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outside so as not to frighten the girls.
    â€œWhat? A helpless old woman makes a statement of fact and your reaction is to grab a blade?”
    Without thinking, the lord barreled his way forward, flipping over the table and breaking through the weak door. Wood splintered outward, spooking his horse tied to a tree. He freed his ride and charged through the woods to the main road, looking for his brother.
    â€œMake sure you find your coins, dearies,” the old woman called to the quivering girls inside the home. “Now the hunt begins.”
    The creature, crouching within a bramble patch—the last place the hunters, especially this prim and proper bunch, would dare tread—unfurled its parchment and glanced at a name that hadn’t been stricken from the list. One of the men straddled a horse in the middle of the road, waiting for the rest of the hunting party to return. The beast reached behind its back and slowly drew from its barrel a chain, gingerly pulling it so the links would slink over the barrel’s lip.
    The lord clearly heard it.
    That was part of the plan. Let the cretin hear a noise out of place within the woods. While technically not on the list—the creature knew not why—the marked man appeared long overdue for punishment.
    Typically the brothers were never far from a knight for protection, but both considered themselves skilled fighters and keen bowmen. The lord circled his horse around the road, scanning the trees and bushes.
    â€œOtto? Mathias? Are you there?”
    â€œYes, my lord.” Otto, followed by Victor and Mathias, galloped to meet him. “Your brother’s not far behind us. He was looking for you.”
    â€œAs I was him. We all seem to get separated so easily. And I see we’ve not had any luck.” The lord saw no kills tied to the knights’ horses.
    The brothers reunited, and the five men trotted the trail up toward the castle, resigned they’d find nothing that day. Victor held up his hand to halt the procession.
    â€œMy lords, up ahead, two bears, eating a—Good God , that’s Hans’s horse.”
    They lost all interest in hunting and charged the bears, chasing them into the forest. “Damn things should be hibernating.” Victor climbed off his horse and caught sight of Hans, gruesomely lashed to a tree by his own entrails.
    Without being ordered, Otto dismounted and cut the last gut link tethering Hans to the tree. The intestine trail sickeningly unraveled. Otto roped the dead knight to his horse for the ride home.
    â€œMy lords, we must leave here, now,” said Otto, who, like Victor, remounted his steed. Mathias had drawn his crossbow and stayed close to the baron’s sons, looking for any movement.
    â€œI checked his horse. The saddlebags weren’t touched. He still had his weapons,” Victor said. “Outright murder. This wasn’t a robbery.”
    Mathias swiveled on his horse and spotted something in the brambles.
    â€œWe’re being watched, my lords. Move.” A thick iron chain exploded from the brambles, smashing Mathias’s face, crushing his nose into his skull, penetrating brain, killing him. The chain snapped back into the woods just as Mathias hit the ground.
    The brothers drew their longbows and fired a succession of arrows from whence came the chain. Otto, fearless, jumped off his horse and unsheathed his broadsword, waited for the lords to stop firing and immediately hacked into the brambles.
    A man screamed from behind them. Otto and the lords turned and gasped when they saw Victor’s stomach gushing blood onto his panicked horse’s saddle. An old woman in black straddled the horse from behind Victor, holding one wrinkly hand over the knight’s forehead while removing a dagger from the man’s belly with the other. She lithely pushed herself off the horse and scurried into the forest. Victor fell and hit the ground while trying to push his innards