me?”

The woman spoke now, and her voice was even more vicious than Hezros’. “Someone has to pay. We sent peace envoys. You sent them back down the river in chunks. You.” She prodded his throat with the tip of a knife, “you will be our return message.”

“I ... I didn’t. We didn’t ...”

He couldn’t find the breath, the words. Was just so damned tired.

“It wasn’t us,” he finally managed to gasp. “Killsister. Killsister.”

Hezros stood, eyes hooded, as if trying to shield himself from the distasteful task ahead. “Kill him.” “Cannibals!” Erin screamed. “Cannibals on the battlefield. They killed your envoys. Our envoys. For years. I woke up, alive on the battlefield, under your horse. They hunted me. They caught me. I pulled three into the river with me. They were . . . eating me alive.”

The flow of words emptied him, drained him. He had nothing left, and Hezros’ face was unfathomable, unchanged.

They didn’t believe, wouldn’t believe. Then he had lost. Both the Crow and the Horseclans had lost.

Hezros opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the woman bent and roughly grabbed one of Erin’s arms, her eyes narrowing as she examined the wounds. Then she peered quizzically at a leg.

“Bite marks,” she said.

Hezros knelt down and studied Erin’s eyes. Erin didn’t have the strength to meet that gaze. Finally, Hezros stood.

“Kill—”

There was a shout from downriver, and the ground thundered with hooves. Two men rode up, one of them dragging behind him a broken, bleeding figure.

They reined in just before they reached Erin and swung down lightly. “We pulled this from the river,” the first man began, kicking the body over.

Hezros swore vilely. The squat, grayish figure was even paler by the light of day, a creature of shadow and darkness, a troglodyte, a creation of myth, of nightmare, of abnormal appetites.

A knife had been driven into its mouth, wedging the jaws open. The Horseclansman inspected the teeth: sharp, filed.

With a grunt, Hezros pulled the knife from between the dreadful teeth, then turned back to Erin.

Erin watched that blade grow huge, its razor tip prick the skin directly beneath his eye. This time, he found the will to meet Hezros’ gaze.

“Is this your knife, Rat?” Hezros asked finally.

“Yes.”

Hezros looked at his two lieutenants, and one of them shrugged. The woman touched Hezros’ shoulder. “Perhaps. I have heard stories. A fairy tale. About a monster who ate children. Its name was Killsister.”

“Just a tale,” Hezros said slowly.

“Just a story,” she agreed.

Hezros sat on the ground, heavily, as if nursing his wounded leg. “Damn,” he said, disgusted with himself. “I may hate myself for this.” Almost casually, his hand blurred, and the knife buried itself in the tree next to Erin’s head. “All right. Let’s hear your story. Beginning to end.” He grinned roughly. “One lie, and you’re dead. Erin.”

Erin had never wanted to talk so badly in his entire life, and he did, omitting nothing, not even his fear, not even soiling himself.

And as he talked, they nodded, and their eyes grew round. The pain grew more distant, and with a strange sort of body knowledge Erin knew that his leg would have to be severed to save his life.

Hezros swore vilely, looking north to Killsister, flexing his great, gnarled fists. There was blood and slaughter in his eyes. Erin saw a crusade, Horseclans and Crow together, sweeping through the mountains . . .

And he felt a kind of peace, was able to say goodbye to his shattered leg without sorrow.

Erin the Warrior was dead.

But there would certainly be room at the campfires for Erin the Peacemaker.

The Enemy of My Enemy

by Mercedes R. Lackey

MERCEDES LACKEY says that of her published work to date (four novels and a host of short stories), her friends were most impressed by the fact that she got to write a Horseclans story. Her latest novel is The Oathbound.

The fierce heat radiating from the forge was enough to deaden the senses all by itself, never mind the creaking and moaning of the bellows and the steady tap-tapping of Kevin’s youngest apprentice out in the yard working at his assigned horseshoe. The stoutly built stone shell was pure hell to work in from May to October; you could open windows and doors to the fullest, but heat soon built up to the point where thought ceased, mind went numb, and the world narrowed to the task at hand.

But Kevin Floyd was used to it, and he was alive enough to what was going on about him that he sensed that someone had entered his smithy, although he dared not interrupt his work to see who it was. This was a commissioned piece—and one that could cost him dearly if he did a less than perfect job on completing it.

Even under the best of circumstances the tempering of a swordblade was always a touchy bit of business. The threat of his overlord’s wrath—and the implied loss of his shop—did not make it less so.

So he dismissed the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck and went on with the work stolidly. For the moment he would ignore the visitor as he ignored the heat, the noise, and the stink of scorched leather and many long summers’ worth of sweat—horse sweat .nut man sweat—that permeated the forge.

Only when the blade was safely quenched and lying on the anvil for the next step did he turn to see who his visitor was.

He almost overlooked her entirely, she was so small, and was tucked up so invisibly in the shadowy corner where he kept oddments of harness and a pile of leather scraps. Dark, nearly black eyes peered up shyly at him from under a tangled mop of curling black hair as she perched atop his heap of leather bits, hugging her thin knees to her chest. Kevin didn’t recognize her.

That, since he knew every man, woman, and child in Northfork by name, was cause for a certain alarm.

He made one step toward her. She shrank back into the darkness of the corner, eyes going wide with fright. He sighed.

“Kid, I ain’t gonna hurt you—”

She looked terrified. Unfortunately, Kevin frequently had that effect on children, much as he liked them. He looked like a red-faced, hairy ogre, and his voice, rough and harsh from years of smoke and shouting over the forge noise, didn’t improve the impression he made. He tried again.

“Where you from, huh? Who’s your kin?”

She stared at him, mouth set. He couldn’t tell if it was from fear or stubbornness, but was beginning to suspect the latter. So he persisted, and when she made an abortive attempt to flee, he shot out an arm to bar her way. He continued to question her, more harshly now, but she just shook her head at him, frantically, and plastered herself against the wall. She was either too scared now to answer, or wouldn’t talk out of pure cussedness.

“Jack—” he finally shouted in exasperation, calling for his helper, who was around the corner outside the forge, manning the bellows. “Leave it for a minute and c’mere.”

A brawny adolescent sauntered in the door from the back, scratching at his mouse-colored hair. “What—” he began.

“Where’d this come from?” Kevin demanded. “She ain’t one of ours, an’ I misdoubt she came with the king.”

Jack snorted derision. “King, my left—”

Kevin shared his derision, but cautioned, “When he’s here, you call him what he wants. No matter he’s king of only about as far as he can see, he’s paid for meres enough to pound you inta the ground like a tent peg if you make him mad. Or there’s worse he could do. What the hell good is my journeyman gonna be with only one hand?”

Jack twisted his face in a grimace of distaste. He looked about as intelligent as a brick wall, but his sleepy blue eyes hid the fact that he missed very little. HRH King Robert the Third of Trihtown had not impressed him. “Shit. Ah hell; king, then. Naw, she ain’t with his bunch. I reckon that youngun came with them trader jippos this mornin’. She’s got that look.” “What jippos?” Kevin demanded. “Nobody told me about no jippos—”