The black Lieutenant gave the little animal his reward, and passed the message cylinder from its collar to Kero. She opened it, and scanned the short scrawl with a sinking heart. Shallan had seen something important, and had dutifully reported it. And Daren would most certainly see the way to break the deadlock that Shallan’s observation opened up. She knew how he thought, and it was the only logical course of action—only now it was no longer counters on a sand-table they put at risk, it was her men’s and women’s lives. But something had to be done, or they’d risk more Karsite intervention before they had neutralized the Prophet.

Even it meant her people would die.

And if by some chance he doesn’t see it, I’ll have to point it out to him. Gods have mercy...

Her throat closed. She passed him the note without comment; his brows creased as he puzzled out Shallan’s crabbed and half-literate printing. Then he looked up into her eyes.

“She says there’s a way to get to the shrine, coming up the bed of the stream.”

Kero nodded, and cleared her throat discreetly. They know what they’re getting paid to do. “But if you sent foot, they’d see you coming in time and reinforce the lines there.”

“But if I sent horse-archers with fire-arrows ... they’d move too quickly for the Prophet’s commanders to see what we were up to and maneuver foot into place. And if the shrine goes, the whole army will panic.”

Kero closed her eyes for a moment to think. There might yet be a way to spare her people. “We’ve tried this before,” she reminded him. “Getting the shrine was one of the first things we thought of, and we couldn’t even touch it.”

“But not using the horse-archers,” he retorted. “We didn’t have a clear shot at it with the archers before; we tried for it using magic. It’s shielded against magic, but I’d be willing to bet it isn’t shielded against plain old fire-arrows. It wasn’t shielded against that ballista shot that took off a corner of the roof. If it can be hit, it can be burned.”

Dear gods, there’s no hope for it. Either they go in, impossible odds and all, or we lose. Her stomach knotted, and her throat ached with sorrow for the slaughter to come. Bad enough to send her people into an ordinary battle, where the odds were in their favor because of their strike-and-run tactics. But this—

She swallowed, stared off into the distance, and tried to think of them as markers on a table. Running the tactic straight-she’d lose about half of those that went in.

But she had the only force that could get in, get the job done, and get out.

It’s a suicide mission! half of her cried in agony.