Chapter 7: The Barracks

The barracks where Stefan and Wilham lay shivering on their first night in Athelburg were the quarters for boys like Stefan, whose peasant parents had put them into training for what they hoped was something better than spending their lives laboring in the fields. What Dalgburth said about the compound not being an inn had been no more than the truth, even taking into account the crude accommodations provided by most inns of the day.

The forty beds crammed together in the unheated room were no more than narrow boards on post frames with a crate underneath to store the boys’ spare clothes and other belongings. Meals were served in an open-air dining pavilion partly enclosed by a wicker wall that kept in some of the warmth of the cooking hearth but did little to stop the wind. As Stefan was soon to learn, the strongest of the boys muscled their way to the front of the food line as much to get places in the middle of the long tables, where other boys’ bodies would block the drafts, as to get the food portions that had the most meat.

That first morning, Stefan woke up thinking Little Hare had pushed him onto the floor. Opening his eyes and realizing where he was, he shoved Wilham off the bed before anyone could see they’d slept together. As he was pulling on his boots and tucking his knife into his belt, he remembered Dalgburth warning him not to leave anything worth stealing in the barracks, and he dug through the clothes he’d stuffed in the storage box to find the silver cross his mother had given him. He never wore it except to church since he didn’t want to be taken for a sissy, but it was the only thing he had from his mother—so, defiantly deciding he didn’t care what anyone thought, he hung it around his neck and, with Wilham at his heels, rushed to join the other boys scrambling to get to the latrine and into the breakfast line.

Except for Wilham, Stefan was the last one to reach the entrance to the dining pavilion, where Edfrig was standing by the doorway next to a taller man with a jagged scar on the left side of his face that ran diagonally from his temple to his chin.

As Stefan approached them, Edfrig scowled and muttered something to the man with the scar. Stefan tensed and stepped back.

Then something odd and unexpected happened.

The tall man smiled at him.

Caught off guard, Stefan smiled back, then ducked his head and hurried on. Once safely past, he glanced back to see the tall man staring after him, his scarred face so transformed that, for a moment, Stefan was reminded of the pictures of saints that hung in the village church.

The man with the scar, as Stefan was soon to find out, was the boys’ chief trainer, and that brief encounter was a turning point for both of them.