Direct as always, Stanager was first to question Ehomba. “Are we to make anything of that? Or was it no more than an unlikely dialogue?”
Turning to her, the herdsman smiled. “They are going to try to help us. Not because it is in their nature to do so, or because it would ever happen under ordinary circumstances—but because the sargassum man asked it of them. As fellow creatures of the sea, it seems they have a compact of sorts that is very old, and inviolate. The king was reluctant, but as soon as he saw that I was able to speak with him, his last uncertainties disappeared.”
“I’m glad they’re going to try to help us,” Simna put in. “If not, I’d hate to think we let such a superb meal just walk away.”
Ehomba glanced over at his friend. “Odd you should say that, Simna. The king was thinking the same about you. About all of us. His people are quite fond of the taste of man, having dined on numerous occasions on the bodies of sailors drowned at sea. At the bottom of the ocean, it seems, nothing goes to waste.”
The swordsman envisioned himself sinking, slowly sinking to the soft sands below, his face turned blue, his eyes bulging in a manner not unlike the crab’s. Saw himself settling to the bottom, to be visited not long thereafter by first one small crab, and then another, and another, until dozens of tiny but sharply efficient claws were ripping at his saturated flesh, tearing off bits of meat to be stuffed into alien, insectlike jaws, there to be ground into …
“Like I said.” Simna swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m glad they’re going to try to help us.” He blinked. “Hoy, wait a moment. Who are ‘they’?”