Doom Under the Shadow (The Outcast Royal Book 3) Read online

  Doom Under the Shadow

  The Outcast Royal™ Series Book 03

  Aaron D. Schneider

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  Version 1.00, September 2021

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-68500-461-3

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68500-462-0

  The Doom Under the Shadow Team

  Thanks to our Beta Team:

  Kelly O’Donnell, John Ashmore, Rachel Beckford

  Thanks to our JIT Team:

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Zacc Pelter

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Diane L. Smith

  Paul Westman

  If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my third-born and currently, my only son, who is without a doubt the sweetest boy and most ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex I’ve ever known. As fearsome as the mighty king of the terrible lizards, yet never so terrible that you won’t encourage the downcast or apologize to those caught in your trampling wake, it has been a privilege to stand in awe of the force of nature He has wrapped up in your bounding frame.

  This adventure is for you, my boy, who has so many more journeys to make. Lord willing, Poppa Bear will be with you for many of them but even when I am not, may you never forget the One who never leaves you nor forsakes you.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Author Notes - Aaron Schneider

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Acknowledgments

  Connect with The Authors

  Other Books by Aaron Schneider

  Books By Michael Anderle

  A strain of cancer

  Chokes the answers

  Are you like me?

  A liar like me?

  ~Ugly, The Exies

  …Round the decay

  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

  ~Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Needles and Pins

  Needles and pins,

  Needles and pins,

  Sew me a sail

  To catch me the wind.

  Sew me a sail

  Strong as the gale,

  Carpenter, bring out your

  Hammers and nails.

  Hammer and nails,

  Hammer and nails,

  Build me a boat

  To go chasing the whales.

  Chasing the whales,

  Sailing the blue,

  Find me a captain

  And sign me a crew.

  Captain and crew,

  Captain and crew,

  Take me, oh take me

  To anywhere new.

  ~Falling Up, Shel Silverstein

  Prologue

  Winter’s grip on Aruhkham was letting go one bony finger at a time, a begrudging abdication as snow retreated, day by day and inch by inch, to the heights of the Wyrmspine Mountains.

  As the frosty rule of the still season came to an end, Aruhkham seemed to stir from the seasonal stupor and look to the coming spring with greater than usual combinations of anxiety and anticipation. The feasts and festivals of midwinter were now long enough past that the leanness of commerce could be felt like the ribs forming ridges on the sides and backs of the lower city’s denizens, at least those still left alive.

  The cold had come early and fast—driven, some said, by the storms that swept across the Norling Steppes—and had never let up. The mountain passes quickly became impassable and even the deep-bellied lake of Talabah-Kalah froze over. To the frost-sealed city, a pestilence came that seemed to feed on the shivering weariness, especially among the poor. Before long, mourning gave way to stony silence as the ranks of the dead mounted and few had the heart or the strength to grieve for them. The rolls of the dead were slow in returning to court, but by the time winter began to break, it was understood that the city had lost almost one in ten, although among the poor it was closer to one in four.

  It had been a hard winter, the hardest in living memory almost all agreed.

  That said, it must be admitted that the truly wizened among those families who still had such elders would smack their toothless mouths, wag their gnarled fingers, and recall stories of the days when Aruhkham did not see the end of the winter for almost half a decade.

  The Amur in those days, great uncle to the white-headed lord ruling now, had been a young and haughty man, they said. In his pride, he almost destroyed the venerable city when he broke oath with a sorceress who leveled her frosty malediction upon his city. It was not until the witch was hunted to her lair within the mountains that the curse was brought to an end and Aruhkham set free again.

  “Now that was a hard winter,” they would croak but there was no joy in the retelling as so often comes when the aged recount their hardships to softened youngsters. Instead, they would rub their hands and shiver beside their fires as rheumy gazes drifted to days when everything was colored in shades of white, gray, and death.

  Most below the threshold of such memories generally agreed that their beloved but befuddled elders must have either exaggerated, as was their wont, or else recalled some tale they had heard from equally matured storytellers in their youth. Having now reached such a venerable age, they were convinced such memories were their own.

  Following this pattern, it was thought among those who gave such things any consideration that if Aruhkham had known such a winter, it was in the mythic time when it was carved from the mountains by the Buana-Rhakah—the Ashen Dwarves. In such days, it might well have been that an Amur had a disagreement of some kind with a sorceress that resulted in something that, at the time, surely felt suitably apocalyptic. In point of fact, the scholars of history insisted it must be so because nothing in their laboriously exhaustive searches had ever found any real evidence of such an event.

  But academics said all manner of things that their civilized fellows must perpetually endure.

  Stil
l, as the Thaw began in earnest and the first passes were opened and the blocks of ice cleared from Talabah-Kalah, all were eager to see travelers, trade, and life flow through the city again.

  And none perhaps as much as a very tall, powerfully built woman headed to market with a wiry boy in tow.

  Ax-Wed cut through the shuffling crowds like one of the ice-cracking barges in the bay, but her presence did not draw too much attention. For most of the winter, she had been seen moving through the streets of the city, usually between the two central tiers. Her errands were focused almost exclusively on the business of collecting medicines or performing some trade to gain what she needed to purchase more medicine.

  For certain, notice had been taken initially, especially when she’d walked with her head uncovered and her blue-streaked hair hanging around her armored shoulders.

  “Unnatural storms upon the Steppes and now a Thulian walks our streets,” some muttered behind their hands. “Truly, these are strange times.”

  Now, however, she was merely an oddity in a city that had its share of august peculiarities and had become something men might merely watch with a shake of their heads or a chuckling sigh. Thus unmolested, the Thulian and her juvenile escort reached the market and negotiated carefully around pools of snowmelt. They’d managed to move clear of the clinging gray slush when with a shriek, the serene business of the market was broken.

  Her head whipped around in time to see a man being hurled bodily through a doorway. With one hand, she snatched the young boy beside her back while her other hand pulled up the thick cloak she wore. An instant later, the man landed with a heavy splash into a drab pool and sprayed congealed frost and mud across the screening cloak. Such was the force that had pitched him that even upon impact with the slimy street, he’d continued his momentum, a sliding smear of sodden flesh and cloth.

  The tall woman looked out from her spattered cloak and glared at the man who flopped on the street. Her expression turned to a scowl when a slurred voice rumbled from beneath the arched doorway to a merchant’s watering hole.

  “I will be having more if I am wanting to, me thinkz,” declared a familiar voice from the shadow of the doorway.

  “Brekah?”

  The word came unbidden to the Thulian’s lips and amid the sharp whispers and shuffling in the streets at the disruption, it would have been an easy thing for no one to notice the name.

  But the voice within the wine sink heard it and a tall, barrel-chested shadow loomed in the entrance.

  “Huh? Who calls for Brekah?” demanded the silhouette before a gaunt face thrust from the shadows with bullying, bloodshot eyes. “Who?”

  She swore under her breath and tried to herd her charge to one side but it was too late. The alcohol-bleared eyes of the big man found her and even as she tried the first shuffling step, a bellowed call stopped her.

  “Ax-Wed!” Brekah howled and staggered forward, and a corked jug sloshed in each hand. “Iz that you, you ol’ blue-headed zword-zlut?”

  The big man bellowed as though calling to her across the tumult of battle, although she stood close enough that she caught the sour smell of his breath with the last shouted word. She kept one hand on the young boy’s shoulder as she accepted that she would not escape unscathed. Forcing a steadying breath through her nostrils, she turned to face Brekah, her best impression of an easy smile fixed unconvincingly on her face.

  “Yes, Brekah, it’s me,” she said. “It seems that neither of us reached Bykarlious.”

  “No, we didn’t.” The burly sellsword snarled disgust with sudden drunken ferocity and thrust the jugs in his hands forward. “If we had, we could drink zomethin’ better than this pizz, me thinkz.”

  Ax-Wed felt that for all his insults, the man certainly smelled as though he had imbibed more than his fair share of the drink.

  “True,” she said, careful to keep Nenad behind her. “Perhaps it's time to give it a rest and stop insulting your palette with such swill, eh?”

  To her great surprise, it seemed that Brekah considered the point for some time. He swayed on his feet a little as he stared at the jugs clutched in his big hands. The man he had thrown climbed shakily to his feet and two bystanders helped to steady him while others gathered to watch the spectacle. She knew that the time before this became an even bigger mess with the Amur’s guard was rapidly evaporating.

  “Maybe,” he muttered as he raised the jug to his lips but paused before he took a heavy swallow. “But nothing much better to be found in thiz wretched city, me thinkz.”

  People had begun to edge closer and Ax-Wed noticed their faces hardening and felt it was only a matter of moments before things got ugly. The mercenary seemed oblivious as he released a thunderous belch and tilted the jug for a long swallow before he muttered again about the poor quality of the alcohol.

  “Come on,” she called to her old comrade in arms and gestured with one arm in the direction from which they had come. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll see if we can find you something better?”

  Brekah didn’t seem to be listening and with a flare of alarm, she realized that his gaze had raised to meet the scowling stares of the people in the crowd. Something kindled in his pale eyes and the tension in the air hummed with increasingly violent potency.

  “What you looking at?” The man growled a challenge, a beast at bay as his gaze swept around him. “Eh, what you looking at?”

  She wanted to shout at the gathering of market-goers to leave but felt certain that screaming would only make things worse.

  “Brekah, come with me,” she said again, her tone gentle but firm—something she’d had much practice with these past months with the lad behind her. “Let’s find you a decent drink.”

  His gaze swept to Ax-Wed but roved past her when he saw even more disapproving faces gathering about him. His lips peeled back from his teeth and his gaunt face took on a skull-like cast made all the more grotesque by his flushed skin.

  “What you looking at?” he yelled and the half-emptied jug launched from his hand. It was a sloppy, half-hearted throw and the worst anyone received was a splash across their shoes when the vessel burst on the cold cobbles.

  Brekah’s now empty hand fell to the hilt of his sword, but whether with intent or reflex it was impossible to tell. The crowd recoiled and seethed at the same time, and she felt things reach a tipping point.

  “Stay back, boy,” she ordered Nenad over her shoulder before she stepped toward the sellsword and threw her cloak clear of her shoulders. “That’s enough, Brekah!”

  Her voice, as sharp and cold as drawn steel, stilled the viperous seething of the crowd and drew his furious glare. The knuckles of his huge hand whitened and a bare inch of the blade slid into view.

  “Enough? Enough!” the big man roared before before he leaned forward with a low snarl. “All everyone zay is that it’z enough but I be dizagreein’, me thinkz.”

  “Don’t,” Ax-Wed warned and moved her hand to the Thulian sylver head at her belt. “It won’t go well for either of us.”

  “That’z juzt what me wantin’, me thinkz.” Brekah laughed as his sword came free of the battered scabbard with a faint scrape. The crowd reacted with a muted cry of surprise and lurched back as he lifted the blade and drew it into guard with a slow sweep.

  The Thulian felt the haft between her hands and the comforting simmer of the darkness in her left hand. Despite her efforts to end this peacefully, she couldn’t tell herself that something within her didn’t want this. For too long, her ax had sat at her hip unused but it now felt like it had inherited a heartbeat to match her own. The pulsing notes rolling within her filled her with thoughts joyous and bloody.

  The mercenary’s drink-muddled eyes sharpened as though he sensed the change wrought within the tall woman before him.

  “I’m not the only one who lost zomethin’, me thinkz,” he rumbled in the back of his throat.

  Ax-Wed brandished her weapon with a fearsome smile to match the shining grin
of the blade.

  “You can always lose more,” she responded with leonine fury. “Always.”

  Brekah seemed to come to himself a little more with the declaration. His back straightened and his footing settled. Grim resolve filled his eyes now, a man who had made peace with some terrible truth.

  “Good,” he said softly and with a single long sigh, launched himself forward.

  She had expected a big sweep of the long blade—something to drive her back lest she be hacked in half—but instead, she was left to parry and evade a flurried series of thrusts. As fast as a viper’s tongue in the big man’s hands, the tip of the blade darted and probed and forced her to deflect one way and swat a blow aside in another. She’d known that of all her former sword brothers, he was perhaps one of the best, but she’d never expected to be so wrong-footed so quickly, especially when he was drunk.

  Ax-Wed parried and with a twist, managed to hook the beard of her ax along the razor edge of the sword. She knew the hold wasn’t firm enough to attempt a disarming yank but she used the momentary leverage to drive the blade wide. Brekah was strong but so was she, and for the moment, his leverage was compromised and he knew it. The blade went wide and it was his turn to dance back as she drove in.