Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 19

  The destruction of the Mongol marathoners allowed the one hundred thousand American near-marathoners to raid, and made it safe for the two hundred thousand half-marathoners to work as golden mules again. New graduates and better wands let the University bring them up to full strength.

  William exploited the Khan’s bizarre absence by sacking cities in the heart of Mongolia. Billy scouted ahead with the marathoners to ambush enemy units while the twenty half-marathon divisions carried plunder to Alaska.

  It took Genghis months to find enough troops to confront the American armada. Only now did it occur to him that he should not have believed his own propaganda -- that he had infinite quads.

  Before winter started, he rushed his force to the Bering Strait to block the Americans from escaping. The loaded down half-marathoners were leaving anyways. Genghis desperately wanted to destroy them and take the wealth back, but the Americans aggressively defended that first line of fortifications. The Americans had destroyed the Mongol bunkers, so the Mongols didn’t have food, bombs, or shelter. Still, Genghis launched one massive assault because he knew the Baron was still raiding in Mongolia.

  And got his butt whooped. Willy had already told them what to do. Half of them kept the Mongols in the air all day, then the other hundred thousand bombed them that night. The half-marathoners could fly higher and longer than most of the Mongols, and so rotated shifts to exhaust the enemy before seriously engaging. Each half-marathoner made five trips from Mongolia, taking one hundred kilos of loot each time. The Americans certainly weren’t going to give up a million kilos of plunder.

  Genghis not only had to flee but, before he fled, learned that the bombs that killed so many of his troops were his own. Stolen from his camp during his disastrous invasions of the Americas.

  The Khan had enough. The Americans couldn’t cross during winter anyways, and he couldn’t keep his troops there without a huge logistical train, so he took his force after the real enemy -- Willy. Why didn’t he give himself a fearsome name, like Bobby or Harold? Who the hell was gonna write songs about someone named Willy?

  But at least he trapped the bastard in Siberia, where feeding one hundred thousand mouths was impossible.

  When William heard that Genghis was gonna block their path home, William literally jumped for joy. Without his wife, there was nothing he wanted more than to kill Mongols. His near-marathoners had to follow him as if their lives depended on it. The Siberians were running out of herds to feed them. Plus, the Strait was really far away, which meant the Khan gave him that much more time to kill. He led the Americans southwest, where they sacked cities and overwhelmed air bases.

  They buried their loot on top of the Ural Mountains. Colder weather forced them to move south into the Stans -- the area between Mongolia-China-India and Persia-Turkey-Europe. The people of the Stans were not Mongolian, but lived a similar nomadic life and were the Empire’s closest allies. The Empire relied on these nomads to fight their wars.

  Forewarned, a massive force of five hundred thousand active-duty, police, militia, veteran, and civilian quads confronted William. Instead of engaging, Billy and the ten marathon battalions lured the fifty thousand fastest enemies away on an exhausting all-day flight that ended when William and the near-marathoners ambushed them after sunset.

  Knowing the geography intimately now paid dividends. Instead of engaging the main enemy unit, William led his force directly away, destroying everything within reach. As he expected, thousands of enemy quads abandoned their armada to defend their homes or flee with their families.

  The enemy rushed to catch up with William, leaving the slowest behind with the baggage train. The marathoners followed the enemy, picking off the slowest, taking their food, and dropping their own bombs on them. With ten thousand marathoners bringing them food, the near-marathoners didn’t even have to slow down to forage. Billy’s marathoners also picked off enemy units scouting, foraging, and reinforcements. This left the enemy hungry, exhausted, and blind.

  After sacking another major city, the enemy camped too close. Sensing an opportunity, the near-marathoners stocked up on bombs from the city’s munitions depot and surprised the enemy armada while they slept. After spending a few days hunting down survivors, they faced no more organized resistance in the Stans.

  By late winter, however, new enemy armadas started shadowing them and the Americans were too loaded down with loot to fight effectively. They were also too far from the Urals to bury their plunder with the rest. At the Caspian Sea, William told them they were going home via Scandinavia-Iceland-Greenland. The cheering troops had been raiding for almost a year.

  A week later, however, they got some bad news. William called a leadership meeting and laid out their situation.

  “The enemy has been shadowing us instead of stopping us, so I sent Shorty ahead, who found Genghis Khan, with a large force in St. Petersburg, waiting for us. The Mongols have been herding us.

  “As all of you know, I don’t like fair fights. I think it’s dumb to confront someone looking for battle. So, instead of going home through Scandinavia, I say we reach Iceland via England. That means we fly west, where it’s warmer, rather than northwest, where the enemy wants to trap us. Europe has a lot of enemy troops, but it also has a lot of food and shelter. And I, for one, could use hot food and an even hotter bath!”

  The marathoners carried light loads, so Billy led them to where enemy scouts would see them flying towards Scandinavia, while the loaded down near-marathoners fled west and avoided population centers. For an exciting month William pounded the enemy in Europe, finally stopping for a week to decimate the Mongol unit in France. The French greeted them like saviors. Not even San Francisco had welcomed so enthusiastically. William feared the wine, women, and song more than the Mongols. So when Billy and the marathoners finally showed up, William tried to look disappointed when he gave his troops the bad news:

  “I hope you’ve all had your hot food, hot baths, and hot women, because the Khan has combined his forces and will arrive soon with half a million quads. Genghis hates crowded places, and so has never even been to France. But, once he gets here and hears we’ve flown home, I imagine he’ll vent his rage on the people who have treated us so well. Can you see the irony? We started raiding to stop the Mongols from conquering Europe, and now we’ll leave when they need us the most.” His squad, company, and battalion commanders no longer looked like they wanted to party. “Yet we cannot even fight the Khan’s huge armada because we’re too loaded down with loot! Nor can we get the plunder we buried in the Urals because we can’t carry a single kilo more.”

  “I have an idea,” Billy said, as they rehearsed. Billy walked in front of them. Although he always covered his face, they knew it was him because he was the shortest guy in the entire armada.

  “We can’t let Genghis conquer Europe, so we must reduce the quality and quantity of his troops. If we cannot fight loaded down, then let’s just give this loot to the European quads risking their lives for little pay. Then, after spanking Genghis Khan, we get our treasure from the Urals, and no enemy force will be strong enough to block our escape home.”

  The commanders gave Shorty a standing ovation, followed by a huge group hug that Billy found suffocating. And oddly endearing.

  The French king loved the idea of the Americans paying his troops what they deserved. That much loot would make the Free Europe economy boom. And he certainly appreciated getting a million sets of wands (William sent half a million more to Spain). What he didn’t like was loaning his best ten divisions to a total stranger. But that was the price he had to pay.

  The king called up his one hundred thousand best quads in the middle of Paris and sobbed like a baby, anticipating their reactions when the Americans handed them their backpacks. The Free European quads (only half were French and about 5% were American) had no idea what to expect. The only thing the king said was the Baron, who had been
sending so much money and wands these past few years, had another gift. William wanted the act to speak for itself.

  The near-marathoners, facing them, levitated their loot closer, then saluted. One hundred thousand curious quads opened their new backpacks and screamed as one. The million people watching had no idea how to react. Then some Europeans hugged their American counterparts, and the rest joined in. In the process, they knocked over some backpacks and bucketfuls of coins, jewels, and bejeweled cups spilled out. The crowd now erupted into cheers.

  Billy, wearing his father’s bloody red body armor, led the marathoners over the parade ground. The boy did his scream and fire dance so that everyone could see him project flames from his boot wands. His ten thousand companions blasted the sky like a drum beat as Billy landed on a tower surrounded by French-speaking Americans.

  “Genghis Khan must pay for his crimes. Today, he makes the first of many payments. Never have so few fought so many for so long for so little. This compensation is the least we can do for heroes who risked their lives for our freedom. We only ask that you give half to your comrades who have been disabled and to the families of those slain. But, to keep the Khan from taking this wealth back, you must join us tonight.”

  Billy didn’t mention that his guys removed the precious gems and jewels for the ladies back home. He himself was accumulating a huge collection of diamonds.

  When the Khan’s vanguard got close enough, the Free Europe Air Force bombed them to bits. The Europeans had just enough time to strip the dead of their armor, money, and wands before Genghis arrived with reinforcements just before dawn. The Europeans fled as soon as the enemy appeared on the horizon, and the Mongols had already flown too far to pursue them.

  The Americans, meanwhile, ate the Mongols food and took a nap a half-hour away. An hour after dawn, they returned to the camp. As William predicted, the Mongol reinforcements slept in the camp made by their vanguard. Unlike the Europeans, the Americans had not dropped their bombs. Until now. One hundred thousand explosions woke the tired bastards up and a million fireballs a minute finished them off. Genghis had already returned to his main force.

  Instead of returning to France, the Americans flew around the Mongols to get their buried treasure on the Ural Mountains. While crossing Russia, they emptied every bank and overwhelmed every enemy unit that didn’t get out of their way. Split into eleven divisions, they swept a wide path.

  William gave money and stolen wands to a descendent of the old Czars called Ivan the Terrible so he could rebel with more than patriotic rhetoric. The rest he left with trainers to hire the ten thousand Russians and the ten thousand Scandinavians with the greatest endurance and turn them into formation fliers -- a process that takes years. He based them out of Helsinki because that’s where he had just opened another bank branch.

  Genghis moved on France determined to take Paris like a sexy bitch. He should have finished Europe long ago, but worried he’d run out of enemies for his quads to kill. He never told anyone this, but he feared civil war far more than any enemy. At least, until the Baron. Without an enemy, his millions of quads would turn on each other rather than suffer from withdrawal. Conquering the primitives in Africa and the Americas would probably cost more than it was worth.

  Then he learned the Americans were not even in France anymore. Instead, they were robbing Bank of Mongolia branches in Russia while getting the treasure they left in the Urals.

  Genghis groaned at hearing the news. This left him two choices: intercept them before they reached Scandinavia, or use his armada to crush French resistance. The prospect of burning Paris to the ground made his fingers twitch. But the French were much stronger now than just a few years ago, while he had sent his best battalions from Europe to Siberia, so it was not obvious that he could actually win with what he had. Especially since the Baron decimated his frontline troops. And if he did commit to conquering France, the Americans would probably attack him from behind.

  Genghis sighed. The French would still be in France next year, while this could be his only opportunity to catch the Americans weighted down. If he let them go now, they’d surprise him again in the spring. France wasn’t his enemy. The Baron was his enemy.

  So Genghis rushed his armada north, not knowing Paris pissed themselves in fear. He couldn’t let his weakest troops slow him down, so he personally led his fastest twenty divisions.

  With twice as many quads, Genghis faced them outside St. Petersburg. The Americans camped after dark an hour away and slept early. The scout reports sounded too good to be true, so Genghis went in person to see for himself.

  Sure enough, it looked like the Americans slept. If he took his entire force with him, he could have ended this before midnight. As it was, by the time he returned with troops, it’d be almost dawn. While the Americans didn’t have any bombs because they carried too much loot, the Mongols didn’t carry any bombs so they could fly fast enough to intercept them.

  But William didn’t want the enemy well rested, so Billy harassed them all night. The kid had more energy than the Sun. Thousands of angry quads chased him as he dived out of the night to fireball their tents. If the Mongols did attack en force, Billy would have warned his father.

  The Americans didn’t wear armor so they could fly higher, faster, and farther. Which made sense in their hit-and-run raids. But in a pitched battle, when neither side has surprise, the side with armor enjoyed a lethal advantage.

  Well, no time for surprises. This would be a large-scale maneuver battle, the kind that Genghis perfected centuries ago. The rest of his troops were only a day away, so he was surprisingly confident.

  Before dawn, the Americans ate breakfast, formed up, and took to the air, leaving one hundred thousand backpacks on the ground. This told Genghis that they planned to fight. The Mongols spent the night in their armor, sleeping in formation, and so wasted no time rising to meet them. Genghis himself led the charge, eager to acquit himself after so many costly mistakes.

  But, instead of a great clash, the Americans fired volleys whenever they enjoyed a favorable position, but otherwise didn’t engage. The Americans could fly higher, and so exploited their advantage by making the Mongols search for them in the sun. This enraged the Mongols, who wanted to teach these bastards a lesson. And they did. Genghis couldn’t help but notice how many screaming Americans plummeted to earth. The Mongols needed this to pump up their morale. Hour after hour they pushed the raiders back, decimating their ranks.

  With their heavy armor and weaker wands, the Mongols tired first, forcing Genghis to rotate battalions. He patted himself on the back for having twice as many troops. The Americans, naturally, targeted units on the ground, so they rested under the reserve division for protection. While each Mongol had a water sack, each American carried several. Having planned on a long battle, the Americans also brought beef jerky and bread to eat in the air, while the Mongols started without even enjoying breakfast.

  Genghis thought everything was going better than expected until he took a wild swing at an American who just killed a bodyguard. His opponent yelled in pain and fell screaming, but the Khan was pretty sure he missed. So he dropped below the fight and tracked the wounded quad. Not easy while avoiding blasts.

  Then he saw it. His opponent regained control over his fall and flew below tree level. A long moment later Genghis believed he saw him streak over the horizon.

  Genghis did not like it. Something was going on, so he watched carefully until an American killed a Mongol, then soon clutched his chest and dropped from the sky. When this guy, too, recovered to disappear among the ground clutter, Genghis felt a bad chill flow down his spine.

  For some reason, it felt like the Americans were laughing at him.

  His battalion of personal guards flew circle-8’s around him. He called a messenger over to tell the reserve division to rest, then motioned for his security battalion to follow him when the next enemy
fell.

  Genghis dived at full power and caught the bastard just as he recovered. The Khan sliced off a leg and watched him fall into some trees. He landed to examine the body. The fall broke his neck, but the Khan could not find any other wounds. Yet he couldn’t be certain the American faked an injury. He fought for five hours, so why turn coward now? The Americans suffered just half as many casualties as the Mongols, and did not look ready to run.

  Disturbed, Genghis ordered his battalion to rest, eat, and drink. Something told him he’d need them soon. He waited until the battle disappeared over the horizon, then led his men around so he could strike the Americans from behind. They dropped on the first enemy battalion that didn’t see them and smashed their formation. Genghis himself killed three and wounded seven more in his best moment yet.

  Units often pair up to watch each others back. Now, the enemy’s companion battalion dropped on his security guards, canceling out their minor victory and giving the Khan his first serous burn of the day. Genghis returned them to his main force to better direct the battle.

  By the time they pushed the raiders back over their camp, the Mongols still enjoyed 50% more quads. Genghis knew the enemy wouldn’t leave without their precious plunder, which meant this was a fight to the finish.

  Finally. Genghis needed a victory under his belt. His troops lost so much faith in him that he could see it in their eyes. The few with the balls to make eye contact.

  Until then, the Khan believed he could still win. The battalion guarding the camp had been cooking and, as one, lifted food packs and water sacks to distribute to the one hundred thousand or so comrades in the sky. The entire American air force broke off to enjoy a brief lunch near their ceiling, putting the sun behind them.

  Dumbfounded, the Mongols stared at them. In the middle of an hours-long battle, they were gonna eat? Really? In three centuries, that had never happened before.

  Genghis assumed it was a trick. Like everyone else, he studied the skies for hidden enemies, then put a wand to an eye to examine the terrain below them.

  Nothing. No hidden ambushers diving from above or soaring from below. No one. But if he could see over the horizon, he could watch an American division smash his reserves on the ground.

  Genghis held his troops back, although he didn’t yet understand why. The textbook move would have been a mass charge to catch the enemy literally while they were eating. But, instead, he reorganized his formations to better prepare for this final fight.

  And that’s when he noticed his quads diving to the defenseless American camp. Soon many others followed, gutting their formations. Genghis let himself go into a controlled freefall while putting a wand to one eye to see better. Even at this altitude, he noticed something bright glittering on the ground. Near the one hundred thousand backpacks full of stolen wealth.

  Ah crap!

  The Americans didn’t even respond. They seemed more interested in eating than protecting their gold. His troops must have agreed, because what was a stream now became a flood. The first Mongols grabbed a backpack and flew off -- away from the battle. They got away clean, which encouraged the rest.

  The butterflies in his stomach suddenly turned into worms. Insight into what was really happening struck him like a knee to the groin.

  “Noooooo!” Genghis yelled, signaling retreat at maximum volume while an invisible hand clenched his heart.

  Most of his troops were allies or mercenaries, fighting for pay, not patriotism, and a backpack of coin was just too tempting to pass up. They all heard how the Americans gave their European counterparts more wealth than most families saw in a lifetime. So while half of his quads followed him back, the rest dived to steal backpacks.

  Backpacks that Genghis realized must be full of rocks. The bastard outsmarted him again. This was the plan all along. To exhaust the Mongols, then lure the greediest away with false gold. That’s why they camped so close! We didn’t push them back, Genghis realized, they pulled us in! He could not even tell his troops because they couldn’t hear him. The Americans faking wounds were probably positioning themselves to pounce on the Mongols lugging one hundred kilos of rocks.

  Genghis roared “full retreat” and led it himself, diving to maximize speed. A glance over his shoulder showed the Americans on their tail -- some still eating. He knew they could cut up his slowest troops, but counted on his rested reserve division to run interference.

  When Genghis saw a shadow in the sky, he rose expecting to see his reserves flying cover. Instead he saw an enemy division blocking their escape. Genghis signaled a sharp turn south to elude the trap. Later he would find the ten thousand corpses of his backup division. His security battalion, having recently rested, kept up, but the rest of his mighty armada could not. The difference in energy levels proved fatal.

  Genghis flew up and the sight of thousands of Americans blasting his quads in the back made him sick because he knew the fault was all his. Kicking himself for his stupidity, Genghis led his one rested battalion to slow down the Americans.

  Genghis thought he’d finally get the climatic battle he sought all day.

  Instead the bastards blasted down volleys from above. One hundred thousand fireballs a second rained down on them. Genghis led the charge up, but the enemy only flew higher. The fastest quads died first and Genghis himself got crushed like a bug. A fireball hit his shield with such force that it broke his nose, which blurred his vision.

  He recovered before splattering on the rocks, and saw his troops getting mauled a few clicks above. The Americans tracked them like a shark, descending just enough to get within lethal range. All too soon his exhausted armada disintegrated in all directions. They abandoned their formations and the fastest tried surviving at the expense of the slowest. The Americans gleefully chased them down.

  Genghis Khan just lost another battle. He pissed away his best battalion for nothing. Humbled, he hugged the terrain at maximum speed.

  He landed at his camp and ordered everyone to leave. He pillaged his own tent, but had to leave most of his stuff behind. He had to personally threaten the slowest staffers to launch.

  And not a moment too soon. One hundred Americans rose over the horizon like a storm. Genghis popped up and flashed his four wands, hoping he could out-run the bastards. Instead, the Baron flashed four wands, but otherwise ignored him, preferring to kill his support staff. One hundred quads chased a thousand, and would probably win.

  Genghis had enough. He raced for his follow-on forces to turn them around before the Americans destroyed them, too. He lost the better half of his armada, and doubted he cost the enemy a thousand.

  They seemed surprised to see him alone that evening, and even more surprised by the panicked expression on his face as he ordered them to fly back where they came from. The Khan didn’t care that they just finished setting camp -- he wanted them in the air within an hour. Genghis was aware they thought he was delusional, but he couldn’t afford to lose more troops. The Baron was killing his guys faster than his flight school could train them. His boast of infinite quads now felt like a cruel joke.

  Later Genghis learned the bank gold the Americans accumulated on their way to the Urals had loaded them down, so they rested and feasted while waiting for the Khan to catch up. With the Great Khan now in retreat, the Americans deposited their stolen riches in Helsinki, then flew to the Urals for the rest of their loot, while crushing Mongol units and emptying Mongol businesses. Thousands of Russians eagerly took them to the richest Mongols.

  On that long, lonely retreat, Genghis examined the trick the enemy pulled on him. Its brilliance was obvious. He thought he had seen everything, yet the Baron kept coming up with something new.

  Then, like a lightning strike, he realized he was fighting a Mongol! Mongols valued deception over brute force because the better the deception, the fewer casualties suffered. So duelers, commanders, and generals who won by deception received
the greatest respect. That’s how a million Mongols, fielding just one hundred thousand quads, conquered half the world.

  Now, how do I fight a Mongol? he wondered.