The Unexpected Ally

by Sarah Woodbury

  Rhodri looked from Gareth to Hywel and back again. “You’re asking me to risk my life for you.”

  “We can leave you in that cell until my father decides what to do with you. Maybe Conall wouldn’t mind taking you back to Ireland with him and selling you,” Gareth said.

  Rhodri’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t!”

  “I would if the alternative was to leave you at Denbigh, which has real prison cells, and throw away the key. It’s seems such a waste when you could be put to work.” Hywel paused. “Do I really have to threaten you to get you to cooperate?”

  Rhodri looked down at his feet. “No. I’ll do it. We’ll go at Vespers like you said. But you’ll have to stay well back. If they really are villains and they find out I talked to you, they’ll kill me.”

  “We will do our best.” Hywel nodded at Gareth, who lifted Rhodri to his feet, and the two men hauled him back out to the courtyard.

  Gwen followed to find Saran standing somberly by herself at the entrance to the church, watching them go. Gwen stopped beside her. “What will you do now? Will you return to Carreg Cennan?”

  Saran shook her head. “That part of my life is over.”

  “Would you like to come to Dolwyddelan with me and Tangwen? Hywel’s wife, Mari, is there, and Hywel specifically suggested that when I go to visit her, you come with me.”

  Genuine hope lit Saran’s eyes. “Thank you. I would like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Gareth

  “Do you see them?” Gareth ran back and forth alongside the monastery wall, looking for the three ‘prisoners’, who had disappeared without a trace. Though the initial escape had gone off without a hitch, and the three men had headed straight for the northeast corner where the wall was lowest, Gareth and Conall had been forced to hang back. By the time they arrived at the wall, the trio were gone. Even Deiniol, who was older and less fit than the other two, had disappeared completely. “Did they double back?”

  Conall cursed fluently in Gaelic and swung himself into the same tree that overhung the wall, which Gareth had climbed the other day. “I don’t see them.”

  Gareth managed to get himself up onto the wall too, not without some curses of his own, and gazed into the darkness.

  “Puts me to shame, it does.” Conall said in an undertone. “I’m not as young as I used to be.” And yet, with an agility that still eluded Gareth, he dropped to the ground outside the monastery.

  “None of us are.” Gareth sat on the wall to minimize the distance he had to drop and pushed off, landing with a thud beside Conall. “Which way should we go?”

  “East. Madog’s men are gone, and going that way means they could leave the monastery grounds behind them all the more quickly. Going west takes them to the river, which has one bridge across it, and the next ford is all the way at Rhuddlan. Lwc would know that. They’ll head in any direction but west, by my guess.”

  Gareth loped along beside Conall, who’d started across the pasture before Gareth had even agreed that east was the way they wanted to go. A faint light remained in the sky behind them, but the sun had set, and it would soon be full dark. They hurried as quickly as they could through the woods to the road that ran along the east side of the monastery grounds, coming out slightly south of where Rhodri had been arrested by Madog’s men.

  Knowing that once the prisoners left the monastery grounds, it would be easy to lose them, Hywel had recruited twenty men to follow them. These men included Gruffydd and Cadoc, the assassin-archer, as a first look at what an elite fighting force might look like. Hywel hadn’t counted on Gareth losing his prey before they’d gone a hundred yards.

  “Has Rhodri betrayed us?” Conall said.

  “There was always a chance of that. He willingly sacked a monastery after all. If the bandits here are the same men, then he knows them, despite all his denials. He could even be their leader.”

  “I wouldn’t have said he was that smart—or that good of a liar,” Conall said.

  “We have been fooled before.”

  Conall laughed mockingly. “And will be again, it seems.”

  Gareth and Conall came out onto the road, and a moment later Gruffydd stepped out of the woods on the other side and tilted his head to point south. “They went that way. I was waiting for you before I followed.”

  Gareth let out a breath. Rhodri may be double-crossing them, but Hywel had planned for that, posting men on the roads all around the monastery, as well as in the fields and pastures. That caution had paid off. “Did you have any trouble?”

  “There must be a secret passage through the eastern wall, because they crossed the road a hundred feet south of where you came out. We almost missed them.”

  “Did you warn Hywel?” Gareth said. The prince had been posted on the other side of the monastery, guessing that Lwc and Deiniol would choose to run south, as it appeared they were doing.

  “I did.”

  With Gruffydd at their side, Hywel and Conall went straight through the crossroads rather than turning right to reach the entrance to the monastery. A few yards farther on, Gareth spotted Hywel, who was standing on a three-foot-high stone wall to the left of the road, waving at them. Gareth had been so focused on the road before him that he hadn’t seen the prince until they were almost upon him.

  Hywel jumped down from the wall. “We are the last. Everyone else is following ahead.” He shook his head, laughing a little under his breath. “They are moving fast. Rhodri is making no effort to slow the other two down.”

  “Conall and I lost them before they’d even left the monastery, so either Rhodri thinks we’re better than we are, or he is really trying to lose us,” Gareth said.

  “Or one of them is,” Hywel said. “I have horses waiting.”

  Gareth grunted his thanks. He could run, but he would really rather not have to. “We should stay far back and make even Rhodri think he’s lost us.”

  “Those were the orders I gave,” Hywel said.

  “Do we have any idea where they’re going?” Conall said.

  “I don’t. That’s why we did this,” Hywel said.

  They kept to the margins of the road to hide the sound of their horses’ hooves. One by one, they caught up to the rest of Hywel’s men, who’d continued to follow on foot. Most were men-at-arms, used to riding. To a man, they were breathing hard and happy to be overtaken. Gareth was in no way surprised to learn that it was only his two foster sons who’d been able to keep up with the three fugitives.

  After a quarter of an hour, Llelo himself appeared from a side road and put up a hand to stop them. “There’s an old farmstead up ahead. I counted a dozen men in and around it. Lwc and Rhodri ran right up to them as if they were recognized.”

  “Lwc and Rhodri? Where’s Deiniol?” Hywel said.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. You told us to hang back, and it was hard to judge how far that needed to be. We came around a corner, and he was no longer with them.”

  “Where’s Dai?” Gareth said.

  “He’s set up on a rising hill to the north of the farm. It’s on the other side of a pasture with a good view of the front door and the barn. Unfortunately, fifty yards on every side of the house is pastureland and fallow fields, with nary a tree to hide behind. If they weren’t on watch before, they surely will be now that Lwc and Rhodri have joined them. They’ll see us coming long before we reach the house. But I can lead you at least as far as Dai without being seen.”

  “Lead on. Let’s see what we have to work with.” Hywel gestured to the men who’d gathered around him. “Spread yourselves out and keep your heads down.” He indicated the eastern horizon. “The moon has risen, and I don’t want to spook them.”

  Llelo had given a good description of the layout, and Gareth was more than pleased at how mature his son had become. He could take only a modicum of credit for it, since all he’d done was set him on a course, and the boy had done the rest for himself. They left the horses in a thicket invisible from the
house with two men to guard them and crept forward until they were crouched in a stand of trees behind a stone wall at the base of the hill Llelo had mentioned.

  Gareth had observed for only a moment, however, before a voice spoke from behind him. “I think these are the thieves you were looking for.”

  Gareth swung around. “Rhodri?”

  A head popped out from behind a tree a few feet away. “Rhodri? No. It’s Deiniol.”

  Gareth sprang on him and dragged him down behind the wall. Hywel noted the commotion and came over, along with Conall and Evan.

  “What are you doing here?” Gareth said.

  Deiniol’s eyes were wide by the light of the moon, which was three-quarters full and waning. “What do you mean what am I doing here?” He pointed across the field. “Those men are villains!” At the last word, his voice rose, going high in his outrage. Gone was the austere, superior monk with whom they’d all been acquainted, to be replaced by a frightened man. Gareth still didn’t know if Deiniol was frightened because Hywel had brought an army to stop the thieves, or because his time among them had made him finally understand the seriousness of the charges that had been brought against him.

  “Why did you flee the monastery with them if you aren’t one of them?” Conall said.

  “I was more afraid to stay than to go, given what you accused me of! With them gone, I could have been hanged because someone had to be.”

  Gareth shushed him with soothing words, and Deiniol continued in a more modulated tone. “Rhodri escaped his cell and freed Lwc first. I begged to come with them, and they said that I could if I didn’t slow them down.”

  “Why are you here now?” Hywel said.

  “I started having second thoughts almost immediately. I feigned a sprained ankle and told them I’d make my own way. Since I didn’t know where they were going, if you caught me, I wouldn’t have anything to tell you. I hid myself while I tried to decide what to do, but then when your company passed by, I followed.”

  Deiniol was either blessed with a remarkable presence of mind nobody had noticed before or an incredible sense of self-preservation. In honesty, it was looking like both.

  “You’re saying that Rhodri and Lwc are working together?”

  Deiniol nodded, but then he frowned. “Lwc seemed to know what he was doing, far more than I would have thought given his behavior up until now.”

  Hywel pursed his lips and looked at Gareth and Conall. “We’ve misread this entire situation.”

  “I told you he was lying about me being involved, and you didn’t believe me.” Deiniol’s self-satisfied look was briefly back. “I tell you, he knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going.”

  “Did they talk about what their plan was?”

  “No. Not to me. Deliberately, I think, and I was afraid to ask.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Hywel

  Hywel had been without Gareth often enough in recent weeks both to have grown used to his absence and to long for the days when it was just the two of them. More often than not, it had been Gareth extricating Hywel from an untenable situation. But he had been the one to save Gareth a week ago in Shrewsbury, and as Hywel watched the farmhouse across the field, his stomach clenched at the similarities. He could be grateful, however, that a captive Gareth was not one of them.

  “It looks like they’re preparing to move out.” Gareth had his hands cupped around his eyes, narrowing his focus as he turned his head, scanning from side to side. “Many men have crossed to the barn.”

  “I don’t think we should wait.” Hywel made a motion with his hand to indicate that his men should spread out. Every soldier with him, with the exception of Gareth, who didn’t have the strength, and Conall, who didn’t know how to use one, wore not only a sword but a bow and quiver. It had been a long time since Hywel himself had gone to war as an archer, but he still practiced several times a week. With the numbers and strength of the bandits uncertain, Hywel had tried to plan for every contingency.

  A light showed through the cracks in a shuttered window by the farmhouse door. A second light shone from inside the adjacent barn, which, as at the monastery, had a paddock attached.

  From the size of the house, the farmstead had once been prosperous, and Hywel wondered what had caused the owners to leave such fertile land. War, possibly. Because of its proximity to the border with England, the lands between St. Asaph and Denbigh had been fought over ever since the Normans came to Britain, changing hands half a dozen times before his father had gained control of the region a few years ago. Too late for this family, perhaps.

  “I don’t like this, my lord.” Evan spoke low in Hywel’s ear.

  “There’s nothing to like about it,” Hywel said.

  “Rhodri knows we could be coming, and yet nobody seems to be in a hurry,” Evan said.

  “It may be that Deiniol misread the situation, and Rhodri remains on our side.” Hywel raised himself up slightly, realizing that this was the chance they’d been waiting for. The cleared space in front of the house was empty. He had seen at least four men enter the barn since they’d arrived. He raised a hand to his men and brought it down.

  As one, Hywel’s men rose to their feet and converged from all directions on the farmstead. In short order, all twenty men reached a spot a hundred feet from the house and stopped, crouching down and breathing hard. Nobody had yet come out of the house or the barn.

  “This isn’t right.” This time it was Gareth who sounded the warning. He held up two fingers to indicate that two of the men should approach the entrance to the house and two the entrance to the barn. Both pairs of men raced across the clearing unmolested, and each pair set themselves up on either side of their respective doors.

  Meanwhile, Gareth straightened, his hands out at his sides, showing that he held no weapon, and walked alone into the cleared space in front of the house. “This is Gareth, captain of Prince Hywel’s guard. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up. If you surrender yourselves freely, you will not be harmed.”

  Silence greeted this announcement. Gareth remained where he was. Hywel pursed his lips, not liking how exposed Gareth was, vulnerable to an arrow that could come from any direction. In the time they’d watched the farmhouse, they hadn’t seen that kind of preparation, but it was still a risk.

  For another few heartbeats, nothing moved, but then one of the men by the door to the barn screamed, the sound almost instantly cut off by a gurgling breath. He fell to his knees in the dirt an instant before the soldier on the other side of the door collapsed too. Hywel vaulted to his feet, and he and Gareth reached the fallen men at the same moment, catching them as they fell forward into their arms. The man Hywel held, the one on the left, had been stabbed through the wall of the barn with a sword, spine to sternum.

  “Fall back!” Hywel waved an arm at the two men by the house, who hadn’t had a direct angle to see what had happened. With Evan’s help, Hywel dragged the body of his man away from the barn door. A moment later, a spurt of flame shot through the thatch roof of the house. Despite the rainy weather, the wood was dry, and the heat of the fire was already tangible on Hywel’s face. In less time than it took to cross the clearing, the entire house became an inferno.

  Gareth stood over the body of the soldier he’d dragged away from the barn. “They were prepared for our numbers.”

  Then the side wall of the barn opened outward, where no door had seemed to be before, and a host of men burst from it—somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen—mounted on horses. They galloped down the road away from the farm. Though still recovering from the shock of seeing two of his men die before his eyes, Hywel’s brain started working, and he shouted and pointed at the riders, “Bring them down! Bring them down!”

  Hywel’s bow was still in its rest on his back, and his hands were full of the man who’d died, but his men had been ready to shoot anyone who exited the farmhouse. They simply shifted as they stood, turning their bows to follow the riders. The distance was t
wo hundred feet and made easy shooting, especially for those with skills, like Cadoc. At least half the arrows in the first volley hit either a man or a horse, which was a far larger target than the man on its back.

  Four horses went down, and then those that had escaped the first volley were stopped by the second or the third. One man did a complete somersault over his horse’s head to land with a sickening thud on the ground. As Hywel’s men converged on the fallen, swords replaced bows.

  “Keep at least one alive!” Hywel glanced at Gareth. “It’s time we got some answers.”

  Gareth nodded and walked beside Hywel to where the bandits had fallen. Rhodri was unconscious on the ground. One of Hywel’s men was binding him at the wrists and ankles as a precaution. Lwc had taken an arrow just below his collar bone. He was fortunate in that it had lodged high in his chest, having missed his heart. It had to be intensely painful, but not so much that he hadn’t been able to clear his feet from the stirrups as his horse was shot out from under him.

  He hadn’t been able to run more than a few steps, however, before Gruffydd stopped him by grabbing the arrow’s fletching and holding on. Lwc was frozen into position, unable to move and barely able to breathe for the pain it would cause.

  Hywel approached with Gareth a pace behind. “If you tell the truth, the whole truth, I will see that you don’t hang. If you lie to me about even one detail, I will leave you to bleed to death beside this road. Do you understand me?”

  Lwc mouthed a yes.

  “This is the crew that sacked the monastery at Wrexham?”

  A nod.

  “Where’s the rest of them? This can’t be all.”

  Lwc carefully cleared his throat. “They’re gone.”

  Gruffydd moved the arrow a hair’s-breadth to the right. “Gone where?”

  The flash of pain that crossed Lwc’s face had Hywel’s own stomach clenching.

  “East to England.”

  By now Conall had arrived, and he observed Lwc with arms folded across his chest. “Everything you claimed back at the monastery was a lie.”