The air inside the stone house was incredibly stifling, a mixture of the acrid smell of burning firewood, the musty odor of damp stone walls, and the stench of bodies that hadn't been washed in a long time.
A total of three fires were lit inside the house, but those frail young slaves only dared to huddle closely together around the smallest, scattered fire at the edge. Even though the flames of the other two fires in the center clearly burned larger and much warmer, absolutely no child dared to approach them to warm up, yielding the best spots to the guard.
