"What will you prevent?"
"The artifice, the treachery, the shame!"
"How can you do it? In the fight with Jurand, you lost your retinue and wagons. You are obliged to live on the generosity of the Order, and you will die from hunger if we do not throw you a piece of bread; and then, you are alone, we are four--how could you prevent us?"
"How can I prevent you?" repeated de Fourcy. "I can return to the mansion and warn the prince; I can divulge your plans to the whole world."
Here the brothers of the Order looked at one another, and their faces changed in the twinkling of an eye. Hugo von Danveld, especially, looked questioningly into Zygfried von Löve's eyes; then he turned to Sir de Fourcy: "Your ancestors," said he, "used to serve in the Order, and you wished to join it also; but we do not receive traitors."
"And I do not wish to serve with traitors."
"Ej! you shall not fulfill your threat. The Order knows how to punish not only the monks----"
Sir de Fourcy being excited by these words, drew his sword, and seized the blade with his left hand; his right hand he put on the hilt and said: "On this hilt which is in the form of the cross, on St. Denis, my patron's head, and on my knightly honor, I swear that I will warn the Mazowiecki prince and the grand master."
Hugo von Danveld again looked inquiringly at Zygfried von Löve, who closed his eyelids, as if consenting to something.
Then Danveld said in a strangely muffled and changed voice: "St. Denis could carry his head after he was beheaded, but when yours once falls down----"
"Are you threatening me?" interrupted de Fourcy.
"No, but I kill!" answered Danveld. And he thrust his knife into de Fourcy's side with such strength, that the blade disappeared up to the hilt. De Fourcy screamed dreadfully; for a while he tried to seize his sword which he held in his left hand, with his right, but he dropped it; at the same time, the other three brothers began to pierce him mercilessly with their knives, in the neck, in the back, and in the stomach, until he fell from his horse.
Then there was silence. De Fourcy bleeding dreadfully from several wounds, quivered on the snow. From beneath the leaden sky, there came only the cawing of the crows, which were flying from the silent wilderness, toward human habitations.