Lowlands had never presented a threat to the Spiders, as the Lowlanders were also notably self-involved and divided. There was a brisk trade along the Seldis road to Tark, Merro and Helleron, but beyond that it was remarkable how little reliable information could be found.
‘They’re subtle, sir,’ Maan had warned, as if that explained everything.
And so here he was now, General Alder of the Barbs, with his own retinue of two hundred Wasp soldiers and, nearby, another five hundred of the light airborne ready to move in on his signal if things got as ugly as he feared. He had Maan with him, for all the good it would do, while behind him the main army was setting up temporary camp under Carvoc’s command.
And ahead were the Spiders. The ground here was hilly, and patchily wooded, and the Spider commander or lord or whatever he might call himself had chosen a little dell to pitch his tent in. It was barely a tent, by Alder’s standards, just a peaked roof of silk held up on poles, tugged lightly in the wind. A small knot of people were gathered beneath its shade, and the rest of the retinue were at military attention, waiting for him in immaculate parade-ground fashion. It was, he admitted, a clever piece of theatre.
At least half of them were bronze-skinned Kessen Ants in gleaming chainmail and helms of like colour. Their shields bore a device of abstract flourishes that Maan loudly informed him was the crest of Seldis.
Some of the others were Flies, and most of those seemed to be nobles or wealthy citizens, as richly clad in felt and silks as many a magnate of the Consortium of the Honest. Others there were Beetle-kinden soldiers with heavy crossbows. An honour guard of a dozen hulking Scorpions, stripped to the waist, leant on swords almost as high as they were. Then there were the Spiders themselves.
There were almost a score of them, and they seemed all elegance and poise, each one regarding the approaching Wasps with a slight and individual smile. If the Flies had been dressed well, these were magnificent, and yet they trod a thin line between the ornate and the excessive. They were, Alder had to admit, the very soul of taste, wearing their fine silks and gold, their embroidered brocades and their jewels, as though the garments were simply casually thrown on for no special occasion. Himself an old soldier who had never cared for gaud and glitter, Alder found himself momentarily dowdy, travel-stained and awkward, but he thrust the thought away angrily.
It was clear to see who the leader was, and to Alder’s surprise it was a male: a further victory for Major Maan’s intelligence because Alder had been assured that they were always led by their womenfolk. This particular Spider-kinden lord reclined languidly in a solid-looking gilt chair, high-backed and fantastically carved. A couple of young women of his own race sat at his feet, and the others stood around him, not as a formal court, but in little groups and cliques. They were all beautiful, men and women alike. Even the oldest amongst them possessed an austere handsomeness, while the youngest glowed with the fruits of youth. Some were pale, others tanned, and their hair was fair or red or dark, more varied than most other kinden ever were, but all with the same ineffably delicate sophistication about them.
The soldiers arrayed behind the Spiders tensed slightly, waiting to see if the armed men coming towards them meant mischief. Alder turned to his troops and signalled for them to take their ease.
‘Major,’ he said. Maan glanced from one Spider-kinden to the next, swallowing awkwardly.
‘Remarkable, General. One does hear-’
‘Just listen, Major. Only speak when I consult you.’ Alder went forward, with Maan dogging his heels, followed by two sentinels for bodyguards and a scribe to make records.
The Spider leader stood up as they approached. He looked younger than thirty years, and he wore a crimson shirt with ballooning sleeves beneath a green jerkin filigreed in gold thread, and loose-fitting dark breeches above knee-high boots that sported silver spurs. He made a flourishing gesture of welcome that was part wave and part bow, rings glittering on his fingers. His neat, dark beard made his smile flash all the more.
‘Do I have the honour of conversing with a general of the Wasps?’ he asked. ‘That is the title, is it not?’
‘General Alder of the Imperial Fourth Army, known as the Barbs,’ Alder replied, restraining an urge to salute.
‘The Barbs? Charming. I am the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael and I am delighted to make your acquaintance, General Alder.’
The second name meant, Alder recalled from his briefing, that this man was of the Aristoi — from one of their ever-feuding noble families. The name itself meant nothing to him though, and he had no clue as to how the Aldanrael might rank in the grander scheme of things.
A couple of the well-dressed Flies came forward at this point, and Alder turned to them to greet them formally, before seeing that they were bearing a flask of wine and a large platter of honeyed meat, shredded and laid out like unreadable script.