That's nice, but he's going to refrain from celebrating until he can put out all the fires he already had.

What's the status of the preparations?

Behind schedule. A number of his subordinates are of the opinion that this is basically to be expected and his entire schedule was too ambitious to begin with.

It's a good thing he's in charge, then, and not them. The barbarians might not be in a hurry to storm his fortifications, not after what happened last time, but that isn't going to last. He's sitting in the heart of one of their cities with a hostile army; they certainly can't afford to leave him there. Even leaving aside the economic implications of losing what has got to be one of their biggest cities, they're sure to be furious about it, and the imperial performance hasn't been overwhelming enough to turn that into real fear. That means they need everyone deployed on a real defensive line, with their rear cleared enough that if they need to withdraw it can happen in good order without a rout, and to be frank they need it done yesterday. They can redirect some people from the looting to help get it done, painful as it'll be to miss out, and try and get things back on schedule. The dragon corps?

It hasn't spontaneously reconstituted itself, if that's what he means.

But he could maybe get one more deployment out of it, if he really had to, as long as he was willing to accept he wouldn't have a dragon corps afterwards.

He meant more if it looked like they were going to blow up into a political catastrophe for him, but obviously none of the night shift subordinates have the full context there he does, so unless they've started openly talking about how they need to get their cousins to organize a senatus consultum ultimum for him or something they wouldn't be able to tell him much. Which would ordinarily be one of his higher priorities, but there's so much on his plate that he's going to delegate the task of getting updates to one of his more politicaly connected proteges and hope it doesn't blow up in his face. 

And his rivals back home?

As far as anyone can tell him, none of them have made a move. It obviously wasn't possible to keep the fact that he was planning something under wraps, and calling in this many military favors without a clear target has definitely had some of the governors and legates in neighboring provinces nervously mustering their own troops just in case it's time for another civil war, but despite everything they think nobody over there is sufficiently clear on both what's happening and their own interests to act decisively against him. That might change in a day or two as word filters back from their spies in his forces, though. 

By then he'll most likely either be the triumphant conquering hero of the century, untouchable by their efforts, or a humiliated disgrace unable to stop them. Not worth worrying about. Now, to put a personal touch on some of the troop deployments, he's thought of some improvements on the strategy they threw together after the night attack failed. Of course they're to chime in with anything relevant they think he missed, that's a good point he hadn't considered about the watch schedules; the second emergency reassignment might not impact the 11th cohort's combat skills but it will mess with things if the legion has to do an evacuation in their off hours, so he needs to either rework that a bit more or let them off early so they can encamp further from the perimeter- 

About half an hour into this planning, there's an visitor at the hanging back respectfully near the entrance of his command tent. There's some news from the front lines important enough that his men think he'll want to hear, but they're not sure it's worth interrupting the report he's currently getting from the chief engineer on their fallback line fortifications.

If something had happened that was important enough to be worth interrupting, they'd be sure. It won't be much longer though, he's got time after this meeting.

So, what's the news?

They've got some more prisoners. Not ones that were hiding somewhere or anything, though, they just showed up in front of one of the fortifications, unarmed and with a cart full of foreign valuables. They're dressed bizarrely, but differently from most of the prisoners; for one thing, they're pretty sure it's real gold thread, and they've got some high quality jewelry of whatever glass substitute the locals seem to favor for that kind of thing. 

Barbarian aristocrats of some kind, then, or favored servants thereof. Hopefully the men have had the sense not to rough them up too much? 

That raises the question of what they're here for. The most likely guess he's got is some kind of prisoner ransom; he and his men have captured a lot of barbarians over the last day, and it seems plausible that some of them would have people trying to negotiate their release. Almost certainly they'll try and get away with a lowball for it, but given that he doesn't plan to stick around as neighbors for them indefinitely, he's not inherently opposed to getting haggled down a bit in the aim of expediency. (In this case obviously the negotiators will be returned either way, even if they can't come to a deal, unless their behavior in negotiations goes beyond the pale - it's one thing to capture an foreign noble in war, but capturing people who come to pay ransoms is cutting off your nose to spite your face.) Another possibility is the similar ransom of some looted property, perhaps a family heirloom spirited away in the sack. It could even be a plot from someone on the other side to get rid of some enemies of theirs, or as an opening offer of weregild like the northerners practiced. 

Or they could be here to assassinate someone. It wouldn't be the first time one of the empire's enemies engaged in some perfidy to try and scrabble for an advantage against the legions, and there's sometimes a hope that killing a Legate and a few of their top brass will break the back of the invasion. It wouldn't work, not for long, but that would be cold comfort to his corpse if they pulled it off. Not for the first time, he wishes he had the benefit of a local guide, or even a travelogue from some past visitor to the place, to give him a better sense of their national character.

They're not an assassination plot.

It's not that there's no circumstances they would go for an assassination - there are plenty, and he would in fact probably already be dead if he was being less cautious - but they wouldn't do it by pretending to be diplomats, or anything that might possibly look like them being diplomats and borrowing the reputation thereof. There are some things you don't do even if it kills you*, and the shape outside of time that calls itself Civilization is committed to preserving the common good of trustworthy negotiation. Instead these visitors will cooperate with their captors, and spend whatever attention they can spare trying to parse what people are saying. It's not easy to improve on the work of all the expert linguists already working on it, but translation efforts are sufficiently primitive that there's still lots of low hanging fruit left to grab, and even a marginal improvement to understanding the aliens or being understood by them could be decisive.

*There are some in dath ilan who disagree, but most of them would still consider it a violation to try to fool the rest of civilization about it to infiltrate a diplomatic mission, and this mission is being screened.

It's not an assassination plot, at least as far as they can detect. No hidden weapons came up when they were searched, and if any of the equipment is magical implements they're quite well disguised, and there's nobody hidden in the treasures or following invisibly that they can detect despite manual examination.

He's still not going to meet with them. It wouldn't be completely out of the question, in other circumstances; they're almost certainly beneath his social class, but the whole purpose of envoys is that they represent someone greater than themselves, and even the great imperial heroes of centuries past were happy to negotiate the terms of victory or defeat with their foes when the situations called for it. And even with the language barrier, it would probably be more pleasant than the administrative scutwork he has on his plate, not to mention more remunerative - whoever does the actual talking is in a prime position to distribute the spoils thereof optimally for their interests, and take any bribed directed to the agent rather than merely included in the ransom.

Unfortunately, he's frankly too busy with other concerns he can't drop for this without incurring more risk than he'd pick up benefit. There is a large barbarian army encamped outside his temporary fortifications, and for all that the gate means they can't really siege him there's doubtless more reinforcements on the way. That means picking someone for the task who will acceptably handle it, or at least owe him for the opportunity and can be relied on to repay it, and also won't fuck it up by letting them off too lightly or getting too offended by their barbarous ways, and who he also won't miss from coordinating the army too much to be worth it, and who won't be a disaster if they do turn out to be assassin after all and his man has to fight them off.

...Manolis, then. Well, him or Jannis, but Jannis only knows Saderan and Elban, and Cattaneo remembers Manolis' uncle commenting on his skill at languages at a dinner a few years back. Not the perfect pick, but not unacceptable, and the next best would involve an extended wait. He'll quickly pen the orders, and then send a runner off to deliver it.

The man who comes to meet the dath ilani delegation is noticeably a different sort from the previous soldiers, art least if dath ilan has grasped the essence of distinguishing between kinds of Saderans yet. His clothes are finely maintained Avion linens, near immaculate despite the proximity to the battle lines, and richly dyed and tailored in the senatorial style; his pendant and rings are handcrafted gold and silver rather than cast and molded brass and bronze of the lesser gentry. The gemstones are a mix of precious and semiprecious, agate and pearl and lapis and saphire, of the sort that represent a small fortune just in acquisition, and the ensemble is coordinated to emphasizes the color scheme in a way that makes clear its owner has more than one such set of accessories available. His skin is clear, with no pox markings or scars, and his face is clean-shaven, with no hair besides his eyes.

They don't recognize the saphires; it's not that dath ilan doesn't use it in jewelry, but nobody except a geologist would equate it with what they see. To a fashion-eyed dath ilani, corundum - for dath ilan lacks a real distinction between rubies and sapphires - is a type of large, clear, faceted stone used in adornment, and has sufficiently little in common with their falmart equivalent that most imperial looters mistook it for a sort of glass. Synthetic manufacture allows them to be grown in nearly arbitrary shapes, sizes, and patterns, and absent a shared understanding of the material conditions that underlay their supply, the effect of a fashion meant to emphasize the size of objectively quite small stones is more baffling than anything. A similar story follows for the other ones, especially the pearl, but fortunately the gold and silver translates more directly. For all that it doesn't have the same associations of wealth, blinging yourself out in shiny metal is a fairly comprehensible way to dress.

It's not what you'd expect to encounter from a Very Serious Person on a first contact meeting, but there's no indication that's what's going on, and it's encouraging both in that they're meeting someone important enough to disregard dress codes in favor of their own personal aesthetics and that those aesthetics are at all recognizable to the observers. (They don't want to update too much on potentially superficial similarities, but that doesn't mean you don't update at all). Hopefully the shaving will make more sense once they know more about this culture, or else won''t end up being relevant; rather than focus on it, they do their best to broadcast cheer at his arrival, since if the alien psychology is relevantly human enough they'll tend to like being liked. 

He can smile back, and then invite them over to some seats the servants have brought up. Do they by any chance speak imperial?

They greet him in baseline first to check for a reaction - it's unlikely but possible that he knows even if the rest of them don't - but it's followed by their best effort at the alien tongue.

Manolis is baffled. He's not an expert on the arts of diplomacy, not like you might find in the curia where senators trade words with the envoys of governors and the proxenos of the vassal kingdoms, nor has he had the sort of experience from those whose garrison lies on the fringes of imperial control, where an officer must be prepared to negotiate with barbarians for information or resources or passage or supply. His education in such matters is of a less practical sort, as might be taught to any youth from the right sort of family alongside a sprinkling of the more notable foreign tongues. 

He had been prepared for guests who spoke fluent imperial, despite the barbarity of the state, as is surprisingly common among the more sensible on the periphery. He had been prepared for them to not know anything, and to have to spend a frustrating conversation pantomining their way to some kind of deal with visual aides, needing the help of some kind of portraiture to identify anyone specific to be released. And he had even been prepared for all sorts of conversations that lay between, conducted perhaps via mutual halting efforts in some shared trade language. But this... he doesn't even know how to describe it.

Greetings, on behalf of Civilization. We wish to negotiate with your people to achieve mutual benefit via gains from trade.

You are commanded to greet the imperial [sic] of Sadera. You will have been merchants of happy Falmart from someone.

Their pronunciation and intonation is excellent; if it weren't for the bizarre hints of an unknown accent and everything else about them, they could pass for a native speaker with a commoner's elucation. There is little stumbling over unfamiliar vowels, or words slurring together, and the words neither come so fast as to slur together or so slow as to be unrecognizable. 

And yet, somehow, he has no idea what they're trying to say. It's as though someone who had never heard of conjugation was tasked with drawing words out of a hat in random order - not only is he not sure what they were trying to say, it's hard to be confident that they were sure what they were trying to say. He's reasonably confident they aren't some manner of envoy homunculi that repeat words without any real understanding, but that's not a theory you usually even consider. (The precise degree of failure here is perhaps somewhat fortunate; while a significantly more accurate guess would have better served their interests, it's at least too incomprehensible to properly offend).

What do you mean by merchants of happy Falmart?

And then he can try a couple of other languages, in case they're able to be more comprehensible in one of those

It's objectively not that useful to them, in that they have much fewer samples of any of those other languages and even less ability to make themselves understood thereby, but the fact that the response to a miscommunication is to attempt to widen the signal channel is encouraging. They can add some bits from a few of the most widely spoken pre-screening languages, in case the aliens have some kind of merely outdated information on what they speak here, but they don't expect much of it and shortly get back to trying Saderan*. It's pretty clear from how he responded and the tone thereof that something didn't get across, but knowing they made an error doesn't automatically tell them what the clearer way to phrase it would be. Obviously whatever actual word they use to mean "mutual benefit via gains from trade**" is going to have a reasonably simple encoding, but an example might get better results than guessing at it if their first one was significantly off base.

*There's a few candidate guesses for what the language might be called to its speakers, but thus far dath ilani linguists have been temporarily calling it divergence, both to create the pun and to keep from baking any assumptions about the meaning of words within it into how they talk about the language. The main conlang previously using that label has temporarily relocated to the a translation of divergence in its own vocabulary.

**A one syllable word in baseline, but one with a number of somewhat longer derivatives with more specific meaning when greater precision is necessary.

He's pretty sure those are different languages from the first one they tried, at least. It doesn't make it any more comprehensible but it at least means they're smart enough to figure out that's what he's trying, so he'll have a few of the people standing by with languages he doesn't have make the attempt.

Still no luck there. 

They're going to try talking more in their best approximation of his language - judging by his earlier incomprehension and this rigmarole, it's not very good, but they're not going to get very far improving it without feedback and it's looking increasingly unlikely the aliens know any of theirs.

What are his options, here?

He knows in principle how to figure out translations for languages, but who knows how long it would take to track down a someone with a sufficiently closely related language to get anywhere that way, and slaves who need to learn a language from scratch were known to take years for more than the very basics of understanding. Certainly an a proper imperial could do better, particularly absent the need to labor their days away, but a translation months away does him no good. Cross that out, for the moment; he cannot practically learn their language.

Magic, then? He's not the sort of ignorant yokel who ascribes magic to everything he doesn't understand - for all that it's a powerful tool, it's a limited one, and there's many reasons the world is not ruled by sorcerer kings. Every magical effect more impressive than a cantrip requires a specific spell designed for the task, and their development is expensive enough to make profligracy a wizardly stereotype. None of the wizards currently with the army claim to know a translation spell, that much he'd made sure of, and they're not lying because if they had it they'd be using it. Whatever else you might say about them, the barbarians are clearly skilled wizards in an unknown tradition, and it's hard to credit any of the mages he knows personally with passing up a chance to get their hands on their spellwork. That means getting one would require sending for assistance, either from wizards outside the army or the cult of the twins. Perhaps not impossible, but slow, and not an answer the legate will thank him for unless he's exhausted everything else. Besides, for all he knows imperial magic isn't any better at translation than theirs is, and they'll be reduced to chanting nonsense at each other through his interpreter.

He can hardly give it up, though. Their words might be incomprehensible, but it's close enough his failure to parse it would raise humiliating questions, and all the more so if one of the other officers managed to figure things out quickly. As long as they're actually here to make a deal, it's his job to make that happen at the right price.