Blood Moon, page 1
part #1 of Lord of Shadows Series
Blood Moon
Lord of Shadows Book 1
Jaeger Mitchells
Contents
Copyright
About the Author
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
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About the Community
Copyright
Lord of Shadows
Book 1: Blood Moon
Copyright © 2019 by Jaeger Mitchells
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent of the author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews.
No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the internet without the permission of the author and is a violation of the International copyright law, which subjects the violator to severe fines and imprisonment.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, and places are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real, except where noted and authorized.
Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
About the Author
Jaeger Mitchells is finally ready to tackle the world with his Fantasy and SciFi Harem novels! After honing the art of writing for the last five years, he started publishing and conquering the scene, one novel at a time.
He enjoys reading SciFi and Fantasy the most, listens to Trance and Metal music from where he draws inspiration for writing. He often is criticized for having MC's who don't do the right thing, like saving the princess, or... other similar stuff.
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More HAREM goodness from Jaeger Mitchells
ReDeath - Raven (Book 1)
Lord Of Shadows - Blood Dawn (Prequel)
Lord Of Shadows - Blood Moon (Book 1)
Hazard Online - Oblivion (Book 1)
Hazard Online - Revenge (Book 2)
Bloodlines - Lilith (Book 1)
Please consider leaving a REVIEW if you liked the novel/s on the links above.
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Chapter One
The lamb stared up at me with pleading, pitiful eyes. I cleared my throat and looked away as I held it to me and drew a blade across its little neck. It gave one frantic squeal, then fell silent as its body landed on the table. Only three more to go until I was finished for the day. The scullery maid could clean up the bloody mess for all I cared.
There was to be a feast tonight and all the servants were scattered about at their tasks. To celebrate my lord’s recovery, they said, but the man still lay bedridden.
Count Nikolai Dvorak, had been ill ever since Boris the Bloodletter attacked him on his weekly ride around the fiefdom. The roving warlord was a thorn in his side and had left a blade in his leg. The wound festered and left him feverish for the past month. Not that he needed any help from nature to keep him off his feet; the man’s gout and protruding belly made it difficult to walk already.
There was some good to come of this though. He had invited the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on to his mansion. I didn’t catch her name, but her pale skin, dark hair, and sparkling eyes reminded me of the moon on a starry night. Her ample assets and full chest helped leave an impression. Most of the other servants for our Lord were scrawny and covered in sweat and dirt from their work in comparison. Or blood, in my case.
But the new servant, in her woolen dark blue dress, was scrubbed clean. I imagined she smelled of chamomile and had hands softer than silk. I prayed she wasn’t the chambermaid, but she never left his bedroom ever since she’d arrived.
That wasn’t for me to know, though. Not for me. I was the head butcher now and enslaved to the count. At least for now. In a few months, I would turn 30 and my father’s debt would be paid off. I would be free at last. Free to go fulfill a prophecy laid before me ten long years ago.
I finished hacking apart the carcass of the lamb and wiped a streak of red across my forehead with the back of my hand.
"Andrej, bring up the next one," I called out to my little helper. The poor boy was in an even worse situation than me. Even with the meager earnings of a butcher, I could still pay my debt, but him? He never would be able to.
Andrej was found dying outside of the village as a babe. Count Nikolai took him in and raised him ‘properly’, as he’d like to state to any woman with a pulse, but all he did was get another slave. And another worry for all of us.
"Hold on. This one’s a little feisty," Andrej called back from the stables.
The lamb cried out as the boy pulled its head forward with a tug. I couldn’t stand to watch the creature and him both suffer in an equal struggle, so I stepped up and put one hand under its neck, and the other under its belly, carrying it over toward the executioner’s site, as the kid used to call it.
The knife was dirty and worn. Sharp was a word the blade was unfamiliar with. A rotting block of wood attached to a long, dull blade. The Count had the money to buy better tools, and a blacksmith to make them, but he insisted that there were ‘more important things’ to spend the money on. Presumably, the village girls he invited into his room for his dark appetites, or another gold plated chamber pot.
He was fucking with me again. Ever since my father died before paying off his debt, he’s hated me. I imagine the only reason he hadn’t ordered Cook to put me into a stew was that he enjoyed meat too much. His gout attested to that. It hurt me every time I had to kill an animal with a knife. It wasn’t fair to them to not have a quick death. But imagining the blade pass through a certain someone’s thin skin made my manhood hard as steel.
I sighed and pressed the second creature against my side as Andrej held down its head. I sliced through its neck, killing it after a few long, agonizing seconds. Soon all four animals were butchered.
The scullery maid, Vera, her face downcast, approached with a heavy iron pot for the meat. She looked worn and weary. From the hard work, from the Count, and from life itself. Fear clouded her eyes as she saw the blood pouring from the butcher’s block. Her bare feet, pale with the spring frost, sunk into the sticky dirt as red mud squished between her toes. She turned to flee but caught my gaze.
As she made eye contact with me, her face lit up as if she’d seen the sun on a midwinter’s day. Ah, if only the new chambermaid would look at me that way.
"Ivan, you’re still here?" she asked with a whisper. "Would--" she bit her lip, which was plain and unadorned like every other servant. "Would you and Andrej help me carry the hot water?" she asked weakly as if embarrassed to speak to me.
"Of course," I said with a slight nod. "Andrej, load up the meat, boy. And don’t skip any of it or we’ll get beaten like last time."
The boy did so as he murmured something I failed to understand.
A faint smile planted on my face as I wiped the blood from my butcher’s blade. My thoughts focused on the face of the young woman that had joined Nikolai earlier in his bedchambers. Her lips and cheeks had been tinted with rose petals. Surely she wasn’t a chambermaid then. Perhaps she was a lady come to visit her ailing uncle?
"They’re just animals, Miss Vera," I heard little Andrej say.
I looked up. He had Vera’s thin fingers in his tiny hands and the loaded pot at their feet. Vera’s dirty cheeks were streaked with rivers of tears.
"Huh? What are you talking about?" I asked, not getting what he was going at.
"We eat them. Or I mean, the Count eats them. We get gruel. Sundays we might get a spot of salted pork belly. But--but they’re food, okay? Don’t cry. You’re really pretty, so don’t cry."
I chuckled. The boy had a lot to learn but was more tender with the women than I was by leaps. The servants were off limits for romantic trysts, and I hadn’t been allowed out beyond the palisade of the Count’s mansion since I grew hair on my chin. Except to chop wood, bury the occasional body or to check out the broken basin.
It took us three rounds to carry all of the water from the well at the center of the courtyard. I tended to my tools as Andrej and Vera washed the meat in the pot over the fire. Her threadbare tunic left little modesty as she bent over at the waist. I caught the boy staring as well and slapped my knife into the butcher’s
Vera’s perky backside greeted me with a little wiggle as I settled in beside her. Her brown hair played in the wind as she moved her body to an unheard beat, rinsing the meat out in boiling water. She glanced over her shoulder with a bright smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
There had always been a weak spot within me that wouldn’t let me look away when someone was in trouble, or doing something by themselves that would take them all day. I loved to step in and help, especially with Vera and since I lost a dear friend in the same position years ago.
Her hands were calloused and caked with dirt, and her smile was often faked, but her green eyes never lost their warmth or sunshine. I’d hear her singing to herself sometimes as she cleaned, up until Cook screamed at her. She had an inner light and tender heart she couldn’t hide, no matter how rough the conditions were. Life wasn’t giving her much to look forward to, but she made the best of it. Such as it was here.
I sighed and tore at the lamb’s skin when the mansion’s main door burst open.
"Vera!" screamed one of the male servants. "Come here! The Count needs you."
The young woman shuddered as she got up and dried her steaming hands off on a kerchief tied to her belt.
"You can wait for me if you want," she said as her fingers lightly touched my arm. She tied her hair back with the kerchief and jogged across the courtyard of the palisade towards the mansion proper. I gave her one last look over my shoulder. I hated to see her go, but I loved watching her leave.
Andrej cleared his throat. I glanced back at him and saw the kid trying to lift my cleaver out of the butcher’s block, but he was so short he couldn’t get the leverage needed. He let go and stumbled back, then leaned against the handle as if to emphasize his point instead. I laughed and directed him to finish up the work for her.
The village of Zharevo was outside the tall, half wooden and half stone palisade. On the inside, there were only the dark stone mansion, worn by age and covered in soot and grime at the base. The buildings within the wall’s safety were the smithy, the butchery, the kitchen, and the non-liveried servants’ house.
House. It was a strong word in comparison to what real homes looked like. Or at least compared to the servants in the mansion with their uniforms and two meals a day.
Andrej, Vera, myself, our beds were made out of hay and wood. A single window on the eastern wall gave barely enough light for us to see one another. We were each issued a small trunk at the foot of our bed for our belongings, though we never had enough to fill it.
The bathing stall was at the entrance of the small building, so anyone coming inside or watching on from within could see every drop of water flowing down my body. Not that there was any shame between the servants, but we still tried to manage a schedule.
Sometimes I would catch Vera watching from around the corner.
I sighed again and continued cleaning the lambs with Andrej’s help. He was a klutz, but he was my klutz. Everything he knew, I had taught him in his nine, long years in this hellhole. Minutes passed and turned into half an hour. I imagined the pale chambermaid spotting me in the shower. Perhaps she was new, and got lost, or thought to explore, and found herself in need of company.
"Hey Ivan, where is Vera?" asked Andrej. Worry wrote itself across the young boy’s face.
I frowned, momentarily shoving the pale woman from my thoughts.
"She should have been back already," I said.
Likely she was called to clean his festering wound again. Perhaps draw water for a bath, but that was the chambermaid's job. I looked around, searching for any sign of her, but I couldn’t find the young woman.
"Andrej? Can you finish cleaning the last lamb and carry them one by one to the kitchen? I’ll make sure to give you more food," I offered the young boy. His face lit up, all worries about Vera dissipating into thin air.
"Yes! You can count on me!"
I dropped my bloody apron on the block and washed my face and hands in the remains of the hot water, then sauntered towards the Count's mansion. Perhaps if I acted as if I belonged, everyone would be too busy with their preparation to notice. I made sure no one was watching and peeked in through the window.
The Count seemed to be asleep in the parlor, melodramatically laid on a velvet couch. The chambermaid was there, reading to him from a book. Perhaps she was a visiting noblewoman after all.
I wanted to stay and see her more. The way her collarbones delicately framed her small shoulders. The way her ample cleavage fell when she sighed to see the Count wasn’t listening to her and instead snored away. Her lips were painted like red wine and set in a deep frown. Even upset, she was beautiful. But as lovely as she was, she wasn’t my favorite scullery maid.
I frowned and headed to the kitchen. Maybe Vera might be there.
Chapter Two
The moss-covered walls spoke volumes about the estate’s history. The previous owner was a kind man who made the surrounding village prosperous and kept the bandits under control. But then along came this asshole, Count Nikolai Dvorak, who was a festering wound on the backside of what used to be a quiet and peaceful place. That is until the Count’s father died and the petulant child he sired with his fourth unfortunate wife came into power as a teenager.
Everything had gone down the drain. Income from the outer farms, maintenance of the village around the estate, the basic tools and needs of the people were forgotten. Pleasure was the only thing Nikolai yearned for. And the thing that gave him the most pleasure of all was destroying young minds and transforming them into mindless drones. The man had never known anything but power, so he’d become lost in it.
I wouldn’t let him have Vera, though. I’d known her for a few years now, ever since she came of age and was sent from her parent’s house to work in the Count’s service. Her light never went out, but it was fading quickly in this darkness. Her body, young and thin, faded away bit by bit as he asked more and more, and fed her too little to build up muscle from the scrubbing and carrying that was asked of her. He would take all, pushing her boundaries further, until she had nothing left to offer. I’d seen it in other women before her.
I stopped in front of the kitchen with my hands clenched into fists and my teeth bared. I liked pleasure, too. And despite the nights, I imagined myself with the visiting pale lady joining me in the shower, nothing would please me more than crunching that long, upturned nose of his with my fist. Crack knuckle to the bone and feel his face cave in under my punches until his skull was shattered in a mess of red. He deserved to scream and be fed to his guests. Not the lambs.
The kitchen staff were too busy stirring pots, as well as chopping meat and herbs to notice me. Even over the din of Cook screaming for her scullery maid, soft whimpering from the larder drew me back from my dark thoughts. I turned my head toward the sound and listened. Sure as the sun would rise again tomorrow, the same whimpers filled me with renewed rage.
