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Leofleda, Gode and Sexburhe each entered into our lives that spring and by late summer, they all were ripening with child. Like in the case of the twins, each new wife earned me sincere thanks from their parents, and more wife-geld; more granted lands, and even good coin. Parents were increasingly desperate to make any consorting arrangements that could be found for the hundred or so remaining young women without consorts, and the notion that their daughter was sharing their husband with a flock of other sister-wives offended no one. More than anything, the valley yearned for children to replace those lost by the war, and each birth was a blessing according to our priests.
Leofleda was the daughter of a shepherd from the southern hills and mountains near the borders of Everdun and Aldaria, and at once she assumed control over our previously ill-tended flock of sheep. Her father, who was quite advanced in years and had no other children to tend his own flocks, gifted us much of his own flocks, and plenty of good pastureland in the hills at the north of our valley for them to graze. She was dark of complexion, with a strong nose that more than suggested that some raiding Caestorian had been very familiar with either her mother or grandmother. Her hair was long and raven black. In bed she was quiet, a follower rather than a leader. Truth be told, in bed she preferred the soft touch of a woman to the penetration of a man, but it never became an issue with us. She bore me three strong children and loved each of them, and her sister-wives well.
Gode was a neighboring girlfriend of Leofleda's, also from the hills, but her expertise was with dairy cattle, and she carefully managed and grew our once small cattle herd wisely and well. Barely a grown woman of nineteen, she was an orphan, with her father and two brothers lost during the war. Still, this tragedy had never dampened her spirits, and no one ever heard a dispirited word from her. As her lands were merged with Leofleda's next door, we had more than ample good grazing ground for the cattle, and she added her inheritance for Cwen's wise management without complaint or concern. We didn't really need the coins, but Cwen wisely used them to buy out other farms and pasture lands nearby, so that someday our growing lands would connect and merge together seamlessly. In bed, unlike her girlfriend, she was adventurous and inventive, and constantly schemed to get as much bedtime with me as possible. She loved vaginal sex, and if she could have managed it, would have placed herself at the top of Alta's breeding listing the moment after giving birth. She loved everything about being pregnant, and she delivered to us a full ten healthy children before the Weavers decided that she had done her part in repopulating the valley.
Sexburhe was a rather strange and mysterious sort of woman a little older than the rest of us, but more than willing to share in our lives. Her father was the reeve of the town, administrating it for the baron, and she had attended school several years before me. She lacked Cwen's ambition, and was much contented to just help others wherever she could. For the most part she helped Burwynne with the household, and took over much of the nearby barnyard duties, tending to the pigs and the various fowl. She was the most thoughtful and perhaps the wisest of my wives, and she was the one everyone turned to for help with their private problems. It is hard for a group of women to all live together in peace, constantly without even minor disruptions, and Sexburhe became the arbitrator and peace-maker, the soother of all trifling and major wounds, and we all came to adore her. After two difficult pregnancies in which she miscarried both children, we dared not tempt fate by risking her life with another one. She instead became the second mother for much of our brood, and she loved all of the children in turn as if they were her own. Sex itself wasn't particularly important to her happiness, but she loved to cuddle with her sister-wives.
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Already, with eight wives, I had as much bedroom attention as I could handle. The next winter I spent enlarging our house to add a large nursery for the babies and rooms for the later use of our growing boys and girls, not to mention bedrooms for wives not listed on the posted bedroom schedule for the night who actually wanted to sleep that night, instead of playing in the master bedroom. Every night, Alta managed the list to make sure that one wife stayed with me until we were certain she was pregnant, or two terms of her fertile cycles had past, along with herself and another wife that rotated nightly. Somehow, I knew the extra bedrooms still wouldn't be enough, and I had to enlarge the wives' bedroom again the next winter, and add yet another one for the children. Actually, I seemed to need to add more rooms each and every winter.
Each season I acquired yet another new wife, until I nearly lost count. Next Wulfwyne, Wilflede, Ælfwenne and Hilda joined our happy family, giving me a full dozen sister-wives, and then another two, Luffa and Mildrede, joined us the following winter to give me a full fourteen wives, one for each month of the year. I suspected this was done so that Alta could better manage the bedroom schedule, giving each sister-wife a full month of preference.
I politely let my beloved Alta know that fourteen wives was quite all that I could handle and she agreed to call it quits adding formal sister-wives, but still, over the next few years, a great number of other assorted lonely unconsorted women constantly came and left the harem, once they had been inseminated with child. At least twice a month, I could count on a new, utterly unfamiliar woman appearing naked in my bed, eager to play... and hopefully have their womb fertilized with my child.
By the time of the twentieth anniversary of the battle of Lacestone, my fourteen wives had given birth to seventy-six children, not to mention the additional temporary playthings that my darling Alta had admitted to my bed in-between, with alarming regularity. If I had fathered a full hundred offspring, or more, it would not at all surprise me!
My old comrades, Hancy, Tirol and Gaston were nearly as fruitful, and I suspected that their sister-wives had admitted a few more fertile and rather neglected women into their beds as well. In a generation, the great catastrophe of our valley without men had been mostly corrected, much to the satisfaction of everyone.
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At the start of winter of the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, Alta and I decided that we should attend it, the final ceremony marking that great battle in which we had both taken part in. We had been some of the youngest warriors in that battle, but already age was quite catching up with the surviving veterans who were all now in their mid-sixties, at a minimum. Several of my companions had died even before the fortieth anniversary, and a few more had passed since. Now there were just four of us left in total, including Alta, and none of us were as frisky as we used to be. Three of my wives had already passed as well, and our horde of children were already mostly now in charge of managing and farming our extensive lands with families of their own. Indeed, Alta and I were by far the largest landowners in the entire valley, in fact now holding a vast majority of all the farmlands.
Ten years ago, we had attended the forty year reunion, and I had taken a few of my younger sons and a few select grandchildren along with us, as had a few of my old mates. Alfrid, my youngest son by Alta, met and fell quite head over heals in love with Earl Rowan and Gwenda's youngest daughter Cwengyth, and in a sudden courtship that astonished everyone, they declared their troth for each other. In the spirit of their martial mothers, both offspring had been born for battle, and together they served as officers for a small mercenary company that was keeping the piece in the western Barbur Valley of Oswein, where a narrow river valley cut into the Brittle Mountains and created a strategic pass into the Great Yarmouth Pass. Before the Great War, this valley was home to hordes of Boar-Men, but now men claimed this fertile pass, and my son and daughter-in-law scouted and patrolled this critical and still dangerous river valley. There are apparently still fouler creatures in the world than the Boar-Men.
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Arriving at Lacestone, were not surprised that we old veterans were still the youngest of the survivors present. In truth we had almost no old friends left to speak to, as Lord Loren had passed a few years earlier, much to Alta's sadness. My son's parents-in-law, Earl Rowan and Gwenda, both seemed to be especially frail, with the noble lady Gwenda appearing to be terribly pale and quite ill. We made our affectionate greetings to her and left her to her sickbed. Lord Rowan appeared little better, fraught with worry for his obviously failing wife. Still, I managed one all too brief conversation with him before he in turn took his leave for the evening.
"My Lord, and somewhat father-in-law," I confessed, "just how scared were you upon your very first great battle? I was a lad of still not yet quite sixteen on the day of this battle and I pissed my pants completely the moment that first boarman jumped out in front of me in the darkness outside of Haldyne."
"So did I!" He admitted also, "At the start of my first big fight on Dead Tree Island, the first time the Boar-Men rushed up to me, before I found and rescued Gwenda! They seemed as tall as the trees and I thought they'd cut me down like they were swatting an insect. Fortunately, I killed them first and won my confidence to face the rest. Their spilled blood covered the dampness on my front, fortunately, and then I had a long swim, so that my shame was well disguised. Being scared is just human, and admitting it."
