“Nor do I,” Ehomba confessed. “But you are right, Captain. The sargassum man must have had a thought in mind or he would not have asked this creature to seek us out. I will try my best to find out what is afoot.” As soon as he stepped forward, the huge crab scrabbled sideways to confront him. It was wary, but not afraid. Nor had it reason to be; not with those enormous sharp-spined arms with which to defend itself.
“What is afoot not indeed, but aplenty,” Simna murmured to the hulking Hunkapa, who stood open-mouthed behind him. Unsurprisingly, the shaggy mountain did not react to what the swordsman felt was his best sally in some time.
Behind both of them, the black litah stood and stared in silence. From time to time its long tongue would emerge to lick heavy lips. The humans aboard were not alone in their fondness for the taste of crabmeat. The cat restrained the impulses that were surging through it. Ehomba had scolded him before for trying to eat an envoy. It was, the herdsman had pontificated at the time in no uncertain terms, not only bad manners but very poor diplomacy.
But oh, Ahlitah mused, what a meal this visitor would make!
Standing alone before the visitant, aware that those watching viewed it from perspectives as wildly different from one another as from his, Ehomba considered how best to proceed. The type of talking itself was no stranger to him. He had known it since childhood, albeit with a considerably lesser degree of eloquence. He simply did not want to get off on the wrong foot. Offend this noble creature and it would doubtless plunge itself right back into the depths it had risen from. It was not for nothing that its kind were called crabs.