Daren snorted, and wiped his own face with a rag no cleaner or fancier than Kero’s. “Not too damned likely. If we don’t eliminate her now, it’ll prove that her god really is on her side, and we’ll be fighting religious fanatics all over Rethwellan. This kind of ‘holy war’ is like gangrene—if you don’t get rid of it, it poisons the whole body. If we can’t burn it out, it’ll kill us all.”

The young aide gave Kero a sideways glance, as if asking her to confirm what Daren had said. She’d already discovered that she had a formidable reputation among Daren’s highborn young fire-eaters; she was using that reputation to reinforce his authority. There could only be one Commander of all the forces, just as there could only be one Captain of a Company.

“You’re dead right about that, my lord,” she said, answering the boy’s glance without speaking to him directly. “I can’t think of anything worse than fighting a religious fanatic, especially one that’s sure he’s going to some kind of paradise if he dies for his god. That kind’ll charge your lines, run right up your blade, and kill himself in order to take your head off.”

She peered through the sun, the heat-haze, and the dust, and cursed again under her breath, resolutely shaking off the weariness that was the legacy of her sleepless night. It was pretty obvious that both armies had stalemated each other. Her people were out of it, for now; they’d done what they could early this morning, and now they were behind the lines, taking what rest they could, and awaiting further orders. And with only a handful of dead and twice that wounded. New recruits, mostly, and no one I really knew well. Gods pass their souls.

For once, she wasn’t having to prove herself and her Company to anyone. Daren had made her pretty well autonomous; he trusted her judgment and her battle sense. He knew she had twice the actual combat experience he or any of his commanders had. He knew that if she saw an opening where the Skybolts could do some good, she’d send them. That was more trust than Kero had gotten from any other Commander, and she wondered if he treated all mercenary Captains like that, or only her, because he knew her.

Right now, the action was all afoot, and hand-to-hand, and there was no place for a mounted force to go—except for the heavy cavalry, who kept trying to plow through the enemy lines without getting trapped behind them.

A glitter of sun-reflection caught her eye and she grimaced at the shrine of Vkandis anchoring the left flank. The damn thing is the rallying point for the entire line, she thought angrily. Every time those idiots haul it forward a couple of paces, the whole left flank follows it.