Deadly Wands (42 page)

He laughed every time he saw Jack search
frantically for a heartbeat. The Great Khan thought Jack stupid for
recording the Baron’s pale chest as it stopped rising. Now they
couldn’t even pretend he still lived. That damn Baron imposter led
his assassination teams astray countless times. Only the layers of
scars, the X branded into his chest, and Subodei’s Millennial Wands
convinced him. This was definitely the same guy who spent months on
the Alps.

His enemy died. Jebe finally finished the Red
Baron. His long nightmare was over. Genghis Khan had not felt this
alive since he massacred his first city.

Then Hulagu flew in as if his clothes were on
fire, yelling incoherently.

“Really, grandson, we do have doors.”

“Have can you leave your windows open?”
Hulagu demanded angrily. “You must weld them shut. He could have
come in just as easily and gutted you like a fish.”

“That’s it! No more fermented milk for
you.”

His grandson studied him for a long moment.
“You don’t know.” It didn’t sound like a question, so Genghis
didn’t answer. Hulagu closed his eyes to search his wand for a
memory. “The Baron somehow destroyed Moqali’s entire force in Kiev.
He even killed a million refugees. All of Europe has declared
independence and the Stans are being overrun.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The Red
Baron died on the Alps.”

Hulagu looked ready to cry. “No, grandpa.
That’s just what he wanted you to think. When I got the video from
Kiev, I searched for the latest dispatches from the Alps, and there
aren’t any. Not even any messengers or survivors. We haven’t heard
from anyone on the Alps in a month.”

“That’s not possible!” Genghis screamed. “I
just paid a thousand gold tons!”

Hulagu projected a 3D movie that started with
a dark sky that gradually filled with growing dots. Genghis
squinted to discern just what he was watching against the white
ceiling. When one of the dots did that famous scream, the Great
Khan jerked back like a horse kicked his forehead -- that actually
happened once. Unknowingly, he started mumbling to himself, not
unlike Hulagu when he flew in. When the warrior fell into the
ditch, he continued recording, so they saw and heard it all: the
incredible explosion, the blinding light, the pressure wave that
knocked over entire huts. Hulagu opened another stick to project a
second wand peeking over the rim. Tens of thousands of quads in the
air, blasted hundreds of thousands of deaf, blind, and stunned
Mongols on the ground. They acted more like cattle than warriors.
The Khan was speechless, but his grandson was not.

“A veteran recorded this as he peed just
before dawn. Falling into the sanitation trench saved his life. It
took him a week to find someone who believed him. He arrived deaf
and yelled so loudly that everyone thought he was crazy. So he
pulled wands and almost got burned alive before he projected this
video. They sent it here by the fastest couriers. The guy who
transferred me a copy looked ready to vomit. I’ve sent marathoners
to the Alps and to Kiev, but it’ll take a few weeks to travel there
and back. In the meantime, we must assume the worst.”

“But he only had a thousand quads on the
Alps!” Genghis protested, still in denial. “I just gave Jebe ten
thousand marathoners! And we destroyed the reinforcements that
American Jack brought him.”

Hulagu shrugged. He didn’t have any answers.
Only lots of questions. “We need to do something about Europe. I
couldn’t take those reports seriously until now. But if we lost
Jebe’s airmen, after he stripped Europe of talent, then we could
lose the entire region.”

“We’re not gonna lose Europe,” the Khan
insisted. “Not after the price we paid.”

“If the Baron destroyed Moqali’s armada, then
we’ve already lost Europe.”

The Great Immortal hugged his baby son, who
giggled while playing with his beard. “Send our best men to
assassinate the Red Baron and everyone he loves.”

Finally, Hulagu smiled.

Every passing week felt like a century. After
three hundred years of success, Genghis Khan had never known so
much bad news. He got more terrible reports than sleep, despite
sucking wands like tits.

First came confirmation of the massacre on
the Alps. They found over one hundred thousand Mongol corpses half
buried in snow. How could not one person escape?

Kiev was even worse. The Russians threw three
million naked corpses into a ravine, that had almost as many birds
as bodies. The shrieking of a million birds was something Genghis
would never forget.

Local news reports gave them their best
information. The Baron somehow destroyed over a million quads with
just fifty thousand marathoners. Genghis forced himself to watch
every video. It felt like plucking out his own teeth. What seemed
unanimous was that their side got destroyed, while the Baron
suffered insignificant losses. Again.

Then came reports of everyone in Europe who
looked Mongolian being killed on sight. Men shaved their beards and
cut their hair to avoid getting shot.

Governors in northern India, Tibet, western
Mongolia, and the Stans sent forces west -- only to be crushed by
the Baron leading a huge international team.

Genghis Khan couldn’t believe it -- he lost
Europe. Not taking Japan or Taiwan was one thing, but to lose an
entire continent? And the more his government put the best face on
recent events, the more credibility it lost with Mongols. What he
needed was a victory. A big victory. Even a symbolic one like the
Baron’s head on a spike. Oh, yeah, that’d help enormously.

It seemed like just several months ago that
Tamerlane took his best marathoners to Spain. Wait! That was just
several months ago.

He understood that many people hated him, but
he had never hated anyone like he hated the Red Baron. And nothing
would satisfy him until he could spit on the Baron’s corpse.

CHAPTER 56

Despite his reputation for fearlessness,
births scared Billy because his own almost killed his parents.
Watching a loved one scream in agony for hours -- when he could do
nothing to help -- drove him crazy. He needed less stress, not
more. He had long felt so burdened by the need to win the war that
it was surprising he could get off the ground.

So, instead of returning to Princess before
she gave birth, Billy flew to England and Ireland to impregnate the
mothers again. Many of the English ladies wanted to meet their
Irish counterparts, so he held a picnic party at one of his Irish
estates. Puppies and kittens played with the thirty or so newborns
among lush grass as the mothers gossiped.

Once Billy returned from the bank, one of the
Irishwomen flew straight up and shrieked her wand really loud. It
seemed so suspicious that Billy popped his wands and flew up after
her. From distant woodlands, Billy saw five hundred quads race over
a hill in attack formation. Billy would later learn they wanted to
kill him to stop payroll for his battalion of relatives.

Billy had not been this scared since his
mother died. To lose someone special was bad enough, but to lose
fifty mothers and a few dozen innocent babies turned him into a
berserker. Thankfully the English mothers left their babies at
home. Although always angry inside, he had never let rage control
him before, much less turn him into a homicidal lunatic. He hated
being surprised, and so vented that hatred on these baby
killers.

Billy blasted the traitor’s head off to warn
the other mothers and rose in an arc to use all four wands for
blasting instead of stabilizing his flight. As he fell over the
hill he did his famous scream while extending four flames to shock
them with his identity. That’s right, Billy whispered, you’re
facing the Red Baron!

They expected surprise, and boy did they get
it. He saw their eyes widen as four-fireball volleys burned holes
in their formation. Some rose to swordfight him while the rest
slowed like cattle in a stampede approaching a cliff. Those behind
-- racing all out -- slammed into those pissing themselves in
fear.

Instead of approaching from all sides, they
chose to hide in nearby woods. That got them closer, but it also
bunched them up so they had nowhere to dodge his huge fireballs. At
a minimum, a few loud quads attacking from the opposite side would
have had the women looking over their shoulders.

For a long moment Billy faced more quads than
he could track, and before he could finish those closest to him, he
felt sharp blades stabbing deep. It didn’t occur to Billy to wear
body armor at a picnic. He spun like a cyclone to swat them from
the sky and blasted so many with his boot wands that he gained
altitude. The more powerful the wand, the less time it needs to
“breathe” between shots, so Billy’s fireballs flowed out like water
from a hose.

Having fixed their position, Billy rose to
the edge of their range. Their fireballs felt no worse than sitting
too close to a bonfire. Shocked to see their leaders fall, the best
rose up to swarm Billy. Expecting this, Billy over-flew them, which
put their backs to his women. He deliberately made himself the
target so the ladies could shoot them in the back. If he wasn’t
terrified to death, he’d have laughed as they slammed into each
other, trying to reverse direction in mid-charge.

About half of the survivors attacked Billy
while the rest chose to slaughter women and babies. The ladies
formed a 25 X 25 meter vertical wall and fired at the charging
Irishmen -- something they could not have done if even one enemy
attacked them from behind. Pausing their charge gave the ladies
valuable time that the Matriarch put to maximum use.

Those chasing the Baron were too angry to
change targets, so Billy lured them farther away to split them up.
He flew up backwards to keep shooting at them. Blasting with his
boot wands made his ascent unpredictable. This strung them out,
separating the fastest from the slowest. He killed less than half
of the few hundred chasing him when they stopping chasing him at
all. Out-numbered over 100-to-1, the worst quads feared getting too
close to the Baron. Billy was used to veterans -- he knew how they
think. These guys probably never killed a quad in their lives. The
Baron fireballed their leaders -- now they didn’t know what to
do.

So Billy attacked them. He descended, like in
a swordfight on stairs, careful to not get within range of too many
of them. Few of them had lethal fireballs beyond one hundred
meters, so Billy didn’t even bother to avoid the weaker blasts. The
most terrified wouldn’t even get within range, so the ambushers
looked like a snake in the sky when they should have all enveloped
him at once.

Billy realized he faced bullies rather than
warriors by the expression on their faces. Billy couldn’t afford to
let them run so, instead of pressing his attack, he actually eased
up. With just fifty left, Billy put himself in the middle, hoping
they didn’t rush him all at once. The closest died first, so most
stayed away.

It was the most bizarre firefight Billy had
ever been in. The enemy did everything wrong. He could shoot
farther, yet fear kept them at the outer limit of their range. This
felt more like practice than battle. Kids throwing rocks at him
would have been more dangerous. Billy’s challenge was killing them
without scaring them into fleeing.

Then he realized they were waiting for his
blood loss to knock him out. Surrounded by enemies, Billy
frantically applied bandages to his worst wounds while avoiding
fireballs.

He got down to a couple dozen when the ladies
swarmed them. The ambushers threatened the babies of powerful
mothers and so got what they deserved. When Emily approached, he
basically fell into her arms.

“Kill them all,” he whispered before losing
consciousness. Billy couldn’t afford any witnesses to his four
flames. If just one of these Irishmen escaped, the world would
learn the identify of the Red Baron, and bounty hunters would kill
his families for the Khan’s gold.

The ladies weren’t in the mood to take
prisoners, so they fired down at the wounded desperately stumbling
towards the nearest rock or ditch. It must be horrible, waiting to
be burned alive, so the mothers slow-played it by taking turns
rather than ending their enemies before their rage. The ambushers
died screaming, their flesh literally cooking.

One of the Irishwomen returned after sunset
with his battalion of Irish relatives. After collecting videos to
document their identities, the Irish mothers led them across the
island to avenge themselves on the friends, family, and supporters
of the ambushers. To deter future attacks, they dropped the
traitor’s newborn on his head in front of the parents of the bitch
who betrayed them, before slaughtering the entire family.

Billy woke up three days later, heavily
bandaged, and as weak as the babies crawling on him. Emily, also
wrapped like a mummy, snored beside him.

“Am I wearing a diaper?” he asked Susan.
“You’re ruining my fearsome reputation.”

“We had some extras,” Susan explained. “You
had three life-threatening wounds and a dozen minor ones. They
seemed to heal even as I treated them. Another week and they’ll
blend in with all the old ones.”

“I recover quickly. I can probably survive
anything as long as I keep my head.”

“Must be nice.” The Matriarch looked envious.
“Your quick reaction saved us. We should all be dead.”

“I assumed I was dead,” Billy confessed. “I
just wanted to take as many with me to avenge my babies.”

“Our Irish sisters should have warned you
this may happen,” Susan answered. “Five paid for this mistake with
their lives, plus two of my granddaughters. Most of us got hurt
when they broke up our wall, and ten of the ladies have serious
wounds. Luring so many away was brilliant on your part. They should
have slaughtered us, then assassinated you later. Just imagine your
reputation if people thought you abandoned your women and newborns.
Instead of them, people would have called you a Baby Killer.”