Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 16

  The marathoners and near-marathoners crossed on a moonless night above the clouds, using ships to leapfrog around hidden sentries. They sped south along the coast, now uninhabited because William had killed everyone there the last few years. Siberians guided them around patrols. He left the half-marathoners behind to destroy the Mongols guarding the Bering Strait, then go south to haul plunder home.

  The night before the full moon, William hid in the trees with a marathon battalion, using his wand to enhance his vision as they all stared at a lake. Somewhere, far above them, a scout dressed in camouflage hid in the clouds. His five best marathon battalions had gone ahead to exhaust the five closest enemy marathon divisions.

  Something plopped in the middle of the lake. Even in the dark, everyone saw the tiny waves ripple towards shore. The mood changed instantly. The scout had dropped a rock to signal that the high-altitude patrol just passed. Within minutes, one hundred and five battalions flew at a steep sixty degree angle to rise to their ceiling to avoid being seen by sentries on the ground.

  The Great Khan loved open space as much as he detested crowded cities, so he usually roamed within a few hours flight of his capital. Ten thousand Imperial Guards now protected his person, and fifty thousand marathoners formed a rapid reaction force to confront American incursions. Genghis needed to be seen personally leading the fight. He couldn’t afford any more Summer Slaughters.

  The Khan had three pairs of patrols circling his portable palace: low altitude, mid-altitude, and high altitude. The higher they patrolled, the larger the circle. Which is why William waited for one high-altitude squad to pass overhead, then raced into the gap before the second squad appeared.

  Once near the Khan’s camp, they dived, with the best quads sprinting towards the other patrols from behind. William sliced one squad up without giving them time to sound an alarm. A minute later, however, a low-altitude patrol must have noticed the huge shadow descending because a shrieking noise warned the rapid-reaction unit.

  Fortunately for the Americans, William targeted this division twice over. First, his troops dropped bombs on them from high altitude, so they had only a dozen heartbeats before the explosions decimated their formation. Then more Americans, flying straight down at maximum speed, bombed them again before overwhelming survivors with fireballs.

  Rocked out of a sound sleep, the rest of the Mongols could not possibly respond fast enough. Sure, several thousand got off the ground, but they could not stop over one hundred thousand ambushers. The raiders firebombed the felt huts, then dropped shrapnel bombs on the densest groups of survivors. A million fireballs a minute torched everything moving, including the dry winter grass.

  The sudden detonations sounded like a thunderstorm at ground level, so Genghis didn’t recognize it as a bombing. Pressure waves blew away his burning tents and intense heat sucked the breath from his lungs. It felt like the air itself was on fire.

  Dayan, the commander of the Imperial Guards, waved at him to hurry. The expression on his face told Genghis that this was no drill. He clearly had no idea what was going on and that scared the hell out of Genghis, who roughly grabbed Empress Borte. One hundred Imperial Guards rushed the Khan into his room of last resort -- a steel box large enough to accommodate one hundred. Although barely portable when empty, it was far too heavy to lift with people inside. Although great protection from bombs dropped from high altitude, it became a death trap without defenders outside.

  Genghis rushed to open one of the wand slits while his guards starting firing out other narrow openings in the steel. What he saw stunned him. A vast enemy force overwhelmed his military. Easily, it seemed, as they stumbled about, blind, deaf, and probably mute. He knew his marathoners would not abandon him -- he’d kill their children if they did -- so they died in place, unarmored and half asleep.

  The Great Khan then identified the guy who must be in charge, for he directed the slaughter of his harem. The Baron wore the same armor suit as at the Summer Slaughter. Americans rounded up his few hundred women and several hundred children. No longer able to have sex, Genghis needed his family around him. The Baron moved them within view before personally beheading them. The cruel bastard even waved towards the box, although the grim chore exhausted him. Still, he must be really pissed because he refused to let anyone help. The Khan had no idea that William apologized to his beloved wife for not protecting her every time he swung his sword. Still, killing the Khan’s women and children felt cathartic. Not many men can behead hundreds of people, but doing so helped relieve his soul-sucking grief.

  Genghis had not felt such helpless rage since his tribe abandoned him when he was ten. His descendents tried to pull him from the tiny window, but he would not be moved. He could not look away as he lost his women and children.

  At least, those he had not already sent away.

  Although his palace moved frequently to give the animals fresh grazing, the permanent nature of his camp made it practical for the families of his troops to stay with them, forming a small city. The capital was near, so they could get whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. Since the Khan encouraged procreation with female quads, these sixty thousand troops had a few hundred thousand women and several hundred thousand children. Including support staff, maids, traders, whores, venders, and those seeking favors, a million people lived with the Khan. But they did not expect to fight, nor were they organized for war.

  The enormity of the loss burned the Khan up inside. His Imperial Guards could not be replaced. They were, literally, family.

  The resistance didn’t last long enough to justify calling it a battle. The incendiaries turned thousands of felt huts into funeral pyres. As the massacre wound down, the Americans searched for valuables, before burning everything they could not take. They must be hungry because some of them set up thousands of his goats on spits for cooking. Others expertly fired up his bakeries. The Americans had laughed, a few years ago, when William ordered them to learn cooking and baking. It slowly dawned on Genghis that the Americans planned to stay long enough to make jerked meat and bread. That would solve their food problem, freeing them to raid without having to forage. What infuriated the Khan was that it meant they were not afraid. Or in a hurry.

  His personal guard, the only survivors, continued shooting at the closest enemies, so the Americans dumped beheaded bodies on his box to block the wand slits.

  Genghis watched the enemy commander pick up a bomb pack and fly over him. “Everyone down!” he warned. A loud detonation blew a hole in the steel roof, followed by anti-personnel munitions which shredded dozens of his guards. Americans then lined the rim of the hole to blast blindly inside while others dumped the heads of his harem into the giant coffin. Genghis could tell when the Baron blasted because his fireballs filled up the narrow box. Even the best quads are just sitting ducks when they have nowhere to move. The closest Mongols soon became ambulatory torches that lit up the dark coffin. Their comrades didn’t even have water to put out their burning friends.

  “Genghis?” shouted the Baron in perfect Mongolian. Only the empress called him Genghis.

  “You’re a dead man!” the Khan shouted back, giving away his position.

  William fireballed the other half of the box. “You’ve been trying to kill me all my life. I just wanted to make sure you survived so you could see me exterminate your descendents.”

  “I’ll kill everyone you love!”

  “You already have. Why do you think I’m doing this? Oh, those bombs you’ve been dragging around will be dropped on your capital today, and your backup Millennial Wands are now my backup Millennial Wands. My primary wands I took from the Third Millennial. You may be in this death trap for a while. If you get hungry, eat shit, but don’t die. You can’t suffer if you’re dead.”

  William was surprised at his own vehemence. Americans dropped corpses to block the hole. This trapped in the smoke. It took the
m all day to pile a million bodies, but the propaganda value was so worth it. Then they added the heads. It looked like a million-headed monster the size of a hill. Finally, they hovered above to piss and shit to tell the world what Americans thought of Genghis Khan. Pundits would call it a shitty declaration of war.

  Inside, Genghis pushed away his traumatized wife to help the wounded. Few injuries were fatal, unless they became infected, which looked likely since they lacked medicine to disinfect the wounds. The uninjured tried to put out the burning people or they’d all die of smoke inhalation. Genghis could not help but look at the faces of his beheaded women and children as he tried to be useful. It never crossed his mind that he made millions feel the same hopeless rage that now burned in him.

  The smoke irritated his eyes and gave him a hacking cough that would never leave him. The delicious smell of roasted meat reminded them that they didn’t have any food. The next week, as their hunger increased, the cooking outside would grow unbearable. But the stench of urine and feces would replace their appetites with nausea. Some of them would never eat meat again. For a proud Mongol, that was like embracing sodomy.

  After breakfast, William flew with his best Mongol speakers to the capital, where they bought fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, milk, spices, and medicine.

  At noon, one marathon division appeared, flying low and slow. The military and the local militia chased the Americans away. When forced to rest, the other Americans dropped out of cloud cover to annihilate them.

  Meanwhile, William and his crew started hundreds of fires and ambushed police. The residents spent all day and night trying to put the fires out while his armada napped an hour away.

  What worked on the Khan’s palace worked even better on his capital at midnight. Thousands of tired, sleepy quads rose up, only for the Americans to blast them with superior height, numbers, and power. They burned the city and everyone in it, except the warehouses that housed the tribute. Genghis rebuilt the city because Mongolia losing their capital would be too embarrassing to live down. In the morning the Americans ate breakfast at William’s ranch, and slept in comfort in their new clothes.

  The next day, his best divisions each lured a Mongol division to them. William liked surprising exhausted enemy marathoners with ten times their number.

  Like before, they loaded every wagon and pack animal, then drove the caravan east to their waiting ships. A few dozen other wagons spread out northward with food, medicine, and tents for their return home. Siberians drove herds of animals to their hidden ranches to feed future raiders.

  Now, with the region virtually defenseless, two hundred thousand half-marathoners arrived to help William sack the nearest cities, towns, and hordes. Each city provided another wagon train of food, treasure, and supplies. William enjoyed so much success for so long that the Mongols had to largely abandon eastern Mongolia, just as Mongols historically displaced one hundred million foreigners over the last three centuries.

  After several days in the box, Genghis climbed through a million decapitated bodies to freedom. The Americans wisely fled before disease infected them. Genghis would never get over the stench of feces. For years, just a whiff of shit would make him convulse. He levitated bodies to clear a path for everyone else and personally carried his wounded bodyguards out.

  A month passed before a Mongol force found him and his few surviving bodyguards. That’s when he learned that the Triads ambushed his Imperial Guards, which explained the delay. Local troops were too busy fighting gangs to fly north to oppose an armada of raiders.

  When William left for Peking, he sent the half-marathoners home with all they could carry. The marathoners and near-marathoners decided to continue raiding. And they soon learned that William made victory look easy. Although they knew what to do, their leaders lacked the sixth sense that William seemed to possess. They still won more than they lost, but suffered several times as many casualties. After one too many surprises, the near-marathoners returned home.

  The ten thousand marathoners, with so much food and mountaintop bunkers, decided to press their luck and stay the winter. Their presence would infuriate Mongols and force the Khan to expend vast resources on catching them.