A friendship of blood and wine is not to be trusted.
Especially if the two "friends" were enemies since birth and their only purpose for seeking had been sought to slay each other.......

A mishap of a raging storm had brought these two together, and they'd made vows to save the other if they were rescued.

A friendship of blood and wine....

“Who are they?” Georg crowed, certain they could not be his own men, whom he had left without a word of where he had gone to.

Ulrich peered cautiously through the great crisscross of tree limbs and foliage, “I am not sure. Truly I’m not, I do not recognize any of the figures before us, they do not even resemble my men in the slightest. Am I imagining….? My goodness, no! It cannot be!” Sprawled just ahead of them in ungodly positions were, in fact, Ulrich’s men, just not as “whole” as he had left them. He struggled from underneath the tree, staring at Georg with a new emotion in his eyes far beyond that of companionship, just fear. His men lay dead, shot at by what looked like the rifles of a thousand men and ripped at and thrown about as if they were nothing more than rag dolls.

“Monster! You fiend, murderer, liar!” Ulrich cursed on as he struggled uselessly.

Georg stared, wide-eyed and innocent, “Oh? So quick to judge me, Ulrich, my friend? How do you come to think all this is my doing?”

He paused, panting, nearly giving in to the pain and lack of slumber, “It isn’t?”

Georg laughed heartily, a sound ever impressionable, loud, and wholly obnoxious, “But of course ‘tis, you fool!” He easily clambered upwards from underneath the tree limb and mopped up the fake blood (he had rolled at the split second the tree fell to avoid the worst of the impact, Ulrich got the best of it, as evident by the suffering he was in), “All of this was staged, I simply played you like one of my own personal fools. Like I’d ever accept your filthy friendship, pathetic, what are you? A child?” He snatched up Ulrich’s wine flask and took a long swig, his cheeks were already warm in his dark triumph and escalation, the alcohol simply added to it all, “My men are within earshot to rid the tree limb of you at my beck and call.” He snickered and turned away, stumbling a bit because of the watered wine, And then they will kill you, you naïve child.

His men came soon enough, they took him up in their arms and knocked him about. Poor Ulrich nearly went unconscious from the blinding pain. After they were through with their spitting and hollering, they passed around his wine flask for each man to take a good little sip in some mock Devil’s communion. Ulrich did not have a bit, even if he had been there longest without rations. They pushed him onto his knees, even that scream of anguish was soundless in the great storm, just like the murders of all his men as they were dragged slowly into the shadows and had their throats slit by bad men trained for just the thing. Georg held his own rifle in a sort of honorary first shot at the great Ulrich’s head, “Any last words, my good man?” They had finally emptied the flask and the drunken men had to shoot somebody to keep from shooting each other.

“Yes, actually, I have a few words indeed for a man like you that God would frown upon just for me uttering them.” He sneered at Georg‘s obvious disgust, limp hair falling over his bleeding face, “But now, only a few will suffice. It’s a great truth in life, one you will find out soon enough, even if I won’t tell them to you.”

And, indeed, he thought them all the while to busy himself instead of focusing on the rifle at his head that would fire at any moment,

The wine was poisoned.