The heavy thud of the door sealing him in reverberated through the small chamber, a sound far too final for his liking. Alone. He was truly alone, a castaway mind in a wrecked body, adrift in an ocean of lost time. "Cadogan bach," the old woman had called him. Little Cadogan. The diminutive felt like a brand, searing into his consciousness the perceived insignificance, the fragility, of this borrowed life.
For a long moment after the woman left, he remained motionless, absorbing the ambient sounds. The wind sighed through the narrow window slit. Dying embers in the hearth popped and faded. Then, another noise: a faint, stubborn scratching within the walls. His lip curled slightly. The air in the cramped space, already foul, seemed to press in on him, each fetid particle a personal affront. He closed his eyes briefly, a slow breath escaping him. When they opened again, the hazy look of mere survival was gone from their depths, replaced by a flicker of something hard, almost cold. This body might be a ruin, but the mind within it had just drawn a line.
With a grunt of effort that felt disproportionate to the movement, he pushed himself up again, this time managing to swing Cadogan's surprisingly long, thin legs over the side of the pallet. His bare feet met the cold, packed earth, sending a jolt up his spine. He remained seated, head bowed, waiting for the inevitable wave of dizziness to pass. It came, a grey swirl behind his eyes, but it was less severe than before. The gruel, however unpalatable, was perhaps doing some good.
He took stock of the vessel. Cadogan's body was gaunt; he could feel the sharp angles of his hips and shoulders. The skin stretched taut over his ribs when he took a deeper breath. The limbs were lanky, possessed of a loose-jointedness that spoke of youth not yet fully set, or perhaps of recent, severe weight loss. He ran his hands – Cadogan's hands – over his arms, feeling the wiry muscle beneath the skin. Not the body of a warrior, not yet, but perhaps one that had known some activity before illness or injury had laid it low. The faint, silvery scars he'd noticed earlier were thin, mostly on the forearms, as if from youthful misadventure or… something else. He couldn't tell.
The air still stank, but his senses were, alarmingly, beginning to dull to the worst of it. Adaptation. A human trait, but in this context, it felt like a surrender. He clenched his jaw. He would not surrender.
His gaze fell upon a small, three-legged stool in the corner, and beside it, a bucket that likely served as a chamber pot. Luxury. He focused on the stool. If he could reach it, he could sit with more dignity, observe the room from a slightly better vantage. It was a small goal, almost laughably so for a man who had once navigated the complex politics of academic funding and deciphered ancient statecraft, but here, now, it felt monumental.
Levering himself up with trembling arms, he swayed, every muscle protesting. The world tilted. He gritted his teeth, fighting for balance, one hand instinctively reaching out to brace against the cold stone wall. Each step was a negotiation between his will and the body's profound weakness. He made it to the stool, collapsing onto it more than sitting, breath sawing in Cadogan's narrow chest.
From this new perch, he could see the door more clearly – heavy planks, bound with iron, a simple latch on the outside. No means of securing it from within. The window slit was too high and narrow to offer escape or even a clear view.
Hours seemed to pass, marked only by the shifting quality of the grey light. He drifted in and out of a shallow, uneasy doze, his own fragmented 21st-century memories clashing with faint, intrusive images that belonged to Cadogan: a windswept tor, the sting of sleet on a young face, the rough grip of a horse's reins, the fear-scent of a cornered boar. These were not coherent memories, more like sensory ghosts, leaving him with a residue of unfamiliar emotions.
The old woman returned as the light began to fade noticeably. Morfudd. The name surfaced in his mind with the same phantom familiarity as the word arglwydd. Cadogan had known her well, it seemed. She carried another bowl, and this time, a small cup of water that he drank greedily, its coolness a balm to his parched throat.
As she spooned more of the bland gruel into him, he watched her intently, trying to match her spoken words to her gestures, to the context. "Bwyd… da," she'd say, pointing to the gruel. Food… good. An opinion he did not share, but he logged the words. When he shivered, she'd pull the rough blanket higher, murmuring, "Oer… anwyd." Cold… a chill. He tried to echo her, his voice still weak and raspy. "Bwyd," he managed, pointing to the bowl. Morfudd's eyes widened slightly, a flicker of surprise, perhaps even pleasure, in their depths. She nodded vigorously. "Da, Cadogan. Bwyd."
It was a start. Infinitesimal, but a start. He was a linguist by hobby, a historian by trade; patterns were his sustenance. If he could learn the language, he could learn the rules.
He was halfway through the second bowl when the heavy door creaked open again, but this time it was not Morfudd entering. The figure that filled the doorway was tall, broad-shouldered, casting the small room into deeper shadow. The man wore a heavy, fur-lined mantle over a tunic of dark, rich wool, a thick leather belt cinching his waist, from which hung a long knife in a worn sheath. His presence radiated an aura of unquestionable authority, and a cold, almost palpable disapproval.
Morfudd scrambled to her feet, bowing her head low, murmuring, "Fy arglwydd." My lord.
This was him, then. Cadogan's father. The Arglwydd of Caer Maelog.
The lord's eyes, chips of grey ice as the fragmented memory had suggested, swept the room, lingering for a moment on Morfudd with dismissal, then fixing on him – on Cadogan – with an intensity that made the weak body flinch. There was no warmth in that gaze, no fatherly concern that the mind within Cadogan could detect. Only a grim assessment, like a farmer inspecting blighted crop.
The lord spoke, his voice a low rumble, harsh and resonant, filling the small chamber. The language was the same as Morfudd's, but deeper, more commanding. He addressed Cadogan, but his words felt like stones thrown from a distance. "Wyt ti'n dal yn fyw, felly?" The meaning was lost on the 21st-century mind, but Cadogan's body reacted with a subtle tremor, a sense of shrinking, of shame. The tone was universal: a bitter observation, heavy with disappointment.
The Arglwydd took a step into the room, his gaze unwavering. He looked from Cadogan's gaunt face to his thin limbs, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. "Bythefnos… a ti'n dal i fod yn gysgod prin." He gestured dismissively. "Nid mab i mi yw hwn." Then, his eyes narrowed. He looked directly, piercingly, at Cadogan. "Neu ydwyt ti?"
Morfudd made a small, distressed sound, but a sharp glance from her lord silenced her.
The lord's final question, though the words were alien, hung in the air, sharp as a drawn blade. The mind within Cadogan, the stranger in this failing flesh, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. The assessment was underway, and the verdict, he suspected, would determine whether "little Cadogan" would be afforded any further chance to become strong.