Winters for our Sins III

caer gwaun

Its name in Welsh meant bog fortress, which was accurate. One cream colored wall, stretching miles, had lost its foothold on the marsh and was slumping into ruin. The architectural vertigo belonged on something wooden and crumbling; a lumberjack's shack with leaning rafters or the wet, discarded trees that a storm left behind. The otherwise magnificent city was relegated to Roman Catholic authority because of this same location. If anyone had thought to check up on Caer Gwaun in the decade of strife that fell upon England, they would have found a prosperous urban settlement of guild less merchants and of farming citizens earning just enough of their own yields to fuel a miniature papal empire. The diocese, seat of the citadel's Prince-Bishop Oberon, formed one-eighth of the city's total walled territory—including sheltered, in-field farms and enough nutrient-rich soil for dedicated three-season crop rotation. The result of careful tithing and outside trading was a fortress of mystic individuality.

Caer Gwaun was sculpted of hybrid granite that shone a dusty rose in dry weather and loomed in gothic grays when the rain fell. Its city walls had six irregular vertices that, in part because of geographic contours, could not become the perfect Star of David that Marcher Lords desired. Each corner piece rose in a stout tower that housed day laborers conscripted by the Prince-Bishop to battle England's anarchic front. More often this disenchanted militia brought trouble to the City; allowing beggars, criminals, and outlying farmers through the closed-entry barricades. A single day laborer might bring his immediate family, his brothers, and his neighbors with him through the guarded entry. In that way Caer Gwaun's looming Portcullis gate, that had proved indomitable against armies of ferocious Normans, was defeated by the desperate poor.

The city's military began with Shire-reeve Weldon Trafford, whose title was handed down from days when Caer Gwaun had been a moated keep and its tiny, established village. Trafford himself was only twenty-seven but accomplished in tournament and military escapades. He may not have belonged to the staunchest of noble bloodlines, but his impressive horsemanship and vibrant youth were a compelling combination. The military followed Trafford because they wanted to, and clad in chain-mail decorated with rosary crosses, he was a gleaming spectacle of warfare.

A falcon flying above the fortress would see in its domain the priority of the governing body within. The diocese was a vast country against the north most wall, where climbing to the height of a French cathedral lay the Chapel of the Radiant Hand. Surrounding the Chapel was a causeway in place to prevent the resident mud from dirtying the Pope's sandals. Pope Innocent II hadn't visited Caer Gwaun since his initial tour of Britain and the causeway remained a symbol of the church's elevated status among its parishioners. Beyond the causeway, the temple gardens stretched until a groomed forest of bog oak, leather leaf, and carnivorous sundew flowers housed the chapel in the heart of a deciduous labyrinth. The shade provided by the climate and territory meant that, lying beneath a blooming layer of lichens, pools of peat formed a brooding lake.

The southern half of the citadel surrounded a network of beaten roads. They opened like veins around the crowded farm and merchant quarters. The occasional wealthy landowner might reside in a wooden or granite tower and these flanked the roads like sentinel chimneys, nestled in a rolling collection of brown and white houses. Set aside in the land too treacherous for trade carts, the Baron's manor slumped into the wilds of his fallow estate. The serfs of his household had long since joined the citizens of the Caer and the Baron now lived in a humble property; left to count his dwindling riches and his swiftly departing authority. The old estate was left haunted by timid red deer that knocked about with the alms-seeking homeless. It too was sinking.

Trafford brought his horse about to stall the procession of Caer Gwaun's justice. They were sixteen healthy, capable knights, most over the age of thirty and all of them united by the thrills of their quarry. Before 1140, hunting was done for wild boar, for stag, and for grouse with the hunting dogs. Trophies were miniature: enough to feed a family, but never enough to brag about. The animals of the moor were gaunt, sickly things that survived on cloudberries and this new enemy brought opportunity for glory that southern England's backwater armies would never see from traditional combat.

No road connected Caer Gwaun to the body of its nation. It was an isle of civilization in the wilderness of Norman hunting grounds. The citadel gate met with a broad, wooden bridge crossing the more hostile of marsh pools and dropped abruptly into the thick of Hen Coedwig, where winter perched on dead branches of pine and oak trees. That bizarre white thing, snow, was fraying at its edges and browning with soil where it met with the obstinate moor.

The knights had been reluctant to stop for long on the eerie ride outside the city and their twice-daily rounds left horse droppings in relic mounds, like a voodoo ward of territorial filth. Trafford remembered a particularly gruesome display. Among all those hoof-prints and pressed into the brown trail of bowel leavings, they found Smith Oswin in a different kind of smear. He was bloody as a butchered hog and removed of his face. Big streaks of shit and crimson tore down his shirt and raked over his naked legs. They only knew him for the apron that he wore and a styled moustache trimmed like the horse's shoes he shaped for their attachment (it remained on his skull like crust on a child's sandwich. Someone or something was picky about its delicacies). His intimate parts had been taken.

Because predators are busiest at dawn and dusk, the clergy decreed a military perimeter to be established at both hours of the day and for precisely one hour. Either for fear of the superstitious moon or in contest with its pagan representation, no soldiers were stationed by authority during the evening. Brave men volunteered themselves as watchmen for outlying fields where the fog came early and shut lumberjacks away in their huts. They were poor and had little wood to spare for their own lodgings.

The wet weather gave all trees a slumping, wicked appearance. A way had been carved into the woods over time and left a pock-marked ring of stumps around the Citadel that was navigated by horses but still hostile to wagons. Trafford and his militia traveled this ring from the wooden bridge and southern portcullis, counter clockwise along the northeast wall and to a small, formal passage in the headboard of the diocese. The circuit meant that a majority of the southwest fields were left unsupervised by the military. This region had been abandoned for a generation and any farmers still claiming property in the area were as wild as the hounds or were hunters fearless of the animal threat.

Rumor began years before that a witch had settled into an abandoned farmhouse on the southwest border of Coedwig. She was either the cause or in concert with the wulven predators. "Nonsense", Trafford would tell his men, though they never finished their loop around the city's perimeter. He left that one part of the country unpatrolled on strict orders from the Catholic Church. When spring came, he would petition authority for the priveledge of an investigation in those parts, but Trafford hated winter. He felt its chill in his heart and bones. The Sheriff's wife took their children to her father's during this bitter season, for the warmth of an insulated merchant house. Trafford was left to send his nights in cold contemplation of the crisis at hand. He took whores, but the relief of their body heat was temporary.

"Those goddamn devils, Shire-reeve! Betyore they is all gibberin' an' dancing like mad wimmins out south! Why is the Bishop wastin' our time?" Cried Evander, a knight whose threadline connection to nobility was through an uncle.

"Cause they got reasons." Trafford said. He was astride a dun horse- a genetic rarity. It was taller and more resilient than the other horses, and wore a draping of Caer Gwaun's stag emblem. Someone had imported the beast from Rome on the church's coin.

"Reasons like they got'a cut our numbers, huh! Markets are thin on crop, Shire-reeve. You ain't got a lie to us forever." He said. Evander's voice carried from the back of the patrol line. He was eight horses behind Trafford, who was two horses behind the scout Dashiell, their vanguard.

"Sirrah, you ought to shut your slat, else Trafford makes you the next victim of 'lycanthropy'." Said Kenrick. He was two horses behind Trafford and was a firm contender in regional jousting meets. He was also great with a sword, which is why Trafford drafted him. Wairwulves played by no gentleman's rule.

A long silence met Kenrick's remark, helped along by melting snow that still masked the plodding of hooves. Every man knew that Trafford had manned another, like-purposed squadron of knights earlier in the year. Precisely what fate they met was a mystery, but each's wife was now a widow. The more romantic thinkers believed that a battle took place and its results left only Trafford, an unparalleled combatant, alive to deliver the news. The wiser men, those who were sober to crueller, political incentives for murder, doubted that a battle had happened at all.

"Aye, Kenrick!" Evander shouted.

"Huh?" The jouster replied.

"Think they loot your wallet when they gut you? Them hounds is smart. Fancy my woman has been prayin' for me to get bit. She got her eye on this gown she seen in the city. Bloody spinster."

Kenrick smiled. He was missing one canine tooth, which challenged his smooth appearance. The other teeth were yellowing with age.

"Why don't we ask the Shire-reeve!" Cried Evander. "Traffa, you seen 'em hounds take a man's coin? Muss be some paws they got a' carry off the coin from your last patrol. All the money the church pays n' it going to nothing but forest pups. Say, rumor's that your wife got a new city home, Traffa."

"Quit it, Evander. Rule of the patrol: you've got to mind the man who's riding behind you. I'm that man, and I'm getting the idea that it isn't so bad if the wulves take you after all. Church can turn a blind eye on my sword in your ribs, 'cause you're a trouble maker." Said Bear Marston. He was a hulking noble, slow to the draw in a battle of wits, but certainly respected for his size.

Evander grunted.

"Besides," said Bear, "Dashiell's seen something. Look, he pulled his horse around."

Dashiell, who was born of the Welsh wilderness, had a special understanding of the moor country. He was a young man with an innocent, earnest expression and a tendency to ride into fog and out of sight. Full patrols would pass where Dashiell said nothing and the horses plodded along with bickering and laughter. When he turned to the crowd behind him it was with sincerity that kept every man's attention.

"Hold your steeds! Bring around to the front! Mind the Sherriff!" Came a call from behind Trafford's horse. Dashiell was pointing a horse-whip to the west where dark shapes slumped against Hen Coedwig's treeline.

"The hounds! Draw your arms and keep your hands free from their fangs!" Someone shouted.

Trafford held up his hand, though he was listening to Dashiell's report with a wrinkled brow, and reigns were pulled in accordance to the command. Most men had noticed by now the shapes near the forest and were squinting to see.

"Another body." Said Evander. "Wonder whose it is. Prolly a wood-cutter type. We got what? Eight a' those?"

No one answered him. Trafford was grave and Dashiell looked a shade of ill. The knights, who were predominantly noble-blooded, were not accustomed to death in the way that commoners were. Only Trafford and Kenrick of the group had seen a great share of battle. It was not this way with the Sheriff's first patrol, whose men had been the Prince-Bishop's initial choice for military support.

"Sir Marston, please join me at the front." Called Trafford.

Bear Marston rode forward inquisitively and drew his reigns next to Dashiell's horse. Trafford put a hand on the giant man's shoulder and the two of them followed their scout lead to the corpse pile. The remainder followed slowly at a distance. They watched Trafford dismount, strike a torch on the edge of his saddle, and turn the limp forms one by one to show their faces.

"That one has the red hair, it's got a' be Marston's son." Said Evander. "It's why he's over there."

"What? Marston's son? What is he doing outside the Caer?" Asked Kenrick.

"What was he doing. They're going to have Marston cleanse him, light him up." Said Evander.

"Jesus. Be quiet, aye? You have no respect, Sirrah."

"I'm saying it how it is, Kenny. You ain't think it's a little excessive? Take a flame an' torch that bloodsucker, or the magicks and the voodoo are gonna getch you in the night? I'll remind you a' how serious you take it when you got a' saw through the neck bone a' your precious little boy to make sure he ain't coming back from his grave a' bite you good. An' make you a Wair Wulf."

"I would do it." Replied Kenrick. "I would do it if it meant that my son, or my wife, or anyone for that matter, didn't rise from their after life with that wild soul. You've seen what they did to Oswin. It ain't a natural thing."

"But you got a' be living to change into a Wair Wulf. It's the bite that gets into your blood an' it makes you grow fur."

"Yeah? And how do you know, Evander? How do we know you're not one of their kind? You knew it was Marston's son up there when Trafford hadn't said nothing."

Marston's large figure was kneeling over the crumpled body of the red-headed boy. He was given a serrated knife by Trafford and there was a slight noise when it cut the bone. The head was cut free and placed beside the body, bloodless as what of the boy's fluids were left had congealed and were worn down the rips in his shirt. Trafford performed the same operation on two other casualties. They filled the mouths with powder, closed the eyes, and burned the remains.

The smell of cooked meat made Trafford hungry, but he wouldn't say anything. He took an article from each corpse—a snippet of cloth or hair as proof of death—and sealed them into parcels for the church scribes. Most of the dead were recognized by the squad but the occasional faceless victim was recorded under "John Smith" or "Unknown". Trafford didn't care which.

"That's the beauty of the thing, huh?" Said Evander. "None of us got any idea if the other is a Wair Wulf. You got a chipped tooth at your front there, Kenrick, but I ain't said nothing. You get that biting someone?"

"Yeah. I tore the throat out of the last man who got his mug in the Sheriff's business. And you're not far off, Evander. My temper's been tried already."

"Thought so. Definitely a Wulven."

When Trafford had finished the burial, he tucked the spade into his pack and made the announcement that no pursuit would be made for the creature responsible. Any tracks or blood trails were from the morning, and it would be dark when they crossed the border into the southwest lair. An acquaintance of Bear Marston muttered slurs about cowardice to the big man and Trafford pretended not to hear. He was expecting them. Marston was quiet and looked at the smoldering burial mound with a fixed jaw. Only Dashiell and the Sheriff had seen that he was crying when he forced the knife to his son's throat.

Trafford's house was a modest, peasant's home built against Caer Gwaun's south wall. He was a noble, but stone and mason-fees weren't something he would spend his riches on. The house was larger than usual in that it had a second bedroom, belonging in the warm season to the Sheriff's two daughters. They were with their mother now toward the north edge of the town's square.

He inherited the place from the last Shire-reeve, a miserable military man who was found dead at his dining table, poisoned. Trafford's little girls wouldn't eat in the room where the old Sheriff died so he partitioned it as a business office that was now littered with charts, maps, and blacksmithing equipment. He had intended on forging something better suited to trapping and killing a Wairwulf but several failed designs left him hopeless in the effort. Oswin was the blacksmith and Oswin was dead.

He dropped into a burnished business-chair and thought about his daughters. And he thought about Marston's son. They didn't take his face, why didn't they take his face? They're just animals. They don't care what they eat, as long as it's dripping blood. No. The others had their faces taken. This one was special. They wanted him to live.

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