The Unlikely Spy (34 page)

King Owain glared at it but didn’t speak.
Gwen hoped his temper wasn’t about to rise because he’d likely wake
Gruffydd, who’d fallen asleep on Mari’s shoulder.

Rhun spoke into the silence. “It seems that
Gryff came upon the ring and the cross, whether while fulfilling
his role as messenger or when actively searching for them. The
latter had been given to Iolo by Cadell to be used as proof that he
spoke for him, the former by Cadwaladr to show to Cadell for the
same reason. Father, I believe this is the real reason both Gryff
and Iolo were killed.”

“They were murdered to hide Cadell’s
involvement in his own brother’s murder, and my brother’s recent
involvement in Ceredigion.” King Owain sat heavily in his chair.
“He knows that I would not support his designs on this land, and
for him to plot to take it, with or without Cadell’s help, moves
him past mischief to treason.”

It was Rhun, not the stony-faced Hywel, who
said, “Yes, Father.”

King Owain’s expression was dark as he
contemplated his sons. “My brother is like a high wind that blows
away everything and everyone in its path. I cannot predict when it
will come, only that it is coming. When my brother betrays me, as
it seems he must, I ask only that the three of us remain united,
whatever the cost.”

Gareth stood taut beside Gwen. In a way,
this was the moment they’d all been waiting for and made up for all
the failures and lack of concord in the past. King Owain had
finally spoken out loud what they’d all known needed to be said for
years.

“Of course,” Rhun and Hywel said
together.

“After Cadwallon died, my father made me
swear to look after my younger brother. Only we two were left, you
see. I have tried …” Suddenly King Owain looked ten years older
than his actual age.

Mari put a hand on the king’s arm. “Nobody
doubts your loyalty, my lord. You have done more for your brother
than he deserved. But some men cannot be saved.”

“Especially not from themselves,” King Owain
said.

Morgan appeared at the entrance to the tent.
At first only Gwen noticed him, but then he cleared his throat, and
everyone else turned to look. “I apologize, my lords, for the
interruption, but I bring grave news.”

Hywel raised a hand to his steward,
indicating that he should speak.

“A rider has arrived from the east, from
Lord Goronwy,” Morgan said.

Lord Goronwy was the father of Cristina,
King Owain’s wife.

King Owain straightened in his chair. “Spit
it out, man. We’ll never be in a better mood to hear it.”

“Earl Ranulf has left Chester in force. He
has fortified Mold Castle on Gwynedd’s eastern border. Lord Goronwy
fears an assault is imminent.”

King Owain stood abruptly, tipping back his
chair, which Gareth caught before it could hit the ground. “It may
be that my brother heard this news and responded, choosing not to
share it with us. He seeks glory for himself.”

“Or he allies himself with Chester,” Rhun
said. “He has done it before.”

“The festival is over,” Hywel said. “My men
can be ready to leave tonight.”

“Then we go,” King Owain said, “and may God
have mercy on our souls.”

The End

The Lost Brother
, the next
Gareth
& Gwen Medieval Mystery
is available wherever books are
sold.

November 1146
. War has come to
Gwynedd at the hands of Ranulf, Earl of Chester, who seeks to gain
a foothold in Wales against the day peace finally comes to England.
On the eve of King Owain’s counter-assault on Mold Castle, the body
of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Gwen is discovered
buried in someone else’s grave. Even in the midst of war, murder
must be investigated, and it falls to Gareth and Gwen to bring the
guilty to justice.

When their investigation uncovers not only
another body, but also treason at the highest levels of King
Owain’s court, Gareth and Gwen must come to terms with
unprecedented treachery—and a villain whose crimes can never be
forgiven.

The Lost Brother
is the sixth
Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery.

To be notified the moment I have a new
release, please sign up on my web page:
www.sarahwoodbury.com

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Keep reading for a sample
of
Footsteps in Time
, the first book in the
After
Cilmeri
series, also set in Medieval
Wales
:

In December of 1282, English soldiers
ambushed and murdered Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales.
His death marked the end of Wales as an independent nation and the
beginning of over seven hundred years under the English boot.

Footsteps in Time
is the story of
what might have happened had Llywelyn lived.

And what happens to the two teenagers who
save him.

Anna

“D
o you want me to
come with you?”

Anna looked back at her brother. He’d
followed her to the door, his coat in his hand.

“Okay.” She tried not to sound relieved.
“You can hold the map.”

The clouds were so low they blended into the
trees around the house and Anna tipped her head to the sky, feeling
a few gentle snowflakes hit her face. They walked across the
driveway, the first to leave tracks in the new snow.

“You’re sure you can handle this?” David
said, eyeing the van. It faced the house so Anna would have to back
it out.

“Christopher’s waiting,” Anna said. “It’s
not like I have a choice.”

“If you say so,” David said.

Their aunt had asked Anna to pick up her
cousin at a friend’s house since she had a late meeting and
wouldn’t make it. Ignoring David’s skeptical expression, Anna
tugged open the door, threw her purse on the floor between the
seats, and got in the driver’s side. David plopped himself beside
her with a mischievous grin.

“And don’t you dare say anything!” She
wagged her finger in his face before he could open his mouth. He
was three years younger than she, having just turned fourteen in
November, unbearably pompous at times, and good at everything.
Except for his handwriting, which was atrocious. Sometimes a girl
had to hold onto the small things.

“Which way?” Anna said once they reached the
main road. The windshield wipers flicked away the new snow, barely
keeping up. Anna peered through the white for oncoming cars and
waited for David to say something.

David studied the map, disconcertingly
turning it this way and that, and then finally settled back in his
seat with it upside down. “Uh ... right.”

Anna took a right, and then a left, and
within three minutes they were thoroughly lost. “This is so unlike
you.”

“I’m trying! But look at this—” He held out
the map.

Anna glanced at it, but one of the reasons
she’d accepted his offer to come with her was because maps confused
her under the best of circumstances.

“The roads wander at random and they all
look the same,” he said. “Half of them don’t even have signs.”

Anna had to agree. Identical leafless trees
and rugged terrain faced them at every turn. She drove up one hill
and down another, winding back and forth around rocky outcroppings
and spectacular, yet similar, mansions. As the minutes ticked by,
Anna clenched the wheel more tightly. She and David sat unspeaking
in their heated, all-wheel drive cocoon, while the snow fell harder
and the sky outside the windows darkened with the waning of the
day. Then, just as they crested a small rise and were taking a
downhill curve to the left, David hissed and reached for the
handhold above his door.

“What?” Anna took a quick look at David. His
mouth was open but no sound came out, and he pointed straight
ahead.

Anna returned her gaze to the windscreen.
Ten feet in front of them, a wall of snow blocked the road, like a
massive, opaque picture window. She had no time to respond, think,
or press the brake before they hit it.

Whuf!

They powered through the wall and, for a
long three seconds, a vast black space surrounded them. Then they
burst through to the other side to find themselves bouncing down a
snow-covered hill, much like the one they’d been driving on but
with grass beneath their wheels instead of asphalt. During the
first few seconds as Anna fought to bring the van under control,
they rumbled into a clearing situated halfway down the hill. She
gaped through the windshield at the three men on horseback, who’d
appeared out of nowhere. They stared back at her, frozen as if in a
photograph, oblivious now to a fourth man, who’d fallen to the
ground.

All four men held swords.

“Anna!” David finally found his voice.

Anna stood on the brakes but couldn’t get
any traction in the snow. All three horses reared, catapulting
their riders out of their saddles. Anna careened into two of the
men who fell under the wheels with a sickening crunching thud.
Still unable to stop the van, she plowed right over them and the
snow-covered grass into the underside of a rearing horse.

By then, the van was starting to slide
sideways, and its nose slewed under the horse’s front hooves, which
were high in the air, and hit its midsection full on. The
windshield shattered from the impact of the hooves, the horse fell
backwards, pinning its rider beneath it, and the airbags exploded.
By then, the van’s momentum had spun it completely around, carried
it across the clearing to the edge, and over it.

The van slid another twenty feet down the
hill before it connected with a tree at the bottom of the slope.
Breathless, chained by the seatbelt, Anna sat stunned. David
fumbled with the door handle.

“Come on.” He shoved at her shoulder. When
she didn’t move, he grasped her chin and turned her head to look at
him. “The gas tank could explode.”

Her heart catching in her throat, Anna
wrenched the door open and tumbled into the snow. She and David ran
toward a small stand of trees thirty feet to their left and stopped
there, breathing hard. The van remained as they’d left it, sad and
crumpled against the tree at the base of the hill. David had a line
of blood on his cheek. Anna put her hand to her forehead and it
came away with blood, marring her brown glove.

“What—” Anna swallowed hard and tried again.
“How did we go from lost to totaled in two point four seconds?” She
found a tissue in her pocket, wiped at the blood on her glove, and
began dabbing at her forehead.

David followed the van tracks with his eyes.
“Can you walk up the hill with me and see what’s up there?”

“Shouldn’t we call Mom first?” Their mother
was giving a talk at a medieval history conference in Philadelphia,
which is why she’d parked her children at her sister’s house in
Bryn Mawr in the first place.

“Let’s find out where we are before we call
her,” David said.

Anna was starting to shake, whether from
cold or shock it didn’t really matter. David saw it and took her
hand for perhaps the first time in ten years. He tugged her up the
hill to the clearing. They came to a stop at the top, unable to
take another step. Two dozen men lay dead on the ground. They
sprawled in every possible position. A man close to Anna was
missing an arm, and his blood stained the snow around him. Anna’s
stomach heaved, and she turned away, but there was no place to look
where a dead man didn’t lie.

But even as she looked away, her brain
registered that the men weren’t dressed normally. They wore mail
and helmets and many still had swords in their hands. Then David
left her at a run, heading along the path the van had followed.
Anna watched him, trying not to see anyone else. He crouched next
to a body.

“Over here!” He waved an arm.

Anna followed David’s snowy footprints,
weaving among the dead men. Every one had been butchered. By the
time she came to a halt beside David, tears streamed down her
cheeks.

“My God, David.” She choked on the words.
“Where are we?” Heedless of the snow, Anna fell to her knees beside
the man David was helping to sit upright. She was still breathing
hard. She’d never been in a car accident before, much less one that
landed her in the middle of a clearing full of dead men.

“I don’t know.” David had gotten his arm
under the man’s shoulder and now braced his back. The man didn’t
appear to have any blood on him, although it was obvious from his
quiet moans that he was hurt.

The man grunted and put his hands to his
helmet, struggling to pull it from his head. Anna leaned forward,
helped him remove it, and then set it on the ground beside him. The
man looked old to have been in a battle. He had a dark head of
hair, with touches of white at his temples, but his mustache was
mostly grey and his face was lined. At the moment, it was also
streaked with sweat and dirt—and very pale.

“Diolch,” he said.

Anna blinked. That was
thank you
in
Welsh, which she knew because of her mother’s near-continual
efforts to teach her the language, although Anna had never thought
she’d actually need to know it
.
She met the man’s eyes. They
were deep blue but bloodshot from his exertions. To her surprise,
instead of finding them full of fear and pain, they held amusement.
Anna couldn’t credit it and decided she must be mistaken.

The man turned to David. “Beth yw'ch enw
chi?”
What is your name?

“Dafydd dw i,” David said.
My name is
David.
David gestured towards Anna and continued in Welsh.
“This is my sister, Anna.”