Hazard — Barbara Hambly

A novelette of 10,000 words. When the lovely Mira visits the hermitage of the local wizard, the former barbarian mercenary Sun Wolf, to beg his help in rescuing her sweetheart from a traveling mage, Sun Wolf suspects that this is a trap set for him. The challenge is to rescue the young lovers from death and peril without using magic, by which his own soul might be trapped.