Who's the Werewolf?

 

cover art by Stan Zagorski

I was watching a Booktube channel recently in which the host was listing his Top Ten Sword and Sorcery stories. It was a good list and most of them I'd read. But he included one of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories that I had not read. So, naturally, I read it.

"Reflections For the Winter of My Soul," was first published the 1973 anthology Death Angel's Shadow." The main character is Kane, who is cursed with immortality, has a degree of superstrength and is a cold-hearted killer. He's an interesting variation of the Sword and Sorcery hero, cursed with immortality by a mad god after he strangled his brother Abel to death. He's a sorcerer as well as a warrior and he's usually not that concerned with morality. He's devious and deadly. Wagner described him as a "gothic hero-villain from the tradition of the Gothic novels..."

This particular story is a "Who's the Werewolf" tale. Kane, fleeing some guys who want to kill him, takes refuge with a Baron in a manor in the frigid northlands. The Baron has a small retinue of soldiers, a son who is nuts, a daughter who is pretty, a minstrel who can sing songs in dead languages and a wizard who stinks at his job.

And one of them is a werewolf. And the werewolf isn't JUST the turn-into-a-monster variety. He or she can also control the wolves that hunt near the manor. In fact, a hunting party Kane takes part in is about to skin an elk they caught when---"At that moment, the wolves attack."

The important question is "Who is the werewolf?" The son who lives in Crazy Town is a prime suspect, but it really could be anyone. Whomever the werewolf may be, he or she manages to frame Kane for a killing at one point, getting the warrior tossed into the manor's dungeon. 

But then someone opens the manor to a pack of wolves. People and hunting dogs find themselves on the losing side of a battle. Kane is battering at the door to his cell, trying to get loose and join the fight. Eventually, he does end up in a brutal hand-to-hand fight with the werewolf. 

It's a violent and satisfying tale, combining the great action scenes with the nicely contructed mystery surrounding the werewolf's identity. I don't want to hint at that identity or the ending to the tale. If you are registered on the Internet Archive, you can read it for yourself HERE. 

Now I'm thinking of another "Who's the Werewolf" story--"There Shall Be No Darkness," by James Blish. I need to dig up a copy of that one somewhere.