Shieldbreaker: Episode 2: An End to Rage

By Ty Johnston

He has hidden among the mountains for years, but now his enemies have come looking for him.

Yet the Kobalan soldiers Lerebus Shieldbreaker hates so much are not out to slay him, but to capture him, to bring him before their captain who has a peace offering to make. If Lerebus will only help them track down one of their own, a general gone rogue.

Utilizing the tracking skills and minor magics taught to him by his murdered father, Lerebus takes on this quest with the Kobalan Prince Corvin Verkain at his side. But who is the hunter and who is the hunted?

Also available:
Shieldbreaker: Road of the Sword
Shieldbreaker: An End to Rage

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ty Johnston
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301875290

Ty Johnston

Originally from Kentucky, Ty Johnston is a former newspaper journalist. He lives in North Carolina with loving memories of his late wife.Blog: tyjohnston.blogspot.com

Book preview

SHIELDBREAKER

Part II of V: An End to Rage

The Ursian Chronicles

by Ty Johnston

a Monumental Works Group author

Copyright 2013 by L. M. Press

visit the author’s website: tyjohnston.blogspot.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

Copyright © 2013 Ty Johnston

Cover artwork copyright © 2013 Ty Johnston

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at [e-mail].

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Table of Contents

About Shieldbreaker

An End to Rage

Preview: Chapter 1 of the novel Ghosts of the Asylum

About Shieldbreaker

Readers familiar with my ongoing epic fantasy saga The Ursian Chronicles might recognize the name of Lerebus Shieldbreaker, the main character of this five-part series. Lerebus appears as a minor character in the novel Dark King of the North: Book III of The Kobalos Trilogy, and as a somewhat more influential character in my novel Under the Mountain: Part III of The Sword of Bayne. Funny how Lerebus keeps showing up in the final novels of my trilogies. Also, I do not hide the fact that the Jorsican barbarian known as Lerebus will appear in more of my works in the future, sometimes as a major character, sometimes as a minor one. This has led to a few questions from readers about the character, especially concerning his past. How did he come to serve as a soldier in the Kobalan army when he is from Jorsica by birth? How does he meet with the mighty Bayne kul Kanon nearly two thousand years before the events of The Kobalos Trilogy? This five-part series of short stories will answer many of those questions, and others, though new questions might arise. The story presented here, An End to Rage, takes place approximately five years after the first story, Road of the Sword. I hope the reader enjoys.

1,982 years After Ashal (A.A.)

The winter cold numbed him body and mind, but when Lerebus heard the jangling of steel near the mouth of his cave, there was little doubt in his thoughts who would be outside. It would be Kobalans, soldiers sent up from the villages in the valley below his mountain retreat. The number of the soldiers was the only question. There would at least be a small squad, no fewer than four, perhaps as many as a dozen. Or, possibly, word had spread of his skill with the sword and spear, with steel and stone. If that were the case, Lerebus could expect as many as a hundred mean, thought he doubted this. A hundred men would have made much more noise. Even in his sleep, he would have awoken much earlier if a hundred fools had been tramping their way up the mountain paths.

No, there was more likely to be only a handful of the Kobalans. Lerebus slung his father’s sword over his back and grabbed up his flint-tipped spear as he rushed to the cave entrance to determine how many foes were approaching his home.

The mountain winds assailed him as he brushed aside the hanging bear skin and stood at the cave’s entrance, snow flittering down all around and adding to the already piled white powder along the ledge before him. Rolling his shoulder beneath the wolf furs wrapping his body, Lerebus stared down the mountain side to the trail two dozen yards below his perch.

There were a half dozen of the big men in black