The days that followed the Arglwydd's visit blurred into a monotonous cycle, marked by the shifting grey light from the arrow-slit window and Morfudd's regular appearances. Each arrival of the old woman was, for the mind inhabiting Cadogan's recovering body, an opportunity, a tiny battle in a long war he was only just beginning to comprehend.
His first priority, hammered into his consciousness by the lord's dismissive pronouncements and Morfudd's cautious comfort, was the language. The Brythonic dialect spoken here was a guttural, surprisingly nuanced beast, its cadences alien, its grammar an elusive shadow. But his intellect, honed by decades of academic rigor and a polyglot's curiosity, latched onto it with desperate intensity.
Morfudd, true to her word, became his reluctant tutor. Their lessons were crude, unstructured, born of necessity rather than pedagogy. He would point. "Mur," she'd say, rapping her knuckles on the stone wall. Wall. He'd repeat it, Cadogan's tongue still clumsy, his throat often producing a sound more like a strangled crow than human speech. Morfudd would sometimes chuckle, a dry, rasping sound, but she would correct him, patiently, enunciating the word again, her wrinkled lips shaping the unfamiliar phonemes. "Drws." Door. "Fenestr." Window. "Tân." Fire. Simple words, the building blocks of his prison, and eventually, he hoped, his escape. He hoarded them like a miser, repeating them endlessly in the dim solitude, etching them into his memory. He found that some of Cadogan's dormant linguistic pathways seemed to stir, making the acquisition slightly less arduous than starting from absolute zero. Certain sounds, certain grammatical inclinations, felt… not known, but less aggressively foreign.
Physical recovery was an equally grim, painstaking affair. The "defiant spark" he'd felt was one thing; the body's profound weakness was quite another. After Morfudd left each day, he would force Cadogan's unwilling limbs into motion. His first attempts to stand unaided from the stool lasted mere seconds before trembling legs gave way. He would push himself up, fall back, push himself up again, sweat beading on his brow despite the room's chill, his breath a painful saw in his chest. The floor was an unforgiving master.
He learned to use the wall as a crutch, then the rickety stool. He measured his progress in agonizing increments: three steps without support, then five. Across the small room and back. Each small victory was a sip of potent wine, fueling his resolve. Morfudd would watch these efforts sometimes, her expression a mixture of apprehension and something akin to grudging admiration. She never offered physical help unless he truly faltered, letting him fight his own battles, but she ensured the gruel, sometimes supplemented with a thin, watery broth, was always there.
"You fight," she observed one day, after he'd completed a shaky circumnavigation of the room, collapsing onto his pallet, gasping. She used the Brythonic: "Rwyt ti'n ymladd." He nodded, panting. "Rhaid… ymladd." Must… fight. A new word, rhaid, logged and stored.
With the slow accumulation of words came the ability to ask rudimentary questions, to piece together fragments of Morfudd's occasional, unguarded chatter. He learned she was the caer's midwife and healer, her knowledge passed down from her own mother. He learned that Cadogan's illness had been a lung fever that had swept through the lower town a season past, taking many, especially the young and old. Cadogan had been given up for dead more than once. "But your spirit," Morfudd said, tapping his chest with a gnarled finger, "enaid dydd Calan Mai," a May Day soul, she called it – stubborn, unyielding, returned from the brink. He wondered what she'd think if she knew just how far it had returned from.
He gleaned that Lord Maelog, his father, was a hard man, his rule firm, his temper short. There was an Arglwyddes, his mother, Elen, but Morfudd spoke of her with a sadness that suggested she was either frail, distant, or perhaps deceased. He dared not ask directly yet. There were other sons, it seemed, though their names and number remained obscure. Cadogan, "bach" as he was, appeared to be the youngest, or at least the least significant.
One evening, as Morfudd was tending to the fire, he decided to probe a little further, emboldened by a day where his legs had felt stronger, his head clearer. "Morfudd," he began, his voice gaining a little more of Cadogan's natural resonance, "Caer Maelog… mawr?" Big? She looked up, surprised by the directness. She considered for a moment. "Mawr digon," she said. Big enough. "Ond… y tir…" She sighed, gesturing vaguely towards the window, towards the world outside. "Gwag." Empty. The land… empty. Depopulation. Deurbanization. His historian's mind connected her simple word to the vast, complex socio-economic shifts of this era. The old empires had crumbled, and the world was indeed emptier, more dangerous, more fragmented. Caer Maelog, big enough as it was, was likely an isolated outpost of order in a sea of encroaching wilderness and instability.
"Why… gwag?" he pressed, careful to keep his tone that of a recovering invalid, not an interrogator. Morfudd shrugged, a wealth of unspoken hardship in the simple gesture. "Pla. Rhyfel. Newyn." Plague. War. Famine. The grim trinity that had stalked humanity for millennia, particularly potent in ages of collapse. "Llawer wedi mynd." Many gone.
This was the world the Arglwydd intended to find "work" for him in. A depopulated land, likely contested, demanding resilience and ruthless pragmatism to survive, let alone thrive. The challenge was immense, the dangers palpable even through Morfudd's terse descriptions.
As she prepared to leave that night, she paused at the door, a rare event. "Tomorrow," she said, her voice low, "Yr Arglwydd… he asks for you. In the great hall. If you can walk." His heart, Cadogan's heart, gave a sudden, hard thud. So soon. He wasn't ready. His language was still a clumsy tool, his body a frail reed. He met her worried gaze, forcing a strength he didn't feel into his own. "Mi gerddaf." I will walk.
Morfudd nodded slowly. "Bydd wrol, Cadogan." Be brave. Then she was gone.
He stood alone in the center of the small room, the words echoing. The great hall. His father. It was another test, a summons. The forging was about to feel the hammer's full weight. He had a few precious hours to prepare, to gather what little strength and knowledge he possessed. The "work," it seemed, was beginning.