Deadly Wands (30 page)

Princess drew wand and fired off a verbal
barrage in their native tongue. Prince didn’t even slow down. He
walked up to Billy and swung a fist.

Billy didn’t need years of martial arts
training to avoid the round-house punch. He evaded several more
while a crowd formed. Frustrated, Prince tried to tackle him, since
Indians grow up wrestling. Billy grabbed his upper body, twisted,
and sent him flying into the dirt.

“Prince, stop!” Jack yelled.

“It’s okay,” Billy said. “I can do this all
day.”

Princess, however, took no chances. Her wand
threw her brother into a nearby stream. Team Red formed a wall
between them. Prince couldn’t believe his friends chose the new guy
over him.

“I deposited a hundred kilos in your name at
Global Bank in Madrid,” Billy yelled to Prince. “And I brought
super wands for everyone!”

Billy emptied his backpack onto the grass.
Hundreds of wand sets spilled out, each wrapped in water-resistant
leather pouches.

"Jack," Billy confessed, "I held back on you.
The most powerful wands were too valuable to give away. And these
are not ‘dead’ wands. I took them from dying multi-millennials, so
they retain their full power. I sent them to Madrid to reward the
best American quads, but instead I’ll give them out now on the
condition that those who accept them swear to follow me until we
win this war. If more than one quad wants a wand, the warrior who
can extend a flame the longest gets it. No one may take more than
one set, and must donate a backup set to the Americans.”

Quads obsess over wands like a man does his
penis. Everyone was soon torching new sticks. Billy may as well
have dropped naked women on them, given their excitement. Better
wands let them fly faster and blast stronger. It could literally
make the difference between life and death.

The twins, after a decade constantly dueling
using their parent’s wands, beat everyone, but a few long time
veterans came close.

“Who’s that lady?” Billy asked Princess.
Their group had a few dozen Africans, most descendents of Jack, but
this one seemed the darkest of them all.

“Pretty, isn’t she?”

“I can’t tell under all that hair, but look
at those flames! What’s her story?”

“An orphan, like so many of us. The Mongols
wiped out most of her tribe, which ruled an empire in northwest
Africa. She goes by Mali, the name of her kingdom. We found her
several years ago dueling constantly to boost her power.”

Billy had a few special sets of wands tucked
in his jacket, so he walked over and offered her one.

“Try these.”

She looked at him hard, trying to guess his
motive. “I cannot promise to follow you forever. I’m just here to
earn money to hire enough quads to kill the Mongols who wiped out
my family.”

“Then these may help.”

She reluctantly took them and her face lit up
when she fired eleven meter long fire.

“What do you want for them?” she asked,
hating herself for asking.

“I’ll let my wife tell you,” Billy answered
as he walked off, wondering what their children would look
like.

Billy asked American Jack if his group had
any experts in sword fighting to teach him. Jack called over
someone still wearing a full suit of armor.

"Blade, Red here wants to improve his sword
fighting skills. Make him show us what he's got."

Blade gave him no time. Billy ducked a swipe,
then popped over another to give him time to extend his own. Very
long blades are great in the air, but they smack the ground. Billy
rose ten meters and Blade went after him.

He found himself completely outmatched. He
thought he was an excellent flier, but she danced around him. Not
wanting to get his ass kicked in front of his new friends, his wand
pushed Blade hard into a tree.

Furious, Blade rose again, clearly going to
beat him to a pulp, so Billy levitated a rock to smack his opponent
in the head. Again, Blade went down. Fuming, Blade made a more
cautious approach, using superior skill to unfairly strike Billy
again and again. Desperate, Billy extended a leg blade that flipped
Blade in the air, then struck his opponent hard into the ground
with a steel bat. For the third time, Billy humiliated Blade in
front of everybody.

He landed a safe distance away to praise him,
but Blade's helmet fell off and she looked about to cry. Billy,
like most teenagers, had more hormones than neurons. Stunned at her
beauty, his slow reaction got him punched in the face.

Prince howled in laughter.

"Stay out of my way, you cruel
son-of-a-bitch," she roared before storming off.

"Damn it, Red!" Instead of helping him up,
Princess hit him while he was down. "Blade has the best rack in the
outfit. I should have mentioned this before, especially when I said
I was a virgin, but I also play for that team, and Blade is my
favorite player. I was hoping to include you, but now you messed it
all up. Now she'll never give you any, even though she wants kids
from a powerful father."

His head already hurt, but now it hurt worse.
Did his wife just say she slept with other women? And still
considered herself a virgin? He must know less about sex than he
thought.

Princess squatted in front of him. “Blade is
the only surviving child of the last king of Switzerland. The
Mongols raped her and her mother when she was a teenager, two
decades ago. She wants to reclaim her kingdom, but she needs a
powerful son to proclaim as king. A prodigy with you would have
been perfect. Nobody would dare mess with the Red Baron’s son.”

Mongols thought nothing of raping civilians.
They raped so many in Peking in 1215 that thousands of women
avoided it by throwing themselves to death off the battlements.

Rape played key roles in Mongol history:
Genghis’ father stole his mother from her husband and, in revenge
years later, the mother's tribe kidnapped, raped, and impregnated
Genghis' wife. Genghis named the product of this rape "guest" to
clarify how he felt towards his wife’s son. The family poisoned him
to prevent the bastard from succeeding Genghis as Khan. Just as
Genghis killed his own older half-brother to become the head of the
family when he was just a teenager.

"I thought she was a guy," was Billy's weak
excuse, watching Princess go after Blade.

Jack suddenly crash landed, looking like he
burnt his wand. "I need to talk to you. Now!" Jack didn’t strike
Billy as the aggressive type, but he dragged Billy by the arm like
he was just a skinny kid. "Where did you get these?" he demanded
once trees shielded them, holding up a wand set.

"They’re my father's," Billy answered.

"And where did he get them?"

"From his father. They go back like ten
generations. Always to the strongest, and only on the condition
that they’re used against Mongols."

Jack turned pale in front of him, clutched
his chest, and slid to the ground. Oh, great, Billy thought. The
guy survives three centuries fighting humanity’s greatest tyrant,
then I kill him without even trying.

"Von Richthofen," the old man whispered.

Now Billy freaked out. He popped a wand and
crouched down. "How the hell do you know my name?"

Jack tried to smile, but failed. "It's my
name. I’m the Baron Karl von Richthofen. My mother Hildred carved
my initials on them. I gave them to my son when I thought I was
gonna die in Peking in 1215. I thought they wiped you out."

Billy suddenly felt equally old. He collapsed
next to his ancestor. “Your great-granddaughter Rachel survived.
The one who could blast with her boot wands. Later, while pregnant,
her fiancée got killed, so she married Taran of Kiev and encouraged
him to duel until he died. Since then we’ve burned ancient trees.
My grandfather believed we cost the Khan several million
wands.”

Jack got all excited. “Oh, but I met some of
them! I just never knew they were family.”

“I’m not the last of my line, so if anything
happens to me, tell the king of England.”

“You’ve had kids with the king of England?”
Jack joked.

“No, but my mother was his only legitimate
daughter. Until Imperial Guards raped her to death. The queen
murdered my father, so I set my grandfather on the throne.
Technically, I’m next in line.”

Jack now looked alarmed. “You’re the one who
killed Queen Margaret!”

“Bitch had to pay.” The boy didn’t sound the
least apologetic.

Jack didn’t want to say anything, but he
suddenly had to take a massive crap. “Why would the heir to the
English crown risk his life millions of times? England looks
suspiciously like the Empire’s last friend in Europe.”

“I own Global Bank, which gets to operate
within the Empire for as long as England looks friendly.”

This explained so much. Yet it didn’t explain
enough. “You’re too young to have raided the Mongol capital several
years ago.”

“My father was the original Baron,” Billy
said to the guy who was still, strictly speaking, the baron.

“Then those are your parents buried in our
family cemetery!” Jack seemed relieved. “I go there to talk to my
wife, and the fresh graves scared me.”

“The open grave is mine. Please bury me there
if you out-live me.”

“And you me. My grave is empty, by the way.
Strategic deception.”

“I’m having as many children as possible,
just in case this war lasts longer than I do.”

"Are you gonna marry Princess? I'm shocked at
how well she's turned out, given all the fawning over her."

"We’re trying to have kids, but I can't marry
for a few years," Billy said.

"Why not? That girl's a great catch."

Sighing deeply, Billy took off the mask he
wore when not wearing his helmet. "Because I just turned fifteen
years old, and the legal age in England is eighteen. The birth
certificate I showed Princess gave me two extra years to throw off
bounty hunters."

"Does Princess know she has to wait three
years to marry you?"

"Not yet. I'm hoping I can make excuses for a
few years like other men."

The old man laughed. "Good luck with that,"
said a guy who started thousands of families. “But I think I can
help you with the bounty hunters. Let me introduce you to someone
special. Stay here.”

Jack returned with a vicious-looking veteran
who probably had not smiled in centuries. “Red, meet John. Mongols
have killed three of his families. John, Red descended from my
great-granddaughter Rachel. He even has the wands I thought I lost
in Peking.”

“I’m calling myself Jim this time, old man.
Try to get it right.”

Daddy issues, Billy suspected. He examined
their faces. “Is Jim your son or grandson?”

That really upset the new guy. “Jack, this is
why I don’t like flying with you.”

“Red won’t tell anyone. He’s got his own
secrets. Show him your face.” Billy took off the cloth and the
guy’s eyes bugged out. “Jim, we need someone to be the face and
voice of the Red Baron, and this boy can’t be it. You could
impersonate him better than anyone I know.”

“Why don’t I just blast myself and save you
the trouble? If people think I’m the Red Baron, my head would be
worth tons of gold.”

Billy knew he needed to bring out the big
guns. “Jim, I’ll give you a ton of gold and the Khan’s Millennial
Wands, taken when we buried him under a million headless corpses.”
Billy knew he had him when his nostrils flared. “But first I need
to know why Jack thinks you’d make a better Red Baron than, say,
Bear.”

Billy took out the Khan’s wands and watched
the new guy salivate over them. “This will be your only chance to
own Millennial Wands. See how long a wingspan they’ll give
you.”

The new guy burst flame eleven meters, nearly
burning down the trees around them. Billy could tell that he’d have
to kill Jim to get the wands back.

“Show him, son.”

Jim carefully scanned for witnesses, then
popped up and poured flame from all four wands. Billy coughed so
hard he nearly choked. No wonder he was paranoid -- everyone really
was out to get him!

“Do we have a deal?”

“Nobody else can know about my boot wands,”
Jim told Billy sternly.

“And nobody can know the Baron is just a damn
teenager.”

Billy spent the night passing wand memories
to video sticks, which Jim would take to experts to make propaganda
that Jim would narrate, while trying to sound like William.

Once they selected, improved, and narrated
every video they wanted, they organized them on a set of video
wands. Then they sent a set to every major library in the world,
each collection containing over a million recordings. Some,
naturally, were from his father. The exhaustive list covered
literally every kill. Widows would search them for husbands who
never returned. Dueling enthusiasts soon argued over his best one
hundred victories and universally declared him the best dueler in
history.

The shock value helped make them the most
popular videos in history, after porn. They struck the Mongols like
a spiritual version of the thirteenth century black plague. Even
hardened super-quads looked ready to give up after watching the
Baron’s best-of montage that highlighted his most spectacular
kills. A more comprehensive montage clinically showed one moment of
literally a million lives the Baron personally took.

The most notorious wand in the set was
dedicated to the sacking of Mongol cities, including the capital
and the Khan’s palace. Most of these extensive videos had never
been seen before and horrified Mongols, who only heard impersonal
news reports.

They even included a video of the Mongol
postal service personally handing the first collection to the Great
Khan himself, and his reaction when the Red Baron appeared in the
message to offer him this gift.

Jim’s job was to appear and disappear across
the Empire to cloud reports of the Baron’s location. He’d beat
Mongols in the arena, flash his four wands, and do the Baron’s
scream before flying off. With the new wands, nobody could catch
him. Jim won a fortune in the arena. Jack later remarked that he
had never seen his son this happy.