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Morning always came earlier than Javan wanted it to in the winter. In the winter, morning came before it was light. It meant getting up in the dark and clutching around in the twilight trying to find your clothes before you froze to death. It meant a sore jaw from trying to keep your teeth from chattering together to breaking point.
He tumbled out of the room where he slept with some of the other boys and men of the hall and stumbled to the fire made up by some blessed person. Eodwine was walking away as he came out, and it took too much effort to force a good morning between his tense jaws. So instead he replaced Eodwine before the fire and rubbed his hands up and down his arms until he felt warmth flowing back into his limbs.
Another thing Javan disliked about mornings in the winter was performing outside duties. He turned his back to the flames and stood thinking about the empty wood-box in the kitchen that had to be filled. And the buckets of water in the stables that Léof would need help breaking the ice in. He shivered with the thought, but there was no escaping it. So he reluctantly left his station at the hearth and went to the kitchen.
He entered just as Léof was coming in through the outside door and he stood to one side, hoping that if Léof got something warm to eat, he could share in the bounty. But all that was offered was a bit of bread from last night. Kara handed Léof a piece and when Javan stepped forward, she gave him one, too, and holding it in both hands before him, he hurried outside to bring in the wood.
He stuffed the piece of bread into his mouth and then began stacking wood into his arms. When he turned away from the pile, he paused, his eyes attracted to an approaching figure. He stopped chewing the chunk of bread and he squinted to see clearer in the growing light. It was a stranger, certainly, and like one he had never seen before. He walked bareheaded, with his cloak thrown back over his shoulder, ignorant of the cold. He had dark hair, like Modtryth and Cnebba, but his skin was pale and fair as the Rohanians’ and he was taller than any man Javan had seen before, except, perhaps, Thornden.
As he drew nearer, Javan waited for him, stamping his feet and shifting the wood in his arms. He swallowed the last bit of bread as the stranger came within speaking distance, and then greeted him.
"You must be freezing! Will you come inside? There's a fire in the Hall and in the kitchen."
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