The answer came later that day. The threads stretched between the trees above them for mile after mile, stretching into the jungle on either side of them as far as they could see. They seemed thickest in ten foot wide concentrations that ran like roads through the jungle canopy about thirty feet above them. A series of almost parallel ropes with diagonal linkages between them supported a matting of fine threads that formed a surface that looked firm enough to walk on, with some higher ropes positioned in just the right place to act as handholds. It was as though a race of intelligent spiders had built themselves a road network out of their own webs, high above the jungle floor and the dangers that lurked there. Thomas was agog. So far as he knew, this was completely new, something that no-one in the world had ever before imagined, and he looked eagerly forward to meeting the creatures responsible.

     Then, without warning, the jungle came alive around them. Streamers of web came flying at them, hitting the seven travellers and tangling them helplessly in the sticky strands. They fell to the ground, struggling uselessly and trying vainly to draw their weapons and cast spells, able to do nothing but watch helplessly as their attackers jumped into view. Thomas felt his blood freeze in his veins as he saw them. They were the spider equivalent of centaurs, with human torsos rising from spider bodies. Arachnaurs, you might call them. Their spider bodies were massive and heavy, in a variety of colours from rusty red to dark brown, and had eight thick, hairy legs that carried them across the ground with alarming speed. Their human parts were squat, hairy and muscular, and their faces were ugly and lumpy with flat noses, long, straggly hair and glaring red eyes.

     They ran from their hiding places among the surrounding undergrowth and dropped out of the jungle canopy overhead, dangling on the ends of long strands of web spun from spinnerets at the rear end of their bodies. Reaching the seven travelers, they took their backpacks and weapons, ignoring their protests and cries of terror, and bound their hands and feet with dry web woven into thin, silky ropes. Fresh newly spun webbing from their bodies was then wrapped around them from neck to feet, shrinking and tightening as it dried, squeezing them so tightly that it became hard to breathe. Finally, small, woven mats of wet, sticky web were placed over their mouths to gag them.

     Each of the seven travellers was then picked up by the human arms of an arachnaur, and Thomas found his face pressed close to a hairy shoulder. The smell of stale sweat was nearly overpowering, making him wish he could breathe through his mouth. They probably can't ever wash, he thought as he tried to turn his nose away in disgust from the sticky, damp skin. They must have a layer of oil all over their bodies so they don't get stuck on their own webs. He marvelled at the way that part of his mind was still able to work in a calm, detached manner even under these circumstances, despite the fact that the rest of it was screaming in terror.

     The arachnaurs carried them up to a nearby web road, along which they ran at great speed, each of their eight spider legs seeming to touch the thick matting for just the briefest instant before lifting again. Other spider people ran along the underside of the road, hanging into the webbing with velcro like hooks on their feet. Thomas, utterly terrified and looking down at the jungle floor thirty feet below, wondered whether the spider creatures ever missed their footing and fell. They appeared to have absolutely no fear of heights, and when they came to an intersection, they cut the corner by jumping across the gap. As Thomas’s arachnaur made the leap, he felt the creature momentarily lose its grip on him and he suffered a moment of panic before it literally grabbed him out of the air and held him even more tightly. He struggled in its grasp as it set off down the new web road, but knew it was useless. The silken ropes binding his wrists were so strong and thin that he'd cut himself on them before breaking even a single strand. Their one hope was Drake, and he silently prayed to the Gods that he hadn't also been captured.

     The arachnaurs carried them for hours, during which Thomas estimated that they travelled about twenty or thirty miles. Then, they entered an area in which the webs hanging down from and between the trees were thicker and denser than before and in which several web roads converged and crossed. The young wizard guessed that they were approaching the centre of the arachnaurs' territory. They passed several other arachnaurs coming and going on other roads that ran above and below the one they were on, and they also saw places where the webs formed great sheets and blankets, supported by silken ropes and webworks of supporting strands so that they formed tent-like structures which Thomas supposed were the spider people's homes. The support webbing needed to hold up these extremely elaborate but flimsy structures and prevent them from collapsing in a heap appeared at first glance to be so tangled and disorganised that they looked like the silk tents spun by some caterpillars, but at the same time they were quite beautiful and the young wizard couldn't help admiring them, in spite of the dire predicament they were in. The creatures who had slowly woven them out of their own webs were not just architects. They were artists.

     Soon, they were passing hundreds of these web tents, each of which was roughly spherical, about ten yards across and had circular openings two yards wide in their undersides. The seven captives saw that they were being carried through a city, a city made entirely out of cobwebs. The webworks here were so dense that everything else, trees, undergrowth, everything, was completely hidden beneath it, and wherever they looked they saw nothing but a tangled blanket of silk in which the tents which the arachnaurs used as homes hung like baubles in a Christmas tree.

     The streets turned into ten foot wide tunnels through which the arachnaurs ran hanging from the ceiling, and they passed several places where teams of the spider people were repairing tears and holes in its tubular wall, presumably caused by large animals blundering into them or trees blowing over. They were clinging to the wall with their spider legs so that their spinnerets were positioned over the tear and moving them back and forth over it, sewing up the hole with freshly spun silk. Glancing at them as he was carried past, Thomas wondered how long it had taken them to create this amazing city and how many inhabitants it had. So far as he could tell, the main body of it was well over a mile across.

     Their destination wasn't in the city, though, but just outside it. Their captors carried them a little way further, to where the webs began to thin out again, and they came to a large open area, about a hundred yards across, in which hundreds of animals, bound in webs like flies, hung from the tree branches on the end of silken ropes. This must be one of their ‘pantrys', thought Thomas. A place where captured food animals were kept until they were eaten. No! he thought in renewed terror. They can't mean to eat us! He kicked and struggled, but to no avail, and he was hung up alongside a leopard that seemed to have long since given up hope and stared at him mournfully with its slitted yellow eyes.

     The others were hung up nearby, the silken ropes from which they were hung being attached to the middle of their backs. They also kicked and struggled as they realised the fate that the arachnaurs had in store for them, but it was hopeless. They never had a chance. Their only hope was that Drake was still free, and that he would somehow be able to find and free them.

     All the arachnaurs then left except one, a large grey creature missing a leg whose wrinkled, shrunken abdomen sagged in great loose folds between its remaining seven legs. It looked old, and Thomas guessed that it was one of their leaders, that it held a position of authority. It climbed among the overhanging branches that roofed the great open area, moving slowly and carefully as if every moment caused it some discomfort, possibly from a spider equivalent of arthritis. It made its way to another silk bound prisoner, a human. Looking around, Thomas suddenly realised that there were dozens of humans there, along with a few goblins and shologs. Shadowsoldiers, he realised. Stripped of their armour and weapons. Perhaps as many as thirty. He wondered whether the arachnaurs had more of them in other ‘pantrys'. Perhaps the entire Shadowforce, all hundred of them, had been captured.

     Thomas got another surprise when the arachnaur spoke to the prisoner it had approached, using the common tongue with a thick accent. "You thought you could fool us by leaving more stragglers behind your main force, but we cannot be deceived so easily. We will capture all the rest of you who are still loose, and you will all pay for your unprovoked attack upon us. We are a peace loving people, but such savage brutality will not be tolerated. I leave you now to contemplate your fate and dwell upon the merits of peaceful coexistence."

     So that's it, thought Thomas. They think we're Shadowsoldiers. Can't they see that we're not wearing uniforms? No, they don't wear clothes themselves, so such things probably don't mean anything to them. All they know is that we're two-leggers, and two-leggers attacked them for no reason.

     He tried to speak and shout through the gag, to tell the arachnaur that they weren't with the Shadowsoldiers, that they were nothing to do with them, but it was useless. The webs were glued so securely over his mouth that he would tear his skin if he tried too hard to open it, and all he managed to do was make unidentifiable, muffled noises that the creature ignored completely, probably thinking that he was just begging for mercy. He struggled violently against the binding webs, but succeeded only in setting himself swinging to and fro on the end of the rope he was hanging by. He could no nothing but watch helplessly as the arachnaur left.

     He looked at Lirenna, and saw her looking back at him with a look of such horror and terror that he wanted to cry. Shaun and Matthew were staring at Diana and were frantic at their helplessness to protect their sister, their failure to keep her safe. Both of them would gladly have given their own lives to save her, but now they might have to just hang there and watch her being eaten alive. Thomas felt sorrier for them that he did for Diana herself, who at least would accept death calmly, knowing that she was going to the loving embrace of her Goddess.

     Jerry seemed to have just given up, and hung there in apparent acceptance of his fate. He'd wanted to see the world, and now it seemed that he'd seen as much of it as he ever would. Petronax, however, was struggling harder than any of them, so hard that he'd cut his wrists on the web fibres and blood was flowing down his hands to drip from his fingers onto the forest floor below. The webs seemed totally unbreakable, though, and the fighter was still bound as tightly as ever. If he carried on struggling, he ran the risk of cutting his wrists so deeply that he'd bleed to death before the arachnaurs got to him. Perhaps that was the idea.

     Obviously, none of them was going to be able to free themselves. The warrior priest was their only hope. Drake'll find us, Thomas told himself in a brave attempt to raise his spirits. Of course he will. We've been in worse spots than this. Old Drake'll find us, you just wait and see. But then, as he looked at the Shadowsoldiers hanging all around them, equally helpless and desperate, a stray shaft of sunlight that was somehow making its way through the jungle canopy shone on something bright, catching his eye. Straining his head to look in that direction he saw a human figure dressed in a crimson robe over chain mail armour. It was Drake, the wizard realised with an awful sinking feeling caused by the last dregs of hope draining out of him. He must have caught up with the Shadowsoldiers and been captured along with them. Now there was no hope left at all, and there was nothing to do but wait for the arachnaurs to grow hungry.