Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 11

  With the Mongol leadership racing north, Billy was free to duel during and after the Olympics. But now he fought two at a time, so opponents would still volunteer, and did not limit himself to one hundred duels daily, injuries permitting. Instead, he dueled literally from dawn to dusk, day after day, when not competing in Olympic races.

  Athletes prepare for the games their entire lives. They had teams to optimize their performance. Companies paid enormous sums to sponsor likely winners. Only for the Boy Wonder to make them look pathetic as Billy dominated every wand event the Olympics offered.

  As expected, the assassination attempts began as soon as the games ended and the tourists left. Elizabeth hired the quads wise enough to not duel her son. She thought a few hundred super-quads would deter attacks, but instead it only turned them into battles.

  Betting huge on the implosion of publicly traded companies paid unexpected dividends. When those counter-parties could not pay in full, Elizabeth seized their assets. She never before fully appreciated having a family full of bankers. Virtually overnight, Global Bank became China’s largest property owner. The month before, William had sent for several thousand English employees to manage the transition. Some of them sailed a ship full of Billy’s winnings to Lisbon to lend more to France and Spain.

  Global Bank would sell the real estate, eventually, but in the meantime Elizabeth used mansions built like fortresses for protection.

  Whoever Genghis put in charge of killing the Boy Wonder tried mercenaries first. Several hundred attacked the estate and lost badly. They tried ambushing Billy on his way to and from the arena. Because she paid so well, Elizabeth had no trouble hiring a few thousand super-quads, while the best of her own relatives acted as an inner guard since she couldn’t trust her mercenaries. Billy loved it. War was even better than dueling. He ate up his first taste of battle and hungered for more. His obsession with dueling broadened into an obsession with war. He read more books that year than in the rest of his life combined.

  Then the Mongols started using regular troops. They wore civilian uniforms, but even Liz noticed the difference. Apparently the enemy was running out of mercenaries. Her bank relatives were hiring in neighboring cities as fast as they could, but Billy was still losing hundreds every week.

  “I think we should run,” Billy told her as the attackers descended from the night sky.

  “There’s only a thousand of them.” It made Liz feel weird to prefer fighting when Billy wanted to flee because it was always the other way around.

  “But they’ve trained together to fly in formation. Our mercs can’t beat them.” Billy paused deliciously. “But they can die trying.”

  That was the beauty of hiring Mongols to fight Mongols. Liz left with the English while Billy led his bodyguards. After the initial clash, he kept rising higher to deal with just several enemies at a time. His guards lasted until midnight. Billy had to duel at dawn, so he disappeared to nap with his English relatives. The soldiers blasted his compound to rubble, but Billy had many more.

  To counter this new threat, they hired Peking’s largest criminal gang, called a triad, and offered to fund ten thousand quads. Billy trusted the Chinese criminals more than the Mongol mercenaries. The next time a battalion of regular troops attacked, the triads caught them from behind.

  Now it became a dance. Genghis took all his good troops with him, so the Mongols had to import units to Peking. Liz paid the triads to kill whoever could be responsible for the attacks, starting with the Imperial Guard. If they could hire Mongol mercenaries as fast as they lost them, Billy would have continued indefinitely.

  Peking had not seen battle in three centuries. Tourists fled, business shut down, and civilians hid in their homes. The news videos of huge firefights over the financial capital of the world spooked the rest of the Empire. And the lower the stock market fell, the more money they made.

  Billy thought it awesome.

  By the time William returned, Billy dueled teams of four all day, and was still running out of opponents. Elizabeth employed a virtual air force, had already bought another ship, and replaced its crew with English sailors. The English had been covertly transferring gold to the ship, but they still had room for several thousand more tons. William had no trouble buying a riverboat capable of such loads, but they couldn’t just move that much gold without attracting attention.

  They needed a distraction. A big one.

  Billy didn’t want to leave his Mongol bodyguards alive, and so suggested they go out with a bang. For the first time, Liz hired Chinese mercenaries. A lot of them.

  After dark, Billy led his remaining Mongols on an attack against the largest enemy unit while the Chinese attacked the police. Triads ambushed imperial guards. William had found displaced Tibetans willing to loot luxury neighborhoods where only rich Mongols could live. Several thousand English then fireballed the city’s most combustible buildings, before moving that gold onto their river barge. A few hundred wands propelled that barge downriver and out to sea, where no one could see them levitate the bullion onto their ship.

  William took the other English to rob the main Bank of Mongolia branch to make it that much harder for the Khan to pay his panicky depositors. They each carried their maximum weight to the ship. Perhaps even more valuable was the video that William recorded showing the empty vaults of Bank of Mongolia. That really panicked Mongol depositors.

  Billy overtook the ship before dawn as it sailed at full speed to San Francisco. His Mongol bodyguards and the Mongol airmen had slaughtered each other. They forewarned the triads so they could finish the survivors and take their valuables. Every air base has thousands of extra wand sets that allowed the triads to recruit more quads.

  In just a few months, they took most of the Empire’s portable wealth. William finally felt his parents rest in peace, and was pretty sure he heard his grandma laughing hysterically.

  In San Francisco, William replaced his English crew with American sailors and bought enough bombs to fill the cargo bays. He paid thousands of two-wanders to turn every edible animal between the Bering Strait and California into jerked meat for the bunkers he started constructing the year before. Until spring, their full time job was to hunt game and blast lakes, rivers, and coastlines to kill fish so the Mongols had nothing to eat.

  Given the mountain of valuables they took, William gave his raiders the next year off since they wouldn’t return without first enjoying their newfound wealth. Almost one hundred thousand villages would become rich overnight, boosting the economy. Over a thousand tribes would share a common bond to bind them together.

  While the English set up more Global Bank branches, William and Liz toured the defenses with the leaders of American University. Warning them that the Khan would retaliate, William paid them to build even more concealed bunkers and to stock each with as many anti-personnel bombs as they could find.

  William sent Billy, as the Baron, to visit every tribe that contributed quads to the raid, with University recruiters. Before the entire tribe, Billy would show off, flying higher and faster than anyone believed possible. He let them measure his flames and showed the various shapes and sizes of weapons he could conjure up. His specialty was using all four wands to blast a huge crater to destroy the myth that only Genghis Khan could use boot wands for something other than propulsion.

  He praised the quads by name who participated in the raid, had them show off the priceless treasures they acquired, and offered full scholarships to anyone who could fly long distance. Then he offered free wand sets to every quad who didn’t already have them. Thousands of teenagers who never had the opportunity to test their wand abilities did so now, to tears of joy from family and friends. Those with the strongest power received the strongest wands, so they had to compete against each other in front of everyone who mattered. Being hugged by the Baron, as he gave them wands, coins, and scholarships, became the defining moment fo
r an entire generation of American quads. Several million teenagers imprinted on the Baron like a baby duck to his mama.

  Finally, Billy laid out backpacks full of wealth for food, schools, and hospitals. Then he showed maps of the highways they planned to build to unite the Americas in commerce. But, before handing them over to tribal leaders, he told them the price they’d pay:

  “The wealth we took back from the Mongols will fund food production, infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which will create millions of jobs and power the American economy, lifting millions from poverty. Your greatest days lie before you. You will give your children greater opportunities than you ever enjoyed.

  “But the price you must pay is unity. Only together are we strong. Violence against each other or your neighbors weakens us. That’s how Genghis Khan has been able to slaughter you for centuries. Let the Mongols duel to the death. I need you to live for your families. Strengthen the policies, systems, and institutions that enable you to resolve problems without bloodshed. Warring tribes threaten the American system of representative democracy, the core of the new American identity, and therefore must be removed like a cancer.

  “I have given your returning heroes more wealth than they can spend in a lifetime. In return, they have sworn a solemn oath to protect the peace. You think Genghis Khan is not now planning to exterminate all Americans? You destroyed his capital, stole his treasure, and slaughtered his people. Right now he’s wondering why he didn’t wipe this entire continent clean years ago. Unity will make you strong, rich, and safe. Warring against your neighbors will destroy you all.”

  Genghis had been sending punitive raiding parties into the Americas for two centuries. He never bothered to conquer the tribes because they didn’t have any wealth to steal, so the Mongols just killed everyone and burned cities, crops, and herds. They killed far more Americans through disease, starvation, and displacement than through violence.

  Because these raids depopulated western Canada, the closest city, San Francisco, was several thousand kilometers from Siberia. Anchorage was a fortress, not a city, and acted as a tripwire to buy San Francisco time. American University took responsibility for defense by vigorously patrolling the Bering Strait and manning the ten lines of fortifications between the Strait and Anchorage.

  With spring coming, scouts noticed Mongols bringing food, munitions, and supplies by the ton. Siberians warned them that the Khan would invade with a million quads. The University did the smart thing and begged William for help.

  William looked relieved. Genghis wanted his money back, knew most of it was in San Francisco, and that the raiders were dispersed across the Americas. Why wouldn’t he invade? William closed his eyes and saw the campaign as Genghis would.

  “Baron, why are you smiling?” the terrified University staff asked William.

  “Because we’re going to destroy them,” William answered to obvious disbelief.

  Although what he said was true, he also lied -- he smiled not because they’d destroy the invaders, but because Genghis Khan would scare the Americans into uniting against him. Because the raiders came from many tribes, Genghis would see all Americans as the enemy. After pulling off such a profitable raid, William wanted to recruit while the moment was ripe. Which is why he sent Billy on tour and why he wanted his raiders to return home richer than kings. William needed the full strength of the Americas deployed against the Empire, and Genghis was gonna help make that happen.

  That made him smile.

  At their victory celebration when they arrived in San Francisco, William told them to take the next year and a half off so that Genghis would hear of it. Privately, he explained that the University would need all winter to count their plunder and deposit it into one hundred twenty thousand Global Bank accounts. Therefore, they needed to return in the spring to get the rest of their money.

  The University had just graduated the last of one hundred fifty half-marathon battalions. The Baron wished he could see the Khan’s face when he unexpectedly faced a few hundred thousand long-distance quads instead of a defenseless city.

  “Record me,” William ordered the staffers. “Genghis Khan leads a million-quad armada to exterminate the Americas. He plans on killing everyone. The only way you can save your family is for every quad to help us stop him near San Francisco. To compensate for leaving your jobs, I’ll pay every quad who joins our self-defense force a full gold coin or its equivalent. Come now or Genghis Khan will slaughter your family just as he has slaughtered millions of other families, including mine.”

  Billy heard about the invasion just as he started getting the shakes. In South America at the time, Billy took the news like medicine. He flew two thousand clicks a day, scared his father would win before he got there, and unaware that the sneaky bastard wanted the Americans to win slowly.

  He never told even Billy this, but William wanted Genghis to bomb San Francisco because only an existential threat -- a threat to their very existence -- would shock the warring tribes into unity.

  All ten lines of fortifications had a division of cheap quads and a battalion of two-wanders for supply, administration, and security. All were volunteers that American Jack paid a subsistence wage. William saved the quads by sending them south in a skirmish line with orders to kill every edible animal they found on their way, and to blast every river, lake, and pond to kill the fish. The two-wanders he asked to stay by explaining how they were gonna beat Genghis freaking Khan:

  “Genghis must feed and shelter a million fliers, so he desperately needs your food and bunkers. You must stay to deny him it. He’ll leave his slowest division to dislodge you. You can do your part by keeping that division here so we can pounce on them at our convenience. We’ll follow the armada and ambush an enemy division at each of the fortifications. To help us win, all you have to do is survive. For your service, dead or alive, I’ll pay each of you a full year’s salary.”

  “Baron, why are you so confident of victory?” one of them asked.

  “Because I’ve been preparing for this battle for over a year. That’s why I built so many new bunkers. I killed a quarter-million Mongols led by Genghis Khan last summer, and now I’m gonna kill a million more.”

  Instead of organizing the quads according to how far they could fly, William put them according to how high. The highest-flying battalions occupied the northernmost bunkers. The University certified the ceiling of all graduates, which made this easier. And whoever could not fly high enough was sent to San Francisco. A year of preparations was about to pay off.