Deadly Wands (16 page)

The night before he dominated Peking again,
the entire city shook with hundreds of explosions. People filled
the streets to find out what happened.

Except Billy. He knew what happened, but not
how. He couldn’t imagine how his father pulled it off. That man
amazed him once again. That old dog kept showing him new tricks.
Still, he argued with management in the hotel lobby and blasted a
hole in the wall to leave a memorable alibi.

That night, kids played soccer with the heads
of dead Mongols -- which infuriated the nobility when they saw the
news videos. The next evening, after beating several hundred
duelers, Billy couldn’t get enough news. The more he read, the
better he felt. Later he heard that thousands of homes had been
bombed, some thousands of kilometers apart, which left Billy as
slack-jawed as everyone else. Every night Billy had tossed and
turned, inventing revenge fantasies, while his dad pulled off
something bigger than he could ever dream of. Billy never lost his
awe of his father.

Then came a video that showed Genghis Khan
screaming threats from a metal box while Americans dumped headless
corpses on top. It showed Americans literally shitting on the Great
Khan. They buried the Great Immortal under a giant pile of crap!
Pundits called it Karma Mountain.

Like millions across the world, Billy could
not stop laughing. Every night, he had to take the news wands to
his room so he wouldn’t be seen in public chuckling at Mongols
getting what they had been dishing out for centuries. Reports said
a deeply traumatized Khan went stark raving mad for months, pulling
out his beard and blowing craters in the grass. The oppressive
weight of his mother’s death finally lifted, although he’d forever
miss her. All over the planet, millions of victims of Mongol
cruelty felt the same. It was not quite a cure for depression, but
it worked better than anything else.

The government ordered massive retaliation
against the Triads, but found it hard to identify them, much less
punish them. To pre-empt that punishment, the Triads attacked more
Guard units as if their lives depended on it. Either out of
solidarity, or just for revenge, thousands of Chinese quads
targeted Imperial Guards on their own. Since it became government
policy to exterminate all Triads, and since Triads ran organized
crime in every big city, open fighting broke out across China.
Billy had accumulated more bronze coins than Global Bank could
possibly utilize, so he spent several hundred tons of it hiring
Chinese mercenaries to help the Triads. A surge of righteous
nationalism swept the country as patriotic songs, plays, and art
enjoyed a resurgence.

Mongols killed the triad leaders before
William could return the artifacts, so he gave them to the
University of Taiwan, which displayed them in an enormous structure
called The Baron’s Chinese Museum. William paid the government to
send thousands of quads, who could pass for Chinese, to help the
Triads kill Imperial Guards. William found American Jack’s
trainers, helping to upgrade their air force, and hired them to
recruit contract killers.

The museum multiplied tourism and renewed
Chinese antipathy towards their overlords. Because Mongols started
targeting Chinese quads indiscriminately, a flood of Chinese moved
to Taiwan. Their horror stories motivated Taiwanese quads to join
the fight in China.

William flew from Taiwan to Japan and offered
to fund as many marathon divisions as they could form, on the
condition that he could borrow them on demand. How they smuggled
the money from Peking was their problem. On the way back, he met
with the descendents of the last Korean kings, now living in
poverty, and arranged to fund the training of a rebel air
force.

Billy won a fortune daily as he defeated a
few hundred teams of four, day after day. It took weeks before word
leaked that he was really the legendary Boy Wonder. He woke up
every day, eager to avenge his mother, and slept like a baby,
knowing he’d get to repeat it. When he couldn’t sleep, he’d
fireball rich Mongol neighborhoods.

So it was almost a shame when Billy saw his
father eating at his favorite restaurant. The boy almost didn’t
recognize his dad with a beard that resembled the Prussian
dueler’s. Their scars looked very similar. They shared a knowing
look and Billy nodded his head, to indicate he’d be prepared to die
the next day.

William actually arrived the week before with
a few hundred American sailors who moved tons of gold to the ship
he bought. William would never have dreamed of transporting to much
wealth from Peking without local officials battling gangs.

Every day William bet Billy’s money on their
duel. Until then, nobody still bet against the boy, so William met
all that pent up demand himself. Once word got out that some rich
fool was acting as a counter-party, everyone placed their life
savings on the Peking champion. It seemed like such a sure
thing.

The Boy Wonder’s last duel would become world
famous. They swapped wands so William could extend longer flame to
make him look almost equal. After several exciting minutes of
exchanging giant fireballs, they drew swords. Since his father was
the better swordsman, Billy didn’t have to fake much. William
wanted everyone to see the Boy Wonder’s last duel, so they drew
upon a decade of training together to make it as memorable as
possible.

Finally, the German got a lucky swipe that
wounded the Boy Wonder’s leg, who left a trail of blood as he
desperately stumbled away. Billy pretended to fight with just three
wands, which had the crowd on the edge of their seats. They
anticipated each other’s moves like mind readers. After an epic
struggle, the duke wore the boy down and managed to stick him in
the chest. While flailing about in pain, Billy covertly poured a
heat-resistant oil on a mask that he used to cover his face under
his helmet.

Everyone in the stadium booed because they
all bet on the boy. William pretended to transfer his own wands,
then projected flame twelve meters to show they were now his. This
convinced everyone that the transfer was real because there was no
other way he could extend so much fire using someone else’s
sticks.

The Prussian duke he was impersonating was
famous for being a jerk, so he insulted the audience, called
himself the greatest dueler ever, and praised Prussia at the
expense of Mongolia. In German. Though few understood him, most got
the message and pelted him with food and garbage while stadium
security formed a protective circle in case the mob stormed the
winner. It would not be the first time.

William then reached inside his pants for
water that he colored yellow and pretended to pee on the Boy
Wonder’s face to protect his son from the coming heat. To
everyone’s shock, the duke blasted the beloved boy, watched the
body flop over, then kicked it while screaming like a lunatic. This
made identification more difficult later, when he replaced Billy in
the morgue with a Mongol boy that William burned that morning.
Billy had drunk so much pain killer that he barely felt anything.
All he thought about was his mama.

That night, after putting a corpse in his
bed, William and Billy, dressed like rich nobles, forced their way
into the hotel, demanded to know the duke’s room number, then
kicked in the door to fireball the room. The hotel naturally called
the police who found a dead body, a lot of gold, and wands burnt
beyond recognition.

And it worked. Mongols would grieve for
years. The Kaiser then strained relationships between the kingdoms
by demanding justice for his grandson.

The Mongols took every decent quad to fight
Americans in Siberia, so William, some English employees, and his
American sailors robbed Bank of Mongolia branches.

CHAPTER 18

Then a storm almost killed them on the voyage
to San Francisco. Only using all their wands did they out-run the
tempest.

But what to do with so much wealth? William
funded more highway projects, along with thousands of hospitals,
schools, and universities. Global Bank in the Americas loaned at
ever lower interest rates. William sent two ships full of wealth to
Global Bank in France and Spain to lend money interest-free to
those governments.

The following spring, William learned the
Khan placed his last three marathon divisions at the Bering Strait.
Genghis apparently expected the Americans to invade because he
personally led his marathoners.

After celebrating Billy’s birthday in an
Alaskan cave over tasteless mutton, father and son crossed the
Bering Strait to deal with this threat. They killed two scouts and
put on their distinct uniforms to infiltrate the Khan’s camp. That
night, they wounded a few hundred sleeping marathoners before being
driven off in a fierce firefight that wounded William.

While William left to lead his marathoners
across the Strait, Billy lured one division on an exhausting flight
led by the Khan himself. Seeing the Great Immortal somehow brought
out the crazy in him, so when they landed to rest, Billy would drop
boulders on them from high altitude.

Genghis reacted like Billy predicted, and
chased after him in a blind rage, rather than let his marathoners
rest. At one point he let Genghis get close enough to hear Billy
yell that he still smelled like shit. The naked hatred on the
Khan’s face excited the eleven year old, who fearlessly played with
the most feared man alive.

William, meanwhile, used his ships as
stepping stones for his marathoners to fly around the patrols and
surprise an enemy division in their sleep. Genghis gave his last
three marathon divisions a distinctive uniform, so the Americans
changed clothes, then visited the remaining unit. In fairness, the
Mongols had no reason to expect ten thousand fliers, coming from
their sister unit’s location, wearing the correct outfits, to be
anything but their fellow Mongols.

Until the bombs dropped.

Having wiped out two divisions, the Americans
overtook the Mongols chasing Billy. Mongols who could not keep up
had to stop. Naturally they were glad to see comrades coming to
their aid, which let the Americans destroy several thousand more
marathoners in small batches while enjoying total surprise and
overwhelming numbers.

Eventually, the chase left Genghis with only
a few hundred of his best marathoners, suffering from severe
dehydration because they didn’t carry several water sacks like
Billy did. Armed with Millennial Wands, Genghis didn’t think anyone
could fly faster. Only when the Khan himself was forced to rest did
it occur to him that they’d never catch the bastard.

“He’s playing with us!” Dayan complained
angrily again as he started a fire against the bitter cold. “He’s
like a kid who thinks this is a game.”

Billy woke them with a primal scream that
traumatized even the Great Khan. Their campfire exploded and
Genghis found his deel on fire. He rolled over in the snow to put
it out. The smell of his beard burning made him nauseous. Enormous
fireballs struck his camp like meteorites as hundreds of smaller
ones shot up into the dark sky. Dozens of his men launched and the
Khan heard short firefights ever higher in the heavens.

Genghis rallied those not helping the wounded
and they took off as a unit towards the last fireballs. But they
found nothing but empty skies and distant stars. Heading back, they
heard thunder near the surface. Fearing the worst, the Khan dived
at maximum speed. Sure enough, their prey had wounded those helping
the wounded.

All those priceless wands -- gone!

On his blanket Genghis found a video wand
showing the Baron beheading his family the year before. Genghis
knew he should not see it, but he watched anyways until the tears
dried up. He projected it so large that his men -- all relatives
anyways -- watched with him. It seemed to take forever for the
bastard to behead so many.

“Ow!” Dayan suddenly yelled in pain, rolling
away and blasting blindly behind him.

Long swords appeared out of nowhere to cut
down those farthest from the campfire. Anyone looking at the fire
discovered his night vision gone. As everyone fired at where the
blades must have come from, Billy popped up and fired back. At such
close range, the huge, fast fireballs engulfed three more quads.
The Mongols launched, determined to end this. While their killer
mood made them breathe heavy, Billy relaxed himself by humming a
Mongolian folk song his mother sang to him at bedtime. Ever since
his mother’s rape, Billy found killing Mongols the best way to cope
with his lethal grief.

Although powerful, chronic stress prevented
Genghis from slowing down his heart enough to fly really high, so
when he reached his ceiling, his personal bodyguards stopped as
well. Those who could fly higher, however, found their prey waiting
for them. Genghis watched a series of firefights slowly descending
in altitude as Billy picked them off a few at a time.

“We’re next!” Genghis warned.

They saw their prey -- the Khan now realized
he needed a better word to describe the bastard beating them --
but, instead of engaging, he dived past incredibly fast.

“He’s going after our wounded again!” Genghis
shouted, diving at full speed.

They arrived too late, however. Genghis saw
his arch nemesis rob the last of the survivors because, without
wands, they could not fly to safety. The Khan fired his largest
fireball and watched it grow. His prey, however, blasted back an
even larger fireball that engulfed his. Instead of the prey having
to avoid his fireball, Genghis had to avoid his. His opponent
popped up and shot four wands, his legs and arms pointing at the
Khan’s guys like a clamp. The four fireballs spread out over a huge
area that engulfed his bodyguards. Genghis still had a height
advantage, so he went into a controlled freefall to fire all four
wands, his ancient back hurting from doubling over. Dueling is
really a young man’s game. Horrified, Genghis watched his nemesis
evade as the fireballs burned his gravely wounded. Their screams
would forever haunt him. Genghis heard the Baron laugh as he flew
away.