The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

brushed the dust from his clothes. Hywel hadn’t stirred, beyond that initial motion ordering his men to shoot.
    Rhun pulled out his sword and stood with it loose in his hand. “Anyone else care to follow that man’s example? Does anyone else refuse to acknowledge my father’s authority?”
    Silence.
    While Rhun was speaking, Hywel moved without haste to the back row of Cadwaladr’s men. Gareth watched, having no idea what his lord was doing, other than that it demanded a grim set to his jaw. Rhun shot a quick glance at Hywel that told Gareth he was in on it too. They’d come to some sort of agreement that needed no conversation.
    Hywel paused, as if he was counting to himself, and then stepped behind and just to one side of the second of Cadwaladr’s men he didn’t trust. The man shifted from one foot to the other, trying to see Hywel’s face out of the corner of his eye. Rhun had been speaking—more of his lecture about Cadwaladr—but cut off his words in mid-sentence, coming to a halt in front of the last man whom Hywel had pointed out. In the same instant that Hywel grasped the second man around the head and shoulders, Rhun shoved his sword through the third man’s stomach.
    Rhun’s man fell to his knees, his hands clutching his belly. Hywel, meanwhile, had wrenched his man’s neck and broken it.
    His face expressionless, Rhun pulled out his sword, reached down for the end of the man’s cloak, and wiped off the blood with it. The remaining soldiers fell as one to their knees. One shouted, “My lord!”
    “That’s better.” Hywel moved to the front of the company to stand beside his brother.
    “We should kill them all,” Rhun said, his tone matter-of-fact. “We can trust none of them.” Coming from him, the words were far more daunting to Gareth’s ear than if Hywel had spoken.
    A voice piped up from near Hywel’s fallen victim. “I will swear! I will swear allegiance to Owain Gwynedd!” The boy was probably no more than sixteen. His face was deathly pale and his hands gripped his knees so tightly his knuckles stood out white.
    The remaining men looked left and right. One of the problems with having a ruler such as Cadwaladr, was that he didn’t take kindly to men who carried their own authority and whom he couldn’t bully. Thus, none of the men left were leaders; without Cadwaladr and the three men-at-arms already dead, Cadwaladr’s company had no head.
    Rhun pursed his lips. “For those of you who didn’t choose your allegiance, but allied yourself with Cadwaladr through birth or circumstance, I will spare your life. For those who chose him, and when you discovered your error, could not escape his clutches, I will spare your life. But for those of you who chose to serve Cadwaladr, even when you knew what he was, I tell you now that if you ever waver in my father’s service, if I sense one moment of hesitation on your part for your changed circumstance, I will kill you myself.”
    “Do you hear my brother?” Hywel said, his voice soft but carrying over the heads of the kneeling men. “And if you hear him, do you listen?”
    “Yes, my lords,” the men murmured, all ten of them.
    The boy practically slobbered on the ground at Rhun’s feet. Gareth felt for him. It could have been him, six years ago. Gareth was just thankful that he’d escaped before something comparable had happened to him. He’d never known where the certainty had come from, but one day he’d woken up with the courage to walk away. It had already been too many years of service in which he couldn’t stomach his allegiance, but he hadn’t known how to get out. Overnight, he’d resolved not to commit one more crime, not to perform one more heinous deed, at Cadwaladr’s behest.
    Perhaps the boy, like Gareth, would survive long enough to recover the honor and courage he’d lost. Gareth was glad, too, that Rhun was in charge and not Hywel. Hywel’s eyes told him that he would have killed them all—and would probably have been right to. They couldn’t trust these men, not even the boy, because unlike Gareth, none of them had had the courage to walk away.

Chapter Twenty-Six

    G wen hung her head over the side of the Danish ship, emptying her insides into the sea for the twentieth time. The chop of the waves was such that she had to grip the rail tightly just to stay upright and not spew the contents of her stomach—what little remained of them—on herself or in the boat. Part of her thought that would