Literature
The Crystal Serpent, Chapter One
Chapter One: The Kitchen Boy
It was the seventh day of winter, and fear was in the air.
Robin could feel it, thicker than the steam from the kitchen kettles. Over an hour ago he’d heard two men speaking in hushed tones about a rider—one that had arrived at the gates of Kalmar Castle just before break of dawn. What his errand had been remained unknown save to the Lord and his nobles, but it must have been urgent. Perhaps desperate.
Near one end of the kitchen Robin stood before a firepit, turning a pig’s carcass on an iron spit. Slender, pale-faced, with tousled chestnut hair, he stood a little taller than most boys his age. He was not quite thirteen. Three years he had lived at the castle, two of them in his present duties.
The wild boar had been taken yesterday morning by bowmen in my Lord Olav’s hunting party. Its flesh crackled over the roaring flames, dripping grease and bits of fat. Heat-waves beat at Robin’s soot-streaked face as he strained at the turnspit. Sweat had
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