The Lost Brother (30 page)

The man—his name was Aeron—had played a role
in Gareth’s past, just as Morien had. He served in Cadwaladr’s
company, and even though Gareth had known that Cadwaladr had
conspired with Ranulf, he still couldn’t quite believe that
Cadwaladr’s men were fighting in the livery of the Earl of
Chester.

Gareth’s surprise was almost his undoing,
because he brought up his sword to counter Aeron’s a heartbeat too
late. Aeron’s sword slid along his blade, allowing Aeron to get
close, and it was only at the last instant that Gareth saw the
knife in Aeron’s other hand.

Gareth twisted away, heedless of the uneven
ground, and instead of driving his knife into Gareth’s gut, Aeron
managed only to slide the blade along Gareth’s right ribcage.
Gareth rolled, his head tucked to his chin and his left shoulder
taking the brunt of the fall, and came up five paces away from
Aeron, breathing hard but alive.

And then Evan swung around and skewered
Aeron right through his mail.

It was enough.

The Welsh defenders had taken heavy
casualties, but the attackers hadn’t been able to finish the job
before Godfrid’s company arrived, and that had been their
undoing.

Gareth had killed at least four men by
himself, and some of Godfrid’s men had done the same, taking
advantage of the element of surprise and their greater strength and
wind. As Gareth surveyed the road, the bright helmets of all
eighteen of Godfrid’s men reflected the last rays of the setting
sun. Not many were still mounted, but all were alive.

Aeron had been one of the last of the enemy
to fall.

“You’re bleeding.” Evan pulled aside
Gareth’s cloak to reveal a burgeoning red stain. The narrow blade
of the knife had gone right through the links of his mail, and the
protective padding Gareth wore beneath it, into his skin.

Gareth looked down, puzzled. “I can’t feel
it.”

Evan pressed a hand to the wound, trying to
stop the flow of blood, though it immediately began to seep through
his fingers. “You will. Where’s Gwen?”

Gareth looked across the road to the other
side, towards the stand of trees into which he’d seen her go. He
gestured to it. “Over there.”

Together they crossed over to it, reaching
the stone wall that demarcated the field. Thankfully, before Gareth
could panic because he didn’t see her, Gwen appeared, leading her
horse. “I’m here.”

“Gwen.” Gareth put out his hand to help her
over the wall, but as he did so, a shout came from the center of
the road. They all turned to look at who’d cried out. It was
Gruffydd, Prince Rhun’s captain. He was only a hundred feet away to
the east, and Gareth could see the horror written in every line of
his body.

Evan took off towards Gruffydd at a
shambling run, and Gareth followed immediately after. A litany of
no, no, no
starting in his head, anticipating what he didn’t
yet know for sure. Evan reached Gruffydd first and gave a cry of
such pain that Gareth’s heart split in two. He came to a halt where
Evan had fallen to his knees. A man lay on the ground face up, and
while his features were obscured by his helmet, the helmet itself
was unmistakable.

Evan threw himself across the body, his
wailing grief rising into the air and sending shivers down the
spine of every man listening. Gruffydd passed a trembling hand
across his brow even as tears streamed down his cheeks. He left a
smear of blood that was not his own across his forehead, and then
he stared down at his hands. Gareth didn’t think he was really
seeing them, and it was easier to think about Gruffydd’s grief than
Gareth’s own.

Edging Evan aside, Gareth crouched beside
Rhun’s body, his hands on his prince’s shoulders. “My lord,” Gareth
said, trying wake him, even though he knew the prince would never
wake again.

Gareth couldn’t see an obvious wound on the
front of Rhun’s body, but the blood on the ground told him that he
would find it if he turned him over. It was too late to save him,
but the rational part of Gareth told him he had to be sure. He put
two fingers to Rhun’s neck. No pulse beat in it.

Gareth bowed his head as Evan’s mournful cry
was joined by others. Prince Rhun, beloved son and brother, the
edling
of Gwynedd, was dead.

Gwen

A
s she rode away
from the battle, praying the whole time, Gwen tried to block out
the sounds of fighting. It was impossible, but she directed her
horse across the field, circling around to the south of the road
towards a tree-covered hill where she could be safe. She focused as
hard as she could on keeping her seat and staying out of sight. The
woods were dark compared to the field outside, and she hoped that
anyone looking in her direction would see nothing but a shadow. Not
that any man in the road had a moment to look her way.

She reached a spot that gave her a good view
of the battle and crouched behind a bush. She was on the edge of
the woods but still close enough to see Prince Rhun, backed up as
he was against Gruffydd and Evan, fending off two attackers at
once.

She couldn’t think about him. She couldn’t
think about Gareth.

She forced her eyes away, but in so doing
noticed a man standing next to a tree on the edge of the woods,
looking away from her. He hadn’t seen her yet, but if she moved at
all, he would.

And then it was he who moved, and she
realized she was looking at Cadwaladr himself.

At first, she had thought it was he by his
shape and the set of his shoulders, which she would have recognized
from a hundred paces away. Then he stepped into the sun and she
recognized him without a doubt. Gwen clenched her hands into fists
so tightly she would have bled from the pressure of her nails if
she hadn’t been wearing gloves.

She hardly dared to breathe, and she prayed
that her horse wouldn’t whicker or shift. He was standing with his
head down, exhausted from the ride.

As if woven into a tapestry, the three of
them didn’t move for thirty heartbeats, each one pounding out of
Gwen’s ears.

Then in the middle of the road, Godfrid rose
up, bellowing in triumph with his sword high above his head.

Gwen couldn’t see the expression on
Cadwaladr’s face, but the Dane’s call seemed to decide something
for him. He loped away from Gwen, heading west and skirting the
hill behind her. He ended up where several unattended horses, which
she hadn’t noticed before, were picketed. Nobody else was there or
looking at him.

Part of her wanted to race after him, to
throw herself at his back, tackling him to the ground and beating
on him. She wanted to rage at him for what he’d done.

But she didn’t. She had neither weapons nor
words to stop him. So she did what she had to, which was to stand
in the shadows in silence, watching as Cadwaladr mounted a horse
and rode away.

Gwen could barely speak around the lump in
her throat, and what she was feeling had to be nothing compared to
Prince Hywel’s and King Owain’s pain. Gareth had sent word of the
ambush and Cadwaladr’s flight to Hywel immediately. The prince had
gathered the rest of his
teulu
and a half-dozen carts and
ridden to the battlefield. His face had been a grim mask when he’d
arrived, and he’d hardly changed expression since.

They’d made their slow way back to King
Owain’s encampment on the hill, the dead thrown over the backs of
the horses and the wounded in carts, while the survivors
walked.

As the hours had passed since Rhun’s death,
Gwen had forced herself to keep moving, to go through the necessary
motions that accompanied the aftermath of the fight: cleaning men’s
wounds, offering water or food to them, bandaging the slice that
Gareth had received along his ribs. Everything she did took place
with a kind of numbing grief that was both emotionless and at the
same time full of emotion.

It was after midnight now, and Prince Hywel
remained incoherent. Having done what was needed to reach the
encampment, he sat on a stool before one of the cooking fires,
Gareth’s helmet in his lap. He wouldn’t eat or drink. He wouldn’t
allow anyone to take the helmet from him.

King Owain had retreated to his tent. Gwen
had offered him wine and poppy juice to allow him to sleep, but
he’d refused them both. “I don’t want to stop thinking about him,
Gwen. Let me keep my memories for now.”

Godfrid, a godsend as always, had taken it
upon himself to do what needed to be done. In the immediate
aftermath of the battle, she’d told him about Cadwaladr’s
departure, and he’d sent two of his own men to track him if they
could. He’d directed two more to what remained of Cadwaladr’s camp,
if for no other reason than to make sure the traitorous prince
hadn’t retreated there.

He’d asked Dafydd to return to Ranulf, to
tell him of the fight on the road and the loss of many of his men.
Dafydd had fought alongside Gareth and Godfrid, and though he was
only one man, his contribution had been significant.

Godfrid had also sent a rider to Madoc and
Cynan, to tell them of the ambush and Rhun’s death. They’d sent
word in return that they were pulling back the men from the forward
positions they’d established and would be at the camp themselves by
dawn.

More men had ridden to the village of
Gwern-y-waun and then to Cilcain, to Father Alun, to ask villagers
to come and succor the men who still lived.

Gwen wanted to put her arms around her
husband and slide into oblivion herself, even if nobody else would
take the poppy juice she offered. But Gareth sat beside his prince,
head bowed and in too much pain in both body and mind to move even
had he wanted to.

None of them could escape the wrenching
truth: Rhun had been struck down because Cadwaladr and his men had
thought he was Gareth. Almost worse, Rhun hadn’t been felled by the
blow of a sword or an axe in the midst of battle. It had been a
thin blade that had been shoved through the links in the armor on
his back, straight into his heart, that had killed him.

Godfrid appeared at Gwen’s side. He hadn’t
had the opportunity to change his tunic, which was stained with
blood. Gwen herself was coated with it, though none was her
own.

“We have to talk, Gwen.”

Gwen nodded reluctantly. She didn’t want to
talk. Four days ago, back when she and Godfrid had arrived at
Hywel’s camp, she’d been surprised and maybe even a little hurt to
have him tell Gareth about his dying father when he’d never said a
word to her about it in the days they’d ridden together from
Aber.

Now, she understood completely why he
hadn’t. Like her fears for Gareth, and for everyone she loved,
speaking to anyone about the pain inside her made it more real.
Speaking of what Cadwaladr had done here would be the same. She
knew Rhun was dead. She knew that King Owain’s hopes for his
kingdom and for this war lay in ruins around him, but she wanted to
pretend otherwise for just a little longer.

Unfortunately, at this moment, Godfrid and
she were the only two people still standing who knew the whole of
what had happened.

“About Cadwaladr,” Godfrid began.

Gwen didn’t need him to finish his thought.
“Your men couldn’t find him.”

“No,” Godfrid said. “He must have gone to
ground, but they don’t know where. They’re seamen, not foresters.
I’m sorry.”

Her hands shaking, unable to express what
she was feeling other than grief, Gwen bent her head and the tears
started to flow again. Everything had gone wrong, and there was no
way to fix it. It wasn’t possible to fix it.

She felt Godfrid’s gentle hand on her
shoulder. “You are the bravest woman I know.”

Godfrid was an old friend, and like the best
of old friends, he understood what was inside her without her
having to articulate it. He pulled her into one of his bear hugs.
“Ah, Gwen. I wish we could start the day over.”

“I do too.” Her voice was muffled by his
tunic. “I was so scared for all of you.”

“What do the sages say?” Godfrid said. “A
brave man isn’t one without fear, but one who acts even though he
is afraid.”

“Gareth has said that,” Gwen said. “You and
he acted. It just wasn’t enough. Even the treaty with Ranulf might
be in ruins now, given the loss of his men.”

Godfrid released her and guided her to a
stool. He crouched in front of her. “What has happened is entirely
Cadwaladr’s fault. If we hadn’t returned when we did, Cadwaladr’s
men would have left no one alive.

“Gareth is suffering. Guilt consumes him.”
Gwen gestured helplessly towards the rows of Cadwaladr’s wounded
men. “I’ve known some of these men since I was a girl, ever since
my father sang for Cadwaladr in his hall at Aberystwyth. I don’t
know how they will live with themselves after this.”

“You feel sorry for them?”

“I don’t want to. I want to hate them for
following orders, but I can’t even do that. Not everyone has the
courage to walk away from a lord he can’t respect.”

“And like the coward he is,” Godfrid said,
“Cadwaladr has abandoned even those loyal to him.”

Gwen looked up at Godfrid. “It isn’t only
Gareth who blames himself. King Owain is telling himself that if
he’d hanged his brother years ago, or locked him up, none of this
would have happened.”

“Sadly, he’s right,” Godfrid looked away. “I
have more bad news. My men have returned from Cadwaladr’s camp. It
is deserted. Even those servants he didn’t take with him are
gone.”

“That’s no surprise,” Gwen said. “They know
who and what Cadwaladr is and would have fled before Rhun arrived
this morning. All of his men here wish they’d fled too. They know
that once King Owain begins to recover from the shock of Rhun’s
death, his wrath will be unlike we’ve ever seen.”

“My men did find these among the possessions
Cadwaladr abandoned.” Godfrid dropped two small purses into Gwen’s
lap. “Adeline’s and Cole’s perhaps?”