Two months before my 15th birthday the orcs on the southern border were massing for their annual surge. The attack was mostly due to the plains orcs rapid population growth. Some years a few thousand orcs and every decade or so upwards of forty thousand orcs. Well this year the estimates were over fifty thousand. So retired soldiers and war mages were being called to temporary service by the king. Lionshire brought me early to the fort before the amassed orcs had started their attack. The south was bordered by a mountain range with four passes that had fortifications. Lionshire had a room in one of the towers built into the walls of the pass. It was high up, over 500 feet and I would have to climb a lot of stairs to get food for us. The room was also dirty, very dirty and I had to clean it which was going to take hours.

The room did have a great view of the forts walls and the pass far below. In the distance I could see the plains and smoke from the horde. I emptied my pocket space and got to cleaning while Lionshire went to the war council. Normally I would have attended but it was already going to be a crowded room. I wished I had learned a cleaning spell but I scrubbed and gathered firewood and cooking supplies from the forts storehouse and my legs burned from all the stair climbing. I made a potato beef soup that my mom used to make on special occasions. When Lionshire returned he dictated seven letters to me. All were requests for aide. He asked the Rimeborn duke to send 500 soldiers with all due haste to the south and another 50 soldiers to the eastern shores. He made other requests to barons he had good relations with asking for soldiers and specific supplies. I sealed the letters and he sent them magically off. My mentor told me things were much worse than they had first appeared after scouts briefed the war council.

The orcs were very organized and well led. There were signs of frost trolls and rock giants in orc camps by scouts. There were even rumors the orcs had a half dozen or more wyvern riders. The general consensus was the orc attack would be repelled with large losses and then the pirate raiding parties in the east would attack the eastern shores while we were weak. Lionshire told me my only duty for the foreseeable future was getting him breakfast at dawn. He would send the rest of the day helping with preparations and would have lunch and evening meals with council members. So I was free to do whatever the rest of the day. The orc attack was between four and ten weeks away.

I wandered the fort the next day and found the fletcher workshop. There were six fletchers there making arrows, two were women in their late teens. The master fletcher got me inside and gave me a quick lesson on making arrows and I spent the rest of the day making arrows and being corrected. There were three shelves for finished arrows. The bottom was the ‘trash’ arrows. It was for arrow rain and had had arrows that were not well made and wouldn’t fly accurately. All my arrows went there. The middle shelf had regular arrows and was the majority of arrows being made. The top shelf were masterwork arrows. The master fletcher put up 2 out of 3 of his made arrows there. The other three men made 1 in 10 that passed inspection for the top shelf. The two women I found were squires from a barony that allowed women to fight and were just helping out like me being recruited. But they made good arrows with most going to the middle shelf. I was sent to bring lunch for the group with one of the women.

Her name was Tara. She was very talkative and she was squire to Baron Fryia whose territory was just north of the fort. The barony taught women to fight so they could defend themselves if the orcs broke through. I asked her if she was any good and she challenged me to a spar after breakfast tomorrow. We brought food to everyone and my focus on arrow making started to bare fruit. One in seven of my arrows made it to the middle shelf and the master fletcher pointed out my errors which helped me. My biggest struggle was gluing the feathers and putting the end into the quick dry heater. I was good at affixing the point and the wraps on the shaft to prevent splitting. At the end of the day I went to eat in the common dining hall with the two female squires. The other women was Niola. We talked about their lives. They were squired at age 13 and were both daughters of the baron’s house guards. Niola wanted in on the sparring practice. Before climbing the tower I got a leather jerkin, bracers and a spear from the armory.

My legs were jelly heading down to the practice yard after retrieving breakfast for Lionshire. I decided to hold off on my vitality recovery spell. My hands also had blisters from making arrows. So when I finally got to the training area Tara and Niola were going through stretches and looked very muscular in tank tops and leather pants. I had to think gross thoughts so my body wouldn’t betray me. There were two squads of men training on the far side and they looked on with interest in the women stretching as well. Ok now I just needed to not embarrass myself.

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I postponed the first spar by stretching and wrapping my spear head. Hopefully my legs would recover in time. Both women had sabers and were slashing and stabbing weapons. I decided to go with no shield for the first engagement. Tara was first and even though she was strong, stronger than me, my two hand spear use was very good and I used my length advantage to get her shield over extended and came around to slash her thigh. No blood of course but it was ruled a debilitating wound by Niola. Next round I won against Tara again sweeping her feet when she obscured her vision with her shield. Then she dropped the shield on the third spar and I got her in the sword shoulder. Frustrated we switched. I was now matched against Niola. I decided to get water and a cast of vitality recovery was needed. After casting the spell I felt fresh and stronger…so the conditioning of running the stairs remained. I needed to age so as not to rewind my body and lose this improvement.

Well Niola was much better than Tara. I barely won the first spar, then I got a beat down in the next four. They admitted they were not used to fighting against spears as we rested. Well Tara obviously picked up a few things from watching and I only got one draw and suffered 3 losses. I tried adding a shield but it just prolonged the spar till defeat. We were all sweaty after three hours of sparring and went to lunch. After lunch we made arrows again. I got a little better making arrows. The master fletcher said after another few days I would be good to go on my own. My new female friends were returning to their barony tomorrow and would return in a week.

Well at dinner Tara caught me before I headed up the stairs to my room in the cliff tower. She sort of dragged me to a mostly empty storage room, it looked like it held a few casks of oil by the smell. But I didn’t have much time to think about it. In the dark I activated my thermal vision as Tara stripped. Oh we were doing that. I stripped as well and soon we were on the floor on rough burlap sacks. I was on my back and Tara straddled me. I tried to slow her down but she was determined and my body had already responded. Soon she guided me in and was riding me. I didn’t last long before orgasm but my youthful body remained hard and Tara was able to work to herself to fervor and to orgasm. As she was coming I reversed positions and tried to prolong her fulfillment. I think I was successful by her moans and the pulsing around my penis. I myself, came a second time before collapsing on Tara.

The room was dark but my thermal vision I could see her, she looked content. I rolled away and she said thank you. She said in a week the fort would be too busy to find a free room so that was why she had wanted to have sex now. She definitely wasn’t a virgin. But she said this coming horde would kill a lot of people and she wanted to get as much pleasure in before then. She said the Baroness would be on the central wall and Niola and her would be by her side. Damn. We dressed and left. The sex was just sex, no real passion, just lust.

I went south of the wall to a fresh water stream. I bathed under the two moons in the sky and washed my clothes. I began to wonder if my vitality spell would get me immediately ready after I ejaculated. Hopefully I would get a chance to experiment. Well I doubted my next encounter would be anytime soon. Besides my 15 year body had managed two firings in just over 4 minutes. The guard at the gate gave me some trouble before letting me back in as it was a different guard from when I left. He relented eventually.

I flew up the steps to the room. Changed into dry clothes and put a pot of tea on. Lionshire wasn’t back yet but it was chilly tonight in the room we shared. We had a window and small balcony. I was sipping my third cup of tea on the balcony when Lionshire returned. He took some tea as well and told me how the horde was growing beyond imagining. I asked what was I to do during the conflict. Lionshire thought for a bit. Then he said I would remain in this room. My new spell was too valuable for me to engage in the conflict. If things got bad he would teleport me back to Rimeborn.

The next week I spent my mornings running stairs and doing some strength training. I was planning to lock in some physical upgrades before resuming my stationary aging. As for making arrows I spent two hours before dinner helping the master fletcher. My skills grew a little but still about 1 in 4 arrows were not good enough. I was excited for the return of Tara and Niola. But as Tara had said they came back with 1200 archers and 900 soldiers from the barony, peasant conscripts. Things were getting busy and Tara and Niola were each training a squad of 6 conscripts each around the clock and didn’t have time for me. I continued my own training and got my hands on a short bow. I figured I could shoot arrows into the horde from my room balcony. I started stockpiling arrows in my room. I kept half the stock I made daily, which added ten to fourteen arrows. Yeah I was pretty slow making making arrows.

I was getting really fit and was having a growth spurt. Over the next 18 days more and more soldiers arrived. The horde was closing with siege weapons and it appeared they were going to attack two passes, one being ours. In the middle on the night I heard scratching. Probably a rat. I activated movement sense and reached for my spear. Thermal vison was next. But movement sense didn’t find anything…wait it was on the outside wall. I jumped up and screamed attack as three hulking figures climbed down to our little balcony.