Deadly Wands (4 page)

The room erupted as the family practically
kicked Richard out of his own house.

"There's something else," William yelled over
the chaos. "Last night Elizabeth and I found treasure at Castle
Edinburgh, so we can give the equivalent of a gold kilo to every
family of Prince Richard who attends our wedding."

Which was a great way to win over the
in-laws, legitimize the marriage, and add protection in case a
sheriff showed up.

"We have over two hundred gold kilos?" Liz
asked in shock, since she didn’t think they carried so much.

"Two hundred?" he asked, kicking himself.
"You said he started one hundred families."

"Before marrying my mother, yes. Since then,
he’s conquering Ireland, one female quad at a time. I can’t walk
into a Global Bank branch without spending an hour just greeting
relatives.”

The Matriarch put a friendly arm around him.
"Not that I doubt you, Baron, but it’d help if we could record it
to show the skeptics. It's a long flight for most of them."

The happy couple led the family to their
secret stash in the nearby woods. What they dumped onto the grass
stunned the family.

“The greedy bastards stole all this?”

“No wonder the queen has to raise taxes.”

“We need everyone in England to see
this.”

"Everyone record me," the Matriarch
commanded. "Lady Elizabeth and her new fiancé offer a gold kilo, or
its equivalent, to Prince Richard’s families who attend their
wedding the day after tomorrow.”

The adults flew off to spread the word. As
soon as the last one disappeared in the sky, Liz playfully slapped
William. "Why didn't you tell me you were rich?"

"I was happy you’d marry me thinking I was
poor. Whenever I travel within the Empire, I check out the local
dueling champion. If I'm confident I can beat him, then I bet
heavily."

"Then why the hell did we rob my uncle?"

"We’ll have a hard life on the run, so I had
to see how you handled adversity before swearing to spend the rest
of my life with you."

"Are you really gonna spend the rest of your
life with me?" she asked, eyes locked on his.

He gave her the perfect answer: "With you,
only you, and with you forever.”

CHAPTER 5

His wife's anguished screams pierced
William's soul. He stopped his relentless pacing to peek into the
birthing room again. Liz, bravely practicing the breathing
techniques he taught her, lay sweating on the bed. The team of
midwives urged her on, ordering her to push the baby through.

After all the fights with bounty hunters and
petty bandits since leaving England a year ago, he knew how tough
she was. And that only made her unbearable pain harder to handle.
The love of his life suffered in agony, and he could do nothing to
help her. One of the women snapped at him, and he shut the door
like a boy caught watching a woman bathe.

"Maybe you should wait outside," his fake
cousin suggested.

William's primary ancestor was Baron Karl von
Richthofen, who Genghis Khan killed while slaughtering the
inhabitants of Peking in 1215. The Baron's family swore a blood
oath of revenge and recruited quads from across Europe to fight the
Mongols. The Khan eventually had to send super-quads to Prussia to
wipe out the von Richthofens. Luckily, a girl named Rachel escaped
the slaughter, the lone survivor of a family that once ruled the
Kingdom of Bohemia.

Widowed while pregnant, Rachel married Taran,
the Hero of Kiev, who never knew the child was not his. Now
accepted in Mongol high society, she raised her son to continue her
family's feud. He started the family tradition of burning the
ancient trees that Mongols needed for great wands. As the last
living descendent, William carried the burden of his family's long
legacy.

Rachel heavily promoted a video documentary
after Taran’s death to make her fake Mongol family famously
Mongolian to protect her son. Passed from wand to wand, videos cost
nothing to copy, so she distributed it to every library in the
Empire. The investment continued paying dividends as William,
careful to model his hair and beard after a man he pretended to
descend from, introduced himself as the great-great-great-grandson
of the war hero Taran.

He looked at the kind man who thought he was
William's distant cousin. The irony is that he personally liked his
fake Mongol relatives even more than he liked most Mongols. Plus,
they provided a compelling cover story if anyone ever investigated
him.

Their marriage infuriated Queen Margaret. Her
punishment was replacing Richard with the now-impotent Aidian as
the official Royal Heir. She could not anoint Prince John because
his stealing angered the country. However, the English liked Prince
Richard far more than Aidian, and the romantic elopement of Lady
Elizabeth captured the hearts of the English. Not to mention the
sharp contrast between the generous newlyweds and the thieving
family of Prince John.

What worried William was the ten kilo bounty
on their heads. How ironic that he feared his family's enemies
would endanger her, when actually it was her family that endangered
him. So much so that they moved to the Mongol capital. William had
to bribe the local official to forward the baby's birth date by two
years to throw off Prince John, who saw their son as a rival for
the throne.

Although not the touchy-feely type, the
emotional turmoil of the moment prompted William to hug his fake
cousin, then suddenly burst outside into the falling snow for some
fresh air. Ever paranoid, William sensed movement on his far left.
He turned to see a man peering through bushes at him.

"It's him!" the guy said in terrible
Mongolian. William recognized him from his fight with the
longshoremen in England the year before.

William pressed his inner arms against his
overcoat. Even before those wands sprung into his hands, his boot
wands propelled him up, out of the kill zone, even as the first
volley smashed the oak door into a thousand splinters.

William flew over the house to get out of
their line of sight, then circled to attack them from behind. He
killed one with his back to him, then blasted another who
apparently didn’t recognize him. William watched his head explode
like a watermelon with great satisfaction. At least two others
returned fire behind trees. A fireball engulfed one tree and the
man behind it, igniting his clothes. It didn't kill him
immediately, but the three-degree burns took him out of the fight.
William and the fourth man traded blasts, but William -- in the air
-- could dodge easier than the ambusher on the ground.

Two bounty hunters from the bushes flew over
the house at him. William evaded the blade of one and parried the
other. Too close for blasting, William used his superior length to
stab one in the chest and slice the other below the knee. Without a
foot wand, he fell on the roof, where William chopped his head off.
William grabbed his wands to retain their power, then did the same
to the other ambushers, finally dispatching the guy still on
fire.

In the eerie silence he heard the scared
longshoreman cry like a baby as he ran through the woods.

Something made William pause before he
realized that he just heard the birth cry of his newborn son. A
son! Swelling with pride, William sped after his last enemy,
expertly weaving his way through the trees before slicing his leg
muscles. With the Englishman’s face in the snow, William landed on
his back and chopped off both hands so his enemy could not use his
wands. He turned over the terrified tradesman.

"How did you find me?" William wanted to
know. Not hearing an immediate answer, his wand shot electricity to
his groin, making him wail like a newborn.

"You’ll pay for killing my brother," the man
promised. "Prince John spent the last year spreading your wanted
poster around the world. Every bounty hunter on Earth is looking
for you."

"But why are you here with them?"

"To identify you. You grew a beard and
changed your hair, so they wanted to make sure before they killed a
baby. And they had plenty of time since they thought it safest to
attack during the birth."

This appalled William the father, but seemed
like a sound tactic to William the warrior. "How many more are
there?"

The dying man laughed weakly. "And dilute
their shares? They only promised me one full coin, the cheap
bastards. Not bad for a month of flying, but nothing compared to
ten kilos."

As he faded out from loss of blood, William
transferred ownership of his wands by holding them as he died, then
took his leather money sack.

Back at the house, his fake family had fanned
out, wands in hand.

"The bastards assumed I was rich," he
explained to his fake cousin, who looked at him with both terror
and awe. It’s not every day someone you think you know kills
several warriors. "I think I got them all, but you better sweep the
perimeter to make sure while I check on the baby."

This time, the wet nurse did not shoo him
away. William found their beautiful baby boy suckling his mother's
teat while the other ladies made silly baby noises. What a
difference a few minutes makes.

"He looks like a blond Chinaman," William
joked. Liz raised her hand to hit him, but then laughed
instead.

"I want to name him after his father," she
proposed.

"No," William replied. "Wang is a terrible
name. We better call him Billy."

Actually, they already agreed to put Temujin,
the birth name of Genghis Khan, on his birth certificate because it
was the most popular name among the Khan's male descendents.
Society would accept their son more, he’d blend in with the
thousands of other Temujins, and it gave him status as a direct
descendent of the Immortal through his fake ancestor, Taran the War
Hero.

"I love you so much," she declared.

"I love you more," he answered, unable to
tell her that they’d have to flee the city because he could not
keep her safe.

CHAPTER 6

William, Liz, and six-year old Billy left
their
ger
-- a portable dome-shaped hut -- careful to not
step on the threshold because Mongols are either in or out. Snow
still covered the tips of the distant Altai Mountains. Smoke rose
from the other hundred or so huts that formed this horde, one of
thousands that roamed the seemingly endless Central Asia
steppe.

To their joy, Billy was a prodigy, sparking
his first wand at age three. Very few people could use wands before
puberty. He literally flew before he could run. Not all prodigies
were powerful, but their boy seemed to have a real gift for wands,
so they trained him intensely to prepare him for a hard life.

Billy excelled at wand games like Tag. He
could evade kids twice his age for hours as they chased him through
the trees. Blessed with great vision and depth perception, the boy
had the unnatural ability to miss trees by centimeters when flying
full out. He especially enjoyed playing Rock, where he had to avoid
kids throwing rocks at him. It usually took years to develop fine
dexterity skills, but Billy displayed a mastery of the air that
William enjoyed with his hands. He did his first somersault in the
air at age five, not appreciating how much that shocked the horde,
and flew upside down like other kids did hand stands. It was rare,
unnerving, and really awesome.

Billy was pure joy until he accidentally
burned their hut with his boot wands. From that moment on, they
lived in terror. Until then, they thought only Genghis Khan could
blast, project steel, or extend fire from boot wands. Anyone else
mysteriously died.

Fortunately, nobody saw it because otherwise
his unique ability would have been a death sentence. Billy would
have been shot on sight and his killer given a huge reward by the
Great Khan himself. Sharing the Khan’s ability meant that the world
was not big enough for both of them. One of them had to kill the
other.

Or so they told Billy.

All his life, William thought he was too
paranoid. It was not until that moment, watching Billy laugh at the
fire coming from his boot wands, that he realized he was not
paranoid enough.

They moved to China, Japan, and India to
learn those languages, study martial arts, and develop their wand
abilities in relative peace.

Most quads train to fly far. William,
instead, emphasized flying high. Every flier has a maximum height
called a “ceiling.” If you can fly higher than your opponent, then
you can shoot him, but he can’t shoot you. Greater height means
thinner air, however, which meant reducing the body’s need for
oxygen. Therefore, the family practiced meditation to slow their
heartbeats.

To their shock, monks taught Billy to drop
his breathing to near zero. Liz once could not find his heartbeat,
even though he was smiling at her at the time. Chanting something
relaxing helped Billy fly higher than either parent. Chagrined that
the pupil out-did the teacher, William then emphasized
endurance.

Those who can fly higher can fly faster due
to less air resistance. And those who can fly faster, can fly
farther. Before, the parents needed Billy to keep up. Now, the
parents needed to keep up with Billy.

They moved frequently, changing identities
every time. Often they’d pass themselves off as English. Billy
picked up languages easily, so they hired tutors on the safe
assumption that he’d need language skills. The family knew they
spent too much time in one place when they had trouble sleeping at
night.

Constant travel also give William an
opportunity to teach Billy geography. He collected aerial images
like other fathers collected bad habits. Together they developed a
system to organize the images they kept on their wands.

They kept returning to the hordes because
bounty hunters never looked for them there. Ironically, they were
safest from Liz’ enemies by hiding among William’s enemies.