The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

ground or had been appropriated for other buildings. The fort lay in a valley, surrounded by tree-covered hills and covering nearly four acres. The River Llugwy split the western half from the eastern, larger half, in which Gareth found himself.
    The ruins loomed over Gareth, disturbing old wounds that every Welshman felt in his blood. Many of his people refused to approach any Roman structure, claiming that ghosts—whether Roman, Welsh, or both—haunted them. Today, Gareth would have believed it, since a real corpse slumped on the ground against the far wall of the fort.
    The man, not well-armored but with an axe at his belt, lay propped against a pillar, his legs splayed. A spear skewered him through his gut and a knife had been driven to the hilt into his chest. Even if his injuries had been less apparent, Gareth would have known the man was dead by the flies that gathered around his head. With more reluctance than haste, Gareth dismounted and headed towards the body, clambering over fallen stones and through ruined rooms to reach it.
    Unlike Anarawd, this man had died where he lay, the remains of the pool of blood still evident on the ground around him. The rain that had fallen on the coast that morning had never reached here and the warmer summer air had accelerated the decaying process such that maggots had gotten inside the wounds. Gareth guessed the man had been dead for several days.
    Sometimes Gareth hated his job.
    He crouched before the man, not wanting to touch him yet—and not just because of the insects that crept and crawled all over and inside him. The man had no weapon in or near his hand, leading Gareth to believe that—like Anarawd—he’d known his killer and been unprepared for the attack.
    Although Gareth couldn’t tell the man’s ancestry from his face, the dead man wore armor and clothing like the other men they’d encountered—and killed—on the road from Dolwyddelan. In addition, the bushiness of the man’s beard and the length and color of his hair had Gareth thinking the man was a Dane. Besides, the crest of the King of Dublin was embossed into the leather of the man’s vest.
    Damping down a squeamishness he couldn’t help, Gareth pulled out the spear and set it to one side. He then grasped the rough and unadorned hilt of the knife. The blade slid out easily. The lack of catch told him even before he wiped away the blood so he could inspect the knife that this wasn’t the same one that had killed Anarawd. This blade, though newly sharpened, was thicker than the other. It was one a peasant might use for eating or whittling—although the odds of a peasant having killed this man were slim.
    Whoever he was, whoever had done this deed, had been more prepared for the act than when he’d killed Anarawd—if indeed the two were murdered by the same person—which now that Gareth thought about it a bit more, he doubted. More likely, this man killed Anarawd and then another person killed him to silence him. Or this soldier had a falling out with his paymaster.
    When Gareth had jerked out the spear, the dead man had fallen onto his side, so now Gareth pulled on his legs to flatten him out. He shifted the man’s armor and clothing, first of all searching for the knife that killed Anarawd (which would have been quite a find), and secondly for anything that might tell him the identity of this man or the one who killed him. It was rough work. Gareth continued to wear his riding gloves, knowing that, regardless of the waste and the cost of new ones, he’d have to discard them when he was done.
    He sat back on his heels to study the body. What else do you have to tell me? Holding his breath against the putrid smell and the crawling insects, Gareth stripped off the man’s clothing so he could inspect his wounds more fully. It was the spear through the gut that bothered him the most. The knife wound had bled freely, indicating that it was the fatal blow. But if the man was already dying or dead, why skewer him afterwards? It spoke of anger.
    Gareth thought back to the last moments of his milk-brother’s life. The Danes had backtracked from the first ambush site, perhaps to here, following a different path from Hywel and his men, and then set up the second ambush. According to Bran, they hadn’t gotten the seal from Anarawd in the first attack, and thus couldn’t prove he was dead. Prove to whom? And was that failure why this man was dead?
    For about two heartbeats, Gareth thought about