The corpse swayed, a grotesque pendulum in the mournful wind. Its presence sucked the meagre warmth from the afternoon, leaving a residue of bone-deep chill. Griff, one of the youths, made a warding sign, his face pale. Owain looked like he might be sick. Even Rhys, the one-eyed cynic, fell silent, his usual sneer replaced by a grim set to his jaw. Madog, true to form, simply stared, his expression unreadable. Dai coughed, a dry, hacking sound that seemed to echo the desolation.
Cadogan forced himself to look, not with the superstitious dread of his companions, but with the analytical gaze he was beginning to reclaim. The man had been dead for some time, weeks perhaps, judging by the state of desiccation and the way the ragged clothes clung to skeletal limbs. The rope was thick, crudely tied. No obvious signs of a struggle on the ground beneath, though the rain would have washed much away. A warning? From whom, to whom? Or simple, brutal justice?
"We move on," Cadogan said, his voice emerging steadier than he felt. There was nothing to be gained by lingering. Cutting the body down was beyond their current means or inclination; it could be diseased, or disturbing it might invite unwanted attention. "Keep your eyes open. Whatever did that could still be near."
The pronouncement, devoid of the fear or ritualistic appeasement they might have expected, seemed to unsettle the men more than the corpse itself. They exchanged uneasy glances but obeyed, falling into a ragged line behind him as he pushed onward, the image of the swaying man burned into his mind. Glyndŵr was not just a ruined land; it was a place where lives ended harshly and were left as carrion.
The terrain continued its descent into wilderness. The last vestiges of managed land gave way to tangled thickets, treacherous bogs that forced them into long detours, and dark, silent woods where the trees grew too close together, their branches seeming to claw at the oppressive sky. The only paths were game trails, faint and misleading. The air grew colder, the silence broken only by their own laboured breathing, the squelch of boots, Dai's persistent cough, and the ever-present, mournful wind.
As dusk began to bleed into the sky, tinting the clouds a bruised purple, Cadogan called a halt. He chose a spot with his back to a low, rocky outcrop that offered some minimal defense against the wind and attack from one direction. It was far from ideal, but in this desolate landscape, it was the best they could hope for. "We make camp here," he announced.
There was no enthusiasm. The men dropped their meager packs with weary groans. Rhys and Madog, with their greater experience, set about trying to coax a small, reluctant fire to life using flint, steel, and the driest tinder they could find, while Owain and Griff were tasked with clearing a small perimeter of loose stones and thorn bushes. Dai tended to the packhorse, his movements slow and deliberate. Cadogan, despite his own exhaustion, moved among them, observing, offering a quiet word here and there, trying to project an aura of calm command he was far from feeling. His body screamed for rest, but his mind knew that any sign of weakness now could be fatal to his already tenuous authority.
Their evening meal was a grim affair – a few strips of Morfudd's dried meat, hard as leather, and a mouthful of stale bread, washed down with watered ale that did little to lift their spirits. The fire, small and smoky, offered more psychological comfort than physical warmth.
"First watch, Rhys, Madog," Cadogan said, as the last light faded and the woods around them dissolved into impenetrable blackness. "Two hours. Then Owain and Griff. I will take the third with Dai." Rhys merely grunted, hefting his spear and moving to the edge of their small, firelit circle, Madog melting into the shadows beside him like a wraith.
The night was long. Through the trees, the wind made a high, mournful cry, unsettling in the deep darkness. The darkness yielded small, sharp sounds – a twig breaking underfoot somewhere, unseen things stirring the leaves – and each one was a fresh jolt to his already strained senses. His watch arrived, and with it, a deeper sense of the night's penetrating cold. He took his place beside Dai at the edge of the dying firelight, the old man a bundled shape, his quiet coughing a frail sound against the wind.
His senses, even those of this unfamiliar body, felt preternaturally sharp. He was a city dweller, a creature of libraries and archives, yet some primal instinct, honed by millennia of human survival, was awakening within him. He listened to the night, not just with his ears, but with his skin, with the hairs on the back of his neck. The forest was alive, but not with the "Green Men" of Rhys's tales, or so he hoped. Small scuttlings, the distant hoot of an owl, the rustle of a night creature moving through the bracken.
Dai, surprisingly, spoke, his voice a low rasp. "Glyndŵr… it changes a man, Arglwydd bach. Or it breaks him." "You have been there before?" Cadogan asked, keeping his own voice low. Dai nodded slowly. "Long ago. With your grandfather, when he first tried to claim it for Caer Maelog. We lost many good men then. The land… it fights back." He coughed again, a painful, racking sound. "And the men who live there now… they are not like us."
Before Cadogan could press for more, Dai fell silent, his head nodding with fatigue. The old man was a fragile reed, but he had seen Glyndŵr. His words, simple and direct, painted a more terrifying picture than all of Rhys's bluster.
An hour into their watch, as Cadogan fought against the oppressive weight of exhaustion and the gnawing cold, he heard it – a sound distinct from the wind, distinct from the forest's natural chorus. A soft footfall? A dislodged pebble? It was there, then gone, too quick to pinpoint, too subtle to be certain. He strained his ears, his heart thudding against Cadogan's ribs. He scanned the impenetrable darkness beyond the firelight, every muscle tensed. Was it an animal? Or something else? Was Dai right? Were they already being watched by men "not like us"?
The silence stretched, taut and heavy. There was nothing more. But the feeling of unseen eyes lingered, a prickling sensation on his skin. He did not rouse Dai. There was nothing concrete to report, and a false alarm would only damage his credibility further. But as he sat there, shivering in the pre-dawn chill, the vast, hostile wilderness of Glyndŵr pressing in on all sides, he knew one thing with absolute certainty: the true test had only just begun. This barony was not merely a ruin; it was a hunting ground. And they, it seemed, were the prey.