About The Wolf of Rajala:
One day, Kurval is hired to take out the monstrous wolves that have been besetting the village of Rajala. However, he quickly finds that the wolves are not what they seem. He also realises that the wolves have a very good reason for attacking the villagers…
This is a novelette of 8700 words or approx. 30 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.
Excerpt:
“Civilisation…” Kurval thought, as he trudged through the knee deep snow, “…is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
In the Year of the Twisted Rope, Kurval had forever left his homeland on the steppes of Temirzhan across the sea behind to seek his fortune in the more civilised lands of the East.
That said, he hadn’t left entirely of his own free well. For there was no longer a place in Temirzhan for a captain of the Royal Guard who had not only defied his king but also helped to bring about his death. Even if King Talgat had been a terrible ruler and worse man.
And so Kurval had left to find his destiny in the lands across the sea, chasing the prophecy of the dark gods that one day, he would be a mighty king on the far side of the great ocean.
But so far, not a hint of that royal destiny had manifested itself to the point that Kurval wondered whether the dark gods had not been toying with him. Nor were the lands across the sea the beacon of civilisation and knowledge he’d expected them to be. Instead, they were mostly cold and miserable.
Since it would not do to simply venture into the capital of one of the kingdoms beyond the sea and announce his intention to take the throne — never mind that those blasted dark gods had not even told him which kingdom he was destined to rule — Kurval now plied his trade as a mercenary, offering his arm and his sword to anyone with gold enough to hire him. It wasn’t kinghood, but it was an honest enough profession.
This time around, he had been hired by the magistrate of the village Rajala. The village was beset by wolves, which in itself was nothing unusual, for the village lay at the edge of the vast forest of Korjus, a forest that many wolfpacks roamed. And even though wolves normally kept away from humans, as afraid of man as man was of wolves, attacks did happen on occasion.
However, in the past three moons, the number of wolf attacks near the village of Rajala has increased. The wolves were also getting bolder, venturing ever closer to the village and its sturdy log cabins. The snatched sheep and sometimes even unwary travellers. Of late, the attacks had gotten even worse. The daughter of a grain merchant only narrowly escaped death when a wolf chased her to the doorstep of her home. A wealthy farmer had his privates bitten off, the judge from the nearest market town lost a leg to the wolf and the village butcher, who also doubled as the hangman, was found dead in the woods, his guts torn out.
Even more alarming was that the wolves that beset the village of Rajala were larger than usual. One wolf in particular threatened the village, a vicious beast three times as tall as a man, with razor-sharp fangs and glowing red eyes. Every night, the villagers heard the wolf howl, a howl that seemed to come straight from the underworld, promising death and doom.
The magistrate had hired Kurval to slay that giant wolf and as many of the others as he could and bring back the beasts’ pelts in exchange for a bag of gold. As jobs went, this one was easy enough, for Kurval was not afraid of wild beasts, even uncommonly large ones. Furthermore, he strongly suspected that the villagers were exaggerating with regard to the wolf’s size. If only it wasn’t so damned cold…
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About Richard Blakemore:
Richard Blakemore was married for more than fifty years to Constance Allen Blakemore and the couple had four children.
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About Cora Buhlert:
Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. She is the author of the Silencer series of pulp style thrillers, the Shattered Empire space opera series, the In Love and War science fiction romance series, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries and plenty of standalone stories in multiple genres.
When Cora is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher. She also runs the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene and contributes to the Hugo-nominated fanzine Galactic Journey. Cora was a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award.
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