Deadly Wands (27 page)

When Genghis gave his brothers permission to
invade Siam, he never dreamed those drunks would conquer so much,
so fast, with so few troops. Not even they knew they had a tactical
genius in their midst. When Genghis backtracked from his promise,
they remained defiant. When Genghis led an air force to subdue
them, his brother’s grandson beat him like a spoiled brat. When
Genghis demanded obedience, his great-grand-nephew instead
proclaimed himself emperor of Siam. Even Mongols still laugh at
that, a khan who controls half the world having to address a rival
overseeing a small kingdom as “emperor.” Genghis had just lost his
first fleet against the Japanese and lacked the troops to force his
great-grand-nephew to obey. By the time he had the strength, the
Siamese Empire fielded a very formidable force.

On his deathbed, Genghis’ brother brokered a
truce. But what really kept the peace all these years is how much
Genghis respected the emperor, as a dueler, a general, and a
ruler.

Decades later, after Genghis suffered a
severe setback in India, the emperor surprised the Indians from
behind. Together, the Great Khan and the emperor rolled up the
subcontinent. Instead of calling him “emperor,” Genghis referred to
his rival as “Junior,” meaning he was like the son he never
had.

The other reason Genghis Khan did not subdue
the emperor of Siam is that he blocked the emperor of Indonesia
from expanding north. Although the Indonesian royal family married
many Mongols, they identified as Indonesian. So the Indo Empire
expanded south, conquering Australia. Genghis felt safe as long as
his two strongest rivals limited each other’s size.

So Billy now faced one of the greatest
fighters in the world, up there with Subodei and Genghis himself.
And something of a living legend.

What worried Billy wasn’t the emperor, but
his wand launchers. They had been acting up lately, after so much
usage, and needed to be replaced. One bad spring and he was a dead
man. Well, a dead boy.

The emperor’s hands hovered over the twin
wands in his belt. He drew, but looked shocked when wands magically
appeared in the Red Baron’s hands, shooting the largest, hottest,
and fastest fireballs he had ever seen -- quite beautiful,
actually, bright yellow with streaks of red dancing inside them.
The surprised veteran barely evaded them. Billy shot two very wide
bursts, which forced the emperor to flight. Billy couldn’t approach
his opponent because of the quads on the ramparts, so he needed to
lure his opponent towards him.

Billy dodged fireballs by backing up in the
air. He alternated between boot wands, which made him look like he
was climbing giant stairs backwards, and used his hand wands to
keep him vertical as he traded shots. A volley from the quads from
the palace threatened to scorch his path. They were fired too far
away to kill, but close enough to burn. Even a brief distraction
could prove fatal.

So Billy pretended the wand in his burnt boot
faltered. With a cry of shocked disbelief, Billy fell to the
ground, landing hard and tumbling out of control. Shrieking in
desperation, he scrambled to replace his left boot wand.

Seeing his chance, the emperor pounced -- by
leaving the protection of his troops. Since Billy’s hands pointed
away, the old man went for the kill. Billy avoided his next shot by
using a wand to push himself across the ground towards his
opponent.

But Billy fired a burst from his right boot
wand. The emperor turned in the air to protect his face, and thus
never saw the blade extend from Billy’s left boot wand into his
side. The boy would never forget the incredulous look on the old
man’s face as Billy tackled him in the air and flew away to the
astonishment of everyone watching.

The Baron tricked the Emperor!

Hundreds of quads chased them, so Billy flew
ever higher. The emperor had trouble breathing, but that made
transferring ownership of his wands that much easier. It’s
dangerous to transfer powerful wands while people are shooting at
you, but all Billy had to do was rise ever higher.

Once finished, Billy circled around and
dropped the emperor on his palace from very high altitude. Billy
followed in a controlled fall to record the dying man’s facial
expression. Despite the pain, the emperor clearly understood his
fate.

“You know what I like most about a fair
fight?” Billy screamed. “The better fighter always wins.”

It wasn’t even true. A sudden gust of wind, a
death stick catching on clothing, a boot wand “coughing” at the
worst possible moment could all kill a better fighter.

But he wanted that to be the last thing his
enemies heard before dying.

After two centuries tormenting the Siamese
and their neighbors, the emperor finally got what he deserved.
Billy knew the video would be popular locally, but he also wanted
the Khan to see it, so he did his primal scream just as a rooftop
spire halved the world’s most famous emperor in two. Billy recorded
the thousands of angry quads swarming him before flying straight up
to safety. Billy later learned that the emperor gave the wands to a
super quad named Jirko who married one of the Great Khan’s
daughters.

Billy tired them out literally all night.
After midnight, the most grateful non-Mongols that he spared in the
arena infiltrated the palace, a few at a time, wearing enemy
uniforms. They had spent the day ransacking rich Mongol
neighborhoods. They first cleared out the palace, slaying dozens of
sleeping quads, then ambushed the Mongols as they landed to rest.
At dawn, the survivors of his force arrived to clean the place
out.

After that, Billy never lacked for quads.
Removing the head of the government and military gave thousands of
natives in the air force an excuse to switch sides. He made a video
urging Siamese to kill every Mongol and everyone pro-Mongolian
under the nationalist slogan, “Siam for the Siamese.” And to take
their stuff. Billy emphasized how rich their oppressors were to
make being patriotic profitable.

After consolidating the city and installing a
new mayor, police force, and militia with natives, Billy led his
guys against the remaining military units, many of which simply
defected to the Indonesian Empire.

Billy knew they won when the kingdoms that
Siam long threatened started raiding on their own. Rebel groups
sprouted like weeds and anyone dressing Mongolian was shot on
sight.

It surprised Billy how quickly he
destabilized a mighty kingdom. He was just killing time. If he set
out to overthrow the Mongols ruling Siam, he’d have brought
marathoners. He didn’t because they’d have to cross half the Empire
to get there, then cross again to escape. He couldn’t risk losing
his irreplaceable troops. Still, having a few hundred quads he
trusted would have really helped.

At a summit of the powerful groups vying for
control, Billy bribed them into working together by transferring
tons of gold to the new democratic government. The biggest
warlords, criminal gangs, business leaders, and tribal leaders
would prosper if they helped organize free and fair elections. And
he warned them he’d return to fix things if they broke their
promises.

But perhaps their biggest motivation to work
together was the Indonesian threat. The Indos easily had the
strength to overwhelm them, Red Baron or not. Even the criminals
knew their new government needed broad popular support to
survive.

Billy expected Genghis to arrive with a
mighty armada to crush the rebels, but instead he led just one
thousand guys. Assuming this was the best battalion in the empire,
Billy wisely left before they landed.

CHAPTER 33

Billy figured he did something right because
Genghis chased him rather than topple the new Siamese government.
He stood there, at noon, in the largest dueling arena in Vietnam,
when a thousand dark shadow expertly fell on the stadium. Something
screamed for Billy to run, so he did, leaving his four opponents
bewildered. Rather than skyline himself, he zipped through the
city’s buildings as if his life depended on it. He didn’t stop
until nightfall, where he slept at a tiny fishing village.

Normally, he’d catch his own breakfast, but
his fingers kept twitching, so he overpaid for the first fish
caught that morning. He barely finished before he spotted a dot on
the horizon.

“Too big for a scout, too small for a hunting
party,” he told himself, sinking farther into the shade beneath the
trees to finish packing. Fortunately he brought a big fish in case
he needed to eat lunch in the air.

They say not even Mongols violate Indonesian
Air Space, so Billy decided to see if that was true. He could not
avoid being seen, so he flew south, to a land bridge called
Malaysia. He was halfway through lunch when he saw three Indonesian
battalions move to intercept Genghis. Having the world’s highest
ceiling gave him a great view of the Great Khan turning tail.

This was perhaps the only time that Genghis
Khan ever surprised him. Were the Indonesians that good? He heard
they conquered a million islands centuries ago, and since then
controlled a huge empty island called Australia. But, for some
reason, they never invaded north, and the Siamese Empire never
moved south.

Once Genghis disappeared over the horizon,
another Indonesian battalion shadowed him. Billy assumed the worst
and maximized speed. Other units rose to wait until he had to come
down, so Billy abruptly left for open ocean to lose himself in the
closest clouds. He felt the storm long before it grew angry, and
felt lucky he found land in time.

Diving steeping, he found large boulders at
the base of a cliff. He levitated them into a crude shelter that
mostly protected him from the rain and wind. The tempest grew ugly
and bellowed all night long. Billy slept hungry, using his helmet
to catch rain to fill his water sacks.

Unlike the rest of the world, Indonesians did
not learn Mongolian. The language was forbidden. They still married
poor Mongol quads, but required them to learn Indonesian. Billy
wanted to discover as much as he could about this mysterious
kingdom, which meant he had to find an ex-Mongol. He knew they’d
come looking for him, so he killed and cooked as many animals as
possible before the winds calmed.

That evening he flew south until he saw a
single cooking fire. He took a nap nearby, then snuck up on them in
their sleep. Of the ten, he flew in and took the one who looked the
most Mongolian. Billy lost them in the dark, even carrying a husky
old man. Back at his cave made of boulders, Billy learned that
Mongols were smuggling other Mongols to Australia, using ships to
island-hop. Australia always attracted the odd, the adventurous,
and the criminal, but his prisoner heard they put a system into
place several years ago to transport thousands of rich quads. The
Indos let them go, as long as they continued onto Australia, which
was too huge for anyone to control.

“I had no idea I was scaring so many out of
the war,” Billy told himself, not realizing how wrong he was.

Billy avoided patrols for another week before
they forced him to leave. He spent the fall dueling in Burma,
India, Persia, Arabia, Turkey, and the northern African coast
before visiting England and Ireland to impregnate the mothers of
his newborns again.

In London, George presented him with his
first suit. “It’s ten times better than ordinary ones. The armor
weighs less, although the new fire-resistant clothes are heavier
and itchier. The boots protect your wands and feet better.” George
pointed out all the features that strengthened the steel and
minimized burn through. “We’re still refining the manufacturing
process to mass produce them.”

Billy -- normally a distant boy -- hugged his
uncle. “You’ve just saved my life. I’ll take what I can with me,
but send more to Global Bank in Madrid.”

Two years before, Mongols controlled all of
the Iberian peninsula except for what locals called Portugal. With
the help of the American marathoners, the Spanish pushed them back
to the eastern coastline. Once his new American and African
divisions arrived for the spring campaign, Billy hoped to kick the
enemy out of Spain. To make that easier, he planned to kill their
best quads in the arena.

Even though Billy entered the Barcelona
stadium under a nom de guerre, a lone girl cheered him by name. He
called himself "Hideously Ugly" because an ugly mood helped him
duel. So he turned to her screams and saw the most beautiful girl
he had ever seen. Long black hair, brown skin, and enough energy to
rival the Sun. She appeared alone, confident, and totally out of
place.

“Hideously Beautiful," she yelled in accented
Mongolian, "kill these pretenders! Show them the real deal! Teach
them who the true master is!" Then she’d lead cheers like "2, 4, 6,
8, I can't wait to pro-create."

Billy had never been in Spain before, or ever
used this pseudonym, so being called out scared him. His first
instinct was to run like hell, but fleeing made him feel silly.

Billy never stayed in a city after dueling,
so he asked stadium management for teams of three. Unknown to
Billy, the manager personally passed on Billy’s challenge to the
local Mongol battalion, who sent for the Khan’s assassins.

Billy started at dawn and often finished by
noon, but something told him this was gonna be a long day. It
looked like an entire battalion of angry Mongols filled the stands,
so he paced himself to maximize energy efficiency.

He loved the new suits and heat-resistant
clothes. He only went through seven sets of armor -- his opponents
usually destroyed twice as many. The new design dug into his hips,
but that was a small price to pay for tolerating twice the heat.
The stronger steel turned aside what would have been penetrations.
Third degree burns became just one degree burns. George gave him
extra faceplates, so he could just fly through weaker blasts,
knowing he could replace any melted glass afterwards.