Chapter 165: Misrable loss

Leon did not step back. He did not even blink. He only lifted his left hand, and the Aegis opened in front of him.

The beam struck the face of the woman on the shield, and it stopped there.

For a moment, the whole yard was lit as if a second sun lay on its side. The stone wall behind Leon turned white.

The shield trembled, and the light in its eyes grew and grew, until it swelled past anything the missiles had given it.

The shield flashed, and the beam went home.

It struck Batnac square in the open chest. There was a deafening crack, and a ring of white fire rolled outward from the point of impact and slammed into the stone wall, and half of it fell away in a rain of broken blocks.

The giant was flung across the yard like a doll. He hit the ground and bounced and skidded, and he came to a stop on his back with his legs sprawled and his chest plates blown clean off.

Where they had been, the blue light of his core flickered feebly in a nest of twisted wires.

"Is that everything?" Leon asked again, very quietly.

"Everything," Batnac whispered.

He tried to push himself up. He had no arms to push with, so he rolled onto his side and kicked at the ground with the legs he had left.

The plates on his thighs peeled off like old paint. His left knee gave out first, and then his right, and he dropped onto his belly with a clatter that sent a puff of ash into the air.

A thin voice crackled from somewhere deep inside his chest. "Master, structural integrity is at nine percent and falling."

"Be quiet."

"Master, the nerve link between your spine and the frame is unstable."

"I said be quiet!"

"Yes, master. I am sorry, master. I have to say it."

He screamed through his teeth and fired the one thruster that still worked.

It coughed out a ragged tongue of flame, and the whole body lurched and spun in a lopsided circle in the dirt, like a beetle with a broken leg.

The scorched grass hissed under the heat. A few of the loose plates flew off and rattled across the yard.

Leon did not move. He stood with his hands loose at his sides and let the giant finish.

It took a while. When the thruster finally sputtered out, Batnac lay on his back with his face turned to the sky.

His chest rose and fell in short, ugly gasps. The cracks across his torso had grown into deep black seams, and the blue light behind his ribs flickered more weakly with each breath.

Far across the city, a siren began to wail.

It was a high, thin sound, and it rose and fell like a bird crying in a storm. A second siren joined it from the north, and then a third from somewhere near the river.

"Hear that?" Batnac said hoarsely.

"I hear it."

"The Association." A crooked, bloody grin stretched across his face. "I flew through their air corridor, you stupid boy. Every alarm in the capital went off the moment I crossed the line. They have been sending teams since before I landed."

"How long?"

"I don’t know. Five minutes. Ten." He laughed, and it turned into a cough.

"It does not matter. Even if you kill me, they will find you. You are the most wanted man in the western continent, and you have just torn up a street in front of three hundred witnesses. Nowhere in Berx will be safe for you."

’He is right about that,’ Medusa said.

’I know.’

’That siren is getting louder.’

’I know.’

Leon crouched down beside the giant’s head. The wind lifted a few strands of burned black hair from the pale forehead, and Batnac’s eyes slid over to meet his.

They were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and in the harsh light they looked much older than the rest of him.

"Go on," Batnac said.

"Go on and what?"

"Finish it."

Leon did not say anything.

"I mean it. I have lost." His voice cracked. "I came here to make you pay for what you did, and I could not even hurt you."

"I couldn’t scratch you. I could not even see you. So finish it, and let them put my name on a wall beside the others who lost to you. I will not beg."

"Nobody asked you to."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"I’m thinking," Leon said.

The giant stared at him. For a moment, the anger in his face slipped, and something raw and tired showed underneath it.

"Do you know what he said to me?" Batnac said, much more quietly. "At the summit. The thing I told you, about how he called me dangerous. Do you know why that mattered?"

"No."

"Because nobody had ever looked at me like I was worth being afraid of." His eyes shone wetly.

"Everyone else looked at me as if I were a clever boy who played with toys. But he stood across the table and looked me in the eye and saw a threat."

"That was the first time in my life that anyone had taken me seriously. Do you understand what that is worth to a man like me?"

Leon was silent for a long moment.

He understood more than he wanted to. A cold, quiet weight settled in his chest, and he kept his face still, because he did not know what his face would do if he let it move.

The siren grew louder. Another one joined it, much closer now, and somewhere in the distance there was the heavy thudding of transport engines.

Behind the broken wall at the edge of the yard, a head popped up and quickly vanished. A pair of small hands gripped the edge of the stones.

The neighbors had crept closer, one by one, and now a dozen of them were crouched along the ruined wall, watching in silence.

Iris was among them. She stood near the back with her arms wrapped around herself, and she was looking at him, not at the giant.