The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

throwing the body over Braith, but immediately discarded the notion. Even if the body itself had something more to tell him, he loathed the idea of carrying it all the way to Dolwyddelan.
    Instead, Gareth used the man’s axe to dig a shallow grave. He dumped the body into it and stacked rocks and stones from the fort over it to protect it from wild animals. Then with the armor and weapons lashed to his saddle bags, Gareth mounted Braith, turned her onto the track, and continued to the site of the original ambush, still evident by the churned up road and darkened blood. It had soaked into the earth by now, but its discoloration was unmistakable. It was helpful that it hadn’t recently rained this high in the mountains. But even if it had, and rain had washed all signs of the battle into the creek that ran beside the road, the putrid pile of dead horse flesh would have given the location away.
    That had been a long morning. With two truncated shovels Meilyr found in his cart, some of the men-at-arms had dug a ditch in which to pile the horses. While Gwen appeared to carry nothing with her but one satchel of clothing and a small bag of medicines, Meilyr was a packrat.
    “What made you bring these all the way from wherever you’ve been?” Gareth had asked him.
    “Some days we camp beside the road—particularly in the summer as we move from one location to another before looking for a winter patron,” Meilyr said. “It’s quite pleasant, even if it doesn’t sound like it to you, and we use the shovels to dig for roots to eat, to carve out a fire pit, or to make a makeshift latrine.”
    So that explained the shovels, but not the odd mix of broken cookware, bent tools, and discarded clothing that covered the bottom of the cart. Gareth had chided Gwen about it on their walk to Caerhun, before the second ambush.
    “I’ve tried,” she’d said. “He won’t let me touch his things. But I also won’t let him bring any of it into our rooms once we find them. He’s accumulated this mess just since the spring.”
    Even though Gareth wished Gwen were with him now, he was glad she hadn’t seen that dead man back at the fort, nor was forced to revisit the location of Anarawd’s death. They’d all worked hard shifting the dead horses off the road and preparing the human corpses for transport. Even Gwalchmai had helped once he returned with the carts, straining his thin shoulders and weak stomach.
    Gareth dismounted and walked along the edge of the road until he reached the spot where Anarawd had lain, still marked with a trio of sticks. As he’d remembered, there wasn’t enough blood here to tell him more. He drifted into the woods, thinking of the man as he’d known him.
    Anarawd was a number of years older than Gareth, so had ruled in Deheubarth with his father and brothers long before Gareth had come to know of him. While none of Anarawd’s brothers had disputed his ascendancy to the throne upon their father’s death, Gareth had never thought much of the man. Like King Owain’s brother, Cadwaladr, he covered his lack of acumen with bluster, talked more than he listened, and felt that his hereditary right to the throne should automatically garner the respect that he, as a man, hadn’t earned.
    At the same time, Gareth had heard no complaints from the people Anarawd governed and one could often tell the kind of person a man was by the opinions of his inferiors. Prince Cadwaladr’s subjects could surely give anyone who asked an earful.
    Focusing again, Gareth crept along the perimeter of the battlefield, his eyes on the ground. He hadn’t been mistaken that Anarawd’s murderer had moved his body. He didn’t know if he could learn anything from finding the exact spot, but a man could never have too much information. He crouched low near the eastern ditch, and at last picked up the parallel trail left by Anarawd’s boots. The killer had held him under the arms and dragged him out of the woods to the road. As Gwen had noted, hauling him by his feet would have been easier, though it would have done damage to his head, which perhaps the killer wanted to avoid.
    Gareth backtracked the trail into the woods. The further he went, the more obvious the signs of both the tracks and the blood, which must have poured from Anarawd’s body onto the ground. Another fifty feet in, and Gareth found the spot where Anarawd had fallen. The killer had tried to cover the blood stains with leaves, but Gareth removed them with