Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 80

  Overlooking the crowded Peking Stadium Arena, Genghis Khan smiled for the first time in years. Instead of the Red Baron interrupting his beloved Olympics, the games went off flawlessly. Foreign news agencies fawned over the Khan’s charm, wit, and generosity. In fact, it was the most successful Olympics in history. Tourists filled every hotel within flying distance, boosting the local economy. If they spend enough, the tourists may actually pull the Empire out of its decade-long economic depression.

  Of the several million Mongol descendents who moved here or just visited, the one hundred thousand sitting with him in the Peking Stadium represented the most powerful -- who refused to fight the war. Most of them preferred running their businesses than the hazardous job of facing the Red Baron.

  Genghis hoped watching the duels would get their blood pumping enough to fight. They had enough quads and gold to win the war. So he charmed them, culminating in this exclusive honor of attending the final award ceremony with the Great Immortal at the famous Peking Stadium Arena.

  Genghis went out of his way to welcome athletic teams from his former enemies. Beating Mongols in sports helped them recover from centuries of humiliation. Few realized that public relations was the Empire's most effective weapon. He charmed the world media into dispelling the negative caricature that Mongol-haters had of him. One summer event would not erase the hostility, but it was a good start to resettling relations.

  While critics portrayed Genghis Khan as a villain, his own people saw him as a great man who brought peace, prosperity, and security for the most people on Earth for the longest period in history. A lone woman could cross from one end of the Empire to another reasonably sure of her safety. The Olympics was less about sports and more about spreading this message to the rest of the world.

  Now more than ever.

  The only dark spot was that damn American Indian dominating every wand event -- something he expected Jirko to do. The Indian arrived in Peking a few months before the Olympics and remained undefeated. Genghis wanted to poison him until his spies showed him an interview of the arrogant bastard bragging that he’d beat the Red Baron to prove he was the world’s best dueler. Even better, the Red Baron publicly accepted the Indian’s challenge!

  Well, that was the best news that Genghis heard in a long time because he could not re-conquer his Empire with the Baron alive.

  And the Khan was glad he didn't poison the Indian because it turned out that he flew for the English Olympic team. King Richard and his extended family came all the way to Peking to cheer their new champion, who married the king’s favorite granddaughter.

  When crowned several years ago, King Richard reassured Genghis that England would stay neutral, despite the pressure his neighbors put on him. When Genghis lost his air forces in Europe, the king repeated his neutrality, despite being called a traitor by the rest of Europe. Genghis Khan valued loyalty. England didn't blow with the wind like most countries, so he didn't regret not poisoning the Indian who won so many medals for the English.

  And King Richard turned out to be a delight at the supper table. Genghis was now very glad he didn’t kill him two decades ago, as Ambassador Tamerlane demanded, when his daughter’s elopement voided their treaty.

  Queen Susan, however, gave him the evil eye. Or perhaps she gave that to everyone. He wondered if she blamed Mongols for her wound.

  “My dear Susan,” Genghis asked soothingly in his grand dining hall, “would it be too painful to share with us how you lost your eye?”

  The Matriarch gave Genghis Khan a look that would have turned softer men into stone. Then she sighed.

  “I fell on an Irishman.”

  “Before you wed, I hope. I’ve heard sex is possible in the air, but I’ve never managed to pull it off. Or, rather, put it in.”

  She closed her eyes to search her wand for the video. “Some English mothers were picnicking with our babies in Ireland when some Irish bandits mistook us for rich victims. They planned to rape us and ransom our babies.”

  She started the video just after Billy had screamed over the hill. Susan stood on her chair so the few thousand guests could watch.

  They saw a few hundred men yelling in Gaelic rush closer, clearly expecting to butcher them. The wand swung to show a few dozen women leave their babies in the grass as Susan commanded them to form a wall. Spacing themselves a meter apart, vertically in the air, is hard enough for trained professionals. These scared mothers had just moments to execute a complex maneuver. Susan led them higher to force the attackers to look into the sun.

  Then the fireballs began. Susan and one other blasted at three hundred meters -- beautiful fireballs, bright colors, tight spacing, while accurately leading their targets. The men charged too closely together to dodge effectively, which allowed the ladies to funnel their fire into a narrow space where it was hard to miss. The bandits fell like rain. The men should have prevented this by spreading out vertically and horizontally to flank the mothers in a classic envelopment maneuver. If fear made them cling to their buddies, then they must have been terrified. The best quads in front faced a meteor shower from the female broadside. Efforts to evade only made them collide with those around them. Those behind, flying all out, smashed into those burning in front. What should have been an easy victory became a bloody defeat.

  The survivors fired once they got into range until the mass of men struck the middle of the wall. The video devolved into a free-for-all, glimpses of steel, fire, and death played out to a soundtrack of grunts, groans, and growls. Susan clearly fought like a demon bitch, so maybe she was born with the evil eye.

  The Matriarch had been spitting giant fireballs, alternating her hand wands every heartbeat, as the ambushers rose up to kill her. She jumped onto a man’s face, breaking his jaw with her boot, then popped vertically a few meters to avoid two men and slice a tendon at maximum range. She saw one granddaughter get cut in the shoulder and a great-granddaughter fight off three more. Susan dropped on one and sliced the other two when something knocked her from the sky. She fell onto the head of an Irishman, her face slapping the top of his helmet, slashing her eye. Yet she barely paused. She wrapped her legs around the guy long enough to slice his head off -- they’d later find an infant playing with his face. This put her into freefall. Her feet smashed into another Irishman who she savagely hacked, while still falling. The recording suddenly showed a wide shield, then a fireball hit, and finally her wand blasted the bastard who almost fried her. Someone crashed into her, and her wand recorded her punching him in the face, splattering his nose in an explosion of blood before her other wand-blade slit his throat. The video watched him fall. The grass had more corpses than babies, and a few dozen men were still desperately fighting to the death when Susan ended the fun.

  “Not all fights involve Mongols,” she said in the stunned silence.

  Now Genghis Khan understood why they called her the Matriarch. She could beat a few hundred murderous ambushers with just a bunch of girls. He was tempted to ask for a copy to humiliate his recruits.

  “Remind me never to invade England,” Genghis said loudly to great laughter. “King Richard, I imagine you don’t argue often with your queen.”

  This was the first time Richard had ever seen this video. “Not unarmed, anyways.”

  Everyone laughed. Even Susan, who finally managed to look more like a grandmother than a dueling champion.

  Genghis thought of his wife. Borte loved witty banter and would have really enjoyed these English.

  What Genghis Khan didn’t know is that, as he surveyed the Peking Arena, Mara helped Billy’s son William put on bright red custom armor. Grandma and her son Jim stood uncomfortably in their own red suits, while Elizabeth danced in excitement in hers. Their job was to lure the four largest Mongol air units away from the marathoners flying in. The four fake Red Barons would tire them out, then take them over the ocean where, hopefully, many of them would la
ck the energy to return. Those who survived would be lured to the Baron’s huge marathon force, one at a time. Their most important job was to keep those air units busy, tired, and apart.

  Grandma did not look forward to pissing off fifty thousand vengeful Mongols, but the other three looked eager to be chased all day. But now she understood why Billy gave them all Millennial Wands -- because they were gonna need them. Two hundred thousand quads chasing four fake barons -- Grandma chuckled at the crazy stuff Red came up with.

  King Richard sought to avenge his daughter’s murder via fifty thousand English and Irish quads dressed as civilians who would pounce on police, militias, and smaller enemy units. Lady Mara, although pregnant again, was especially eager to avenge her older sister’s death.

  Then, to the dismay of millions, reports came in that the Red Baron caught pneumonia in Alaska by working himself too hard. Apparently he never recovered fully from his near-fatal wounds from the previous summer. Genghis found that hard to believe, but his spies followed the marathon armada south to San Francisco. The Khan expected the Baron to make a last-minute rush north, but instead they flew farther south to Los Angeles, which made it impossible for the marathoners to reach Peking in time.

  Or so he thought.

  In fact, Genghis received a report every day, and just this morning he saw a video of Grandma at the Baron’s bedside with the distinctive Los Angeles city and many thousands of marathoners behind them. What he didn’t know is that this would be the last messenger that Team Red would let through.

  Genghis organized two million quads into four groups: he had half a million at the Bering Strait; four groups of fifty thousand around Peking; half a million opposing the Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanese; and the rest near his border with China. The Russians, Persians, and Turks kept their air units far from his borders, so he redeployed those troops to oppose the Chinese.

  What Genghis didn’t know is that Europe started attacking a week ago. The Khan’s sack of Krakow scared them, and Jack constantly reminded them that they’d never be safe as long as the Mongols survived. The Russians spent the winter pre-deploying supplies and the marathoners carried heavier loads so the rest could travel farther.

  To help the Chinese, Billy paid the Indian Air Force to attack the Mongols facing the Chinese from behind while the Republic of Northern India cleansed the Tibetan Plateau of Mongols.

  In the Khan’s favor, the Baron’s raids motivated Mongols to join his air force. Widespread persecution in former territories succeeded in motivating several million other Mongol descendents to move home -- something that Genghis himself repeatedly failed to do. The Baron’s threat to the homeland motivated several million more to temporarily defend their ancestral homeland without actually moving there permanently.

  Apart from a million new quads joining his air force, and a few million more flying in just to protect Mongols in case the bells rang, Genghis hired a million foreign mercenaries with bullion he buried centuries ago.

  Besides training millions of two-wanders, Genghis spent heavily to give away conventional weapons -- swords, bows, and spears -- to millions of Mongols who couldn’t use wands. The generals facing the Americans, Chinese, and those in Korea spent months preparing for every conceivable scenario, building defenses, and stockpiling supplies. If the enemy attacked, these troops would trounce them.

  If bells rang across northern China, several million people on each side would start slaughtering each other. Plus the four million quads in professional air units.

  Genghis tasted victory already. Without the Baron and his quarter-million marathoners, the Americans and the Chinese Air Force won’t attack, which presented him with a delicious irony. Genghis waved a messenger over and gave the order to ring the city bells after the ceremony. He’d much rather fight the enemy now without the Baron.

  With his two million quads without enemy armadas to occupy them, he could deploy them against the Chinese civilians and foreign tourists shooting Mongols. With the homeland empty of traitors, he could then retake southern China.

  Or, he thought with a smile, put pleasure before business and wipe out the Americas. There couldn’t be more than one hundred million of them left. That’d be just the therapy his traumatized spirit needed.

  What a beautiful morning! He personally didn't like Peking because dust clouds from the Gobi practically buried it. And the dust triggered his hacking cough, which inevitably reminded him that he once had to crawl through a million headless bodies covered in shit. But since the Baron destroyed his roving tent palace, he only felt safe within the Forbidden City in Peking.

  Music started and the three champions flew out. The Indian landed on the highest post, with Jirko winning the silver and a Tatar prodigy the bronze. Then Genghis gave an inspiring speech that he spent an unusual amount of time on, knowing the world was watching. The Empire's national anthem followed while the arena played a montage of video clips of the duels that the audience witnessed over the last month.

  Genghis Khan could not remember when he last enjoyed himself so much.