Exiled as Useless, I Healed the Demon General Who Fell at My Feet novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Greywater

The Dawnblade came over the ridge at sunrise, and every demon on the Greywater bank flinched.

Kanae felt it too.

It was a thin white-gold light on the far side of the ford.

She stood behind the shield wall with her hood pulled low and Ishkra's hand clamped on her elbow.

"Stay behind the spears," Ishkra said. "If the General sees you in the front line, he'll lose his mind and the Legion will lose the battle."

"I won't move."

"You say that now."

On the opposite bank the Hero's party formed up.

Raizen was in front, in silver armor, with the sword raised above his head so the whole river could see it.

Himari stood behind him with her staff.

The knight with the grey beard took the left flank, and the archer climbed onto a rock.

Kanae looked for any sign that they felt the loss of a bookkeeper.

There was none.

They looked exactly the way they had looked for fourteen months.

The Legion's horns bellowed.

Vorhaan walked into the middle of the ford with his sword on his shoulder and the water coming up to his knees.

He was bare-headed, with the Brand a small black handprint over his heart, and he did not hurry.

"Raizen Ootori," he called across the water. "You cut me down two days ago. Come and finish it."

Raizen laughed.

He actually laughed, bright and cocky, and ran into the river with the Dawnblade blazing.

Kanae had seen him fight a hundred times, and she had never looked at it properly.

She'd been busy.

Now she watched the whole thing as an outsider, and she saw the part she had missed.

He was good, but he was reckless.

He took hits that should have laid him out, and he laughed them off.

At the Cinder Marsh, a month ago, a troll had put a club through his ribs, and he had slept it off in a tent with her hand on his back.

By morning he had walked out clean.

She hadn't wondered about that.

Nobody had.

The Legion hit the ford.

Spears and swords and the roar of four hundred voices came together in a crash, and the water churned red and brown.

Vorhaan held the center against the Dawnblade, and sparks flew where their blades met.

Raizen pushed him back a step.

Then a demon spearman, small and quick, slipped under the Hero's guard and drove the point through his thigh.

Raizen yelled.

He went down on one knee in the river, and a fan of bright blood spread out in the water around him.

"Radiance!" he shouted. "Himari!"

Himari's staff flared with a beautiful, theatrical white light, and it poured over him.

His thigh kept bleeding.

Kanae saw his face change.

She'd seen the Hero angry, and bored, and smug.

She had never seen him afraid.

He looked down at his own blood.

"It's not closing," he said, high and thin. "Himari, it isn't closing!"

"I'm casting it!"

"Cast it harder!"

Behind them, the knight let out a bellow and charged a demon axeman.

He took the axe in the chest.

He went down all at once, a big grey-bearded man, and he did not get up.

The archer screamed his name.

Kanae put her hand over her mouth.

He had been a quiet man.

He had never once met her eyes, but he had also never once taken the biggest portion at dinner.

"Don't look," Ishkra said.

Kanae looked.

The party broke.

Raizen was dragged out of the water by Himari and the archer, bleeding, and they fell back to the far bank with the Dawnblade trailing in the shallows like a dying lantern.

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