Monday following Palm Sunday, 1198

"For Christ's love, leave us with our lives!" the man pleaded. "Do you not have everything else?"

Michi hesitated, his silvery great sword held high. He looked past the man, bruised and dirty, who had just a moment before been his attacker. A woman, her face bruised and bloody, crouched in the bracken beyond. Further in, hidden among the undergrowth, stood two dirty mules; on one a passenger hunched insensate, tied to the beast to keep him on its back.

The preacher pushed past him, clutching the hem of his homespun robe. "They think us more of the robber-baron's troupe," he said, dropping to his knees to examine the woman's wounds. "Clearly ambush is not their trade." Michi lowered his sword, but Stephan was more cautious with his, eying the trees about before lowering it as well. For a moment there was no sound but the dripping of snowmelt from the trees about them.

The famed robber-baron of the Ardennes had given the strangers--a wine merchant and his company, bound from Norman Blois to Liege--good reason for wariness, though their attempted ambush (they feared they were being set upon again) had been ill-conceived. "They demanded a fifth-part of our goods," explained the merchant, a Brendan of Ulm. "I had brought an armed man, and thought we could resist. There were five of them, as brutal as mad Saracens. Give them what they ask, when you meet them!"

Gaspard, the ostensible leader of the group from Triamore, was indeed prepared to do so. They had a quantity of coin among their own mules, just to placate the robbers. "Do not waste yourselves in contest with the robber-baron," Daria, the princeps of their covenant, had instructed the magus. "The robbers will not recognize the value of your cargo; the taking of this coin will satisfy them. And attempt no deception, even by magic, for you will have to return through the forest and cannot risk the robbers' ire on the way back--when the value of your cargo will be more plain!"

And so the company had set off from Triamore: Two days southeast, first along the Meuse and then into Luxembourg into increasingly wooded lands. Then a turn south on the third day, into the forest, under the thick branches of primordial pines along a rocky and rugged path that bruised their feet and lathered their mules. It was in that late morning that they fell into Brendan's poor ambush.

They left the merchant and his battered companions with some provision and a few coins from Madeleine's purse. A few hours later they found more evidence of the robber-baron's work: a flapping of heavy wings and an angry chorus of caws met them on approach to a clearing. From the branches above hung body cages--a dozen at least, their grizzled occupants lounging within, shreds of skin and sinew black over dirty bones. One was more freshly occupied, and it was this that the ravens made their prize. A body no more than a day old: clearly Brendan of Ulm's armsman.

But the robbers made no appearance, and the band continued on. Darkness came, but the travelers were eager to leave the forest behind them before setting to camp, so Michi and Bruder Cornelius led them stumbling on through the forest's blackness. At last they emerged into pasture, with the hedges of a village field a mile or so beyond. With the sky over their heads, they hobbled the mules and horses and set camp.

It was during Michi's watch that the wolves began to prowl.