When morning finally came, it brought with it a flat, unforgiving light that did little more than reveal the true misery of their position. A pale, weak light seeped through gaps in the tower's stonework, catching airborne dust in the chill and highlighting the weary, soot-stained features of his companions. Only cold ashes remained where their small fire had been. Every joint protested as Cadogan got to his feet, his skull tight with the pain of a night spent cold, wakeful, and on edge.
He looked at the five men who were now his sole responsibility, his only resource. Their initial fear had subsided into a sullen, weary apprehension.
"We have work," he announced, his voice raw. "First, water. Madog, you found the seep yesterday. Is it close enough to be our main source?" Madog, who had been silently observing the dawn from the tower entrance, shook his head. "Too far. Too exposed. There's a stream marked on that map your father showed, north of this valley, but it's a half-day's march through rough country." A half-day's march for water. Another nail in Glyndŵr's coffin. "Then we look closer," Cadogan said. "Owain, Griff, search the immediate area within the palisade. There must be a well, or a cistern, however fouled. Rhys, Dai, see to the horse. It needs water as much as we do. Madog," he turned to the silent scout, "with me. We inspect this… 'settlement' more thoroughly. And we deal with the body in the hut."
A shudder went through Owain and Griff at the mention of the corpse. Rhys grumbled but moved to obey, likely seeing the logic in tending the horse. The task of dealing with the murdered man was as grim as expected. The hut stank of death. With Madog standing guard at the door, Cadogan quickly examined the body again, noting the crudeness of the spearhead, the lack of any other obvious wounds. There were no personal effects, nothing to identify him. This was a man who had nothing, and had lost even that. "We can't leave him here," Cadogan said. "It'll draw vermin, disease. And it's… unseemly." His 21st-century sensibilities warred with the brutal pragmatism this era demanded. Madog merely grunted. "Fire is cleaner. Or the bog." "We'll bury him," Cadogan decided. "Behind the hut. A shallow grave is all we can manage." It was a small, perhaps foolish, nod to a dignity this place seemed determined to strip away.
While he and a reluctant, visibly nauseated Owain (recalled from his water search) dug a shallow trench in the cold, stony soil using a rusty spade found in another collapsing shack and their bare hands, Madog, Rhys, and Griff conducted a sweep of the palisaded area. They returned with little to report beyond more decay. The other shacks were empty, stripped bare or collapsing. There were no obvious food stores, no tools beyond the one spade and a broken axe head. Owain did, however, find the well. It was in the center of the muddy clearing, its stone lining partially collapsed, the water at the bottom a dark, scummy pool choked with leaves and unidentifiable filth. Unusable, at least for now.
The burial was a brief, bleak affair. They rolled the body into the trench, and Cadogan, surprisingly, found himself uttering a few half-remembered Latin phrases from his historical studies, a fragment of some requiem. It meant nothing to his men, who watched in uneasy silence, but it was a small ritual for himself, a demarcation. "The tracks Madog found," Cadogan said, wiping dirt from his hands once the grave was covered. "Those who killed him. We need to know more about them." He looked at Madog, then at Rhys. "I want two of you to follow those tracks. Cautiously. Learn what you can – numbers, direction, how far they went. Do not engage. Observe and return before nightfall."
Rhys looked skeptical. "Scouting for ghosts, lordling? They're long gone." "Perhaps," Cadogan conceded. "But they left a fresh kill. They might consider this their hunting ground. We need to know if they're a persistent threat or just passing through." He met Rhys's eye. "You have experience in the wild, Rhys. And Madog is our best tracker. The two of you go. The safety of all of us could depend on what you find." It was a risk, sending out two of his five men, especially his strongest (Rhys, for all his faults) and his most skilled (Madog). But staying blind was a greater risk. Rhys seemed to weigh the order, then gave a curt nod. "If there's trouble to be found, we'll sniff it out." He grinned mirthlessly. "Or it'll sniff us out."
As Rhys and Madog prepared their meager gear for the scout, Cadogan turned his attention to the tower. With Owain, Griff, and Dai, he began the laborious process of making it marginally more habitable. They cleared more rubble from the ground floor, swept out the worst of the filth, and tried to block the most obvious drafts in the lower walls with stones and mud. Cadogan directed them to reinforce the log barricade at the entrance, adding more stones, creating a crude but more defensible barrier. His body ached, his head swam with exhaustion, but a grim purpose drove him. Every stone moved, every patch made, was a tiny act of defiance against the desolation of Glyndŵr, against his father's scorn.
Late in the afternoon, as he was trying to assess the stability of the crumbling spiral staircase, Dai called out from below. "Arglwydd Cadogan! Look!" Cadogan descended carefully. Dai was pointing to a section of the interior wall near the entrance, where their clearing efforts had dislodged a patch of ancient, grimy plaster. Beneath it, faint but discernible, were more of the strange carved symbols they had seen on the tree outside – spirals, chevrons, and a recurring motif that looked like a stylized, watching eye. They were not random markings; they were deliberate, covering a significant portion of the stone. The tower itself, it seemed, was older, and perhaps held more secrets, than he had first assumed. And it too bore the mark of Glyndŵr's unseen, unwelcome inhabitants.