Free The Honorable Barbarian by L. Sprague de Camp

complexion, and the accent wherewith you spake Salimorese. I might be wrong on one of those inferences, but hardly on all four. I must explain my theory of probability. Meanwhile, art hungry?"
    "Now that you speak thereof, I am ravenous."
    "Then enter my hut and make yourself at home. On the right you shall see, dependent from the peg, a weighty club. Take it to the beach, strike a crab with force enough to break its shell, and fetch it hither."
    Kerin found the hut well organized. Pwana had brought ample equipment to his hermitage. There were cooking utensils, an ax, a shovel, a spear, and a big brush knife that could serve as a sword. He set forth with the club.
    A half-hour later, Kerin returned to the hut, gingerly bearing the crab by one leg. Although his blow had smashed the shell, the creature's limbs still twitched. Kerin did not intend to let a pincer get a grip on him.
    He found Pwana stirring a pot, which hung from a tripod over a fire. The hermit set down the long-handled spoon and took the crab, which he deftly dismembered.
    "Watch!" he said, bending back the flap on the underside of the body until it broke. "Now you must peel back these parts, which we call 'dead man's fingers,' since they are not edible." He glanced sharply at Kerin. "Doth the sight revolt you, young sir? If so, you will never survive in the wilderness."
    Gulping, Kerin mastered an impulse to gag. "N-nay, Doctor. Pray proceed."
    Piece by piece, crab meat went into the pot, wherein vegetables already bobbed. Pwana chattered on, telling of the properties of each kind of green and ways of cooking it.
    At last the hermit set aside the pot to cool. "We bother not with plates; and since I have but one spoon, you must needs use the fork from the hut." When Kerin returned with the fork, Pwana continued: "It is a pity you came not yesterday. I still had some smoked wild pig, but I finished it."
    "How did you get it?"
    "I set a snare. The time before, my trap caught a megalan."
    "A what?"
    "A megalan, one of those monstrous lizards. Hast seen any?"
    "Aye; I passed one on my way hither. Are they dangerous?"
    Pwana chewed and swallowed a mouthful of stew. "Not usually. But pirates marooned a man on Kinungung a few months past, and the lizards ate him. Methinks he lay down to sleep on the beach, and they seized him ere he could flee. And now, young sir, tell me how you come to be cast adrift on Kinungung?"
    Kerin paused in trying to spear a bobbing piece of crab with the fork. "I was journeying to Salimor. The navigator, a witch, made advances, and the captain waxed jealous. To save my gore, I borrowed the ship's boat and fled. Now tell me how you come to dwell alone here."
    Pwana gave a deep sigh. "I atone for my sins."
    "Were they so great?"
    "Ah, yea! Didst ever hear of the Temple of Bautong?"
    "I fear not. Do tell me!"
    "I was a simple practitioner of magic and wizardry, a member in good standing of the guild. But I was not satisfied with the decent living I earned from my profession. I lusted for more wealth, power, and glory. So I started a religious cult, of an obscure god, worshiped on one of the lesser isles, clept Bautong.
    "To bedazzle my followers, I told a tale of the evil Emperor Ajunya, who lived during the previous cycle of Vurnu, twenty-six billion years ago."
    "Your pardon, Doctor," said Kerin. "Vurnu, I am told, is a god of Mulvan; one of the holy trinity of Vurnu the Creator, Kradha the Preserver, and Ashaka the Destroyer. Do they, then, worship Mulvanian gods in Salimor?"
    "Aye. Centuries ago, the Salimorese had no higher worship than that of nature spirits, of whom Bautong was one. But missionaries came from Mulvan to reveal their facets of the truth. To continue: By a mighty spell, I preached, Ajunya imprisoned the souls of all the previous mankind in a single gem, the Cosmic Diamond, which he wore as a pendant.
    "There these souls remained whilst the universe, at the end of the cycle, shrank to a single atom in the mind of Vurnu. When