Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/287

Rh Danveld looked again with an inquiring glance at Siegfried, and the latter closed his eyes, as if in sign that he agreed to something. Then Danveld spoke with a strangely changed and dull voice,—

"Saint Dionysius might have carried his severed head under his arm," said he, "but if yours once falls—"

"Are you threatening me?" interrupted De Fourcy.

"No, but I shall kill you!" answered Danveld.

And he plunged a knife into his side with such force that the blade was hidden to the handle. De Fourcy shrieked with a terrible voice; for a moment he tried to seize with his right hand the sword which before he had held in his left, but he dropped it to the ground; that same moment the other three brothers fell to stabbing him without mercy in the breast and the bowels, till he dropped from the horse.

Then came silence. De Fourcy, bleeding terribly from a number of wounds, quivered on the snow, and tore it with fingers twisted by convulsions. From beneath a leaden sky came only the croaking of crows as they flew from empty deserts to human habitations.

And then a hurried conversation began among the murderers.

"The attendants have seen nothing!" said Danveld, in a panting voice.

"Nothing. The attendants are in advance, they are out of sight," answered Siegfried.

"Listen: there will be occasion for a new complaint. We shall spread the report that Mazovian knights attacked us, and killed our comrade. We will make a noise,—until Malborg hears that the prince sets murderers on guests even. Do you hear? We must say that the prince not only was unwilling to listen to our complaints against Yurand, but that he gave command to kill the man who made the complaint."

De Fourcy meanwhile turned on his back during his last convulsion, and lay motionless with bloody foam on his lips, and terror in his eyes now opened widely. Brother Rotgier looked at him, and said,—

"Consider, pious brothers, how God punishes even the intention of treason."

"What we have done has been done for the good of the Order," said Gottfried. "Praise to him who did the deed—"

But he stopped, for in that instant from behind them, at the turn of the snowy road, appeared a horseman who raced