Deadly Wands (8 page)

William stood strong. “My little brother was
younger than Billy when they killed him, and my sister was just a
baby. Yet some Mongols smashed their heads against a rock. Mongols
get away with a million murders every year. We can stop them. But
sacking cities is the price to pay.”

“We’ve trained Billy to be a monster.”

“No. We trained Billy to be a warrior. And a
warrior does what must be done to protect his people. That child of
yours will stop the conquest of France. Not just by donating money
and wands, but by stretching the Empire thin. The Mongols will be
too busy chasing Americans in Siberia to finish conquering France.
And England is safe as long as France remains free.”

William held up her chin. “Winning this war
is the most humane mission we could possibly dedicate our lives
to.”

“Do you really believe we can win this war?”
she asked, clearly skeptical.

William gave her the smile that melted her
heart years ago. “I believe Billy can win it. And winning will
justify everything else.”

His wife’s face hardened. “Then make sure he
wins. Whatever it takes.”

CHAPTER 9

Genghis Khan and his wife came to watch Billy
compete for his 10,000th duel in one hundred days. At over 350
years old, Genghis thought he looked pretty good. But that damn
child looked even better. "He's young, but he looks even younger,"
his beloved empress joked. Genghis killed thousands to preserve his
reputation as the greatest dueler ever. Now a kid from the steppe,
of all places, with the same name, of all things, was usurping that
unique claim to fame. What a difference one hundred days makes.

Every week the little punk suffered what
looked like severe injuries. Some days ended with him unable to
fly, and many days he limped or lost use of an arm. Yet, no matter
how many third degree burns, ringing blows, or bloody cuts, he
returned at dawn looking good as new. Genghis appreciated more than
most the incredible recuperative powers of superior wands, but he
still hoped the bastard suffered crippling injuries by now.

In fact, he had counted on them.

Well, the Immortal had a little surprise for
the child. He personally recruited the hundred best damn quads the
world has ever known and bet a fortune on them. He promised the
winner a thousand tons of silver, since gold was becoming scarce.
Already rich, it took the personal plea from Genghis himself, in
front of their astonished families, to get them to do this favor
for him. The Khan fantasized about how easily he could crush the
French Air Force with such talent.

On a more practical level, he could not
afford that much gold leaving the economy. Already inflation was
destabilizing financial markets. Commerce could not handle so much
coin leaving the system. He not only needed to kill the kid, but to
stop the river of money flowing out. Paying a thousand tons of
silver seemed a small price against the thousands of gold tons he’d
win upon the Boy Wonder’s death.

To return money into the economy, the Khan
personally walked into the betting exchanges and waged one thousand
tons of gold against the Boy Wonder winning ten thousand duels.
Financial institutions, the wealthy, and everyone with a spare coin
duplicated his bets in betting exchanges across the Empire. Genghis
smiled at the thought of all that gold soon flooding local
economies, and himself taking 10% of each transaction.

The kid projected sixteen meter-long flames
now -- one meter more than when he arrived. Most people saw him as
the One Who Could Win The War, but Genghis instead saw a threat to
his own survival. He had dealt with palace politics long enough to
know that rival factions would gravitate to the kid, and every
misfortune the Great Khan ever suffered would be sited as reasons
for new leadership. Every year he had to kill a dozen descendents
attempting to replace him; this would just be the youngest.

If anyone asked him about the morality of
murdering a ten year old, Genghis Khan would not have understood
the question.

Few people appreciate that he was elected
khan at a
khuriltai
, a grand meeting of the tribes, and that
they could simply elect someone to replace him. Not without
bloodshed, but it could be done. And a fighter who could out-duel
him would be a necessary choice. So Genghis Khan saw the Boy Wonder
not just as a threat to his economy, but to his life.

Genghis had never seen a crowd this excited
off of the battlefield. With tickets so expensive, these one
hundred thousand represented the wealthiest members of the Empire.
The child sensation could become a cult. He should know -- he spent
three centuries building his own personal cult.

After everyone stood up for the national
anthem, which glorified conquest, Mongols, and Genghis Khan
himself, the arena manager grandly introduced the boy, who flew in
a circle slapping outstretched hands. Genghis did not realized that
he and his Imperial Guards were the only ones who did not stand.
The roaring did not die down until Billy himself stopped in the
center and tapped his vocal cords to speak.

"Thank you, brothers and sisters! I love you
all. Today I face my greatest challenge: I will either reach ten
thousand kills or die. It has been a long one hundred days, and I’m
exhausted. I look forward to my first day off tomorrow so I can
train for the Olympic Games. When I’m of age, I’ll help conquer
Europe."

The stadium roared again.

"I wish to welcome the greatest man who has
ever lived; my hero, my ancestor, and my inspiration: Genghis
Khan!" More applause as the Immortal rose to bow. "His blood gives
me strength. His example shows the way. His policies taught me
Mongol virtues hard won on the Mongolian Plateau. I owe him a huge
debt of gratitude."

Genghis tapped his own throat. "I accept both
gold and silver!"

“I owe the Immortal a great debt that I can
never repay!” the champion re-stated to wild applause, flying
closer to the Khan.

"Some say I’m just like him, so let’s see if
we share more than just a name." The boy, hovering close, peered
intently at the khan. "They’re right. It's like looking in a
mirror!" People laughed and Genghis wondered where the hell this
was going. "I never knew I had such pretty eyes."

With that the crowd went crazy. No one had
ever had fun with the Great Khan before. Even Genghis smiled. But,
next to him, Empress Borte doubled over in laughter, almost falling
out of her seat. A few weeks ago she attended her first duel, and
Boy Wonder dedicated his win that day to her. She liked that so
much that she kept coming back, often holding a sign that said “I
love Wonder.” While everyone feared, admired, and respected Genghis
Khan, most people simply adored the Empress. So when the child
flirted with her every day, the crowd ate it up.

But to flirt with an empress was one thing;
to play with a genocidal monster something else. This brat has
balls big enough to attempt anything, Genghis realized.

"Let me help those of you who confuse us: the
guy who rules half the world is the tall guy, while the one you
never heard of one hundred days ago is the short guy. The one who
did so much for so many for so long is the tall Temujin, while the
kid who duels to get out of school is the short Temujin." Billy had
them now. Even the Great Khan seemed to enjoy the show. "Everyone
got it now? The greatest man who ever lived is the tall one, while
the child who still gets slapped by his mommy is the short
one."

The video of Liz smacking him in the
manager's office had spread like the flu because it meant that the
Greatest Fighter Ever still respected his mother like a good Mongol
should. It made him human, humble, and heroic. Having won over the
men, that video conquered the women. The sheer contrast between him
beating one multi-millennial after another with his skinny mother
whacking him across the room endeared the Boy Wonder to
millions.

"I point this out because too many people
keep equating us. I can't tell you how many times I'm on the
crapper when some super-quad bursts in, confuses me with my twin,
then knocks himself out kowtowing." Even the Khan was laughing now.
"Okay, the first thousand times were pretty funny, but now I can't
take a shit without wondering who will mistake me for greatness.
And my mother is tired of moping up all that urine from millennials
who piss themselves thinking they've interrupted the Great Khan
doing his private business."

The imagery was just too much, and fans puked
from laughing too hard.

"You're just afraid of him!" someone loudly
yelled from the premium stands.

"You think I'm afraid of the Great Immortal?"
Billy angrily demanded. Now he had everyone's attention. "Of course
I'm afraid of him! He farts fireballs and his penis wand extends
ten meters long." He paused to look directly at the Khan’s wife.
"Assuming everything the empress has told me is true."

The crowd went crazy. Or crazier.

Having made his point, the boy welcomed his
first opponent, who he dispatched within thirty heartbeats. Genghis
then watched in utter dismay as the child defeated the rest of his
carefully recruited quads. The kid suffered several ugly heat
blasts, got cut a few times, as well as thrown a lot, but no more
than on any other day. The titans he spent so much time recruiting
all died before noon.

And no sooner did the last one fall than half
the stadium flew away, right out of their seats, as if fifty
thousand puppet strings suddenly pulled them up. It made no damn
sense.

The Boy Wonder limped across the bloody arena
towards the Khan. With a smile that barely fit on his face, the boy
rubbed his thumb and fingers together in the universal sign of
money.

With that simple gesture, Genghis realized
the enormity of his mistake: he pissed off one hundred powerful
families, let thousands of his best quads die for nothing, lost a
thousand gold tons to a potential rival, and a disastrous amount of
coin just disappeared from the local economy. He didn’t fix the
problem -- he multiplied it!

Never before had the Great Khan felt his grip
on power slip so far, so fast. But he couldn’t kill the boy until
after he competed in the Olympics. Then he’d quash him for
good.

A messenger on his personal communications
staff flew in and whispered urgently to his head of security, who
waved him through.

“There’s a run on the bank,” the messenger
whispered into the Khan’s ear as if this information wouldn’t soon
headline news reports.

Genghis didn’t understand. “What bank?”

“Your bank.” Meaning the Bank of Mongolia.
“Thousands of Mongols are withdrawing their money.” This had never
happened before. Sheer panic made his own people doubt his
solvency. The most powerful man in the world got up to fix this.
“There’s something else. Somebody bet against the market.”

Genghis built the world’s biggest, richest,
and most stable economy with the world’s first, largest, and most
sophisticated stock market. Other commerce centers had them, but
the Peking Stock Market traded more wealth than the world’s other
markets combined. Gamblers frequently bet against companies in
crisis, sometimes as a prelude to taking them over, but no one had
ever bet against the entire stock market before. Who could possibly
have the wealth, the balls, and the desire to do that?

Something made Genghis turn around, and there
stood that damn kid studying him. It was as if the boy could read
his mind. It looked like the champion was challenging him. A child
against Genghis Khan.

The realization that this punk crippled his
beloved stock market started a fury that his wife feared would
never end. Genghis flew to the main bank branch to tell the scared
crowd that he’d refill the bank vaults with money from the capital
right after he officiated over the opening of the Olympics.

Then he’d teach the punk a lesson.

CHAPTER 10

William planned it carefully. The Siberians
told them the location of every enemy unit in their way. A few days
before the Olympics started, one hundred ten thousand Americans
surprised the military units, clearing a wide path to the Mongolia
capital.

William shocked the world by sacking
Karakorum, slaughtering its residents, and taking everything of
value. The city received tribute for three centuries, so the
warehouse section was actually larger than the rest of the city
combined. The Bank of Mongolia vault alone took up an entire block.
The thousand horse-drawn wagons that William earlier sent to a
nearby ranch joined thousands of others from the capital, and soon
stretched several kilometers.

Given his family history, William made sure
they didn’t burn the air-sealed wand-storage facility. The million
wand sets he found there would soon arm a million Americans and
Free Europeans.

While the slowest division moved the heavily
loaded wagons east to the coast, where William had cargo ships
waiting, the rest of the near-marathoners transported the gold and
precious jewels on their backs. They went one day east, dropped
their packs, returned the next day, loaded up, then flew east again
in the morning. Ten thousand half-marathoners from the fleet took
the loot the rest of the way. The marathoners continued attacking
Mongol units south to give the wagons the month they’d need to
travel within one day’s flight of the ships.

Many rich Mongols owned estates near
Karakorum. Mongolia always had more horses than people. After
looting those mansions, the Americans used those horses as pack
animals and the Siberians drove the herds north, where they’d be
turned into enough jerked meat to feed an air force.

The irony itched enough to scratch: the
Americans only found so much to take because the Mongols created
the richest kingdom known to man. What the Mongols spent over three
hundred years taking, the Americans stole in just a month. A clever
singer penned a ballad called A Tribute to the Tribute that soon
become popular worldwide.