Chapter Three

Hans removed his hand from Gisela’s bouncing corpse—confident Otto had tied the body around the horse’s frame enough so that it wouldn’t slide off. He didn’t especially enjoy the prospect of mingling with peasants, but felt compassion, knowing he’d soon devastate a family without touching his sword.

The girl was pretty, he thought. There’s no way she didn’t suffer.

Hans had seen his share of cruelty doled out to enemies of the lord to whom he’d pledged himself. He’d heard about ordinances dictating that anyone caught stripping bark off a tree would have his belly slit. A length of intestine was yanked out and nailed to the trunk, and then the unfortunate soul was made to circle the tree so long as any part of his gut was left in his body.

A twisted dance around the maypole, Hans thought. And that was just for stripping bark. What’s the big deal about stripping bark? Just chop off my head and be done with it.

Soon the road would cease its decline and open toward a cobblestone-lined village a distance from the mountain’s base. He estimated it to be three o’clock, time enough to dispose of the body and return to the castle before nightfall. Danger grew whenever one lost sight of the castle.

Instinct prodded him to unsling his crossbow from his back and stop his horse in the middle of the road. He heard and saw no movement, but he knew someone was watching.

“I am one of the baron’s knights.” He kept the crossbow at a downward angle, ready to raise and aim it. “My lord knows my whereabouts and will be expecting my return. My disappearance will mean my fellow knights will come looking for me, and if you are from the village and they learn this, it will not bode well for you or your family.”

Hans waited for a reply. Just silence, the kind that stoked uneasiness.

“I seek nothing more than to return this murdered girl to her family. Walborg’s the name. I shall reward you should you assist in me in finding the parents.”

“Leave the girl.”

Hans aimed the bow to where the deep voice originated. He saw nothing but clustered fir trees, enough to shield a body.

“Unless you are a relative and can prove it, I will not.” Hans pivoted back and forth, listening for movement. “Show yourself.”

“I only want the girl. She means nothing to you. Leave her and ride back to your lord.” The rough voice seemed angered by having to converse.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that. I have my orders.”

“Then I will take the girl and will leave you dead.”

Hans knew exactly what false bravado sounded like—this sounded nothing like it. Although his face expressed confidence and resolve, he couldn’t help but think that whoever addressed him from within the woods would stay true to his word.

“Threatening a knight is punishable by death. And when I identify your relatives in the village, they’ll suffer too.”

Hans didn’t expect amused laughter, or the response that chilled him: “Raze the village for all I care. Kill everyone in it. Give me the girl. Now.”

Hans heard a few heavy clinks of a chain, sounds that made his horse fidget. “Easy, Hrolf, easy,” he whispered into Hrolf’s ear to steady him, and then to the forest, “If you were serious and a competent shot, you’d have arrowed me by now. You’re bluffing.”

“I don’t use bows or arrows. Nor swords. Against you, all I need are my bare hands. And hooves.”

“What?” Hans said, then shuddered when the spot in the trees where he’d aimed his bow roared at him. Hrolf reared, sending Hans, still holding his crossbow, tumbling over Gisela’s body and landing butt-first on the ground. Hrolf bounded for the village but had gotten not twenty feet when a large chain flew from behind tree trunks and wrapped around the horse’s neck. The wielder yanked back the chain, and the sound of the horse’s neck snapping echoed through the branches. Hrolf collapsed on his side, pinning Gisela’s lower body to the ground.

The wielder dropped the chain. Hans saw an immense figure striding behind the trees, making its way toward the shaken knight.

Hans aimed his bow, timed the thing’s movements and fired an arrow the moment the figure strode past an oak tree. The arrow sizzled and hit its target square.

Hans didn’t attempt to reload. He dropped the weapon next to him and remained seated, marveling at what appeared from the woods with an arrow’s fletchings and nock jutting from a brown, hairy rib cage.

“Ouch,” the creature mocked.

Now Hans knew what it meant by hooves, for it stood on two of them, the top of its head hovering eight feet above ground. The two twisted horns atop its skull made it ten feet.

The creature plucked the arrow from its side and almost flicked it away like a used toothpick, but refrained at the last second.

“I know you,” Hans said, awestruck by the thing his parents had warned him about when he was a child who had scoffed at the idea of its existence. “But it’s January. It’s over. And I’m no longer a boy.”

The creature stood in front of Hans, resting its clawed hands on its hips, looking at the knight the way a parent might a misbehaving child.

“Correct. You’re now an unthinking yes-man. You should’ve stayed a boy. I never came for you then—you must’ve done something right. But that was long ago. Today you turn a blind eye to despicable acts perpetrated by those who employ you.”

“Take the girl, she’s yours.” Hans dove back to reality.

“You don’t think I’m aware of that? It’s what I’m planning on doing to you that’s keeping me here.”

The thing brought the arrow up to its eye level, examining it, and then looked down to the knight and grinned to reveal all of its fangs. It then held up its pointer finger, making certain Hans could see its curved talon. “I have an idea. Let’s you and I go for a walk.”

The creature’s hand, when placed over Hans’s screaming mouth, concealed almost all of the slowly dying knight’s head, muffling his anguish. It finished with Hans and loped to the horse and used the same bloodstained fingernail to slice the rope binding Gisela. It lifted the horse by the tail and gingerly picked up Gisela, seeing what he’d expected but needing to be sure.

“And they say I am heartless. You were lucky you were with child a month ago.” It held Gisela by her shoulder, her body dangling from its grasp like a used handkerchief. “The master frowns upon harming pregnant women.”

It looked at Gisela’s belly. “I must show you to the master. He needs to see the frau’s handiwork. The master is not without heart either. I am certain he shall have me return you to your family.”

It reached over its head, still holding Gisela, and lowered her body into a tall and fat barrel it had strapped to its back.

It retrieved the chain from around Hrolf’s neck and lowered the links into the barrel next to the girl.

It left the horse to be picked on by a mother bear and her cub, both of which would be scared away by knights who would later find Hans, slouched face-first against a tree, his intestines wound several times around the trunk, the gut’s end stuck in place by a crossbow arrow.