The Interlopers

The Gradwitz and Znaeym families are long-time enemies. Many years ago the families battled in the courthouse over rights to a strip of land. The Gradwitzes ultimately prevailed though the Znaeyms refused to recognize the court order. Consequently, generations of Znaeyms continued to trespass onto Gradwitz land, claiming they’ve been unjustly dispossessed. Ulrich Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym inherit this animosity and are born enemies.

The neighbor feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he detested and wished ill to, it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game
snatcher and raider of the disputed border forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the
personal ill will of the two men had not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another’s blood, as men each
prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this windscourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a lookout for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot from across the land boundary.