CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Steffen felt his palms go raw as he stood before the huge mill, pushing on the wooden crank with all the other laborers. It was backbreaking labor, what he was used to, and it made him blot out the worries of the world. He had been given just enough grain and water to get by, sleeping on the floor like an animal with all the other indentured servants. It was not a life: it was an existence. The rest of his life, as it had been once before, would be filled with labor and pain and monotony.
But Steffen no longer cared. This was the sort of life he had led in King’s Castle, working for King MacGil in the basement, tending the fires. That had been a harsh life, too, and really an extension of his entire life, of his home life, of his parents, who had been so ashamed of him
