Deadly Wands (49 page)

He rolled in the dirt, desperate for oxygen,
his whole body aching. His ears rang so loud he couldn’t hear
himself swear. He found himself on his feet, running to his bunker.
He gulped a sack of fermented milk to pop his ears, like when
changing altitude too fast, while watching the enemy blast his
previous marathoners. Thousands of two-wanders bravely shot up at
enemies beyond their range, doing little more than warm the enemy
on a cold night.

Genghis waved nearby quads to follow him.
They rose to attack the Americans from above. No sooner did they
position themselves when a squad of enemies attacked him from
above. They exchanged fireballs for a few minutes before the Khan
realized that he should just dodge the blasts while striking the
bastards below who had their backs to him. Or, better yet, slice
them with blades.

Then a familiar scream woke him like a bad
dream. He squinted to see the Baron, tantalizingly close, flashing
four wands, divert one of his rapid-reaction battalions that was
about to pounce on the Americans. He lured them away and the Khan
got set to follow. Genghis realized with disgust that the Baron
just saved hundreds of his irreplaceable marathoners. Then a
fireball smacked Genghis from the sky like a green recruit for not
maintaining constant situational awareness.

He hit a rooftop with a loud thud before
smacking into the ground. Concentrating through the pain of burning
flesh, he removed his armor while flying into the nearest
water-filled tub to cool his third degree burns in freezing water.
He sucked wand like a slut to ease the pain.

The Americans left by the time he got out,
dripping cold water, his eyebrows still smoking. He stared at them
as they disappeared into the cumulous clouds and realized he didn’t
kill a single enemy.

A massive artillery barrage made everyone on
the ground look up towards the glowing western horizon. For some
reason, it didn’t sound right. Genghis hoped his fastest troops
caught up with the bastards and shot them in the back, but that’s
not what this sounded like.

It slapped Genghis like an open palm: the
enemy used cloud cover to assemble into a wall to fire broadsides
at those pursuing them. The angry Mongol novices would fly right
into their trap. His veterans would know enough to attack them from
behind, but few flew under experienced leaders. Genghis inwardly
winced at every blast. He saw a rapid reaction unit take off in
good formation, but feared they’d arrive too late. Soon the
explosions stopped and Genghis knew the enemy escaped largely
unharmed.

The world’s most powerful man cursed his
impotence. The Great Khan couldn’t even hide in his bunker and get
drunk. Instead, he had to show his troops that he cared. So he
roamed the camp, helping the wounded and promising vengeance.

One hundred thousand dead and twice as many
wounded mocked his eyes. He had not even left his training camp and
already his nemesis made a fool of him. Ever since the Baron toyed
with him near the Bering Strait several years ago, Genghis felt
like the cosmos was bitch-slapping him. What did those funny
Indians call it? Karma. Yeah, the Baron was karma sent to pay him
back for all the bad things he had done.

A few hours of bucking up his troops helped
them, but drained the leader of the mightiest empire humanity has
ever known. A man who practically invented flying dragged his feet
to inspect the damage.

One of the wounded actually snored in a water
tub so loudly that the Great Khan smiled for the first time in
months. He patted the burnt warrior on the shoulder and wished he
could sleep so soundly.

The sight of his favorite son-in-law put
spring in his step. He sprinted over and hugged his old friend. Few
foreigners appreciated this, but Genghis relied on his daughters
and daughter-in-laws to govern while he conquered.

Genghis examined the guy’s bleeding hip.
Nothing lethal, unless it got inflected, but it must hurt like
hell. Worst yet, the veteran must stay immobilized for it to heal.
They went back three hundred years. He knew how hard it’d be for
such an old warrior to just lay still for a few days.

He remembered asking his daughter why she
wanted to marry this local chief instead of a great king. Her
answer? “Because he’s a good Mongol.” Genghis laughed so long he
could not then force her to cement the political alliance that he
planned for her. They gave him great grandsons, too. Even after her
death, he remained his favorite. His descendents hated when he said
this but, really, they didn’t make Mongols like they used to. His
son-in-law was something of a model by which he judged others.

Which really pissed his grandsons off.

Something made Genghis look up. That wounded
airmen stared at him, and not in a good way. Before he could make
sense of it, wands magically sprung into his hands and giant
fireballs flew to engulf him.

The Baron!

Genghis flung himself to one side, away from
his old friend so he wouldn’t die as well. If he held his hand
wands, he may have escaped, but these fireballs were too large to
avoid without wands for propulsion. So the Great Khan rolled when
he hit the dirt while awaiting the inevitable. A heat wave washed
over him, so he kept rolling until he bounced hard against a
pole.

Even as he spit out dirt, it occurred to
Genghis that the Baron never left. When not snoring in water tubs,
the bastard must have been killing his best quads. Who had such
nerve?

He heard a firefight and looked up to see his
arch nemesis laugh down at him. Genghis drew his death sticks but,
before he launched, heard his son-in-law cry out in agony. Genghis
levitated him into the same wooden bathtub the Baron slept in. The
water put out the flames with an audible sizzle that sent a chill
down his spine -- a sure sign of future nightmares. He ran over to
help.

Genghis cried. He didn’t even hide it. His
friend’s eyes were burnt out, his face more cooked than his
mother’s mutton, and his clothes hung on him like tiny rags. His
nose burned to the bone. Smoke rose from his blackened corpse.

But that was not what made the Great Khan
cry. It was seeing the poor man’s chest rise and fall, indicating
he lived long enough to experience all this suffering. Genghis
quickly slit his throat and burst into tears, to the astonishment
of those around him.

CHAPTER 64

After his troops left, with thousands of
Mongols on their tail, Billy -- still in his Mongol commander
uniform -- landed in the training facility and pretended to help
the wounded. In actuality, he covertly killed as many as possible,
even as he levitated some to triage centers, where he got to kill
doctors as well as wounded. He worked his way to the high-altitude
unit, most of whom left to chase Grandma.

As he hoped, only the sick and wounded
remained in their barracks.
Billy killed them, then blasted open their chests to take their
backup wands, starting with the battalion commander, who had the
most sets.

Once he exhausted those barracks, he made his
way to the marathoners, stopping at the medical stations, who were
easy prey. As he took the wands from those he killed, he slew those
bringing in more wounded.

Billy moved from building to building,
slaughtering everyone within, until surprised by suspicious
veterans who torched his stolen armor, his pants, and his bony
booty. He beat the three of them, but had to throw himself in a
water trough to cool his burning butt.

Having filled his backpack with thousands of
good wand sets, Billy relaxed there for so long he may even have
slept. The wand juice flowing to his wounds released so much
tension that he peed without knowing it. Then a tender hand on his
shoulder woke him up and who should pass by but Genghis Khan
himself, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Billy’s first reaction was to escape, but then Genghis did
something rare: he hugged one of the wounded, relief showing on his
face like pimples. The two talked like old war buddies, and the
warrior showed his familiarity by patting the Khan on the
shoulder.

Genghis really liked this guy, so Billy
decided he must die. Billy wanted the man who sent his mother’s
rapists to know what absolute hatred felt like. He remembered his
father saying, “Genghis can’t suffer once you kill him.” So Billy
was always on the lookout for opportunities to make the Immortal
suffer.

Slipping out of the water like an eel, he put
on his backpack and wished he had time to steal some pants. His
backside exposed to cold air and silent ridicule, Billy limped
along a path that took him near the Khan. Until then, he hadn’t
realized his leg hurt. It surprised Billy to find a deep cut in his
calf. The bleeding stopped, but the pain continued.

Several quads watched him warily. He stopped
twenty meters from Genghis and turned. When his nemesis finally
looked up, Billy launched wands and blasted the Khan’s friend.
Genghis, assuming he was the target, threw himself to one side. His
quads fired as one, but Billy popped into the air laterally, before
escaping. Billy paused a few hundred meters up to laugh directly at
Genghis, which sounded sinister with his vocal cords augmented.

Billy crossed Siberia to the Bering Strait.
As he was told, Genghis pulled his best one hundred thousand quads
from India -- half of them marathoners -- to guard the Strait with
fifty thousand Mongol quads and fifty thousand two-wanders. Billy
heard the rebels in India declared independence as soon as the
marathoners cleared the Himalayas. The Mongols may be mediocre, but
the Indians represented a real threat. Billy was so glad he ordered
the Americans to not cross into Siberia without him.

“Dad,” Billy asked out loud, “how am I gonna
beat fifty thousand marathoners?” It may have been early dementia,
but he thought he heard his fathering laughing as an idea
formed.

Billy called up the maps his father made
years ago that showed a chain of islands, called the Aleutians,
that jutted out from Alaska towards the Kamchatka Peninsula in
Siberia. That winter the Americans had pre-deployed literally tons
of supplies along their raiding route, so Billy searched for the
closest supply ship. He had it load up on potable water, sent
messages to the other ships farther down the coast, and asked them
to position themselves equidistant between the coast and the
nearest Aleutian islet. Using the first ship as a stepping stone,
he island hopped to Alaska, bypassing the heavily patrolled
Strait.

At Global Bank in Anchorage, Billy found the
bright red suit that he asked George to send him. It had been a
long time since the Red Baron actually wore red.

He assembled the armada that Jack promised
him and had video taken of him flashing his four wands -- with
250,000 cheering quads in the background. Because he had sent so
many great wands, the University graduated twelve marathon
battalions this time, rather than ten.

Who had to defeat fifty.

While the rest broke camp, Billy had two
marathon battalions island-hop to the supply ships. They carried
sleeping gear, stoves, and supplies, with instructions to cook
enough fish for a division.

The best marathoners he took to the camp
closest to the enemy. After a good sleep, they packed food kits and
water sacks, then attacked at midnight. By morning they pretended
to tire quickly, lost formation easily, and looked scared to death.
The Khan rewarded victories, so the fifty thousand marathoners, who
had not eaten breakfast, took the bait and tried running them
down.

The marathoners from India chased the
Americans several hundred clicks down the island chain until
exhaustion stopped them. By now they knew they had been duped. They
had no food, water, or blankets. All the Baron had to do was block
the only way home and dehydration would do the rest. They basically
killed themselves.

Sure enough, the Red Baron himself flew from
that direction and dropped several hundred video wands of him
speaking bad Hindu.

“We poisoned the watering hole that you
passed two islands ago and now block your only route back home. Our
ship has the only drinkable water within a thousand clicks. Those
who don’t freeze to death tonight will soon die of dehydration.

“Or I’ll triple your salary if you switch
sides. I promise you can return home if you fight for me this
summer. But you must first kill everyone pro-Mongolian and lay them
on the beach so I can see their corpses at dawn.”

As the sun rose, Billy saw several thousand
dead bodies. It was more than he expected, which meant the
pro-Mongolian Indians went down fighting. The living looked tired,
hungry, and dehydrated. Nothing destroys morale faster than killing
your own. Caesar famously threatened to decimate the 9
^th
Legion, where one out of ten randomly selected men are clubbed to
death by the other nine. But he only threatened. His friend Marcus
Crassus actually did it when Roman troops fled before
Spartacus.

Billy wondered if they’d rush him when he
landed. They sure looked beaten, though. Trapped. If they knew his
Americans had already reached the Kamchatka Peninsula on the
Siberian coast -- instead of blocking their only way home -- they’d
kill him for sure. They backed up as he descended, more scared of
him than he was of them.

Billy called them by squad, such as first
squad of the first company of the first battalion. He recorded them
identifying themselves, swearing fealty to the Red Baron, insulting
Genghis Khan, then beheading a pro-Mongol corpse.

After making them give him their backup
wands, Billy sent them to the island with potable water that he had
not, in fact, poisoned. Billy repeated this all day with the other
survivors, except they pissed on the corpses when they ran out of
heads to cut off.