In Defence of the Keep
Copyright© 2025 by James Girvan
Chapter 8: Old Patterns, Appointments, and Old Age
Action/Adventure Sex Story: Chapter 8: Old Patterns, Appointments, and Old Age - Laird Nathanial was once a Hero of Chaos and Crossroads but tonight is under attack in his family’s Keep by his brother and a small army of mercenaries. No longer welcome on Crossroads after breaking the rules of chivalrous combat, he hatches a plan to both defend his lands and travel back to Crossroads. Can he survive in either world?
Caution: This Action/Adventure Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Heterosexual
I will normally shed my clothes immediately and cleanse myself upon returning to Crossroads after a mission, but I needed to be certain that this tunic wouldn’t disappear like all the other dirty clothes and sheets. I therefore toughed it out and stayed dirty for a few more hours while Sue tried to bring Diane around, both healing boxes being full at the moment. I was sipping a hot coffee and speaking to my sister when Diane gracefully reentered the room and sat across from me, looking uncomfortable as she again saw my marked tunic.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” I asked, not really asking. She nodded, looking away. “Since you had such a strong reaction to it, I assume it has to do with a hero, perhaps your Hero?” I asked softly.
Diane didn’t respond, staring off to the side, probably back many, many years. My sister put her hands on Diane’s and the older woman jumped at the unexpected contact. She finally turned to look at me, her eyes flicking to the stamped image with a sad expression.
“He was from a part of earth that your people haven’t contacted yet, very different from your people both in looks and language but also in ... behaviour.” She paused.
“Can you tell me how you found that image? It is a written language and not taught anywhere on Chaos or near you on Earth.” Diane asked.
“It was two trips back, we wandered off the cart path to find a deer that one of the men had shot with a crossbow. It went about 200 yards off the route, far further than most would have gone just to set up a camp. We stumbled across some disinterred remains, four or maybe five men and all their gear. They hadn’t been killed by other men, or all their gear would have been gone. We found a lot of rusted weapons and a set of three very unusual blades, straight, light, heavily waxed and lacquered, not rusted in the slightest. I have the ring back home on earth...” I finished quietly.
Diane looked at me while I was speaking, then turned away. “Do the blades have a similar form of writing on them, complex swooping images?”
“Yes, they don’t repeat, and they are all the same pattern” I mouthed carefully.
“May your blade chip, and shatter...” Diane whispered.
I stayed silent, she was in her own world, and we were just interacting with the small bit that was still here. After a few more minutes of quiet, I left for the shower, the two ladies holding hands in silence.
There were too many men, and only the two (available) women. Andre got a free pass with his Caretaker (after an extremely thorough shower) while the Damsel was in the box and getting a new hand. Once released, Damsel Sue tried her very best to kill poor Andre with her snatch. If the doors were left open we could hear the two of them howling away like foxes in heat. The knock-on effect had the rest of the brothers (and father Timothy) in quite a state which kept both Caretaker Sue and Diane busy as they tried to keep five healthy men drained and calm.
I found myself keeping company with my sister, who (besides being put-off by all the coupling around her) needed lessons in comportment and an education of a certain standard before she could be admitted to the higher society. I planned to adopt her as a ward. Anyone looking at her would quickly know the true state of the relationship, but immediately marrying her off to a newly powerful and titled family would be seen as a smooth solution to a sudden problem (if nothing else). JC ended up with lessons on maths and language as well, my thoughts running to the idea that she could oversee the Thatcher lands and tenants if it came to that.
Combat training continued also. Tim (eldest son) dug deeply into his very soul to better himself and improved by great leaps and bounds over the two months we waited for Andre’s Damsel to catch. If we’d had three months, Tim’s hand-to-hand fighting without weapons would have begun to rival mine ... he was so driven that most of his evenings were partly spent in the healing chamber, repairing from broken bones or broken knuckles.
Timothy (looking toward the future and obviously coordinating with Diane) had been wearing very high-quality leather armour at all times, and carrying an extremely well made all-wood and leather shield also. His boys followed suit (even Andre, where he could).
My sister seemed to become fond of an odd sort of formal gown which seemed to have a second gown underneath it, followed by extremely dense underclothes and topped by some very pretty pearl necklaces on silk strings that I had seen her wear at the dance so many weeks ago.
It seemed we all had ‘our pockets full’ just waiting to bolt out the door of the shop. I was also wearing my own version of generic armour, but it had been made with an under layer of lacquered stacks of the Crossroads ‘paper’ and I was told it was the traditional way armour was made in the place where Diane’s Hero had come from.
During some of her free time, I was allowed to hear some of her stories. This series of trips wasn’t the first time she’d bent the rules for a Hero. Hers had been taking specific volumes of carefully selected ores with him, then when he had enough of these ores on Chaos, the swords were forged with them by master smiths from his own land that had been found on Chaos. The quality of these weapons and their extreme durability was due to these specific ores.
I was impressed at her dedication to protecting her Hero. My own Caretaker had trained, practiced and planned her very best to make me as prepared as possible, but perhaps it was a measure of her innate dedication to the position of Caretaker that she never ever bent the rules even once for me.
The only other notable event happened when I was thinking about my own apparently lowered libido. The Thatchers had been going about it like rabbits any time they were not actively training or building muscle. I had a small number of trysts with Diane, but compared to the men around me, I was positively chaste. I mentioned it to Diane and she replied that the body may have been a willing one, but the mind was that if a 70 year old. I took it as an insult until she reminded me that although my body didn’t age, my mind had lived every single day that I had been on Cossroads or on Chaos, and that I had probably ‘lived through’ 70 to 80 years.
I was just silently flabbergasted that I might have lived more than half of my life away from the Keep. She walked off mentioning that she would ask for a more accurate reckoning and get back to me about it.
The revelation did put some things that bothered me into a different light. I was mostly attracted to the older women here on Crossroads (although I never turned down the young ones). My (mostly ignored) wife was all of 19 years old, and my annoyance with her behaviour and manners of speech were probably more due to my own great mental age than to her being immature.
When the total was returned, I was 77 & 1/4 years old (by way of life experience). I wondered how old my ‘Uncle’ was. He could easily be 120 or more.
Plans continued to be made and (besides the normal training of weaponry and tactics for individuals and small groups) I was given more instruction on how to control large groups of man and to coordinate multiple groups of men at once. This included planning for their feeding, housing, setting up a healthy camp and such. Timothy (elder) joined me for this training, and since I had elevated him, I had no cause to keep him from it.
I did have a series of private tutoring sessions in ‘accountancy’ by the ever voluptuous Caretaker Sharon. Between bouts of bountiful time between her bosom I learned about how money is counted, tallied, Mis-directed and stolen. It was a difficult training for me, as maths have never been my strong point.
“Argh! I was never meant to be damn snivelling clerk!” I vented one afternoon following a complex lesson where cross-checking multiple entries which had been previously totalled ‘compiled’; but had extra funds ‘tagged along’ which would be diverted and stolen at a later time. “I was born to fight and conquer goddamnit!”
“Very well, risk your neck and conquer.” Sharon said with a chuckle that moved her best assets in an interesting way. “Your snivelling scribes at home will line their pockets with your hard-earned silver...”
I took a half an hour to work out my frustration on her and her maths in a way that benefited and calmed both of us before returning to my studies.
But the time our Damsel announced she had her own bun in the oven, I was throughly sick of numbers, ledgers, profit, and graft. We all managed to pass the portal with our spoils, I admit that I thought a lot about the possibilities of moving valuable baubles across the portal to support the future of my Keep, but all of that would depend on us surviving the encounter at the Keep tomorrow morning.
The time shift got to me this time ... we had been working just after breakfast when we were rudely ejected from our comfortable purgatory (if purgatory had fine wine, soft beds, and randy women) and spit out into the middle of night into the hall just outside my private Study. Seven armoured men and a woman in evening attire might have startled the stoutest of warriors but my Steward was made of sterner stuff.
“Andre, ... the ring.” I held my hand and received my father’s heirloom. “Steward, ’Sir’ Thatcher here and his sons are to be afforded the right to carry weapons in the Keep, he has my full confidence and will begin arranging defence preparations inside the Keep.” Timothy and I had discussed my concerns about compromised people on the Inside of my Keep trying to ensure I didn’t order the portal destroyed if the battle was going poorly, like a retreating army would burn the land as they went.
“Yes sir, it will be done...” my unflappable man replied in a neutral tone. “Your requested, umm, interviewees are in your Study at this time, along with three farmers sons and your Wife Sire...” he continued in the same bored tone.
“Sir Thatcher, I am going to interview the men in my office, you are to come in after two minutes and escort any man left in that room to the dungeons and then have my wife taken to our quarters with a guard. Sit Thatcher, detail enough of your men to accomplish this.” I was suddenly aware of the fact that my wife might be a target of provocateurs inside the walls.
Her extended family was firmly in financial control of our nearest port city, and my marriage to their third child (a most favoured daughter) had included preferential trading status when my people took their goods to that particular market. For their part, our woollen goods and raw materials shipped exclusively through them and any goods they trans-shipped through our lands were guarded heavily and taxed lightly. I wondered idly what she would think of watching me disappear in a few minutes.
“At the same time, please see that my Ward here is similarly protected, perhaps she could aid as a lady-in-waiting for my wife?” I fired out at both men as I turned to the doorway.
Turning the handle as the light glinted off of my ring, I had no fear that I might pass through the portal embedded in the frame of the door, as I had been told repeatedly that past actions had quite clearly confirmed my ineligibility to be a proper Hero any longer. Still, it was a mild disappointment to pass the door frame wearing the ring without being transported to see my true love once again.
Instead of a half-naked, dark haired pixie with shining eyes, a shrewd mind and a happy shriek; I was greeted with the baleful stares of my exchequer and his two sons, the apprehensive glances of three farm boys, and the tired sad eyes of my wife.