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- Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
- Sprache: Englisch
Thurvok, the sellsword, is enjoying a meal with his friends, Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, the sorceress Sharenna and Lysha, Meldom's sweetheart whom the adventurers saved from the gallows, when a peasant woman asks them for help. Her young daughter Tali has been chosen to be sacrificed to the dragon that terrorises the area.
Thurvok and his friends want to help her and save Tali. But slaying a dragon is difficult, not to mention dangerous.
This is a short story of 4500 words or 18 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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The Cave of the Dragon
by Richard Blakemore
Bremen, Germany
Copyright © 2019 by Cora Buhlert
All rights reserved.
Cover image by © Kevin Carden via Dreamstime
Cover design by Cora Buhlert
Pegasus Pulp Publications
Mittelstraße 12
28816 Stuhr
Germany
www.pegasus-pulp.com
Introduction
by Cora Buhlert
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.
What is more, 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 wide 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 fascinating is a series of heroic fantasy adventures that Blakemore penned between 1936 and 1939, making him one of the pioneers of the genre now known as sword and sorcery.
Richard Blakemore was a big fan of Weird Tales and particularly admired the work of Robert E. Howard 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. He started out as a lone adventurer, but quickly gained a companion in Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, whom he encountered towards the end of “The Valley of the Man Vultures”. Not long thereafter, the duo of adventurers became a quartet with the addition of Sharenna, a formidable sorceress, and Lysha, Meldom’s childhood sweetheart.
“The Cave of the Dragon” is the second story that features the full quartet of adventurers and the first that shows them as an established team. Indeed the opening scene, which shows Thurvok, Meldom, Sharenna and Lysha bickering, while dining at a village inn, not only serves as a quick (re)introduction of the characters to those new to the series, but also illustrates how comfortable these four are with each other by now.
In her first two appearances, Lysha mainly served as damsel in distress and did not have much to do, though she did show some agency towards the end of “The Bleak Heath” and helped to defeat that story’s main villain. But in “The Cave of the Dragon”, Lysha has finally found her role as treasurer and moral conscience of the team.
While Thurvok’s first few adventures were quite similar to the exploits of the characters who inspired him, the introduction of Sharenna and Lysha changes the tone of the series in more ways than one. For what sets Thurvok and his companions apart from most other sword and sorcery heroes and heroines is that they share the Silencer’s zeal for justice and spend a lot of time fighting evil in all its guises, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. It’s not that Thurvok and his companions aren’t interested in gold and treasure — they absolutely are, though like most sword and sorcery heroes they tend to be financially unlucky. But when given the choice between looting a tomb or saving a life, they’ll usually opt for the latter.
“The Cave of the Dragon” is a typical example, since it features our quartet of adventurers in full hero mode. As with the several other stories in the series, there is a damsel in distress to be saved, though for once, the damsel is neither a member of the main cast nor a love interest.
Pegasus Pulp Publishing is proud to present to you the adventures of Thurvok and his companions, for the first time in print since 1930s. So buckle up and prepare to accompany Thurvok, Meldom, Sharenna and Lysha as they venture into…
…the Cave of the Dragon.
The Cave of the Dragon
by Richard Blakemore
In the Succulent Grape tavern in the village of Ilderol, there lounged four adventurers, engaged in deep conversation.
Thurvok the sellsword was a veritable mountain of sinews and muscles, bronze-skinned with dark hair and equally dark eyes. Not a man of many words, Thurvok was content to listen, while gnawing on a leg of roast lamb, which he washed down with wine.
