The Fourth Horseman by Sarah Woodbury Read Free Book Online

straightened, studying his
surroundings. The trees were fully leafed, and here in the shade
beside the river, the ground remained damp even when the sun was
out.
    “ Over here, Sir Gareth!”
Evan didn’t leave off Gareth’s title as he might have done had they
been alone.
    Gareth turned to Amaury. “He’s found
something.” Without waiting to see if Amaury would come with him,
Gareth crossed the clearing to where Evan and Gruffydd had entered
the woods. Thirty feet on, he reached the two men. Evan crouched
near some footprints on the bank, while Gruffydd hovered near a
cluster of reeds growing at the water’s edge.
    “ What have you found?”
Gareth said.
    “ Two sets of footprints.”
Evan pointed to the thick mud that bordered the brook.
    The print of a boot was sunk deep into the
soil, indicating that a man had come out of the water there. Then
Gruffydd showed Gareth several damaged reeds, as if something—or
someone—large and heavy had passed through them.
    The second pair of prints faced the brook,
indicating that the man coming out of the water had been greeted by
a second man, who’d perhaps grasped his arm to help him from the
brook. Following Evan’s pointing finger, Gareth traced the path of
the departing sets of footprints as they headed back to the
clearing. They followed a different path through the undergrowth
than the one Gareth had just taken.
    “ We’ve got more, Sir
Gareth,” Gruffydd said. “Look at this.”
    Amaury had followed Gareth from the
clearing, and now he peered over Gareth’s shoulder as they looked
at the spot on the ground that Gruffydd indicated. “I would say
that’s blood.” Amaury waggled a finger at the dark patches
speckling the leaves of several plants beside the trail.
    “ Indeed. Someone is
wounded. If it’s Alard, it indicates that David may have fought
back.” Gareth turned his head to look at the riverbank. “If I read
the signs right, Alard left the brook here. A man greeted
him—”
    Gareth broke off his sentence without
finishing it and ran back to the clearing. John lay as they’d left
him, with a lone guard standing over the body. Gareth crouched and
ran a finger along the bottom of John’s boot. His finger didn’t
come away clean, but it wasn’t coated in mud either.
    Just to be sure, he tugged off John’s boot
and brought it back to the riverside. Crouching, he placed it in
the first print Evan had found, the one belonging to the man who’d
gone for a swim. Unsurprisingly, his boot didn’t fit the print.
    Then Gareth placed the boot into the second
print, fully expecting it to fit, only to find that John’s boot was
two fingers’ width larger.
    Amaury had watched Gareth’s antics with
interest and now leaned in. “Could the print have shrunk?”
    “ The sun doesn’t shine in
here. The mud should have preserved the boot’s shape perfectly. If
anything, the print should be wider than the wearer’s actual boot
and deceive us into thinking it’s John’s.” Gareth straightened and
surveyed the water’s edge. “So Alard met a third man, who was not
John; I don’t have enough information yet to say how John fits into
this story, other than to say that it is likely that either Alard,
or the one who met him, killed him.”
    The four men moved back to the clearing.
Unfortunately, the boot prints around John’s body had been smeared
and jumbled by all the activity, and it was impossible to link a
particular print to the man who had killed him. “My bet is on the
third man from the wall walk,” Amaury said.
    “ Provided the one who came
out of the water was actually Alard,” Gareth said.
    Amaury shot Gareth a puzzled look.
    “ I’m not rejecting my
earlier supposition that Alard killed John,” Gareth explained, “but
the additional boot prints and the overall complexity of this
investigation have given me renewed resolve not to assume
anything.”
    Amaury’s expression cleared. “Oh, I see. We
have prints and blood, but nothing