CHAPTER 35
Dozens of them flew to find friends, so they didn’t actually empty the bank until just before dawn. Princess couldn’t wake Billy up after sex, anyways. All banks have thick walls cemented with mortar, but Billy punched a hole through it quickly. With the city battalion dead, the militia tried to stop them, but they charged blind instead of massing together. The fighting woke most of the city, but most assumed the Americans were bombing again.
Billy landed them at noon in the middle of nowhere so they could rest. The poor bastards indeed took all the coin they could carry. Billy backtracked, but soon returned to get them into position to ambush their pursuers.
Leaving the wealth in a gully, Team Red (as they decided to call themselves) dived out of the sun to take the militia from behind. The few hundred super-quads devastated a few thousand mediocre quads. After that, Billy’s newest employees enjoyed a much overdue vacation in Madrid. The Spanish King insisted on staging a huge feast in the Baron’s honor, while ignoring American Jack, and recounted at length how the gold and wands the Baron sent saved his people.
Billy and Princess stayed the longest to party like newlyweds. His fifteenth birthday was coming up, so he showed her his birth certificate that claimed he was turning seventeen. He bought her expensive jewelry and transferred a ton of gold into her account in anticipation of their first child. The prospect of having a child, then not being alive to support it, horrified Billy. Ultimately, however, they had to go back to work.
Flying high, they spotted a company of Spanish airmen chasing two squads of Mongols. But then two companies of Mongols sprang up on both sides as soon as the Spanish passed them. No matter which way they fled, the Spanish were screwed.
Billy silently sliced the ten quads guarding the ceiling. They all fell like rocks, having no idea what hit them. Then they sped after the next forty, cutting them from behind until survivors noticed and shot back. Billy and Princess stayed with them, even as they banked left towards their comrades.
Discovering the imminent trap shocked the Spanish, who abandoned the two squads ahead to turn on those fighting Billy and Princess. The two groups quickly closed. At the last moment, Billy appeared above the Mongols and distracted them with his famous scream. Princess then shot from above to target the enemy from three places.
The Spanish rose so they all faced the Mongols and fired like a ship's broadside. Blasts travel farther from height, so the Mongols had to gain speed and altitude before the Spanish got into range. The Spanish, however, pulled off an old Mongol trick by flying backwards at a 30 degree angle -- extending their broadside until they destroyed the enemy.
The other Mongol company positioned themselves favorably against the Spanish while the two Mongol squads raced back. Billy used himself as bait to delay their attack. The reward for killing the Red Baron would set them up for life, so they attacked him instead. Once they dove, he led them in front of the Spanish, who devastated them. When the two Mongol squads fled, Billy and Princess hunted them down -- two quads against twenty.
They returned to find the Spanish robbing the corpses. One of their squad leaders had an impressive fireball, so Billy sought him out. And he turned out to be young, beautiful, and female.
“Maria, this is my wife, Princess,” Billy said when she landed. He already thought of her as his wife. He handed Maria a set of wands. “Show us your new wingspan.”
Awed at meeting the famous Red Baron, Maria blew out flame nine meters in joyous disbelief.
“She’s a keeper,” Princess agreed.
“You can have those wands if you follow me until we win the war.”
“I cannot quit the Spanish Air Force now. They need me.”
Billy laughed. “I guarantee you’ll kill more Mongols with me. Take us to your division commander and I’ll get you transferred to Team Red.”
Billy found their camp much bigger.
“Bear, has Jack been recruiting?” Billy asked.
“It’s amazing how old friends find me when I’m finally loaded. The money you gave us is attracting super-quads like flies to shit. We may have a thousand supers soon. You’re a quad magnet.”
Princess cursed. “Damn! My brother is back.”
“He’s not gonna duel me, is he?” Billy asked, surprised, as a skinny American Indian marched angrily towards them.
Princess drew wand and fired off a verbal barrage in their native tongue. Prince didn’t even slow down. He walked up to Billy and swung a fist.
Billy didn’t need years of martial arts training to avoid the round-house punch. He evaded several more while a crowd formed. Frustrated, Prince tried to tackle him, since Indians grow up wrestling. Billy grabbed his upper body, twisted, and sent him flying into the dirt.
“Prince, stop!” Jack yelled.
“It’s okay,” Billy said. “I can do this all day.”
Princess, however, took no chances. Her wand threw her brother into a nearby stream. Team Red formed a wall between them. Prince couldn’t believe his friends chose the new guy over him.
“I deposited a hundred kilos in your name at Global Bank in Madrid,” Billy yelled to Prince. “And I brought super wands for everyone!”
Billy emptied his backpack onto the grass. Hundreds of wand sets spilled out, each wrapped in water-resistant leather pouches.
"Jack," Billy confessed, "I held back on you. The most powerful wands were too valuable to give away. And these are not ‘dead’ wands. I took them from dying multi-millennials, so they retain their full power. I sent them to Madrid to reward the best American quads, but instead I’ll give them out now on the condition that those who accept them swear to follow me until we win this war. If more than one quad wants a wand, the warrior who can extend a flame the longest gets it. No one may take more than one set, and must donate a backup set to the Americans.”
Quads obsess over wands like a man does his penis. Everyone was soon torching new sticks. Billy may as well have dropped naked women on them, given their excitement. Better wands let them fly faster and blast stronger. It could literally make the difference between life and death.
The twins, after a decade constantly dueling using their parent’s wands, beat everyone, but a few long time veterans came close.
“Who’s that lady?” Billy asked Princess. Their group had a few dozen Africans, most descendents of Jack, but this one seemed the darkest of them all.
“Pretty, isn’t she?”
“I can’t tell under all that hair, but look at those flames! What’s her story?”
“An orphan, like so many of us. The Mongols wiped out most of her tribe, which ruled an empire in northwest Africa. She goes by Mali, the name of her kingdom. We found her several years ago dueling constantly to boost her power.”
Billy had a few special sets of wands tucked in his jacket, so he walked over and offered her one.
“Try these.”
She looked at him hard, trying to guess his motive. “I cannot promise to follow you forever. I’m just here to earn money to hire enough quads to kill the Mongols who wiped out my family.”
“Then these may help.”
She reluctantly took them and her face lit up when she fired eleven meter long fire.
“What do you want for them?” she asked, hating herself for asking.
“I’ll let my wife tell you,” Billy answered as he walked off, wondering what their children would look like.
Billy asked American Jack if his group had any experts in sword fighting to teach him. Jack called over someone still wearing a full suit of armor.
"Blade, Red here wants to improve his sword fighting skills. Make him show us what he's got."
Blade gave him no time. Billy ducked a swipe, then popped over another to give him time to extend his own. Very long blades are great in the air, but they smack the ground. Billy rose ten meters and Blade went after him.
He found himself completely outmatched
. He thought he was an excellent flier, but she danced around him. Not wanting to get his ass kicked in front of his new friends, his wand pushed Blade hard into a tree.
Furious, Blade rose again, clearly going to beat him to a pulp, so Billy levitated a rock to smack his opponent in the head. Again, Blade went down. Fuming, Blade made a more cautious approach, using superior skill to unfairly strike Billy again and again. Desperate, Billy extended a leg blade that flipped Blade in the air, then struck his opponent hard into the ground with a steel bat. For the third time, Billy humiliated Blade in front of everybody.
He landed a safe distance away to praise him, but Blade's helmet fell off and she looked about to cry. Billy, like most teenagers, had more hormones than neurons. Stunned at her beauty, his slow reaction got him punched in the face.
Prince howled in laughter.
"Stay out of my way, you cruel son-of-a-bitch," she roared before storming off.
"Damn it, Red!" Instead of helping him up, Princess hit him while he was down. "Blade has the best rack in the outfit. I should have mentioned this before, especially when I said I was a virgin, but I also play for that team, and Blade is my favorite player. I was hoping to include you, but now you messed it all up. Now she'll never give you any, even though she wants kids from a powerful father."
His head already hurt, but now it hurt worse. Did his wife just say she slept with other women? And still considered herself a virgin? He must know less about sex than he thought.
Princess squatted in front of him. “Blade is the only surviving child of the last king of Switzerland. The Mongols raped her and her mother when she was a teenager, two decades ago. She wants to reclaim her kingdom, but she needs a powerful son to proclaim as king. A prodigy with you would have been perfect. Nobody would dare mess with the Red Baron’s son.”
Mongols thought nothing of raping civilians. They raped so many in Peking in 1215 that thousands of women avoided it by throwing themselves to death off the battlements.
Rape played key roles in Mongol history: Genghis’ father stole his mother from her husband and, in revenge years later, the mother's tribe kidnapped, raped, and impregnated Genghis' wife. Genghis named the product of this rape "guest" to clarify how he felt towards his wife’s son. The family poisoned him to prevent the bastard from succeeding Genghis as Khan. Just as Genghis killed his own older half-brother to become the head of the family when he was just a teenager.
"I thought she was a guy," was Billy's weak excuse, watching Princess go after Blade.
Jack suddenly crash landed, looking like he burnt his wand. "I need to talk to you. Now!" Jack didn’t strike Billy as the aggressive type, but he dragged Billy by the arm like he was just a skinny kid. "Where did you get these?" he demanded once trees shielded them, holding up a wand set.
"They’re my father's," Billy answered.
"And where did he get them?"
"From his father. They go back like ten generations. Always to the strongest, and only on the condition that they’re used against Mongols."
Jack turned pale in front of him, clutched his chest, and slid to the ground. Oh, great, Billy thought. The guy survives three centuries fighting humanity’s greatest tyrant, then I kill him without even trying.
"Von Richthofen," the old man whispered.
Now Billy freaked out. He popped a wand and crouched down. "How the hell do you know my name?"
Jack tried to smile, but failed. "It's my name. I’m the Baron Karl von Richthofen. My mother Hildred carved my initials on them. I gave them to my son when I thought I was gonna die in Peking in 1215. I thought they wiped you out."
Billy suddenly felt equally old. He collapsed next to his ancestor. “Your great-granddaughter Rachel survived. The one who could blast with her boot wands. Later, while pregnant, her fiancée got killed, so she married Taran of Kiev and encouraged him to duel until he died. Since then we’ve burned ancient trees. My grandfather believed we cost the Khan several million wands.”
Jack got all excited. “Oh, but I met some of them! I just never knew they were family.”
“I’m not the last of my line, so if anything happens to me, tell the king of England.”
“You’ve had kids with the king of England?” Jack joked.
“No, but my mother was his only legitimate daughter. Until Imperial Guards raped her to death. The queen murdered my father, so I set my grandfather on the throne. Technically, I’m next in line.”
Jack now looked alarmed. “You’re the one who killed Queen Margaret!”
“Bitch had to pay.” The boy didn’t sound the least apologetic.
Jack didn’t want to say anything, but he suddenly had to take a massive crap. “Why would the heir to the English crown risk his life millions of times? England looks suspiciously like the Empire’s last friend in Europe.”
“I own Global Bank, which gets to operate within the Empire for as long as England looks friendly.”
This explained so much. Yet it didn’t explain enough. “You’re too young to have raided the Mongol capital several years ago.”
“My father was the original Baron,” Billy said to the guy who was still, strictly speaking, the baron.
“Then those are your parents buried in our family cemetery!” Jack seemed relieved. “I go there to talk to my wife, and the fresh graves scared me.”
“The open grave is mine. Please bury me there if you out-live me.”
“And you me. My grave is empty, by the way. Strategic deception.”
“I’m having as many children as possible, just in case this war lasts longer than I do.”
"Are you gonna marry Princess? I'm shocked at how well she's turned out, given all the fawning over her."
"We’re trying to have kids, but I can't marry for a few years," Billy said.
"Why not? That girl's a great catch."
Sighing deeply, Billy took off the mask he wore when not wearing his helmet. "Because I just turned fifteen years old, and the legal age in England is eighteen. The birth certificate I showed Princess gave me two extra years to throw off bounty hunters."
"Does Princess know she has to wait three years to marry you?"
"Not yet. I'm hoping I can make excuses for a few years like other men."
The old man laughed. "Good luck with that," said a guy who started thousands of families. “But I think I can help you with the bounty hunters. Let me introduce you to someone special. Stay here.”
Jack returned with a vicious-looking veteran who probably had not smiled in centuries. “Red, meet John. Mongols have killed three of his families. John, Red descended from my great-granddaughter Rachel. He even has the wands I thought I lost in Peking.”
“I’m calling myself Jim this time, old man. Try to get it right.”
Daddy issues, Billy suspected. He examined their faces. “Is Jim your son or grandson?”
That really upset the new guy. “Jack, this is why I don’t like flying with you.”
“Red won’t tell anyone. He’s got his own secrets. Show him your face.” Billy took off the cloth and the guy’s eyes bugged out. “Jim, we need someone to be the face and voice of the Red Baron, and this boy can’t be it. You could impersonate him better than anyone I know.”
“Why don’t I just blast myself and save you the trouble? If people think I’m the Red Baron, my head would be worth tons of gold.”
Billy knew he needed to bring out the big guns. “Jim, I’ll give you a ton of gold and the Khan’s Millennial Wands, taken when we buried him under a million headless corpses.” Billy knew he had him when his nostrils flared. “But first I need to know why Jack thinks you’d make a better Red Baron than, say, Bear.”
Billy took out the Khan’s wands and watched the new guy salivate over them. “This will be your only chance to own Millennial Wands. See how long a wingspan they’ll give you.”
The new guy burst flame eleven mete
rs, nearly burning down the trees around them. Billy could tell that he’d have to kill Jim to get the wands back.
“Show him, son.”
Jim carefully scanned for witnesses, then popped up and poured flame from all four wands. Billy coughed so hard he nearly choked. No wonder he was paranoid -- everyone really was out to get him!
“Do we have a deal?”
“Nobody else can know about my boot wands,” Jim told Billy sternly.
“And nobody can know the Baron is just a damn teenager.”
Billy spent the night passing wand memories to video sticks, which Jim would take to experts to make propaganda that Jim would narrate, while trying to sound like William.
Once they selected, improved, and narrated every video they wanted, they organized them on a set of video wands. Then they sent a set to every major library in the world, each collection containing over a million recordings. Some, naturally, were from his father. The exhaustive list covered literally every kill. Widows would search them for husbands who never returned. Dueling enthusiasts soon argued over his best one hundred victories and universally declared him the best dueler in history.
The shock value helped make them the most popular videos in history, after porn. They struck the Mongols like a spiritual version of the thirteenth century black plague. Even hardened super-quads looked ready to give up after watching the Baron’s best-of montage that highlighted his most spectacular kills. A more comprehensive montage clinically showed one moment of literally a million lives the Baron personally took.
The most notorious wand in the set was dedicated to the sacking of Mongol cities, including the capital and the Khan’s palace. Most of these extensive videos had never been seen before and horrified Mongols, who only heard impersonal news reports.
They even included a video of the Mongol postal service personally handing the first collection to the Great Khan himself, and his reaction when the Red Baron appeared in the message to offer him this gift.
Jim’s job was to appear and disappear across the Empire to cloud reports of the Baron’s location. He’d beat Mongols in the arena, flash his four wands, and do the Baron’s scream before flying off. With the new wands, nobody could catch him. Jim won a fortune in the arena. Jack later remarked that he had never seen his son this happy.
“Killing Mongols reduces the pain of lost loved ones,” Billy explained from experience. “And the more he kills, the better he feels.”
After Jim left them in the trees, Billy asked Jack: “Is it true you have a million employees?”
“I have thousands of descendents who run companies that employ a million Americans.”
“I need an organization to manage my investments. I’ll give you access to my charity fund in San Francisco if you’ll expand my food production, infrastructure, education, and healthcare projects. All I ask is that you record detailed expense reports and that you publicly credit the Red Baron. I’d also like to give you access to my general war fund accounts in Europe in case something bad happens to me.”
Jack started laughing hysterically, literally rolling on the ground like a kid being tickled, which the boy took as a “yes.” Billy could almost see a huge burden falling from Jack’s shoulders.
“Why me?” Jack finally managed to ask.
“Because you won’t rob me. You already spend every coin you can get your hands on to avenge your family.”
Jack liked the logic. “In that case, I’ll make you my heir.”
The following morning, Billy called them together.
“Prince, if you duel enough, you could become the most powerful quad in the world. I’ll loan you a ton of gold for you to bet, on the condition that 90% of your winnings go into my general war fund."
"50%"
"85%, since you can't win without my wands, can't bet without my money, and can't survive without quad protection. But let's sweeten the deal by assigning female bodyguards willing to mate with you, and a kilo a year for eighteen years for each child comes out of the 85%. But you have to duel at least 10,000 times a year."
"60% and I'll duel 15,000 times a year," Prince countered.
"80%, 15,000, and you get to keep these beautiful Millennial Wands that I took from the Third Millennial. My father dueled with these babies." The crowd gasped as Billy took wands from his arm launchers and boots. "You've seen what I can do with these beauties."
Actually, he held up Subodei’s backup that his father used. The more powerful Millennials that he really used he hid under his shirt.
"Let me see those," demanded Jack. He held them to the sunlight, peered closely, even sniffed them. As the final test, he lit them up, pushing out flame ten meters to enthusiastic clapping. Jack looked like he got laid.
“Jack, we’re too famous to duel, so you can’t have them, but the Mongols welcome Indians in their arenas so they don’t have to fight them in the field. Prince, the sooner we kill their super-quads, the faster we’ll win the war. Mali will also duel, so don’t kill any dark women with huge hair. The lives we save by dueling could very well be our own children."
“You just want to get rid of me,” Prince said flatly.
“It’ll be easier to ravage your sister without you here,” Billy admitted.
The athletic Indian took the wands from Jack, felt their power surge in him, then shot twelve-meter long flames. He’ll have no problem killing a million people for those wands, Billy concluded.
"You have yourself a deal, Baron," he said, shaking Billy's hand for the first time, his animosity buried.
That night, Billy found Blade off by herself, still seething mad.
“I’ve been an ass, so you can hit me again if you want.”
Luckily he wore his helmet because she smacked him hard enough to knock his head off. He held out a set of wands, even as she began kicking him mercilessly until she exhausted herself. Then she snatched the bundle and tried them out.
She changed from fire to steel to flying through trees. Satisfied, she landed and accepted his apology. Sort of.
“Okay, Baron. What do you want for them?”
The question confused him. “I want you to make me a better swordsman.”
“And what else?”
“What else is there?”
“Princess said you gave her a ton of gold for having your child, and that you’d do the same for me.”
“I sure don’t want my children growing up poor. Life is too short to live poor.”
“Okay. For a ton a child, I’ll give you as many as possible. But you must bathe first,” she said.
Billy ran for the stream.