Chapter 1

My name is Robert of Upper Weston on Avon and I was born in a year of great sorrow and pestilence in our blessed land.

When I was old enough to understand the heavy burdens on our family and the common folk of our shire caused by the loss of our monarch and the destitution of our people, I resolved to never allow myself to feel pity for our foes in battle and to strip them of their wealth and dignity at every opportunity.

Eventually, our family was able to reconstitute our fortune with the sound principles of the marketplace and several hired managers who made our farms and stables prosper and return ever greater levels of profit to our coffers. I was tutored in both the Latin and Greek languages by pasty-faced academics who spoke the words of greatness with faltering confidence in their manly abilities. I became a disciple of Master swordsman Alphonse D'Maupassant who took great pains in assuring my left hand was as skilled as my right. I became proficient in all categories of weapons and he drove me to distraction with his constant endeavor to surprise me with some new trick to catch me off guard.

I was a lad of eighteen winters when I mounted my first conquest in the stable of my father as a bet between graduating squires with the poacher's daughter as the prize. I had no interest in the poor girl and knew her father to be a bit of a drinking man with no common sense when it came to ownership of land or the animals thereon. It was probably good fortune for the girl that I was the winner of the game because I took her virginity with no devious attempt to rob her of her dignity in front of witnesses. I entered her fair and square and plucked her innocent cherry knowing it was her father's fault and not mine.

She tried her best not to squeal in panic or despair and I respected her for that because I was fairly in total ignorance about such matters as well. We got into a respectable rhythm and brought the affair to a hasty ending as I sprayed her inner legs with the seeds of my hastily withdrawn cock. I had no intent to burden the young girl with an infant in her tender years before she had a chance to find a suitable partner to take her to his bed and hearth.

I gazed at her cum-covered flanks and allowed her to cover herself with as much dignity as she could muster in such circumstances. I pronounced her father absolved of his poaching sins and it kept him from the gallows at the entrance of the farm. That was the only penalty that seemed to work in times of great hunger and in all honesty, the current time was certainly not that. It must have just been the man's sheer laziness and dishonesty that led him down the path of criminal activity to steal from the hand of his benefactor.

I noted that the girl was not brimming with tears and seemed relatively calm.

I pressed a coin of dubious origin into her palm and she disappeared it into her bosom.

"Thank you, kind sir, for not using me too harshly and for releasing my father from his penalty. My mother will thank you allowing us to keep him a while longer to feed his family by legal means and not be a poaching in the future."

Her name was Elizabeth and she had impressive hair and a stance that spoke of finer breeding. If I had met her under different circumstances, I am certain I would have sued for her pleasure and rewarded her nicely for her cooperation. She was not of my circle but could have fit in with the proper clothes and perhaps more education to improve her common speech.

Her younger sister Mary kicked me in my shin when I wasn't looking and I saw she was only a young child and far too young to be witnessing such matters. I instructed the man and his elder daughter to remove her from the stable and keep her away from gentlemen with foul intent. I wondered if the mother was mistress to some nobleman on another estate because both daughters were fair of face and carried their delightfully designed female bodies in a manner that bespoke of a class much higher than mere common folk.

The following spring, I was fitted out in full armor and given a pair of fine mounts to ride into battle against the heathen hordes that endangered our beloved pilgrims to the Holy Lands in adoration of the Son of Christ. The tales of butchered pilgrims and raped nuns and female worshipers were widely touted about the shire and across the land like vicious tentacles of evil incarnate requiring our attention to duty and firm resolve.

We entered into the Holy Land from the land of the Greeks hopping along the coastline like so many frogs going into a strange and distant territory. I was fortunate enough to have a pair of squires with me who were fairly skilled with the longbow and had some knowledge of sword fighting but only enough to put up a spirited defense. I had progressed to the point that I was able to cut through ten or twenty foes with little difficulty working up an appetite and a sweat that flooded my boots. The squires kept well to the rear and only us knights with our heavy armor and sharp blades decimated the lines of heathen opponents like strands of wheat ready for the harvest.

Our first major battle was close to the coast and the supply of our ships. We went through the almost deserted port town expecting some resistance but finding only empty houses. A few kilometers inland we found the enemy waiting in ambush but curiously absent skilled fighters to defend their group. We later discovered the young bloodthirsty males had all joined with the killers of the Christian pilgrims and gloried in the bloodshed of the "infidels" on their sacred land. The stories of the raped females were apparently all true because we saw their severed heads sitting on the town walls like monuments of evil. What they had done with the shattered bodies I had no idea and was content not to find them for fear it would instill in me a ferocity that would lead to my downfall as I took ever riskier exploits to increase my successes in killing the enemy.