The Nomad Read Free Page A

burning pagafa wood. There was a small covered porch attached to the cabin, with some crudely built wood furniture, but no sign of the wood chopper. The chopping sounds had ceased. In front of the porch, she saw a large pagafa stump with an axe embedded in it, and beside the stump, a pile of freshly chopped firewood. She looked around. There was no sign of anyone. She was about to climb the four wooden steps to the porch when a deep, gravelly voice suddenly spoke behind her.
    “I thought I smelled templar.” She whirled around. The man standing directly behind her, no more than four feet away, had suddenly appeared as if from out of nowhere, moving silent as a ghost. He was tall and massively built, with a full head of long gray hair that fell down past his shoulders.
    He had a thick gray beard, and his face was lined with age and well seasoned by the weather. He had been a very handsome man, and was handsome still, for all his years and fearsome aspect. He had once had a well-shaped nose, but it had been broken several times. He still had all his teeth, and his eyes belied his age, sparkling with alertness. They were a startling shade of azure blue. An old scar made by a knife or sword came up out his beard, crossed his left cheekbone and disappeared beneath his hair.
    He wore a sleeveless hide tunic fastened by a thick belt with several daggers at his waist, studded wristlets, and hide breeches tucked into high, laced moccasins. His shoulders were broad and powerful, and his chest was huge, rippling with muscle, tapering in a V-shape to his narrow waist. His forearms were scarred and corded with dense muscle, and his upper arms were thicker around than Veela’s thighs. His bearing was erect and loose, and he conveyed an impression of immense physical power.
    “Greetings, Valsavis,” she said.
    “Veela,” he said, in his rough voice. “It has been a long, long time. You have grown old.”
    She smiled at his insolence. He always was direct. “And so have you,” she said. “Perhaps too old,” she added, lifting her chin to gaze challengingly into his eyes.
    “For what?” he asked.
    “For that which you had once done best.”
    “If the Shadow King believed that, he would not have sent you,” said Valsavis simply, reaching for his axe. He picked up a piece of pagafa wood and placed it on the stump. He raised the axe and split it with one powerful blow.
    Veela marveled at his insolence. He had turned his back upon a templar and gone back to work! “You have not changed,” she said. “You are still the same insufferable barbarian you always were.”
    He continued splitting wood at a leisurely pace. “If that offends you, you know the way back,” he said.
    She smiled despite herself. Most men would have trembled at being addressed by a templar of the Shadow King. This one spoke to her as if she were no more than a serving wench. She should have been offended, gravely so, and yet was not. It had always been that way with him. She had never quite understood why.
    “His Majesty King Nibenay wishes to see you,” she said.
    “I had deduced as much,” Valsavis said. “I did not think you came all this way merely for a social call.” He continued chopping wood.
    “He wishes to see you at once,” Veela added emphatically.
    Valsavis kept on splitting wood. “Is he in immanent danger of death?”
    Veela looked surprised. “Why, no. Of course not. The Shadow King shall live forever.”
    “Then what is another day?” Valsavis asked. Veela felt the color rising to her cheeks. “I may be tolerant of your insolence, Valsavis, for the fact that it amuses me, but the Shadow King has no such forgiving traits!”
    Valsavis stuck his axe back in the stump and turned around slowly, stretching his bulging muscles. “Nibenay has not required my services in years,” he said. “And for all those years, I have remained forgotten by His Majesty the Shadow King. Now, suddenly, he is impatient for my presence. Clearly, he