The Uninvited Guest (17 page)

“
Do you see the horse?”
Gwen said.

Mari put her fingers to the corners of her
eyes and squinted. “Not very well.”

“
It doesn’t have a rider.”
Gwen’s heart rose into her throat. Frozen, she gazed down from the
height for another ten heartbeats, each one thudding in her chest
so that her whole body felt them, and then she turned towards the
stairs that led down to the gate.

“
What’s wrong?” Mari
said.

“
That’s Gareth’s
horse!”

Chapter
Thirteen

“
You missed me that much,
did you?” Gwen said. “I waved to you from the steps but you ignored
me.”

After Gareth caught his breath, he wrapped
his arms around Gwen’s waist and pulled her closer. “I would never
ignore you. I thought of you every day we’ve been apart. It was the
events of last summer and their aftermath that chased you from my
thoughts.”

A flash of concern crossed Gwen’s face. “I
hated that you left so soon, before we had a chance to talk or make
real plans.” She took a step back from him and gripped each of his
hands in hers, looking him up and down. “How are you, Gareth?”

For a moment, Gareth’s exhaustion showed in
his face, but he mastered it as quickly as he could. “I survived,
Gwen. I am here. That is all that needs to be said of
Ceredigion.”

Gwen put a hand to his cheek. “You don’t
have to speak of it. Not just now.”

Not ever
. “And you?” Gareth said, drinking her in. “You are so
beautiful.”

“
I love you,” Gwen
said.

G
radually, Gareth came to himself. He didn’t know how long he’d
been thinking about Gwen, but he was sure that if he opened his
eyes, she’d be right in front of him. Yet, when he did open his
eyes, he could see nothing. His heart raced.
He was blind!
But then he breathed in
leaf mold and sneezed hard and realized he was face down in the
dirt.

His sneezing convulsion made his head hurt.
He moaned and rolled onto his back. The bed of leaves on which he
lay had provided a cushion for his head, but now crackled as he
moved. Though many of the trees had lost their leaves, others were
evergreen, like the yew that overhung the ravine into which he had
fallen. Once his face was no longer pressed into the earth, hints
of light from the star strewn sky and the nearly full moon filtered
through the foliage far above him.

He remembered where he
was—and even more to the point,
why
—and it wasn’t a happy thought,
though he was pleased that he could remember anything at all. As
had been the case with the young assassin, many men could have had
their minds damaged by the blow he’d received. An image of the
branch that felled him filled his vision. Had someone swung it at
him? He could have convinced himself it was an accident, if not for
that muffled curse. Unfortunately, he hadn’t recognized the man’s
voice.

Gareth touched his head
where it hurt and his fingers came away sticky. He rubbed his
fingers together.
Blood
. That had him pushing up on his right elbow and feeling for
the rest of his limbs. He couldn’t sense his left hand and his
heart raced until he realized that his arm was numb because he’d
spent the last hours awkwardly lying on it.

He flexed and stretched his arms and
shoulders, becoming more awake with every heartbeat. He shivered.
His teeth chattered and they sounded as loud as clapping in the
winter woods. He clenched them, while at the same time reaching for
his cloak to clutch it around himself. He felt around his
shoulders, and then at his throat. His cloak and the clasp that
held it were missing.

Could the killer have taken it? But no, it
had snagged on a tree branch eight feet above his head. He got to
his feet and scrabbled at the leaves and dirt, climbing just high
enough so that he could reach its tail. He tugged at it, gently at
first, and then harder. It came loose with a tearing sound and
Gareth fell back to the leaves.

It was difficult to see the damage to it in
the shadow of the ravine, but he felt along the cloak’s length to a
six inch tear near the bottom on one side, and then to another tear
where the broach’s pin had held it around his neck. Fortunately, it
was still wearable and he threw it around his shoulders and secured
the broach in a different spot.

Gareth wrapped his arms around his
midsection and shivered violently. If he’d slept another hour, he
might never have awakened. As it was, his head hurt so badly, all
he wanted to do was lie down. He did lie down, just for a moment,
but then jerked himself into wakefulness.

That wouldn’t do at all. That was what the
murderer wanted.

Gareth felt at his waist for his belt knife
and scrip. He fingered the few coins in the scrip—the only thing of
value he carried other than his sword.

His sword!
Another gasp of panic flashed through Gareth until
he remembered that he’d strapped his sword in its sheath onto
Braith’s back, rather than wear it on the hunt. The slap of the
sheath against his thigh as he rode was annoying and he hadn’t
thought he’d need the sword.

Braith, however, had run off or been scared
away. He recalled her whinnying protest.

Fully alert now, Gareth eased out of his bed
of leaves and stood. He surveyed the distance to the top of the
ravine. It was twenty-five feet to the top at least. Given his
difficulty in reaching his cloak, climbing out of here might be
impossible. Better to walk along the bottom until he found a better
spot.

Gareth set out, his mind churning all the
while. He pictured the moment the branch had hit his head. If it
wasn’t an accident, if a tree branch hadn’t just happened to fall
on him, it was a crime of opportunity. Impulsive. But no less evil
for all that. At the same time, that the killer had left him alive
could be due only to the steepness of the ravine into which he had
fallen. He’d hit Gareth and left him for dead, rather than climb
down himself and finish the job.

Unfortunately, knowing who had ridden with
King Owain didn’t narrow Gareth’s list of suspects at all. But it
gave him the inkling of a plan. Hastily, Gareth returned to the
ambush site and pushed the leaves into a man-sized pile. And then
with reluctance, he removed his cloak (saving the broach) and
draped it over the pile. He couldn’t know what this would look like
to the killer in the daylight, but were he to have second thoughts
and return to finish the job, hopefully it would fool him into
thinking Gareth was really dead.

Obviously the killer didn’t understand that
going after a key investigator in a murder—and failing to subdue
him—was never a good idea. Leaving Gareth for dead was a huge
mistake on the killer’s part because it had Gareth asking questions
the killer wouldn’t want asked. Cadwaladr had taken Gwen to Dublin
because he thought she was getting close to fingering him. He had
taken matters into his own hands and had been wrong, in the same
way the killer here was wrong. What had Gareth done that made the
man think he was close to uncovering the truth?

Gareth had worked quickly, anxious that the
killer might return and catch him in the act, and now hastened down
the ravine, heading south. It was the wrong way if he wanted to
reach the road to Aber, but was the only direction that was clear
of impediments. It wasn’t until he had put several dozen yards
between himself and the ambush site that he allowed himself to
admit that he had been terrified the whole time. He was one man,
alone and unarmed in a deserted and darkened wood, miles from Aber
Castle. He didn’t like the feeling.

Gradually, the ground rose before him and at
last he reached a spot where the walls on either side of him were
lower, only ten feet high. Boulders obstructed the path in front of
him and he spent some moments finding a place where he could climb
out of his prison. Finally, he reached level ground again. From the
position of the moon, it was early evening still. If all had gone
well, the hunting party should have headed home hours ago—because
even armed parties didn’t like roaming the landscape after sunset.
They’d killed the boar at least ten miles from Aber. It would be a
long walk home for Gareth in the dark.

Gareth continued through the woods, staying
off the path but now curving away from the ravine, heading north,
towards the road that would take him eastward. As time passed, his
head ached less and his body warmed. He strode along comfortably,
his arms swinging at his sides. It would have been a beautiful
night, if someone hadn’t just tried to kill him.

Another half an hour went by before the
first shouts and the glow of torches came to him from the north:
“Gaaaareeeeeeth!”

His heart leapt. His first
instinct was to run towards the sounds and the light.
His first instinct
.

His second instinct was to think twice and
slither into the darkness of a particularly dense stand of trees.
From the number and timbre of the voices calling, a dozen men had
come to search for him. That was about right: enough to cover
ground quickly, but not so many they’d lose track of anyone. Nobody
wanted to make things worse by losing a searcher in a quest for the
missing. They’d be positioned on both sides of the trail, eyes to
the ground. If Braith had returned to Aber—if that was how they
knew something untoward had happened to him—Hywel would assume that
Gareth had fallen from her back and couldn’t get up.

Gareth stumbled over an unseen root and
braced his hand against the trunk of a tree. The night was bright
enough that he could navigate, but moonlight made ghosts of rocks
and bushes, and the floor of the woods was cloaked in darkness.
Instead of moving directly towards the search party, he headed
east, trying to loop around the searchers to reach the only one he
wanted. He found, suddenly, that of everyone at Aber, it was still
Hywel whom he trusted most.

Hywel and—

“
Gareth!” Gwen’s high voice
carried through the cold, night air.

Gareth froze, having just come around a
blackthorn bush with its dense, spiny thorns and into another area
cleared of trees. Gwen held Braith’s reins and paced through the
bracken half a dozen yards from him, at the end of the line. The
closest man’s torch flickered fifty yards further on.

Braith whickered.

Gwen slowed to a stop and listened. The
night was crisp and quiet, except for the calling of the men and
the thud of their boots on the turf. “What is it?” Gwen patted the
horse’s nose. “Did you lose Gareth near here?”

Braith nudged Gwen’s right shoulder, turning
her directly towards Gareth. Beyond, the man with the torch had
moved another twenty paces south, blinded by his own torch and too
far away to notice that Gwen had stopped moving.

Gareth stepped out from
behind the bush. Gwen opened her mouth to shout, but Gareth dashed
across the grass, his finger to his lips, shushing her before she
could speak. “I’m fine; I’m fine.
Sssshhh
.” He wrapped his arms around
Gwen in an embrace, which she returned.

“
What—”

“
Let’s get into the trees
and I’ll explain,” Gareth said.

Gwen tugged on Braith’s bridle to get her
moving. As they crossed the clearing, Gareth kept his arm around
Gwen, ducking his head and trying to disguise his bulk behind her
and the horse so that if anyone glanced their way, he wouldn’t
notice anything amiss.

When they reached the line of trees, Gareth
pulled Gwen into the shadows of an ancient elm and into his arms.
Gwen patted his back and then pulled away to look into his face.
“Are you all right?”

“
Mostly,” Gareth said. “Is
Hywel here too?”

“
Yes.” Gwen gestured to the
west. “Further down the line. He was really worried. We all were.
Even King Owain didn’t need any persuading to send out a search
party for you.”

“
I’m sorry you were
worried,” Gareth said.

“
Given the events of the
last two days, we were afraid you’d been murdered.”

“
I almost was.”

“
Oh, Gareth!” Gwen wrapped
her arms around Gareth’s neck and pressed her cheek to
his.”

“
I’m glad you have Braith
with you,” Gareth said. “Where did you find her?”

“
She came to us at sunset,
at the same time as King Owain’s hunting party,” Gwen said. “She
had burrs in her coat and was a little wild-eyed, as if she’d had a
rough time of it.”

“
How is it that you are
here?” Not that Gareth was sorry, or even genuinely surprised. The
question really was how hard Hywel had tried to stop
her.

“
I was watching for you
from the battlements,” Gwen said. “Braith intercepted the hunting
party at the bridge across the Aber River. I recognized Braith and
ran to meet Hywel.”

“
And he didn’t balk at your
coming?”

Gareth didn’t need to see her face to know
that Gwen smiled. “I was dressed in cloak and boots, prepared for
the outdoors. He pulled me up behind him. But what happened to
you?” Gwen patted down Gareth’s arms. “Are you sure you’re not
injured?”

“
My head hurts,” Gareth
said.

Gwen ran her fingers gently through Gareth’s
hair and along his scalp. She stopped at Gareth’s hiss of pain.
“You’re bleeding!” Her voice went high.

Gareth grasped her hand and pulled it from
his head. “It’s a surface wound. Braith carries bandages in her
saddle bags. I’ll let you use them on me before I leave you.”