About Twelve Nooses:
Before Kurval became King of Azakoria in the year of the forked serpent, he was commander of a mercenary company in service to his predecessor King Orkol.
While helping to bring the rebellious northern provinces back under Orkol's heel, Kurval is ordered to hang twelve innocent young women as an example to the rebels.
Kurval is disgusted by Orkol's cruelty. But can he find a way to save the twelve young women from the gallows? And dare he defy King Orkol?
The new sword and sorcery adventure by two-time Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert and her occasional alter ego, 1930s pulp writer Richard Blakemore. This is a novelette of 14200 words or approx. 50 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.
Excerpt:
Kurval, commander of the Ruthless Swords, watched impassively as the hanged rebel leaders twitched their last.
Lethal fighters and skilled with blade, bow and axe the elite Azakorian Blood Guards might be, but they were lousy hangmen. And so the execution of the rebel leaders had been botched and the men had suffered more than necessary, struggling on the gallows until they finally expired. Kurval wasn’t sure whether this was due to incompetence or design.
He disapproved, at any rate. The rebels had gone bravely to their deaths and had not flinched once, when facing the noose. The least the victorious Azakorians could do was grant them a swift end.
Not that Kurval had any say in the matter. The Ruthless Swords were mercenaries, selling their services to whoever was willing to pay for them. Right now, they were in the employ of King Orkol of Azakoria, putting down an uprising in the northern province of Stedinge.
It was a lengthy, bloody and brutal campaign, for the northern edge of Azakoria was mostly marshland, full of treacherous swamps and deadly bogs and beset by all sorts of vermin besides. Random attacks by rebels were common and the Northerners were fierce warriors, so retaking the fortified villages and towns always involved a lot of fighting and bloodshed.
Worse, Kurval strongly suspected that the people of Stedinge were in the right. After all, their ancestors had colonised these treacherous marshes and bleak moors by the work of their hands and the sweat of their brows. It was truly their land, land for which they’d toiled and bled, land granted to them by royal decree. If not for the hard work of those peasants, Orkol would rule over a stretch of uninhabited wasteland.
From what Kurval had seen, Orkol was a cruel tyrant and notorious wastrel who bled his own people dry in order to finance palaces and swift horses, fine clothes and jewels, seraglios and orgies. No wonder that the people of Stedinge had enough of his rule. Especially after Orkol had broken the treaty that guaranteed them lower taxes and a degree of autonomy in exchange for colonising the wasteland that was the northern edge of Azakoria.
Kurval had seen kings like Orkol before, had even served under them. They inevitably came to a bloody end, once the people had had enough and became so desperate that even the threat of the gallows, the stake or the cross could no longer deter them. The people of the marshlands were at that point and the rest of the kingdom would eventually follow and then Orkol would meet his bloody and well deserved end. Kurval planned not to be here, when it came to that — at least not on Orkol’s side.
However for now, Orkol was still the employer of the Ruthless Swords, the one whose gold paid for food and wine, weapons and armour. So Kurval had to go along with Orkol’s campaigns against his own citizens for the sake of the men and women under his command, even though he abhorred the man’s cruelty.
Kurval sighed. This was not what he’d envisioned his life to be, when he left his homeland of Temirzhan after refusing to follow a cruel king’s orders and journeyed across the Great Sea. True, he’d been chasing a foolish dream then, a prophecy made by the treacherous Dark Gods that one day he would be king in a land across the sea. But instead, Kurval had only left behind the cruelty of one king to serve another who was just as cruel.
“See to it that they remain hanging, so the ravens may feast on their entrails,” Lord Vitericus, commander of the Blood Guards ordered, “Anybody who tries to take the bodies down shall swing beside them.”
He turned to Kurval. “These Northerners bury their dead by letting them sink into the bog, where their bodies are preserved to rise in the afterlife and take revenge on their enemies. To them, a decomposed body consumed by animals is the worst fate, for he is denied the afterlife.”
He spat. “Superstitious savages.”
Privately, Kurval thought that the people who buried their dead in the bog holes that abounded in this forsaken land were a lot more civilised than those who thought it was a good idea to leave bodies hanging out in the open for the ravens and other vermin to consume. But he wisely kept his views to himself. Not that Vitericus would care anyway. The only voice that Lord Vitericus paid attention to was his own.
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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 is a two-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer and the winner of the 2021 Space Cowboy Award.
