Deadly Wands (56 page)

The offer stunned them.

“You’ll have to deposit the shares due the
Indians, but the Americans and the super-quads have agreed to
forfeit our cut to fund your new government. And the half that
would go to my general war fund I hereby donate to your treasury on
the condition that your elected leaders sign trade and mutual
defense treaties with China, Persia, and the Republic of
India.”

“Agreed!” they shouted, jumping up and down
like teenagers.

“Then let’s leave the near-marathoners to
move and protect the wagon train while the rest of us leave after
sunset to liberate your kingdom.”

The Indians gave Billy a group hug a dozen
people thick. Someone started a song in Hindu and soon everyone was
singing while they took turns embracing Billy.

For Team Red, this solved their problem
simply. They couldn’t just leave all that gold, yet they sure
didn’t want to tie it around their ankles. Mongols controlled
Tibet, Billy didn’t trust the new Persian government, while
northern India was the closest place to send it.

While everyone prepared to leave, Prince came
back with word that the 20,000 or so survivors on the eastern end
of the pass headed north, to circle around west to join up with the
gold they were suppose to protect.

“Do you know what I want you to do, Grandma?”
Billy asked.

She sighed. “Make sure the Mongols don’t
ambush the wagon train.”

“You’re a mind reader!” He turned to
Princess. “Well, my wife, want to liberate a kingdom?”

“You can call me your wife when you finally
man up and marry me.”

The silence felt incredibly
uncomfortable.

“At least you two talk like a married
couple,” Bear remarked.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Billy
said, looking hard at Princess, “but now I’m really in a killer
mood.”

“I’d be in a better mood if you gave me
more,” she shot back.

"You're not pregnant enough?" he joked,
patting her growing bump. "You don't see Blade here demanding
more."

"Well," Blade replied smiling, "not from
you."

"Ouch!" Billy turned to Prince. "If even
Blade can develop a sense of humor, then I hold out hope for you,
dear brother."

CHAPTER 73

Despite their defeat in southern India, the
Mongols in northern India clearly did not expect 20,000 enemy quads
to show up at the provincial capital. The Khan and the assault on
Ceylon had bled their units of those identifying as Mongolian, so
when the Baron identified himself with his scream, backed by a sky
full of quads, the Indian troops mostly cheered. The twins didn’t
get the battle they expected, but they got some therapy killing the
governor and his family. The twins’ extended family had plenty of
Mongol blood, so they offered an amnesty to anyone who accepted the
new democratic government.

Billy didn’t want to kill Indians, so he
waited for enemy units to offer battle. Instead, those who didn’t
support the new regime either remained silent or left.

As they toured the cities, most people
welcomed the twins, hoping they’d resuscitate the dead economy. To
that end, Billy let every quad who recorded a video swearing
loyalty to the new democratic government to get free food from the
pass. In one swoop, the cousins learned the identities of every
quad they could count on. More importantly, they knew they couldn’t
trust any quad not on their list. Billy barely had enough wagons to
haul the gold, so much of that food would rot unless eaten soon.
Every militia soon returned to distribute food to the cities they
served, then went back for more.

Distributing gold, food, and supplies ended
the war before it began. It’s hard to rebel against overlords
giving away fortunes. The Red Baron gave it the credibility it
needed. And it helped that they scheduled elections, rather than
rule by fiat. Just like that, several million people left the
Empire. This was the first time things went as well as Billy
hoped.

Billy sent for enough employees to convert
every Bank of Mongolia branch into Global Bank centers. All the
deposits were now his. He had to wait for the first team to arrive,
so he sent his super-quads to Grandma.

In his last speech, Billy set up a
competition: “The Republic of India in Ceylon is expanding north.
The faster the Republic of Northern India expands south, the
stronger, safer, and richer it will be.”

Forming a competition in the minds of all
Indians would speed up the liberation of the subcontinent and give
a sense of inevitability to Indian rule. Millions of mixed descent
would chose the side they thought would win. Whereas before no one
doubted the Mongols would prevail, now no one doubted that the
Indians would win. Doubters had only to look at what the Baron did
in Europe.

Once the wagon train arrived, the cousins
would have twenty-six long distance battalions, a sense of urgency
that the Republic of India didn’t, and a hell of a lot of coin.

Billy left confident that the new kingdom
would thrive. Now he had to destroy the remains of a mighty armada
with just four thousand super-quads.

For the first week, the Mongols posted layers
of sentries because they couldn’t believe the Red Baron would not
hunt them down. By the second week, they relaxed because no one had
attacked them. So Billy’s super-quads surprised them
completely.

Still, the twenty thousand would have fought
much better if they knew they faced only four thousand.

With strong winds, heavy rain, and dark
clouds, they posted sentries on the ground rather than get blown
away in the storm. The Mongols spread out over several small hills
to make bombardment less effective.

So Billy formed his super-quads in a skirmish
line on the ground. They walked quickly into the Mongol camp,
stabbing and slashing the sleeping quads as they went. The wind and
rain drowned out their shouts, while terrible visibility and
rolling hills masked their presence among the trees. As they
progressed, more Mongols lived long enough to blast, but the sound
did not carry far and Team Red stuck with steel to avoid noisy
firefights.

For several minutes, things went so smoothly
that Billy hoped they could cross the entire camp. But all good
things end too soon.

Out of Billy’s hearing, the enemy spotted his
troops walking down a hill, killing as they went. A Mongol woke his
teammates by blasting Team Red, and soon a few hundred Mongols were
shooting from behind trees, stopping the advance. Not dumb enough
to charge out in the open, Team Red flew up and over these Mongols
to use their maneuverability in the air to pick off the easy
targets on the surface.

It was the right tactic. Unfortunately,
aerial blasts carried much farther, waking up more Mongols.

Billy’s skirmish line broke down. Some
companies advanced far, while their neighboring company fought
duels above the treetops. As Mongols tried to flank the aerial
duelers, they came upon the super-quads on the ground, triggering
desperate fights in the dark. The two sides became mixed up, which
cost Team Red some of its advantages.

In contrast, Billy had a great night. He had
plenty of practice, so his team advanced the farthest. Whenever
Mongols looked too closely, Billy sang the latest Mongolian hit
song or yelled something reassuring to buy enough time to get
within twenty meters. He heard some firefights, but had no reason
to retreat until he reached the peak of a hill and saw the extent
of the battlefield. Some of his companies advanced a kilometer into
the Mongol camp, where they could be attacked from behind. Hell,
Billy realized, his own company could be ambushed from the
rear.

Billy gathered his team together, flew behind
a thousand or so Mongols pushing back his neighboring team, and
surprised the enemy from behind -- what Mongol tacticians call The
Sodomy Maneuver. Billy now flew over the battlefield to signal
retreat as the entire Mongol force would soon be upon them. They
had a great victory. Now all they had to do was break off and enjoy
it.

They rallied in dense woodlands across from a
stream, behind a large outcropping just a five minute flight away.
Billy’s company hovered in a line between the rally point and the
camp to drive back enemies pursuing too closely. He noted which
team members flew by and which had wounds.

Then something prompted him to fly
higher.

Billy noticed a fierce firefight in the
enemy’s camp. It now dawned on him that he had not seen Princess.
Instead of fading away, the firefight grew in intensity. Stomach
churning, Billy tapped his throat and shouted down to his unit:

“Do my scream when you engage.”

Billy knew this was bad. Superior quads
maximize their advantage by keeping a distance because they could
fly and fire better. It’s so much easier to avoid small, slow
fireballs than big, fast ones.

Knots tied up his stomach as he raced full
out and saw his worst nightmare -- an aerial rumble where numbers
mattered more than skill. The remains of a company battled a
thousand Mongols and some of the dead bodies on the ground were
mothers of his children. He glimpsed Tiny picking up Prince, who
looked dead, while Princess held off several Mongols in a blur of
sword fighting.

Time to distract the enemy.

Billy risked blowing out his vocal chords by
tapping his throat with both hand wands. His primal scream erupted
all on its own, voiced with greater fear, rage, and intensity than
Billy had ever known. Later, watching the video, he didn’t
recognize himself. It was like a parent shouting down a child, if
that parent was Thor and he used thunder to yell. Billy’s throat
would remain raw for weeks, but he accomplished his goal: letting
the enemy know that the Red Baron was coming.

The verbal assault froze the battlefield as
hardened warriors felt chills run down their spines. It was like
crawling into a cave, then having a mother bear roar in your face.
Hearing the Baron’s scream on video did not compare to the terror
of hearing it in person; it was like virgins comparing sex with
watching porno. Few would have been surprised if a giant troll
crashed through the trees. The enemy backed up, seeking the
protection of comrades, squinting in the dark to see the new threat
through the rain. They looked more at each other than the
vulnerable enemies virtually at their feet.

Billy rose in an arc to fire at the densest
mass of Mongols below him. He descended like a meteor farting
streaks of fire. All enemy eyes could not help but focus on him.
Billy knew his quads on the ground would use this opportunity to
break contact. Since he had so many targets, he continued his
controlled fall, firing as fast as he could. His powerful wands
barely needed to breathe, so his fireballs flew in a virtually
continuous stream.

No one had ever seen that before, and many
were not sure what to make of it.

Having captured their attention, he needed to
keep it. He extended his full forty-four meter wingspan -- he no
longer hid his recent gains -- and twirled among the Mongols as
fast as his body could rotate. The Baron struck them like a
tornado.

While the tip of a sharp blade can pierce
body armor if given enough force, a sword’s edge just scratches the
surface. So, instead of blades, Billy used fire. Falling among
them, he positioned his boot wands at an angle to keep spinning.
When he fell too far, he reversed thrust to spin back up, like a
cyclone with two fiery arms. They were so numerous that Billy
didn’t have to see them to burn them.

His boot wands blasted at those below him,
which threw him in the air, like a dancing drunk. It looked like he
bounced off of invisible walls in the sky, but it worked since this
made it harder to predict where he’d be the next second. Every
heartbeat he changed his elevation, speed, and trajectory, like
kids learning to fly.

Billy’s flames obscured the battlefield. The
rain turned his fire into mist, the hissing sound surprisingly loud
against the falling rain. The aerial dance now had music. The
Mongols projected shields, even though a thin stream of fire would
not injure them. It was like the Baron held a water cannon in each
hand, except it blew fire instead of liquid. In a very crowded
quarter-kilometer of cubic space -- not unlike an open-air stadium
arena -- Billy used dual twenty-two-meter long flames to burn a
dozen enemies a heartbeat, and horrify the rest.

Billy glimpsed a few thousand Mongols staring
up in confusion, not sure what they were seeing. If they joined the
fight, then not even his one hundred quads could save his troops on
the ground. But first they had to understand what faced them. It
looked like a giant fire serpent dancing in front of a mirror, the
way the lines of flame flowed, curled, and snapped. Forty-four
meters of air hissed like an angry snake. With every heartbeat more
steam rose to cloud their night vision.

Although someone had to later point it out to
him, what Billy did was not unlike the fire dance that Diva taught
him, but delivered with a desperate fury that confounded
expectations. The video montage would soon stun viewers
worldwide.

A Mongol above him recorded the “fire” fight
and used the sale to fund his early retirement. Although the Sun
was far beyond the horizon, it nevertheless did not look like
nighttime. It was easier to imagine a two-headed fire-breathing
dragon with one hell of a cough than one guy taking on a thousand
quads with just flames.

As Billy staggered vertically and
horizontally, he crashed into enemies unpredictably. Billy felt
something whack or cut or burn him every other heartbeat. He passed
through pockets of super-heated air as if campfires filled the sky.
He thanked Princess for bringing him more of George’s armor.
Something almost knocked his head off and his left boot wand kept
coughing. Because of the rain, Billy had no idea that tears of fear
for Princess flowed down his face like rivers. He prided himself on
his tactical sense, his self-control, and foreseeing the immediate
future, but now he became a fiery tornado hell bent on
destruction.