The Renegade Merchant (30 page)

“I’ve never run away from a fight in my
life,” Gareth said.

“Hywel came all this way.” Gwen had her arms
around Gareth’s waist, holding on. “He wasn’t able to save his
brother. Let him have the satisfaction of saving you.”

Hywel

H
ywel hadn’t had time to count his opponents, but at first
glance the two sides appeared evenly matched—even with sending Evan
to help Gareth and Gwen. Hywel had let John Fletcher lead the
assault, but now he cursed himself for doing so because John had
opted to give the men a chance to surrender instead of simply
killing them all. Hywel didn’t know what they’d done, exactly, but
they’d harmed Gareth and Gwen, and that was good enough reason for
Hywel to attack first and ask questions later.

Before Rhun had died, he’d told himself that
he could go through life with a kind of amused detachment. It
seemed to him that with his mother’s death at the very hour of his
birth, the worst thing that could happen to him had happened before
he’d lived a single day. He’d been wrong, however. Rhun’s death had
proven that.

As he’d grown to accept the mantle of grief
and anger as a permanent part of himself, that detached cynicism
had been renewed—possibly even more so than before. He had thought,
on the whole, that he didn’t care whether or not he lived or died,
as long as Cadwaladr died before he did.

But tonight, the sight of
Gareth and Gwen stumbling around the side of the mill, Gareth with
a bloody bandage around his head, had sent a fire surging through
him.
By God, he did care.
He wasn’t detached, and he was overcome by a rage
like he’d never experienced in battle before.

Since Hywel and Cadifor had
hung back, they had more room to maneuver than John did. When the
lead conspirator, whom John had called Martin, raised his blade
against the young watchman who’d accompanied Gareth and Gwen from
around the corner of the old mill, Hywel and Cadifor spurred their
horses forward. They didn’t have quite the same advantage as if
they’d descended a hill or if they’d had more space to pick up
speed, but Glew was swift and well-trained, worthy of his name,
which meant
valiant.
In battle, he obeyed Hywel’s every wish almost before Hywel
commanded it.

He cut through the first opponent like he
was chopping wheat, slicing through his midsection with one swing
of his arm and hardly noticing where he fell because he had already
turned his attention to the next man to stand against him. That
Englishman also fell in one blow, the side of his face sliced clean
off by the downsweep of Hywel sword.

Blood spattered Hywel, but again, he hardly
noticed. A red haze colored his vision, and his whole attention was
directed at the leader, who was fighting the young man who’d come
in with Gareth and who was completely outmatched. John Fletcher was
struggling to reach him too, but he had several men and a cart
between him and Cedric.

Then one of Martin’s minions put his axe
through John’s horse’s forelock, and the horse crashed to the
ground. Before he was crushed beneath the animal, John cleared his
feet from the stirrups and rolled free. Unfortunately, that meant
Cedric was even more on in own than he had been before.

But not for long. With a roar, Hywel spurred
Glew at Martin while Cadifor got between John Fletcher and the man
who’d killed his horse. It was all Martin could do to parry the
first blow Hywel directed at him, which left him completely
unprepared for the second.

Hywel had sharpened the blade of his sword
such that just touching it could make a finger bleed. He’d done it
with the vision of Cadwaladr’s neck bared before the sword, and
even as he undercut Martin’s arm, slicing through it and then
through the man’s neck in one complete blow, it was Cadwaladr’s
face that he saw on Martin’s head, which hit the ground with a thud
and rolled away from the body.

With a gleeful shout, Hywel checked his
horse in front of the mill and turned, looking for more men to
fight. At some point while Hywel wasn’t looking, Evan had returned
to the clearing. He stood ten yards away, breathing hard, his sword
bloody and a dead man at his feet. With such an assist from
Gwynedd, the remainder of Martin’s men had been dispatched by
John’s soldiers or were even now fleeing into the woods.

Hywel made to spur his horse after one of
these escapees, but Cadifor caught his bridle before Glew could
charge. Rain pattered on Cadifor’s upturned face, and he shouted
something at Hywel, but Hywel couldn’t hear him through the
thundering in his ears. He still held his sword high, and he was
anxious to continue the battle, but then Evan was there too. He
took Glew’s nose in his hands and talked to him.

“My lord, it is over.” Cadifor’s words
finally penetrated through the haze in Hywel’s mind.

He blinked and looked around as if seeing
the scene for the first time. He realized he had no memory of how
many men he’d killed or how he’d done it. Hesitatingly, he lowered
his bloody sword. He had never lost himself like this, not in all
his years of fighting. He still felt the anger at Rhun’s loss, but
he was almost more angry at himself for losing control just when he
needed it most. 

“Get down, son,” Cadifor said, his voice no
longer urgent.

Hywel obeyed, landing unsteadily on his feet
beside his foster father. He rested his cheek against Glew’s neck,
so exhausted he didn’t even know if he could walk. “What about the
others?”

“We can leave them to John.” Cadifor tipped
his head to indicate the mill and spoke to Evan. “Would you find
out if there are more prisoners in there?”

“Consider it done.” Evan bent to clean the
blood from his sword on the cloak of one the downed men and then
walked towards the door to the mill, which was open.

“Are you hurt at all, my lord?” Cadifor
said.

“No.” The short response was all he could
manage. “You?”

Cadifor shook his head. “They weren’t
soldiers. They should have known it was over before it
started.”

John had been walking among the dead men,
looking into their faces, his own pale in the torchlight and
glistening with sweat and rain, but now he came over to where Hywel
and Cadifor waited. “You and your men saved the day, my lord.”

Hywel nodded.

“It would have been less necessary if you’d
simply run Martin through at the start.” Cadifor said, as willing
to instruct John as he was Hywel. “You were too noble for your own
good,”

Hywel glanced to where Martin Carter’s head
lolled several feet from where his body had fallen. He wished it
was Cadwaladr’s head, understanding now that in the heat of the
fight, he’d wanted it to be so badly that he’d made himself see it.
Now that the rage had cooled, it left him shocked at how hot he’d
burned.

John was called away by one of his men, and
once again, Hywel was alone with Cadifor.

“Can you tell me what happened out there, my
lord?”

“You know what happened.”

“You lost yourself.”

Hywel tipped back his head, so the drops of
rain could cool his face. If it hadn’t been for how slick his sword
hilt had been in his hand when he was fighting, he wouldn’t have
even noticed that it was still raining. “It shouldn’t have
happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen. Rhun wouldn’t have let it
happen.”

Cadifor moved closer so his face was only a
foot away from Hywel’s. “Look at me, son.”

Hywel didn’t want to, but he had never been
able to disobey that voice.

“I have loved you from the
moment I first held you in my arms after the death of your mother.
We don’t share blood, but you are my son as much as any of the
others. Your name is Hywel ap Owain. You are a warrior-poet and
the
edling
of
Gwynedd. You are not Rhun.”

“My father—”

Cadifor gave him a small smile and placed a
hand on his shoulder. “Your father needs you to be you. He’s
already lost Rhun. Don’t deprive him of Hywel too.”

Hywel stared at Cadifor. He had never
thought about his role that way, and as they looked at each other,
something broke loose in the back of Hywel’s mind—not his sanity,
not his control—but the relentless fear of failure that had been
fueling his anger all this time.

Then Evan returned, even as Hywel was still
reeling from Cadifor’s words. “There are a dozen women in there, my
lord, Welsh and Irish.”

Cadifor made a guttural sound.

“What is the purpose of keeping them?” Hywel
took a step to follow Evan. “Were they to work in the brothel?”

“They were to be sold as slaves.” Gareth’s
voice rang out from behind Hywel, and he turned to see him and Gwen
halting a few feet away. They’d ridden in on Evan’s horse. Gareth’s
eyes were bright, and even as Hywel watched, he dropped to the
ground in an easy motion.

“A moment ago, you were at death’s door,”
Hywel said as his friend approached, after helping Gwen to dismount
too. “Why didn’t you return to the monastery like I ordered?”

“Answers weren’t to be found at the
monastery.” Gareth tipped his head to indicate his left shoulder.
“Gwen patched me up enough to be going on with.”

“What answers are you talking about?” Hywel
said. “Are you saying these men were slavers?”

Gareth gestured to a man who’d accompanied
them down the track but whom Hywel didn’t know. “This is Conall,
who serves Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster.”

“My lord prince.” Conall stepped closer and
bowed. “King Diarmait has grown concerned about the stealing of
women from his lands. I tracked the raiders to Shrewsbury and
attempted to insinuate myself into their operation. My hope was to
lure them to Ireland so that my king could arrest them.” He spread
his hands wide. “I don’t know what gave me away, but Martin there—”
he jerked his head to indicate the body on the ground, “—discovered
something about me that made him mistrustful. I have spent the last
two days in that mill with the captive women.”

Gwen took up the explanation. “Most of the
women are not Irish, however, but Welsh.”

Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “How is that
possible? We’ve heard of no war in Wales that involved
slave-taking.”

Gwen made a murmur of assent. “Which means
either these women were abducted like those from Leinster—”

“—or their lord sold them himself,” Gareth
said. “It has happened in the past, though not for a long
time.”

Conall took in a breath. “As it turns out,
the answer is both.”

Gareth gestured forward two more men,
watchmen of John’s who held the arms of a woman between them. “She
runs the brothel here.” He waved a hand at the two men. “You don’t
have to hold her. She’s done nothing wrong as far as we know.”

As far as we know
covered a lot of ground, but Hywel simply nodded
at Gareth that he should continue.

“Jane, here, can describe the man she
believes provided the funds for this undertaking, and who derives
the most wealth from its success.” Gareth tipped his head to the
woman. “Go on.”

The woman was quivering before Hywel: cold,
wet, and scared. The yard had turned into one great puddle, and
soon even well-oiled boots would be filling with water. Hywel
hadn’t put up his hood, since he was still steaming from the fight,
and if his cloak hadn’t been nearly soaked through, he would have
offered it to the woman.

“The man was richly dressed—as much so as
any nobleman—even Lord Ludlow,” Jane said. “Those snooty merchants
in Shrewsbury who pretend to be above what we do, even as they
patronize us and reap our profits, have nothing on him.” Jane made
a motion as if to spit on the ground, but then caught herself at
the last moment, remembering where she was and whose company she
was keeping. “He wore a sword, and spoke no English.”

“What did he look like?” Gareth said.

Jane scoffed at that, as if
what Gareth was interested in hearing was the least interesting
part about the man. “Tall, fair hair going gray, a paunch he tries
to hide. I never heard his real name. He only went by
Gwynedd
.” The woman canted
her head. “Flann referred to him as
the
prince
, though I never learned what he was
supposed to be the prince of, seeing as how he was here and not in
Wales.”

Gareth turned to John. “Too bad we didn’t
take any of Martin’s men alive.”

John had been staring at the ground while
the woman was talking, having pulled up his hood to protect his
head from the rain, but now he looked up. “But we did.”

“Who?”

“The man you suspected: Flann. We took him
into custody not two hours ago. It was to invite you to question
him with me that I arrived at the monastery when I did, in time to
ride here with Prince Hywel.”

Hywel allowed himself a mocking laugh. He
had many of his own questions answered now. That Cadwaladr knew
Martin Carter went a long way towards explaining how he’d come upon
Adeline, Gwen’s lookalike. “Perhaps it’s time to tell me what this
is all about.” 

Gareth

G
areth had a moment’s fear as they rode back through the dark
to Shrewsbury that John’s guardsmen might have let Flann go, once
John himself didn’t return in a timely fashion to question him.
Fortunately, John’s men were better trained than that. For Gareth’s
part, he felt no anger at Martin, just impatience that killing had
been necessary. There was enough death in the world as it was
without adding to it.

Gareth had spent the ride back into
Shrewsbury relating to Hywel, Conall, and the others everything
that had happened in the last few days, after which the prince had
explained how it was that he’d come to Shrewsbury with only Evan
and Cadifor as companions. Imminent war with Powys didn’t make
slavery in Shrewsbury a paltry matter—but it did mean that they
needed to finish up their business here quickly so the prince could
return to Aber and his father. Tomorrow, however, would have to be
soon enough, and they took a moment to stop at the monastery
infirmary to augment the work Gwen had done on his head and
shoulder.