The Renegade Merchant (29 page)

“How did you end up here?” Gareth said.

That prompted a mocking laugh. “I posed as a
trader—as a possible source of women. Unfortunately, I must have
given myself away—” he broke off as sound of a door banging came
from the other side of the wall.

They all looked at each other, a little
wide-eyed, afraid that their captors were returning already.

“We have to get out of here,” Gwen said.

“You have a plan for doing that?” Gareth
said.

“I have a plan now that you’re awake.” Gwen
tipped her head in the direction of the wall behind her, in which a
door was set. The orientation of the room indicated that the door
led to the outside.

“One would presume that it’s locked,” Gareth
said.

“Yes, but the floor is dirt, isn’t it?” Gwen
said. “And if I’m not very much mistaken, the bottom panel is
rotting from contact with the damp earth.”

Gareth’s eyes narrowed, trying to see what
she was talking about, but the room was too dimly lit. He shifted
to rise to his feet, having momentarily forgotten about his wounds,
and nearly screamed from pain. He tasted bile and fought to control
both it and the pain.

“You were stabbed in the back and hit on the
head,” Gwen said, “but you were very lucky too. The man’s aim
wasn’t true. As it is, the knife split the links of your armor but
stopped on your shoulder blade. I bandaged both wounds before you
woke, but the shoulder wound is in an awkward place. If not for
Conall, I don’t think I could have wrestled your mail off you at
all.”

“How much blood did I lose?” Gareth
said.

Gwen closed her eyes for a heartbeat, which
he took to be a bad sign without her having to say anything more.
“Both wounds bled freely, but that’s good because it cleaned them
in a way I could not.”

As a last measure, while Gareth sat
patiently, Gwen took a length of cloth, ripped from the bottom of
her petticoat, and wrapped it around his body so that his upper arm
was affixed to his side. She tied it, so he couldn’t move his left
arm except below the elbow.

“Is this really necessary?” he said, looking
down at his arm.

“You move that arm, you open the wound, my
friend,” Conall said. “I’ve seen it before. Be thankful you can
still bend your arm at the elbow and use your left hand if you have
to.”

“You may have to,” Gwen said. “Can you
stand?”

Gareth put his right arm around Gwen’s
shoulder and allowed her to help him to his feet. His shoulder
screamed at him, and a staccato beat pounded behind his eyes. He
breathed evenly and deeply, trying to master the pain, but he knew
even as he struggled against it, that it was his master for
now.

With a low groan, Conall proved himself more
agile than Gareth, and rose to his feet all on his own. He teetered
back and forth for a moment, prompting Gwen to put out her free
hand to steady him, but then he straightened.

“What of these women?” All Gareth could
manage was to move one finger, but he used it to gesture to the
women in the room, who seemed to be taking little interest in what
they were doing.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” Gwen
said, “but whatever it is, it prevents them from being able to help
us.”

“At least they’re not a hindrance,” Gareth
said.

“They’ve taken a potion that derives from a
variety of hemp,” Conall said. “It isn’t the same plant as is grown
here that we use for rope or cloth but a pungent herb that traders
bring to Europe from the east. It dulls the senses when smoked or
eaten. Devil’s Weed, they call it.”

Gareth had never heard of it and wished he’d
remained ignorant.

“I want you both by the door,” Gwen said,
“ready to leave the moment I’ve dug underneath it.”

“Do you actually think either of us will be
able to crawl?” Gareth said.

“Do you want to live?” Conall said.

That shut Gareth up. He allowed Gwen to rest
him against the wall by the door. She handed him her knife, for
what purpose wasn’t immediately clear, since he wouldn’t be able to
defend himself in his current state. But he didn’t protest further
as she went to the nearest girl, removed her boot without asking,
and began to work with the heel at the dirt underneath the
door.

The girl to whom the shoe belonged watched
with uncurious eyes. Meanwhile, it was as if the weather knew that
they were trying to escape and was doing its best to help.
Raindrops and wind pounded at the wall at his back and shook the
whole building with its force. The noise was such that he could
hardly hear Gwen’s efforts, and he was sitting right next to her.
The water also soaked the ground below the door, making the soil
easy to move.

He watched Gwen work for a few moments and
then focused instead on the door opposite, through which their
captors would come if they came.

In short order, Gwen had created a gap six
inches deep into the soil under the door. She dropped the boot and
started working with both hands at the wooden panel above it.
Gareth gave her back the knife, and she began to pry out the nails
that held it.

“Gwen! Gwen!” A hoarse whisper and scuttling
sounds came from the other side of the door.

Gwen exchanged a wide-eyed look with Gareth
before bending to look through the hole she’d made. “Cedric?”

“Yes!” Cedric’s voice came clearly from the
other side of the door. “And Tom Weaver, Adeline’s father. We’ve
come to rescue you.”

Those were the most beautiful words Gareth
had ever heard—not that he hadn’t had faith in his wife. But if
they were going to get out of here alive and hold off their
abductors when they inevitably discovered that their captives were
escaping, five was better than three, especially when the two
newcomers were men and could actually stand.

The shriek of an iron nail separating from
wood came loudly—so loudly that Gareth feared one of their captors
would return—but no one did. That far away, the sound blended in
with the general cacophony of the rain and the creaking of the
water wheel, which seemed to have picked up its pace in the
storm.

A moment later, Cedric was ducking through
the doorway, followed by Tom.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Tom repeated
as he crouched by Gareth. “I didn’t know it would be like this. I
swear it.”

“Why are you sorry?” Gareth said. “You’re
saving our lives.”

Tom shook his head again as he helped Gareth
to his feet. “I knew it was wrong, but Martin said we could make so
much money, and I thought that if Adeline had more money, she would
marry Roger and stay.”

Gareth’s mind was stuck on
the name
Martin
,
but he nonetheless allowed the weaver to take nearly all of his
weight and practically carry him out of the mill while Gwen held
the door open for them.

Cedric helped Conall out but then turned
back for the women, who were making no move to escape. “What do we
do about them?”

“We’ll send John Fletcher back for them.”
Gwen returned the boot to the girl who owned it, but the girl made
no move to put it back on.

Meanwhile, Tom Weaver was still saying over
and over again, “I knew it wasn’t right.”

“What wasn’t right again?” Gareth said,
exasperated with the man’s inability to articulate what he meant,
and perhaps his own inability to understand through the fog in his
head.

Tom brushed his sodden hair back from his
face. “Taking these women. I went to Martin to say I wanted out,
that I didn’t trust Flann or Will. He tried to reassure me, but
then Roger came, and he overheard us talking. They fought.”

“Are you saying that Martin killed Roger
because Roger had found out he was involved in the slave trade?”
Gareth was shaking with pain and cold, which made him uncertain
that he’d heard correctly. “And you didn’t stop him?”

“I didn’t actually see the murder.” The big
man’s shoulders hunched. “At the shop, all they did was hit each
other. I tried to separate them, but Roger clubbed me with a fist
on my forehead, and I went down. Gwen saw the cut when she met me,
but I passed it off as a result of being clumsy. By the time I
could stand again, Roger was gone, and Martin was helping me to my
feet. I never saw Roger alive again.”

While Tom had been talking, they’d been
hugging the side of the mill as they followed the path around it,
forced to go single file by the flow of the mill race. Gareth was
so focused on what Tom was saying—and on staying upright—that he
didn’t notice the others pulling up short until he nearly ran into
Conall’s back.

Martin Carter was just dismounting in front
of the main door to the mill. He seemed as surprised to see them as
Gareth and the others were to see him. He gaped at them for a
moment, and then threw back his head and laughed, heedless of the
rain and the wind that buffeted them all. “I see I’m just in
time.”

From behind Gareth, Tom let out a squeaking
grunt that was unmistakably fear. “Martin.”

Now that the true villain was revealed,
Gareth found himself quite calm. He’d been beaten and stabbed at
the behest of this man, but Gareth still found himself able to
study this version of Martin Carter with an objective eye. Martin’s
brother, Roger, had been difficult—respected but unloved—and all
the while it was Martin who had been the true villain.

Gareth had unveiled the wrongdoings of
two-faced men before, but rarely had he encountered a man who could
maintain such a complete façade, behind which his true self
remained hidden. Gareth had a sudden pang of sadness for Jenny,
Martin’s wife, and he wondered how much she knew. She lived with
the man, but that wasn’t to say she knew him. It seemed she might
have lied for him, however, since according to Tom’s testimony, it
was Martin who’d killed Roger and then stashed the body in Conall’s
room, which he knew would be empty since he’d already imprisoned
Conall.

Martin hadn’t yet pulled the blade from the
sheath at his waist, but weapons suddenly appeared in the hands of
the men with him, and they stood as if they were prepared to use
them.

“I’m so sorry, Gareth,” Cedric said from
beside Conall. “We must not have been as secretive as we
hoped.”

Gareth was in no shape to fight, without
armor or sword, though Gwen had given him back her knife after
she’d used it to pry out the nails. Cedric pulled out his sword,
which he had a right to wear as a watchman, but Gareth didn’t know
how much he could count on the youth. He was nineteen,
inexperienced, and couldn’t fight off a dozen men all by
himself.

For his part, Tom dithered. Gareth supposed
he was very fortunate that the big man had found Cedric and chosen
to free them when he did. He’d acted when it mattered most. Just
because a man had the body of a fighter didn’t mean he had the
character of one.

When they’d arrived, only one torch had lit
the yard in front of the mill, but it had been joined by three
more—along with three carts, two enclosed by fabric. They were
parked in various stages of readiness, presumably for their
imminent departure. A cart path headed into the woods to the east,
the same one Gareth had planned to take to the brothel before he’d
been set upon from behind by Martin’s men.

Martin jerked his head towards the front
door of the mill. “Let those fools inside know that several of
their charges have escaped.” One of his men obeyed, loping to the
door and going through it. Curses came from inside the mill,
distinguishable even over the sound of the rain, which continued to
pour down.

“Martin has too many men,” Cedric said in an
undertone. “We are outnumbered.”

“I am sorry to say, I am nearly useless,”
Gareth said by way of a response, “but I will fight beside
you.”

“Martin Carter! Put up your blade!”

Martin spun around as John Fletcher and a
host of men surged into the clearing. Rather than simply running
their opponents through, however, they reined in, which wouldn’t
have been Gareth’s choice. John had surprised Martin, and Gareth
was more glad to see him than he could say, but Martin and his men
were prepared for a fight, and John would have been better off
attacking first and asking questions later. Of course, as a man of
the law, he might not have felt that he would be justified in doing
so.

As it was, Martin’s men had no such qualms
and reacted immediately—not by running, which would have been so
much easier, but by launching themselves at their foes. Running
away wouldn’t have solved anything for them. They had to leave no
trace of John and his men—or Gwen and Gareth—in order to survive
themselves.

Tom Weaver had no intention of letting
Gareth fight, and he dragged him towards the trees, despite
Gareth’s objections. While Conall and Gwen came with them, Cedric,
bold young man that he was, charged straight for Martin Carter.

Martin had swung around to face John,
naturally viewing him as the greater threat, but at Cedric’s roar
of rage, he turned back to meet Cedric’s blade. Their weapons
clashed, and Gareth strained through the dark and the rain—and
Tom’s protests—to see what was happening.

Then Evan appeared beside him. “Come with
me.”

Gareth gasped to see his friend.
“What—?”

“The prince is here, and he told me to get
you away before I return to help finish them off. If we don’t
hurry, Fletcher’s men will have won before I can do that.”

“I’m not leaving—”

“That is a direct order from Prince Hywel.”
Evan urged Gareth to mount Evan’s own horse, which he’d brought,
and boosted Gwen up behind him.

“What about—?”

“Go!” Evan slapped the horse’s rump, and the
creature leapt away through the trees. Conall and Tom ran behind
them, stumbling a bit in the dark, though Evan’s horse found his
way with no trouble through the brush.