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    Worm Fodder: Kurval, #7
    Worm Fodder: Kurval, #7
    Worm Fodder: Kurval, #7
    Ebook69 pages34 minutes

    Worm Fodder: Kurval, #7

    By Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert

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    About this ebook

    After a hunt, King Kurval of Azakoria and his entourage make camp at the village of Ogwall. However, something is not right in the village. All men of fighting age are away at a mysterious ritual and the remaining villagers are clearly afraid of something.

     

    Kurval investigates and learns that the mysterious ritual in the woods involves sacrificing the young Celisa to the dread worm Thibunoth.

     

    Kurval is furious, for he outlawed human sacrifice in the kingdom of Azakoria. And so he sets out to save Celisa, deal with the monster and punish those who would violate the ban on human sacrifice.

     

    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 9600 words or approx. 32 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Pulp Publishing
    Release dateJan 11, 2021
    ISBN9781393632399
    Worm Fodder: Kurval, #7

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      Book preview

      Worm Fodder - Richard Blakemore

      Introduction

      by Cora Buhlert

      sword

      Nowadays, pulp fiction writer Richard Blakemore (1900 — 1994) is best remembered for creating the Silencer, a masked vigilante in the style of the Shadow or the Spider, during the hero pulp boom of the 1930s.

      Furthermore, Richard Blakemore is also remembered, because he may or may not have been the real life Silencer, who stalked the streets of Depression era New York City, fighting crime, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty just like his pulp counterpart.

      The mystery surrounding the Silencer has long overshadowed Richard Blakemore’s other works. For like most pulp writers, Blakemore was extremely prolific and wrote dozens of stories in a variety of genres for Jakob Levonsky’s pulp publishing empire. Blakemore’s work spans the full range of the pulps, from crime stories via westerns, war and adventure stories via romance to science fiction and fantasy. Indeed, the sheer amount of stories Richard Blakemore wrote during the 1930s refutes the theory that he was the Silencer, for when would he have found the time?

      Of the many non-Silencer stories Richard Blakemore wrote, the most interesting are his forays into the genre now known as sword and sorcery.

      Richard Blakemore was an acknowledged fan of Weird Tales and particularly admired the works of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and C.L. Moore. And so, when Jakob Levonsky started up his own Weird Tales competitor called Tales of the Bizarre, Blakemore immediately jumped at the chance to write for the magazine and created Thurvok, a warrior hero in the mould of Conan, Kull and Bran Mak Morn.

      Thurvok first appeared in the story The Valley of the Man Vultures in the first issue of Tales of the Bizarre in 1936 and quickly became a regular feature of the magazine. Pegasus Pulp Publishing has recently brought the adventures of Thurvok and his companions back into print.

      However, the Thurvok series is not the only contribution that Richard Blakemore made to the budding sword and sorcery genre. For in the July 1937 issue of Tales of the Bizarre, Richard Blakemore introduced a new character called Kurval in the novelette King’s Justice.

      Kurval is a somewhat older and wiser character than Thurvok and his friends. He is described as a barbarian from beyond the sea who has seized the throne of the kingdom of Azakoria after slaying the previous king.

      Whereas the Thurvok stories are characterised by banter, adventures, swordplay and battles with monsters, the Kurval tales are more serious and mostly deal with Kurval’s struggles to be a good and just king, even as he finds himself faced with subjects who don’t respect him as well as with would-be plotters and assassins.

      When asked why he chose to create a new sword and sorcery hero in Kurval and didn’t just go the Conan route and make Thurvok into a king, Richard Blakemore answered, "I had an idea for a story — the story that eventually became ‘King’s Justice’ — that simply didn’t fit into the framework of the Thurvok series. For Thurvok is quite happy being a wandering sellsword, thank you very much, and Meldom, much as I like him, should not be placed in any position of authority. And so I created a new character. Initially, I intended for Kurval to appear only in that one story. But I liked him and so I continued to use him for stories which didn’t fit Thurvok and friends."

      Worm Fodder is excellent example of the differences between the Thurvok and Kurval stories. For the basic situation Kurval faces — a young woman is about to be sacrificed to a monster and Kurval has to save her and slay the monster — is one that Thurvok and friends faced several times, most notably

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