The Tomb of the Undead Slaves E-Book

Richard Blakemore

• Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The sellsword Thurvok and his friend and companion Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, venture into the Rusted Desert to seek the tomb of the ancient king Chagurdai and the legendary treasure supposedly hidden there. But once Thurvok and Meldom venture into the tomb, they find that a treasure is not all that's buried there. This is a short story of 4100 words or 13 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Leseprobe

The Tomb of the Undead Slaves

by Richard Blakemore

Bremen, Germany

Copyright © 2019 by Cora Buhlert

All rights reserved.

Cover image by © Luca Oleastri 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 vein 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 wide range of the pulps, from crime stories via westerns, war and adventure stories to romance and even 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 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 an acknowledged 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 of course 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. By his second appearance in “The Tomb of the Undead Slaves”, Thurvok had gained a companion — Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin — whom he encountered towards the end of “The Valley of the Man Vultures”.

In their second adventure, Thurvok and Meldom launch an ill-fated expedition to loot the lost tomb of a long dead king and of course encounter some suitably terrifying supernatural trouble. They escape with their lives, though without the treasure in what would become a pattern throughout the series.

“The Tomb of the Undead Slaves” is probably as close as Richard Blakemore ever got to a traditional sword and sorcery tale. For what sets Thurvok and his companions (he gathers several over the course of the next few stories) apart from most other sword and sorcery heroes is that they seem to share the Silencer’s zeal for justice and spend a lot of time fighting dragons and monsters, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. It’s not that Thurvok and his companions aren’t interested in gold and treasures. But when given the choice between looting a tomb or saving a life, they’ll usually opt for the latter.

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 and Meldom, as they descend into…

…the Tomb of the Undead Slaves.

The Tomb of the Undead Slaves

by Richard Blakemore

Thurvok the sellsword and his friend and companion Meldom — cutpurse, thief and occasional assassin — had been trudging through the Rusted Desert for three days, when the Tomb of Chagurdai finally loomed before them.

Thurvok and Meldom came from Krysh, the wealthy oasis city, where the walls were studded with diamonds and the streets were paved with gold — or so the story went. For the truth was that Krysh was a city like any other with a criminal underbelly like any other and plenty of unscrupulous people willing to pay even more unscrupulous people to do the few things they had scruples about.